Beren

Not calling for Howe's head, or anything close to that, but his approach to bedding Isak into the team has objectively been proved wrong IMO. Unless Isak has a chronic conditioning issue. Mistakes are as serious as the results they cause, and it feels like we've missed an opportunity to get Isak to gel in a new attack by persisting with Wilson when it just wasn't working or even showing signs of turning around.

Feel a bit numb. From a rational perspective, I thought that was a better performance than our previous two finals (although I was a kid so maybe my memory is shite). We fought hard and showed some good stuff. We've played worse this season and won. On the other hand, from a Man Utd perspective you'd be hard pressed to call that anything but a comfortable victory. It's a bit frustrating because there was some promising flashes but not enough against such an in-form team. Also some of the known recent issues were prominent - Wilson and Almiron ran hard but were passengers. Neither offering much at all. I like them both, but it might be fair to wonder if their purple patches aren't sustainable. Not much you can do mid-season with that kind of problem. I was disappointed Isak didn't start personally. Schar and Botman looked uncharacteristically lost at sea from the get go. They've been the rock of the team so that was unsettling. Karius was pap for the goal. I thought ASM played well. Really tried to conjure something. Bruno gave a good account of himself - his heart on his sleeve, but not reckless and keeping things ticking. You just have to hope lessons are learned and the next final isn't 24 years away.

It was just stickied before.

I'd hate to be at the meet up right now. Must be an almighty queue for a pre-match dump.

Incredible display that

Incredible. Gonna need some labels at some point.

Can you guys recreate this: in the Tyne after we win?

Unless I've done an O-Nut

Just saw John Carver. Blast from the past.

Fans stalking the outside of the hotel next to the stadium

I'm freezing like

Olympic Way is all Geordie Featuring goofy Beren

Driving around North West London, surreal seeing toon tops in Kenton, Kingsbury, Harrow. Think I'm gonna throw up in my mouth a little when I see the first contingent of Man Utd fans and realise this isn't just a coronation of NUFC as silverware winners. Heading down to Wembley now.

He's having a jab at plenum for posting a picture of a literal cup, not coming after your thread title

Clean Kitchen has nice loaded fries. Thai Express is decent too.

I've poured myself into an Ameobi 23 top - not a good look

Low key nervous on behalf of England. America's biggest Anglophile thinking Newcastle is shit would be heartbreaking.

Lock up your cousins.

Burn might be a bit knackered at the end of the weekend like

Good game

It's a thing of Howe's, isn't it? We could buy a fully fit peak Ronaldo with only Chris Wood as competititon, and he'd use R9 off the bench for the first 8 games. He's done it with Bruno, Isak and now Gordon - all who should have been starting nigh on immediately. Not a big knock, just the way he does things.

Then Man Utd are in big, big, big trouble. We've got a shit ton banked.

Performances getting steadily worse. A stinging loss is probably a bit of much-needed bitter medicine for the club to take. Shame it's in such close proximity to the final and there's limited options to change things up though.

On the catastrophe scale, echoes of the 0-3 Aston Villa loss today. We came into that match on a 12 match unbeaten run in all competitions or something, and lost convincingly and spectacularly to a dross side. Got to laugh.