HawK

Was a great 1-2 goal

Makes you wonder why they pay to turn up to do that I despise that. Matches at St James' park aren't something you can just sit and watch, you're part of the atmosphere and you have a job to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkwdsmvnSUI Alice loves us

Would love him back. You can't underestimate the passion of having local lads in your starting XI - to run that extra yard and keeping going for that extra mile - and to set the tone for everyone else. I swear Burn is twice the player he would be anywhere else because he's playing for us.

The two lads couldn't be further apart on the confidence spectrum though right now

Definite Murphy vibes about that smile

Ramsdale with some absolutely clutch saves too, hope this gives him some confidence and we see a few starts from him

He's always been good on the right, scored 2 bangers from there now, he's no striker, he deserves a RW start

The high line against us really plays to our strengths

If Woltemade put himself about a bit just a little bit like Sesko did there it'd change his game

Really pleased so far, the lads are playing with a bit of grit and belief

Elanga makes that foul so often

Ramsdale so much better against a high press

Back of the napkin maths I make it about £140m on the bench

Strap in lads, I feel the match thread is going to be brutal. As long as I see effort and pressing and it looks like we're trying that'll do for me.

The pioneer of the rightback quarterback role before Trent made it cool

Whilst Ashworth was here we got some fabulous deals done, went through the signings before individually, but for conciseness to me there's a clear distinction between what was an Ashworth-player or signing for the future/breakingthrough players (Lewis Hall/Livramento), and an Eddie Howe signing for the here-and-now (Elanga,Ramsey). This is not a slight against Eddie Howe, he shouldn't have been put in the position to effecitvely head up recruitment, but it shows why you need a DoF person to oversee long-term strategy vs the need for now and looking at attributes and squad planning rather than recent form.

Not going to get into it here in the aftermath of this match but agree to disagree

'Streaming out of the ground' at 96 minutes, co-comms really has it in for us today

Save of the season

I'm not married to Howe but I think this performance is the culmination of 3 years of impulsive recruitment with no squad planning whatsoever

Willock standing with his hands on his knees in the box just watching the deflected cross go to an Everton player

Mentioning this game in the same breath as all-time classics like it has any kind of quality

This performance is entirely indicative of years of impulsive signings and absolutely no recruitment plan. Hard to put this on Eddie.

Osula coming on, game over