The College Dropout

Staying up with Krul in goal and Hanley in defence is something

I was having dinner in a local Caribbean restaurant / rum house then none other than Garth Crooks himself came in for a drink. He's a big lad, The end.

Depends if he knew how far Rose was from him which i'm 50/50 on. It was such a calm finish i'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Get it out his feet, slide into the corner.

Started an 8, still an 8. Not entirely down to Bruce either (as manager). There's just not enough fret in this team. A team that finished 10th lost 23 goals and 8 assists from 2 players. We'll replace them with half those goals and assists from the replacements and go down. We haven't had a match I thought we would get points from tbh.

RIP

Was he ever ‘on the wing’. Spent the best part of his career as a false 9 or on the right as an inside forward. Real’s CL golden era revolved around building a functional team and just letting Ronaldo be ‘the difference’. The same would work for Barca imo. Messi doesn’t need to conduct everything.

Maybe it's hard to play with Messi, Busquets and co.? Turan, Coutinho, Dembele and others are fine footballers.

Rooney was done by 30. Torres too. It happens to a lot of players that start young. It's that much harder for attackers imo.

I would never wish serious injury on a NUFC player. I personally hope the lad does as well as he can. I know he’s not fit for the role he’s been out in. He’s not fit for the manager. Won’t get us the results we need. When we struggle and get relegated I don’t know want injuries to be an excuse. I know we will struggle because we are not a serious sporting organisation.

He's a prick. Average league position the 10/12 years before Ashley came in... 6th or so? Since Ashley came in... 15th or so? He's the reason we are a bottom half PL team. He's the reason Bruce is our level. Since he's been in charge we've had Shearer for a few months, Keegan for a few months, Benitez... the rest have been shoddy managers and names. Before MA, we had Dalglish, Gullit, Robson... even Souness won multiple trophies and is a big name within the game. MA is the reason we get second class managers. That's why we hate him and why we hate Steve Bruce.

Agree with this. Quality of the championship is miles better than last time, plus we won’t have Rafa. I genuinely believe a season in the Championship is part of his 5 year plan. Sell out the most valuable. Spend most of it on a core team to get us promoted and to stay up. Recoup the losses over the next season in the PL. 3 years straight profit on a lower wage structure, then back down again for a season.

It's relegation. And staying down. I've no doubt when we get relegated, we'll spend to try and get out. Eventually, we'll fail to get out year 1. Then fail to get out year 2. And that's a game-changer. 4 years in the Champo and things will change. I think it would take 2 years.

That was an outlier of the Ashley era. He's never intended for us to challenge that highly. I think the worst aspect of the Pardew era was Pardew being the focus of hate. He was doing the job he was intended to do. SMC's ineptitude was also a distraction. It was only under Rafa, who attempted to build a sporting organisation that the majority on here properly turned against MA. He's never been interested in sporting success.

Tbf we are still spending the 8m, 6m, 11m on defenders now as we did with Wooodgate, Boumsong and Bramble.

The famous one in all white is a laugh. Always a crisis around the corner, liable to get battered. Except the win trophies. Always had a soft spot for Valencia and Sevilla.

Pardew's very streaky as a manager. He can sometimes get a team on to a good thing through motivation, confidence and team spirit. His lack of a plan going forward can be a benefit to someone like HBA if he does a job the other way. When he had us "front foot" we would often get battered because he can't coach it. Keep it tight at the back, then when we get the ball give it to YoCabs, Ba, HBA, Cisse etc. That's how we won most of our big games. Swansea the best example. Kept it tight and defensive and just killed them with quality and confidence in attack. Once the confidence goes, Pardew has no idea. Bruce is a bit of a Pardew in that sense. But I don't see him getting enough confidence in the players and the players don't suit his style. Bruce would do better than SMC mind.

People complained a lot but it was better than it's given credit for. We were a counter-attacking team. We let teams come on to us. We worked hard, had talented players that kept teams at arms length - often through determination, bravery and hard work rather than excellent coaching but the players were motivated and up for it. And the lads had quality and belief in themselves to get us enough goals to win matches 1-0. Man United 3-0 was an excellent example of that. The team worked tremendously hard, battled away, won their individual battles through determination and skill. Then we scored 2 worldies to secure the win. A 25-yard freekick in off the bar iirc and another from a long ball to Shola beating Evans, then Ba beating Ferdinand for pace and strength and topping it off with an excellent finish. Ba was tremendous at scoring goals from minimal chances. We played better stuff in the second half of the season with Ba, HBA, Cisse and Cabaye all together. Again, on the counter, through quality of individuals rather than coaching but oh well. Kind of like when Burnley finished 7th but with better quality. It depended too much on thin margins, team spirit, bodies on the line to be sustainable with a small squad and a few more matches.

Nothing to do with his body, he's just not a predator in the box like a Ronaldo or even a Mane or Salah who have movement like strikers. Obviously, he's not as gifted as Messi. But he's still one of the worlds best players. He gets on the ball a lot, nice dribbler, excellent passer, he'll look good at Real imo. He may not score tons of goals but I feeel the fans will like him. In terms of goals he may not score as many or have the ratio of Bale. But he'll be fit longer and impress more in general play. A wide player getting 15 goals - maybe 20 in all comps and the same in assists is fine providing you have a striker that can get you 25-30 which Benzema did last season. If Zidane can get a tune out of most of Hazard, Benzema, Jovic, Bale and James they'll have enough goals to be fine.

The fact Mike Ashley is British billionaire who made his money and has his influence in the UK is a major factor. He's not some east Asian retailer with limited influence in the UK and its media. Rio Ferdinand has business with Ashley, that type of thing cannot be ignored. His businesses buy-up media advertising for the rags. I still say, we don't make a big enough deal of it as fans. The media didn't make a big song and dance of his troubles with Rangers but Rangers ran him out of town anyway.

No way in a month of Sundays we are finishing 5th again, not unless Joelinton turns out to be far better than his stats would suggest - and if that is the case we will have to eat humble pie and give credit to our scouting team. That season we finished 5th we had a front three of Cisse, Ba and Ben Arfa, that would frighten a lot of teams tbh. I think the pundits are right, survival will be all we are looking for, whether that means finishing 12th or 17th doesn't really matter. Sorry to be pedantic but I can't let Pardew get away with this. We actually kept a fully fit Ben Arfa on the bench until the second half of the season. Alan preferred Obertan. Later, Sammy Ameobi would render both Frenchmen defunct. That 5th finish came about due to a tremendous team spirit and fabulous performances from Krul, Colo, Taylor, Cabaye, Tiote, Ba, Cisse and HBA. We scored so many screamers and great goals that season. We caught teams by surprise

The Chinese thing doesn’t have anything to do with what happened between him and Ashley’s club.

Delph can't replace Gueye.

His personal business interests are woven into the fabric of the club. I think the best we can hope for is that he maintains PL status for long enough to demonstrate to a prospective buyer that they can profit from the deal he is prepared to offer. Not good enough for me. Best case is the club drops to league 1 and the club haemorrhages money

Overrated and spends half the game diving. A record of 1 goal in 7 9 and 10 goals the last 2 seasons. He's an exciting player who is getting better and better.

His passing is over-rated. He's good at a certain type of pass. A penetrative one that comes off a few times a game, that often goes out of play or to the opposition many more times than it helps us. Great passers, don't lose the ball as often as he does. He wouldn't be better in a slower league because his passing is direct. He doesn't control games with patient passing, waiting for the right incisive ball. He plays too deep to make the most of the type of passing he can pull off.