The College Dropout

Nah he’s not a baller though cmon. The bar is a little higher for that but he’s no clogger.

Nah he’s class imo

Shearer chatting shit about the offside Rashford over Watkins is insane. I guess he wanted to keep it tight. Get to the last 20 then throw on the Calvary. Will need to do that at least 15 minutes earlier now. Some obvious rotation options for the weekend mind

So yeh they’ll need to have won 9 out of 10. So fair fucks to them. I think they drop points to at least 2 of us, City, Fulham and Bournemouth.

68 points will be enough - even if we lose to Villa (and don’t get slaughtered). Villa will have to beat us then win 5 out of 6. That would be something like 10 wins from 11 in total. Any less and we’ll probably be ahead on GD. They’ve got something like 5 games in 17 days too.

More confident of beating Chelsea than Palace. Chelsea have been in bad form for the last 18 matches pretty much. We are second in that time. Palace are 6th. Chelsea are 10th. https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/premier-league/formtabelle/wettbewerb/GB1?saison_id=2024&min=15&max=32 Palace style wise are tougher for us. Chelsea will play out from the back, try to dominate possession - we can get on top of them and kill them on transitions, turnovers, counter attacks etc. Chelsea game could be an eliminator for them, crowd and players will be up for it. It has 6-2 Spurs potential almost. Or 3-0 Brighton. palace will give us the ball and look to do that to us which we can sometimes struggle with.

They’ll probably need a minimum of 4 points against us and City to do it. Or 3 points then win the rest of their games. So fair fucks if they can do it. They will have to be excellent. Their GD is likely to be the worst of the group too. We just have to be good-ish.

Still don’t understand it. You would imagine new registrations are the most expensive of which we only have a few. Potentially we are paying the young lads agents a lot of money.

Why would you demotivate one of your best players? If he’s genuinely fit, there’s not a good reason to not get him involved in playing in some capacity. It’s good for him physically. This isn’t a video game. If he’s been busting a gut through rehab to get fit. Let him play. He shouldn’t be overloaded obviously and it should be taken carefully.

He'll be buzzing when he gets a run out.

Would give him 20 minutes here and there, just to give him the mental boost. He's fighting hard to get fit to play, not to sit on the bench. He'll want to get some minutes for his own sake. Not the back to back 90's.

Can't be right? Fees for re-signing Bruno, Joelinton, Gordon and co? That's insane or it's wrong.

Still so many games, still in the cup. The next 4 league games, I need them to drop points. They'll win the last 2 games of the season. I have said for some time that if we get to 68 points, it doesn't matter what the others do. If it's 66ish, then we need to look at the others. The next two are super tough. Three points is fine and keeps us on track, four would be great, and six is amazing.

Yeh it's Man U.

The coverage thing is annoying. I kinda get it for Man U because they are such a big club but it is frustrating. Im so keen for us to press home our advantage as a club. Most pundits didn’t have us qualifying for Europe at all. We still aren’t being taken seriously. If we can push in the transfer market and get further quality in we can start thinking about 73-85 point seasons rather than 60-72 point seasons. The media haven’t shifted to reckoning with us. With CL, a bit of luck and our ambition that could change over the next 18 months.

I'm a super Cal fan but lad doesn't look like he has much left to give at this level. Thanks for the memories and goals lad.

This is as a guaranteed 3 points as there is in the league* *assuming Ange is still there I think Chelsea will miss out entirely (or finish 7th). They are the worst team of the 7. I think they'll get a maximum of 4 points before we play them.

Serious but shouldn’t be world ending. I didn’t think it would be something minor, someone like Eddie wouldn’t be hospitalised because of the flu. Get better Eddie.

I’ve no idea how much it will take to make us further competitive. I’ve no great idea on our PSR position. i do think this new CL format is brutal. You need a deep squad to compete there and requalify for the CL. For me the ends always justify the means. The window of 2023 won us our first trophy and has us competitive almost 2 years later with no improvements. I was critical at the time, critical last June. We’ve won a trophy. If we qualify for the CL - it was all fully justified. All the 2023 signings hit, including Minteh. Bad luck with injuries, the Ban and the draw screwed us. Maybe a lack of experience too. Take all the chips and put them on Eddie, Nickson and whoever. If we got 3 CL campaigns out of 4, the cartel cannot stop us. That first goal is £120m worth of player. They made it look easy. Get us 2 more we could win the league man. Some of our lads are so good, I want them to win more trophies elsewhere if we won’t constantly compete. Isak should be competing at the top end of world football and we ain’t far off making it happen. If we don’t, sell and rebuild. Im not saying we shouldn’t learn, improve, be smarter. But the last approach worked. Iterate it.

I’m not talking about Chelsea. I’m talking about Newcastle United. The club that has spent £220m on Isak, Tonali, Barnes, Botman and Bruno. I’m happy for them to spend another £220m on 5 players Newcastle United think are of that level or better if we can afford it next season. Not fucking Chelsea.

You’re right it’s not age. It’s general position and profile. Tonali was a Serie A winner and international - a bit more proven in his career. Thuram might be a better player for all I know but I’m not against paying that bit more if we think it’s more of a sure thing like we did with Tonali or Isak. Isak will be 26 next season. We’ll not always a have a top 5 striker in Europe on our books. Let’s go for it. Gamble a bit. If we don’t get CL football, we’ll probably have to sell him next summer anyway - for his own good as well. There’s no point in keeping him, Tonali etc. to be in and out of the CL or Europa at worst. Let’s get more players of that level, so we can stay there. I look at Arsenal, Liverpool, Villa what they’ve achieved this season. They aren’t that much better than us or not better than us at all. We’ve beat them all handily this season. Spurs and Man U being shit is great for the 12 points. But we’ve beaten 2 CL Quarter Finalists 4 times and the league champions in a cup final all by ourselves. We are good. At our best we are damn near unstoppable. The time is now. LETS WIN THE LEAGUE.

Etikite would’ve been a success but Isak was another level. Getting our premium targets is why we are as good as we are. A lot of our better players are hitting their peak. Let’s get CL and fucking go for it man if FFP permits. A second CL campaign helps tremendously with the sponsors too. Im not against a good younger option when it’s the best option (Hall, Livra). But if we can get our first choice 23 year old let’s do it. If Villa had the squad they have now at the start of the season they get CL. If we can build a proper squad we’ll challenge for CL again next season. Maybe even a title challenge. We are so close to being a legit side. Give us another quality attacker. A top RCB with pace. A good goalie that can pass and some more quality at CM. We are damn near as good as anyone in Europe.

In the tougher PL I think Szob’s work rate is shining through more than his ability on the ball. Cunha has that bit of magic that I’ve not seen from Szob. At his best too Maddison has more magic. I’ve also not seen Cunha play RW and he’s right footed.

Too slow in the press right? This is why I’d take Welbeck. 20-30 minutes off the bench. Pressing Machine. Hold up and link up play.

The fee is about right considering he has room for improvement age wise. Do you think he’s better than a prime Welbeck? Different styles but similar in a weird way. Neither will score lots of goals but can bring lots to a team - they just do it in different ways. I would take Welbeck here for free.