Andy

True. Aside from a very select group of clubs across Europe, every club is a stepping stone for someone. The only way the rest of us can be competitive is to buy well, sell well and replace with better. We are only in the infancy of our quest to become a top club, it's perplexing to me that people think we will fend off the elite clubs just because we have what is essentially an imaginary stockpile of money behind us.

He's been pretty poor playing off the left for the best part of two seasons. You could probably count on one hand the amount of great games he's had in that position in the league; Barnes has had far more in that time I'd say, for all he hasn't been amazing at times either. The problem we have is that we can't buy/replace an entire team. There's already a huge amount of work to do without replacing Gordon as well.

Aye. He's hurt himself and is about to be sat at home for months on absolutely ludicrous wages, he hasn't died. Always found it bizarre that it's so taboo to be outwardly happy about an opposition player getting an injury. Especially when they come across like a cunt.

It's probably good if you have 11 top notch, intense players who can squeeze the life out of teams and benefit from gaining immediate territory high up the pitch like PSG. Not so good for basically anyone else.

To be fair KI, there isn't a single club in the league that wouldn't have sections of their fanbase questioning their manager after some of the performances and consistent repeated mistakes we've seen on the pitch this season, mitigating factors or not. I respect your capacity to push back against it, but it's not inherent to NUFC.

Not great by any stretch, but at least we've got a lead, we looked a lot better after the goal. They are clearly just going through the motions so hopefully the second half will be a formality for a change.

Good ball in by Miley that, some better football out wide.

When playing two massive fixtures a week aye, I'd agree, you'd expect some urgency after a 3 week break though, especially with 7 games to salvage a decent finish in the league.

It's essential to ours, aye, it's the only way we've won games for the past few seasons. We'll still probably get something here like, they are dire and clearly have no interest in the PL fixtures at this point, but there's definitely something lacking in our approach.

We're playing with absolutely no intensity or urgency whatsoever.

This is like watching a pre season friendly, far from the response I wanted from us so far.

I reckon most people had them battling relegation if not just outright down. If they finish top 7, Andrews is easily manager of the season IMO.

Fair enough. I only see it as being needlessly disruptive personally, creating noise where there didn't need to be any. The shite about the Sunderland match was entirely pandering to fans to stroke his own ego, there is nothing beneficial about those comments at all.

It is by far a better option than what he actually said.

To be honest, regardless of what their actual stance is, the obvious answer is "we've reached a league cup semi final and the club has hit new heights in the Champions League in a transitional season, questions about Eddie's future are ridiculous". It's not like you are locked in to that statement. You could say that then still sack him in June, no one would bat an eyelid as that's just standard football craic. By entertaining the question he's quite deliberately created a wave of discussion. People like this don't pick their words accidentally. To me, he's chosen these words because they are indeed uncertain about Eddie's future.

Always thought he was a bit overrated tbh. Hasn't really achieved all that much for someone who gets the hype that he does.

100% agree with this. For a team with so much pace, we're probably one of the least threatening teams in the league when it comes to getting in behind the opposition's defensive line.

His and Tino's ball retention would look wildly out of place at City.

Feel like this post was made 9000 times during the Isak saga tbf. Nothing has happened, but it certainly seems like something is happening, and has done ever since his agent was mouthing off a few weeks back.

Booing is quite comical really if you consider that grown adults, many of whom are probably in decent and responsible jobs, are literally making and holding this stupid noise with their mouths to represent a pure form of discontent. Imagine doing it in a meeting with your MD at work or something.

He's not a striker. He's just been better than the alternatives over the past couple of months which has convinced some people that he can play that role. A good couple of months won't convert me into thinking that he's suddenly one of our best players again or that we should build around him. He was absolute dog shit for the best part of 18 months and is turning it on now because the world cup is around the corner.

A lot of strong opinions in here today and valid points in both directions. In my opinion, the situation sits somewhere between the two extremes. Is Eddie capable of turning our form around? Of course he is, he's done it before as we all know. Is it guaranteed that he will? Of course it's not. Managers go stale at clubs, it happens, and it's happened to him before as we all know. Whether this season is his fault, the mess of last summer, the fixtures, the players, whatever else, is all subjective and depends on how you choose to look at it. In all honesty though, it's a bit of everything. The entire club has been a mess this season and that includes Howe, his system, and some of his in-game management and decisions. The reaction after the international break will be crucial for me and will determine how I think we should proceed long term. We have players returning from injury, time on the training ground, and a kind fixture list, we'll learn a lot in these games about whether he's still able to get a tune out of these players, whether he's been "found out", and whether he can tweak his tactical approach to be effective over 90 minutes again. He needs to end the season strongly. If he can't galvanize the players after the results this week then that would be concerning to me heading into what I think will be another difficult summer.

I mean two of those teams have won the champions league in the last five years, and the other is on course to win the league this year aye they've wasted money in the process, but they have that luxury. Howe has done an incredible job, and did an incredible job at Bournemouth. There are better and more successful managers out there though and he isn't irreplaceable, it would be daft to suggest otherwise. His future here relies on reinventing himself a bit, and along with Wilson, identifying signings that actually suit what he wants to do on the pitch. There is a solid argument to be made that his tactics and style have been found out this season, arguably the league has caught up to the way we try to play and we haven't been able to sustain it either due to fatigue; the players we've brought in don't suit that style at all either, and we haven't successfully navigated changing things around to make up for it. As others have pointed out, it went stale for him at Bournemouth in a similar way and the comparisons are obvious to anyone who paid attention to his time there. The consequences for them were just more catastrophic as he didn't have the luxury of having the 7th most expensive squad in the league.

He's always been prone to getting caught on his heels and sleeping, it's nothing new, it's just been exposed badly this week. He's an excellent one-on-one defender, has good recovery pace and is useful at driving forward, albeit with little end product; those are his main attributes as a fullback. Everything else he's pretty hit and miss at.

There's not much that gets my blood pressure up more than the Big Dan Burn left wing overlap from centre half. It's such a bizarre tactic, it's not as if he has the end product to justify the great big fuck-off gap that you just know nobody has bothered to fill in the middle of the pitch.