Lenny

He bottled that chance by going down and was rightfully booked. The thing is, if he’d have shot first time there’s a high chance the defender catches him trying to intercept giving us a chance of a penalty, but he didn’t want to get hurt. He’s in the team for a single reason and he’s not been justifying his selection recently. As others have said, though, I’d still pick him.

Neville saying we might as well lose by 5 than by 2. Is this the FA cup?

Exactly. Anyone would think there’s a semblance of a game plan.

I’d rather we not be in such a way that we can’t even compete with the top teams. No one wants to see their team play this way, but I have to base my perspective on the circumstances we’re in, and therefore I understand our tactics. If we can play this way and keep it 1-0 until the latter stages then we could have a go at taking something. We will absolutely lose “going for it”, and I’d actually rather not lose 10-0 just so we can say we went for it.

He’s been the only player with speed of thought to get a pass off today. Very strange timing, this comment. Wrong. Lush post.

He’s been the only player with speed of thought to get a pass off today. Very strange timing, this comment.

Pretty certain he’d walk, claiming his hands were tied / someone else’s fault, before sitting through a relegation.

Elliot almost doing a Darlow... At least he was assertive though.

Early sub; what is this sorcery?

Only been half watching but whenever I've seen Atsu he's looked like the only player wanting to have a go at them.

That's why Hughton was so keen to sign Ben Arfa despite him being a massive bell end. Allegedly.

This current squad is definitely as ill equipped for the premier league as I've seen from us. I've always said that I'd rather have a team of limited try-hards at the bottom of the league than the talented, yet heartless mercenaries we've had in previous relegation seasons, but now I'm not so sure. There's a modicum of hope with talented mercenaries

Absolutely, and by a significant margin.

Absolutely woeful.

This is definitely on a par with the worst Newcastle team I've seen in terms of quality. We are collectively hapless.

We are worryingly bad. Such a horrible feeling when you look at the 18 at realise that there's no one you really feel confident will give us something. Not one of our players is dependable for a goal.

I don't think we outperformed them, that's too strong a statement. We matched them and deserved to be at least drawing. We played well but to think we were the outright better side is biased by the fact that we performed better than expected. Second half, we just absolutely weren't on their level, and from the matches we've seen this season, from an attacking and creative sense, sadly the second half was the more "real us" than the first.

He must be lacking confidence as others have said. Looks afraid to take a chance and when he does he has no belief in it pulling off. The attempted cross got me the most; he made no attempt to trick the man, just whacked it into him.

We really are a worryingly poor side.

Brilliant news.

Quite possibly the most disciplined performance I've seen from any Newcastle side in my time watching us.

FYP

I think overall we were pretty fortunate that season to finish as high up as we did. We scored beyond a ridiculous amount of wonder goals and but for those and a 6 game spell where we played like Barcelona it was quite evident we were punching above our weight.

I quite strongly disagree with a lot of this. I think you can use his pace and lack of skill/trickery as a reason why he may struggle to step up a division as a wide man, but you're painting him as no more than a grafter with little ability that's going through a bit of a purple patch with his end product; something that his career to date has shown is not the case. He has always had very good technical ability; he's a superb passer of the ball and thinks quicker than most. He's decisive, doesn't hold on to the ball longer than necessary and when the opportunity presents itself to either shoot, cross or play a killer pass he often does so with quality. I'd be very surprised if anyone in our team comes close to him for assists, come the end of the season.