Yorkie

"PSR doesn't stop us playing well" is obviously true to a certain extent, in that PSR doesn't directly cause the maddening behaviours delivered by players and manager every week. However, it's a meaningless juxtaposition of the issues, and at worst it's a strawman argument in the Howe in/Howe out skirmish. PSR facilitated the Isak saga and prevented us from building on our amazing season, which led to an up-and-down first half of this season, which led to a dismal second half of the season, which appears to have led to an absolutely disastrous end to the season. It has completely ruptured 'The Project' and created the conditions for our regression. Howe's job was to navigate a way through the choppy waters and, at the very least, retain our competitive position in the top half of the table. That should have been achievable regardless of all the incredibly influential external factors, I think, and if he has to pay for that failure with his job then I reluctantly accept the fact (equally as I would accept him being given another go). But you really cannot play down the impact the financial structures have had on our season and, potentially, our entire existence in this division. We might have to get used to being a cup team.

Slept on it and feel much the same this morning. I don't think he's the main reason we are where we are, but him leaving could nevertheless be part of the solution. My tipping point has always been "are the players still playing for him?" Annoyingly it's really difficult to take a clean view on that at the end of the season, where the players might be starting to phone it in regardless.

I'm not sure I've ever personally witnessed a reaction like that to one of Newcastle's own players at the ground, just before he was subbed off. Unreal how bad he was today.

I think I'm reaching the point where I don't mind what happens in the summer. On the one hand, I believe in all of the things I've said previously - he's not the reason we are where we are, and a terrible end to the season is just the last domino to fall in a chain which started with PSR and Isak. We were designed to fail this season and we have done. They did their best, did alright in the CL, made a decent defence of the cup. But the Barca/Mackem week kettled it cos the league campaign has never looked like building momentum. Put it down as somewhat circumstantial and give it another bash next season. On the other hand, there's no denying we're at a bit of a crossroads as a club and with more high profile departure/s to come in the summer, with awful negativity only likely to fester over the remaining games - maybe it's better for everyone that we have a clean break at this point. I don't know if they're done with the boss or just done with the season, but the players don't have it in them now. Dunno, torn and feel awful. I'd see him go tomorrow if a sequence of bad results is going to cop him more and more of the disgraceful disrespect that's likely to follow. We'd never have any legends of Twitter existed in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Who's the red goalscorer I've missed from the second game? @KDT?

Reds 3-0 Blues SGTF KDT Spaceman Reds 1-3 Whites Yorkie Ian Samptime Sifu og Blues 1-2 Whites Lucas (pen) Ian TaylorJ Reds 2-0 Blues Spaceman KDT Reds 0-5 Whites TaylorJ x2 Ian x2 Pata Blues 0-0 Whites FINAL TABLE Whites - 10 Reds - 6 Blues - 1 TOP GOALSCORER @AyeDubbleYoo MAN OF THE MATCH @Dr.Spaceman

10:05 🟥 Vs 🟦 10:20 🟥 Vs ⬜ 10:35 🟦 Vs ⬜ 10:50 🟥 Vs 🟦 11:05 🟥 Vs ⬜ 11:18 🟦 Vs ⬜

Sorry man, it's just ridiculous levels of conjecture/2+2=5ing. He wasn't talking about recruitment in any way. All he said was that you need good athletes to have an intense style. Which is absolutely true. Incidentally 'athletes' doesn't just mean Anthony Elanga clones. Every decent player in the league is an athlete.

I had Reds as favourite personally. At least this debate proves the seeding is cock on.

Where's the bit about doubling down on recruiting 'athletes' (as if that's suddenly controversial)?

always the best policy

Catching up on the Europa highlights. Looked like a lot of fun in Strasbourg; made mincemeat of Mainz against what looked like an amazing atmosphere there. Totally appreciate their existential crisis given the Chelsea link but looked like pretty epic scenes there. Enciso looked dynamite. Would be happy to see Lejeune's lads do em in the semi-final but surely Strasbourg are the only hope of stopping Palace.

Ah k. Appreciate the fact check.

Glad Eddie and I are on the same page about the attacking. Fix that and you fix everything. Dunno if we can, like, but the solution lies there.

Incredibly forgiving comments from the boss in his presser. Outside chance he's not a cunt who should die?

Have been expecting this since 4pm on Sunday tbh.

If this happens, I’ll personally hunt you down, break into your house and perform the best fellatio known to man on you. Sounds great but you're right; I deviated to a different argument but forgot to delete the sentence. Edited now. Clearly we won't win all of our remaining games but it's not beyond the realms of possibility that we put a decent run together.

It isn't a dead rubber by any metric. Literally no one between us and sixth is particularly consistent and it's not too late to build a run at all. There'll come a point where it's dead rubber but this weekend is nowhere near it. Brentford and Fulham play each other. It's the Merseyside derby and Sunderland go to Villa. De Zerbi's home debut against Brighton. We win and just a couple other results go our way and suddenly it's interesting again. People too caught up in the optics of 14th imo.

Even putting to one side the overpowering nature of the PL at the Europa scale, Betis and Freiburg playing our a semi-final is a real sign of how the calibre of the competition has fallen. Betis have only made the Last 16 the odd time and Freiburg have no meaningful European record to speak of. Still, would be absolutely fantastic if one of them somehow managed to stop Villa/Forest (probably Villa).

But it was a contest for children! Yeah! And Crystal Palace beat their brains out!

Poor lad. RIP.

If we have any agency at all in deciding who stays or goes, the thing with Gordon, Tino and Bruno is that none of them are going to be in a position to complete a transfer until the end of June at the earliest. That's problematic to our summer planning. This doesn't apply to Tonali of course and you wonder if we might search for a deal to be made in his case, thereby: making at least one sale broadly on our own terms; kick-starting our own recruitment; and strengthening our position for any future negotiation for the likes of Gordon. So if Man Utd turn up in the first week of June with a competitive offer Tonali, I wonder if we just take the deal. The presence of a saga completely neutered us in last summer's market and you'd expect priority number one will be to avoid that happening again. (Impossible if players are going to behave like Isak, mind.) People will say we need to buy early, well we probably need to sell even earlier, if possible.

Howe, thankfully, seems to understand more than anyone else associated with the entire club that the financial regulations are horrendously imbalanced, and that we're cornered into selling. He desperately wanted to keep Anderson but accepted the sale.

More bothered about the disruption to the remaining games than the fact he might leave. All very annoying because he's our most important attacker in an already dysfunctional attack. I'm not surprised he fancies a move, like. I'm sure he would've done even if we'd had a decent season. He backs himself and wants to compete for titles; we're not allowed to do that.

He's had about six of them tbf.