AlanSkÃrare

Good to see him showcase what he can do right away. With space to attack he'll be different level. His awareness and movement really showed. He'll be perfect for the way we're playing.

Lots of goals in Spain we're him following up on rebounds, so his awareness is quite good. In my mind, attacking deep sitting teams is about making them move anyway and attacking them with pace. Bruno is central to that. And Isak's timing and movement is good. Problem with Sweden's new possession-based approach is that it's slow, he gets stuck and standing still between five defenders most of the time. Same with Real Sociedad last season, they moved the ball to slowly. I've seen lots of teams being able to move it around and switch sides quick to open up space to attack, despite the opposition sitting deep. He'll work well if we do that. And Howe seems to understand this. But, our main approach is still high press, quick regain of possession and then be quite direct. That's his game. That's why I think he'll be excellent.

Yes. That's mine. I've covered him extensively and done a lot of stuff on his background, career and social surroundings. He comes across very clever and calm. Seeing him make his professional debut at 16 and talking to him at that time, those attributes came across immediately. Talking to his old teachers and people he grew up with, it sounds as if he hasn't forgotten much about who he is and where he comes from. For example, he called his old Spanish teacher from San Sebastian to thank her for teaching him the Spanish language (she told me in person). In my mind, Isak is a fantastic signing. I wouldn't be overly concerned with his goalscoring form from last year. He possesses qualities that could potentially make him devastating under Howe. His awareness and understanding of the game is vastly underrated. He has a tendency to link up with good passers (Ödegaard was a very good source for him), his movement is both smart and quick, he's a good finisher. His decision-making is what makes me think he'll fit in especially well under Howe, we attack teams with pace now, and what makes us dangerous is when our players manage to capitalise on the spaces they create for each other. Isak has been playing in a quite slow system at Real Sociedad. When he scored 17 for them the other year, they were more direct. Last season he was asked to do a lot of other stuff next to Sörloth, and La Real for some reason started to play a lot more through Oyarzabal, which just slowed them down even more. On top of that, he's overcome struggles in his career, his time at Dortmund in particular. If you want to look at recent, big games where he's performed well, I'd say you look at how he played against Spain last year, both in the Euro's and in the WC qualifiers. His goals against Greece in the WC qualifiers. His performance against Slovakia at the Euro's was also magnificent.

I've never seen us play this bad for ten games.

Thinking about all this it's a bit intriguing to see what Jones will do and how he'd work with Bruce. I'm quite convinced he's not someone Bruce has asked for considering his background. Can add to the stuff I wrote here earlier that Jones is a big NUFC fan, might be one of the reasons he is joining. Listening to Graham Potter for many hours when interviewing him, and drawing conclusions from his footballing mind, I have no idea how his skills or ideas would fit into Bruce's training regime or (non)tactical setup. One of my favourite quotes from Potter was when he described his experience of coaches in the English league system and said "the coaching never happens" in too many cases, following an argument that too many managers throughout the system was given jobs because of their networks (i.e. who could they potentially sign), not their methods. And so him and Jones, who played together at Boston United, started their coaching careers with that sort of insight. They basically wanted to be the opposite of Bruce.

Graeme Jones, fwiw, is from another football planet. I've spoken to him. He's close with Graham Potter, they both studied Martinez after retiring and Jones then recommended Potter to Östersunds FK, the club where he made is name in Sweden, when he (Potter) was still a teacher at Leeds Met.

He's constantly giving away his incompetence when trying to explain what he could've done differently. It's always "picking the team", as if that's the problem. The problem is that the players and the team aren't being coached. There's no aim, no method, nothing being worked on. They're trained by a man who thinks his job is to motivate the players, pick 11 of them, choose a formation and improve things with new signings over time. He has a completely different concept of being a coach than every other manager in the league, which causes him to look for errors in his primitive little world of nothingness. It's painfully embarrassing. As for Shearer's comments the other day, trying to portray Bruce as the "latest victim" of Ashley is cowardice. I get that they are pals, which is a general problem with ex-players being asked to give opinions on current matters, they're all friends. But Bruce isn't disliked or in this terrible mess because of Ashley, Newcastle are in the hands of Bruce because of Ashley. The problem with Ashley is that he chooses incompetence as a mean to design mediocrity. He chooses Bruce. The club is falling victim to incompetence, again and again. The club is falling victim to Bruce.

He's an idiot for taking the job. Painfully obvious it was going to turn out like this, with him being hated by everyone connected to NUFC and embarrassing himself week after week.

No chance whatsoever he'll be sacked. They hate changing managers. They even put up with Rafa's ambitions for a few years because the prospect of having to hire someone tortures them. And after Bruce, there aren't many around who'd be forever indebted to them. Sherwood? McLeish? McCarthy? Pulis and Big Sam are both busy.

Worst performance for quite some time. When was the last time we were this embarrassed? Considering the relative strength as well.

Nobody shows him up better than Potter. Brighton spend less money and have had their manager in place for the exact same amount of time. There is a clear and obvious difference: They've worked on their idea on how to play whereas we are at best organised. They show us up every time. It will not matter how many players Bruce is given, he'll never, ever come to the conclusion that football teams can be coached, not only trained. Potter is good at it too, which makes it even more telling.

Shearer would be a terrible choice and the only argument to hire him is nostalgia. Good thing these people look like they're all over the place and won't buy the club.

Terrible or just no game plan, more or less outplayed by one of the worst teams in the league. We have no idea about how to do anything. We just turn up and see what happens. How is there a fucking argument for Bruce.

well put - what was that period where we were picking results with our defenders scoring random goals as we were dicked off the pitch in most games? he doesn't "deserve credit" for that because winning games by having your defenders score all the goals isn't a tactical plan, it was f***ing luck 12 goals conceded in 15 home isn't purely down to luck man. f***ing hell :lol: not sure what point you think you're making, he stuck to rafa's system in order to keep games tight and as a result we couldn't score for s*** if you think steve bacon is the brains behind that defensive organisation and dubravka playing out of his skin you need help Might as well just had a f***ing crash test dummy in the dugout then? This f***ing board man. Well we can have a look at some stats can’t we? This great defensive record has Dubs with the highest number of saves in the league and also we have the 4th highest shots faced per game behind villa, Bournemouth and Norwich lol. Is that sustainable? Could you tell me what positions those three are in the league? 19thb in goals from open play Shots on target we are 17th 15th in shots per game Counter attack goals 19th 2nd in set piece goals (very sustainable to get all your goal from set plays And defenders) All these things are telling you where we really should be. Through balls per game 19th Short passes 19th Crosses 18th It’s all here if you want to check it: https://www.whoscored.com/Regions/252/Tournaments/2/Seasons/7811/Stages/17590/TeamStatistics/England-Premier-League-2019-2020 Can you tell me the common numbers amongst those stats? They are bottom of the league numbers I'd be interested to see how this compares to last season. Shots pg 13th On target pg 16th Shots conceded per game 12th highest 11th in goals from open play 17th for counter attack 16th set peices Crosses pg 6th through ball per game 12th short passes 18 As you can see we look about where you would expect us to on last season's stats. The Almiron signing transformed us last season. First half of the season wasn't great, second half we were the fifth best team in the land or something. Yeah and we didn't have ASM. He started the season with Ayoze – a player he more or less made himself – and Rondon on fucking loan. Bruce was given ASM for £17m, Joelinton for £40m and already had Almiron at £21m.

Do we thank Benitez for being a game away from Wembley in the FA Cup too? True. Bruce really deserves credit for beating Rochdale after needing a replay, then Oxford in extra time after needing a replay and being outplayed for most of the game, then a Championship side. I'll give him that.