Yorkie

I love the Conference League as a neutral and would like to keep it that way. For a Premier League team not to win that tournament - especially now, without even the Europa dropouts - would be shameful frankly. There's no magic in winning something like that. Garang Kuol's team finished 4th in that league phase.

That could mean pretty much anything tbf but we're going to collect an injury every single game for the foreseeable you'd expect.

Gtfi

Trippier and Burn at FB feels very dicey in this day and age

Absolutely. Ross Wilson has copped a disproportionate amount of flack (Hopkinson even more, for having the temerity to speak publicly in a building that isn't a new stadium), and we should be heading into the summer with a renewed hope. We should be more equipped - both in terms of bodies and finance - to recruit effectively, meanwhile there isn't a player whose saga/departure could have the same cataclysmic effect that Isak had. PSR will still prevent us from matching our competitors' recruitment, but maybe we'll be in a better position to navigate its bullshit. I appreciate we're still in three competitions but it honestly feels like this season is now about damage limitation. The biggest damage of all - other than getting relegated, which is extremely unlikely - would be sacking the manager.

I totally believe the players will go into it in this frame of mind, then they'll get to 30 minutes and their bodies will remember they've played 400 games since Christmas and it'll probably be quite ugly. Thankfully Spurs have a similar situation going on and that might be enough to secure a dreary draw. Which I would snap your hands off for tbh. I dare say they'd take it as well.

You must be able to count on one hand the amount of games Hall and Tino have played together this year. We also know beyond all reasonable doubt that he's not had the keeper he wanted this season.

Fair dos. I'm not gonna be wanky enough to quote my own post from the other day, but the other thing beyond 'evidence-based faith' (keen to make the distinction between that and blind faith), is that I don't believe he's the main reason why we're struggling. I'd put him at like reason 5 or 6. I appreciate that a manager doesn't have to be the principal reason for a slump to justify a change (bad fit, club going in a different direction, whatever), but in this case I do still think he's the right fit. The other thing is that I love the guy and I like loving the Newcastle manager. This might trigger certain people but, after those 14 years, I've come realise that results aren't necessarily the be-all-end-all for me. Of course there would be a tipping point eventually, but I'm not there yet.

Some fans can watch a manager go six defeats in a row to the mackems and not consider giving him any stick. It would be absolutely ludicrous if that was the tipping point for anyone, such a relatively short time into a difficult period. For me it's just about faith. I don't have the football brain of some on here to consider what the solution is, I just believe he's got it in his locker to suss.

Reckon Frank will get peddled in the summer?

I think West Ham will almost certainly gain points on us over the next two rounds of games but it's very unlikely we'll get sucked into anything. We need to win like two more games to be safe.

Enjoyed his presser as always. My opinion wouldn't change regardless of the result tomorrow but fuck I hope we get a result tomorrow. It's going to be really tough going for ages yet, we just need the odd positive result to trepanate the growing negative vibes, stay vaguely in the running, and attack the end of the season without the toll of Europe.

It also ignores the market we're forced to operate in. Obviously they're miles apart - but let's say we had the same net spend as Liverpool - we don't have access to the same players they do. That doesn't absolve us of recruitment mistakes outright, but it provides that additional context in demonstrating the challenge we have in catching up to these teams.

I would argue the complete opposite tbh. By converting chances you take the pressure off the defensive aspect of things and probably don't shit the bed quite so much in the final stages. 23/24 is a good example of this; there's six games where we scored three without reply. Several more where we scored a hatful but conceded once, twice, three times without it affecting the result. Everything bad about our play this season can be traced back to not putting our chances away imo. Do that and you take the pressure off the defence, build momentum and confidence, and probably start to play better football on the whole. People will gladly lump all of our summer signings into the shitpile, but if just one of the strikers worked out, we're looking at a very different season altogether imo.

Well sure but the poster who brought it up didn't say that; they suggested we'd been unlucky, pointing to xG as evidence of that. Tbf I wouldn't necessarily agree with that, but there was a fair argument (up to say Christmas time) that there was one glaring weakness in the team and - if we could resolve that - maybe we'd start getting somewhere. Sadly, Wissa having basically zero positive impact has banjaxed that idea, and the ropey start has provided the context for a bad league campaign altogether, as opposed to a potential slow burner.

sorry KI

Sounds mysteriously like you're using numerical data to offer an analysis of our performances there; careful, Bob!

We have played terrible football for 90% of the season, we don’t need xG to tell us that. Who's saying that? It's just one statistic among many others which provides data about overall performance. No one says it has to be the be-all and end-all.

It's as much a waste of time as any other statistic. Whether it's a waste of time is dependent on what you're using it for.

this fucking schedule. Wholesale structural changes needed. Thank God we've got approximately five minutes to implement them before the next game. I agree with everything you're saying but it just feels impossible atm.

Binned. Cba. Signed up days ago just to spout shite and wind people up. No ta.

Some great posts from @stozo across the topics.

Hopefully we'll get the one point we need to match that season's tally.

Added in the item which demonstrates how it's all a balancing act. Again I think it's entirely fair enough to consider it the wrong call not to invest now. My main issue is with the suggestion that it's through some braindead non-decision-making. It was the same all the way through the summer; the accusation of cluelessness, unprofessionalism, stupidity - when no one in the building has demonstrated any of those traits over the past four years. Wilson and Hopkinson have been here for months and weeks, there's no judgement to be made of them.

We've all seen what neglect looks like in the context of this club so it's easy to identify. Do you really believe it's that? They just couldn't give a monkeys about the well-being of the team?