Conjo

Santos < Conte Bruce < Emery Smith < Fonseca Quite the upgrade of managers for a large portion of clubs in the PL in a short space of time (assuming all of them signs). Will be interesting to follow second half of the season.

Doesn't look good for Smith. That being said, are the results that surprising? I don't think they have a particularly good team, and even if they've lost 3 in a row before this match, with exception of Arsenal, they have been by 1 goal margin against teams with better squads. Before that they won against Man Utd, drew at Chelsea and demoished Everton.

It's baffling. Every single match, one of our players jogs towards the opponent. Opponent passes ball, player runs back into postion and another player jogs towards the new opponent that got the ball and so on and so on until the opponent find a run or some space to create something. Every single match, whenever we get the ball, the opponent team closes our player down with at least 2 players resulting in either a back pass, an aimless hoof or outright losing possession.

Good thing we got Almiron on now when Chelsea can sit back a bit, instead of that point in the match where they were chasing the lead and we could have exploited that with his pace and directness.

It doesn't really matter as we wouldn't have gotten anything from this anyway....but still Can't wait for a new manager soon who can identify our strongest team and hopefully 2-3 quality additions to the squad in January.

Really can't wrap my head around keeping Almiron and Willock on the bench. I could to some tiny small degree see the benefit in keeping it tight and unleash them onto a tired Crystal Palace team, but against Chelsea it's very risky to assume we'll be able to contain them same way. Game will most likely be over when it's time to sub them on so won't matter anyway.

Understood, thanks for clarifying.

I haven't really paid attention to the discussion around sponsorship money, but I'm a bit surprised and confused at how it would be enforced. Surely there's no requirement for any club to disclose commercial deals to other clubs? So if we were to announce a new sponsorship deal without disclosing the value of it, can we just not tell the other clubs that it's within true market value and reject any request for information on the value of the deal?

Get Rafa back home. He's most suited to drag the team out of the relegation battle this season and he can lay the foundations on and off the pitch for future success. Worst case scenario a few years down the line if the investment & quality in the team dictates we should do better than what he is achieving it will most likely be a case of seeing out his contract with no hard feelings on either side.

Only watched ~2 matches of Everton this season and he was really poor so not shocked to read that. One of the games he started well in the opening 10 minutes where he looked a bit of a threat and that was about it. Didn't work particularly hard, poor at holding up the ball and never good into any good positions in the box. He's had a long career and is 32 now, could just be he that he's finished at this level.

Free header? Did you see how Clarke was literally pulled away?

Damn my feed is far behind some of you Good use of VAR.

Wilson

If you're physically inferior ina duel, best you can do is try to put the challenger out of balance which is what Clarke tried to do. Benteke too strong though.

Nah, just weaker in the air than Benteke.

Best thing so far is that it's still 0-0. Can definitely see us grabbing an undeserved goal and win if Palace doesn't score in the first 10-15 minutes of the second half.

Ah yes, the commonly utilized 2 subs at half time routine when things aren't going well. You should put some money on it happening.

I really hope whomever our new manager is, drills the team on how to collectively press the ball. So frustrating to see the team back off until the ball is outside of our box, and then one and one player press the ball.

Ritchie, Krafth & Clarke

You think salty non-Newcastle football fans will still call it St. James'? Some of my friends still refer to it as Sports Direct Arena.

Seems like there is room for improvement

No need to elaborate further than this man

Fonseca has been managing since 2005. Hardly up and coming The days of 3 years rolling and 8 year contracts is over. If we get someone like Gerrard, Howe or Martinez to steady the ship I'm not really concerned, and they should be more easily replaceable when/if they have taken us as far as they can.

Someone posted a video of Xavi on here a week or so ago, where he was talking about his tactics and how he is obsessed with possession. Imagine him trying to get the current batch of players to play a possession style of football Have we had even one match in the league with more than 45% possession the last 3 seasons?

ASM absolutely loving the British weather there at 0:43