mozy

Fred Rutten looks like that wanker of a cop from the first Rambo film.

I love the fact he's top of all the defensive stats for strikers in the league too. Highlights what we all see with his work rate and effort from the front.

It's been pretty much exclusively 4-3-3 since we went away from the 3-5-2 used at the world cup. Not to say he won't switch to use 2 holding players again at some point though.

Assuming we stick with a 4-3-3 there's absolutely a spot for Foden in there as one of the two attacking central midfielders. He's competing with Alli, Barkley and Lingard and you could argue he's already a better playmaker than all of them.

He should have given away a pen mind, liable for the odd wild challenge in the box.

It's just another example of what makes Rafa a world class manager. Switching to a completely different system and still having the players more organised than the majority of other teams in the league. He's definitely bought players with flexibility in mind, we have 5 first team quality CB's.

Shelvey's an attacking sub only, not the man to bring on to protect a result as he's unfortunately proved time and time again.

It's bang obvious at this point in his development he needs to be playing every week somewhere to refine his decision making, he isn't going to get that here unless we go down.

Ashley is nailed on Brexiteer though. Those juicy new employment laws.

It's almost like our Champions League winning manager can spot a player and it makes sense to back him in the transfer market.

Can only think Carrick specifically didn't want it.

You can't defend Mourinho at all, dinosaur of the modern game. A job in China awaits.

Asking anyone to 'do a job' is the kind of backwards logic that ended up with Paul Scholes playing on the left wing. Pick players in roles they are suited to in a system that's design to get the best out of the collective group. Not bloody shoehorning. Thankfully Southgate seems to adopt the former approach.

Their targeting of the Sports Direct (along with the other groups, in fairness) has been really good, absolutely no reason why this shouldn't continue.

That's all deliberate, have no doubt about that. It's part of his PR as the jolly, smiley, fat idiot persona that people naturally sympathise with, the same as we all first did when he necked that pint at the Arsenal game. It's been the same as when he was summoned in front of the MP's and every sky interview he's done talking about NUFC. The protests will have the greatest chance of working when organised at short notice, not planned weeks in advance. Give his and his puppets no time to react like they did this time.

He looks a bit slow and heavy to me, also like he knows it which is why he's backing off challenges. Doesn't excuse the brain fart for their first goal though.

Nope. Yedlin's wasn't a cut & dry case. First of all his shirt was being pulled first and Lascelles had to have a chance of covering. Of course it was all Yedlin's doing in the first place (don't get me started on this useless sack of shit), but it didn't warrant a text-book red card at all. As for the elbow it doesn't matter if it was intentional or not (which it definitely was). It's a foul. You are impeding a player from getting to the ball. It happens to be in the box so it's a clear penalty. The shape of the left elbow tells me it was deliberate. Woke up this morning still seething. English refereeing and football in general is making me hate the sport. Maybe it's because we're not doing well as NUFC. Everything about it though is just substandard at the moment. Completely agree with all of this.

I think it's pretty clear at this point the Kenyon consortium is genuine, but at any point Ashley could Ashley and fuck the whole thing up. Watch this space.

He's not involved in the game enough even when he plays as an attacking midfielder now, sitting him deeper would completely marginalise the one part of his game that makes him effective, i.e. the freedom to be a box player. It's different to someone like Pirlo who made the conversion from a #10 to a holding player, he was always a pure playmaker who wanted to control the game. Alli has never shown the aptitude or ability to do that.

Sancho outshone Pulisic for me.

Rooney was finished and should have been canned in 2013, absolute joke to give him this 'cap' and for him to accept it. Dumb fuck.

The point is to protest at Ashley, not protest at the Rafa & the players. As I said before, booing Lascelles or whatever does the anti Ashley campaign no good at all.

People furious with Lascelles are doing exactly what Bishop will want by the way. Create further divisions in the anti Ashley campaign by making it about those who do want to boo Lascelles and those who don't. Takes the heat off MA completely.

Lascelles loyalty is to Rafa and that's what his comments are relating to RE fans getting behind the team and supporting them in the stadium. Like Rafa, it's in their interests to win games and further their own careers be it with us or someone else. The Ashley nice guy stuff is a bit annoying but as others have said, that was Keegan's first impression as well. It's clearly naïve to say that though given the 11 years of austerity & wider shit with Sports Direct.