Chris_R

At least it's happened early!

I don't get the "please not another bowl" crowd - What shape do you want it to be, triangular? It will be a bowl. It must be a bowl. What kind of bowl is important though and I want steep sides behind the goals, with big blocks of seating a-la Dortmund. Plus a low roof over those ends, something designed for acoustics to push the sound out onto the pitch. That's all I ask. They can dio whatever the fuck they want then with the corporate stuff or the stands at the side.

If it's Trippier and Burn at fullback, that's not a lot of pace. Also, Burn at fullback.... That said I do like the idea of Hall playing in midfield and dropping back to help out like Joelinton does. That could work.

And when was the last time we played 5 at the back successfully?

Yeah I'm a big believer in playing your natural game, play to your strengths and make the opposition worry about you. This reeks of trying to defend for 90 minutes which is going to be grim to watch and if they score, we're fucked. Hope we offer a threat up the other end. 90 minutes with 10 men behind the ball is going to be a awful. Can imagine Arteta and Arsenal now think we're scared and will be well up for it knowing they can just send wave after wave against us. Hope I'm wrong of course. I'm an eternal pessimist.

As I've said before, if we've finished 4th, 7th, and then maybe top 6 this year we've every right to sign deals of the magnitude the other 6 have and just tell them to eat shit. If we're averagint a top 6 position, we have a right to do top 6 deals even if they're related party deals.

It's been explained a thousand times. If we'd bought big in the summer, someone like Gordon, Bruno or Isak would have left to balance things. There were very strong rumours about Gordon to Liverpool, and Bruno had his release clause. We've been over this a lot.

I don't think he's checked out. He may want a move, he may not, but whatever he's continuing to be vocal around the pitch and try his best when brought on. He's just not as fast anymore, that's just life though. I'd reluctantly take the money, then if he wants to we can bring him back as a coach once he's done playing. He seems to have a lot to offer even when not on the pitch.

That's a feature, not a bug.

I'm a massive geek. Anything to do with science, space, computers, I'm all over it.

Love the weird boast about being too 'adult' to play video games. I'm 47 and play loads of them. You're never too old to have fun.

I love a drink as much (more?!) than most, certainly more than is healthy. But I don't think I've ever, ever been drunk at a football match. I have on rare occasion had one drink beforehand if meeting mates, but just can't comprehend why people either need or want to watch a match whilst pissed, or can't go 90 minutes without a beer. I just don't get it. Clearly it's just me as the culture is so deeply ingrained, but I'm there to watch (and remember!) the match, if I want to get drunk that's a separate event.

Can't see anyone touching Rashford. Maybe on a loan where they pay £70k/week max, but anything more than that is crazy. He'll see out every minute of that contract he's got.

I think that's what I said?

Not quite. Despite being taller than Shearer and especially Ferdinand, he's not anywhere near as good in the air as those two were. They'd smash headers in, going straight through the defender to get the ball. Absolute monsters in the air, Sir Les especially was the best I've seen and Shearer not far behind. Isak's decent, but he's nowhere near world class aerially.

He hasn't gone away, he just started writing a reply 6 months ago and is still writing it.

If the consensus is that that's well-known, fair enough. Personally I've never heard that said before. If we go back far enough, maybe someone said it about someone else before Kante, these things go round in cycles. There's only so many words and so many orders to put them in, very little is truly original.

Get that on a banner

Beresford was great, excellent fullback both offensively and defensively. Barton was OK, got stick at the time but it was a long time before we had a better right-back than him again if you look at the list that followed him. Peacock took a little while to convince me but he was solid too, very dependable. Shaka was a bit of a liability though, he never gave me any confidence. Pav was erratic, sure, and every single time he dropped his shoulder on an attacker I was convinced he was going to get caught but he never once did and nearly always left them sat on their arse as he strolled off up the pitch. Actually reckon with his footwork and shot stopping he'd be a very good keeper today.

I'll always love Miggy, that patch where he was banging them in was great fun and he always plays with a smile. Great lad. Delighted we're actually selling someone for money though, for far too long have we just let people drift away on frees. Need to be more proactive like this.

Ah, OK, that makes more sense. Fine then, by those rules why are we not talking about Keegan's 13 consecutive wins in the Championship then? 11 of them were in the "PL era", 1992-93 season, so at least they should count? I'll accept Keegan's record of 9 alone, or I'll accept Keegan's record of 11, or even his record of 13, but there's no grounds to say the record is 9 tied between Keegan and Benitez because if Championship games are allowed then the record is no longer 9.

There's some decent players in the Keegan team but by god that Benitez team is shite. Getting 9 wins all season with that would be some achievement. Fucking hell. Edit: As has been pointed out, Benitez's wins were in the Championship which makes that a little less incredulous.

Without Keegan, there genuinely might not be a Newcastle United.

This. Eddie stopped us getting relegated to the Championship and got us to 4th. Keegan stopped us getting relegated to L1 (And likely folding) and got us 2nd in the Prem, and within a whisker of a title. And by god did we play some amazing stuff under him. I love Eddie, and there's no present manager I'd rather have in the here and now to take us forward. But Keegan is still number 1 for me.