afar

Bad set pieces today from Ritchie, we need a change.

Here is a chance, don't fuck this up

Lascelles is not having his best game for us today.

Hell of a save by blobby

We haven't. Come. Out the dressing room with any passion, look awful right now.

What ?

Cost us, stupid free kick to give away

Pointless free kick to give away

He likes a push doesn'''t he Knockheart

Hayden once again disappointing, he was at fault in the builde up to their best chance, seems so tentative in this league.

The american sumeriser made a great point there about us, he said "Newcastle make you feel like you are doing better than you actually are".

I was saying that after the last game, the guy is costing us, he's missed four simple chances now, he was fortunate Lascelles bailed him out in the last game. Mitro does just as much if not more in the build up/ link play and is a better finisher.

It's by far the weakest area of the team

Atsu has been disappointing today for me.

Needless foul

Can't give the ball away there, but we kept them out well.

We are due a loss but I'm still confident about this one, we are better than Brighton, we are in good nick, thought they were awful against Bournemouth.

Yeah, I found that hilarious, you give free tickets to anyone that will have them, you barely get 20k real folks attending, you are in the relegation places on the champo, yet this is the time to extend your ground to 60k raising the ticket price from Free to 10 pounds. Mackematics should be taught at schools, for it's comedy factor alone.

They still wouldn't fill it, how big is South Shields's stadium ?

He's just fucking lush isn't he ?

We are not flying, we have beaten 3 poor to average teams, trying to build us up so they can take great joy in knocking us down.

One of the reasons (not the sole reason of course) that they are in this mess is that they have (and still continue in the lower league) abused the loan system. They've been bringing in too many players they don't own and helping develop them, to fix holes in their squad. These players are just taking first team opportunities away from your own youngsters or preventing them from seriously addressing holes through player purchases of their own. They like to pat themselves on the backs for developing the likes of Welbeck and Rose, but this and the fact the the general quality of the loanee has not been at that level, look at the list of players they loaned last season, has just been papering over the deficiencies and not helping them build assets that they can sell for profit. I'm glad we have not touched the loan market to much of an extent, and that on the rare occassion we do, we protect ourselves buy insisting on buyout clauses such as Atsu's and Merino's. The state of Sunderland should be a warning to a lot of clubs who continue this short term policy. Honestly think that UEFA/FIFA or the FA need to tighten up on the regulations for loans, teams like Sunderland have become over reliant on them to their long term determent while teams like Chelsea have quite frankly been abusing it from the other side. There should be tighter limits on how many you can loan in and out, and to which clubs. Chelsea wouldn't stockpile all the best talent if they couldn't loan them to top flight clubs here and abroad.

I love watching us, I'm glued to the TV while we are on and it's great when we win of course but for the neutral it must be awful as our primary goal and Rafa's big strength area is to stop the opposition from hurting us. We are biased but someone sitting in Norfolk or the home counties or wherever that doesn't have a black and white allegiance and turns on our games to watch a bit of footie will not be in for a fun 2 hours or so.

Our next 3 games are all the main games on Sundays on Sky. That's stupid for the neutrals, we kill the life out of games, honestly don't understand them outside the Liverpool game of course which is an obvious choice. I'm not complaining about our style it's absolutely what we have to do to survive in this league and we are doing it pretty effectively of late but unless we have a bad day at the office it'll be 3 goals or less in 3 games for Sky.

WTF are Sky thinking picking this one as their prime live game, it's almost certain to be a terrible watch for the neutrals, both teams are set up to not lose first and foremost, we are better at it than them, that's why I give us the edge here, but I'll be shocked if it's a classic for their viewers.