Mick

He doesn't get the shit he deserves, he set us back massively by trying to build his own team because he didn't want Keegan to get any credit if we'd won something.

Hopefully our players have more balls than some of our fans.

This has 2-1 home win written all over it, I can't wait.

I've just done it and have us stopping up with 40 points in 16th place, 4 points more than the relegated mackems and 1 more than Swansea. Leicester were top with 2 points more than spurs. I think I should book myself in for a drugs test.

He's class, just having him has given everybody a lift, we're not the same club that we were this time last week.

Anybody fancy chipping in to get his wife some flowers if we go down to see if we can get him to stay?

I could see signs of a change after 3 days.

Our shitty managers have been as much of a problem as our players. I can't see our players bottling this weekend with Benitez picking the team.

Cheer up for f***s sakes. We've got Rafa Benitez and at the end of the day we're playing one of the worst teams in the league. One of the worst teams but they're still above us. Not only that but they've beat us 6 times in a row, albeit heavily paedo assisted so they don't really count for much. I think Rafa is a great manager but he can't physically go on the pitch and score the goals Mitrovic should be scoring or head away the crosses Taylor should be clearing. I suppose we'll find out in just over 72 hours. Didn't we beat them 5 in a row before they started getting the better of us? That counted for nothing in the 6th game so what is stopping us from turning it around again? All good things come to an end, maybe it's time for us to get on top again.

I think a win for us will give us a massive lift and will go a long way to keeping us up because of that lift.

Mitrovic doesn't deserve a starting place at the minute as he's bringing nothing to our game. When the ball is lumped up to him it bounces off his chest and heads back towards our own goal. He never seems able to try and turn his markers because he's nowhere near the ball after its bounced off him. You can say that we've made few chances for him but he can make his own chances, or not in his case because he's not clever or quick enough. I would love to defend against him because he does most of the defenders work for them by offering very little.

I thought that sissoko wasn't too bad and he could be a very important player for us if we can get him playing at his best.

Armstrong Why not? at least as an option from the bench. He's in great form, whereas mitro and perez are not and doumbia can only get 5 minutes on the pitch due to fitness I guess. Armstrong hasn't scored in 6 games or something like that.

If we score first, we win.

I have no doubt that we're going to be better organised after tonight. 3 days of training and we looked like a team which we haven't often done and I rarely felt we were in danger of leaking goals. If front of goal is another thing and is our current biggest problem and we need to do something different because we'll always beat risk if we're not looking like scoring. Marks out of 10 for his first game, 8.

I didn't think he was too bad tonight.

I don't know where our goals are going to come from. We have players who can score, maybe Wijnaldum is our best bet unless we can get Cisse fit.

Alternatively he thinks we should have got something tonight and minor adjustments would have done so. As I said in the pre-match thread, this fixture (and its timing) was never likely to produce any points. It's more important that he's learnt enough about the squad to get more out of them starting with the derby. He'll have learned a lot more tonight than he will have in training sessions. I think we'll be better on Sunday for tonight and I can't see us losing although I don't know if we can win it.

I had hoped he would get booked tonight, I was even screaming at the ref to book him for wasting time.

I thought that our players were up for it, they still don't have loads of confidence and we'll need goals for them to get a lift.

That and not having enough goals in the team.

If we're relying on goals from Mitrovic, we're down.

Mitrovic is far too slow, both in movement and thought.

Morgan moved his arm to the ball, I don't care where it was, it was hand to ball and not the other way around.

We've played really well 2nd half and should have had a penalty. If it was us defending that I can guarantee that it would have been given. We need to find goals from somewhere because we'll always be under pressure if we don't score. It was a positive start from Rafa because we would have folded if McClaren was still here.