thenige

Yeah but he was a bit shit quite a bit last season as well. Started really well and gave us a boost. Then went off the rails, started to believe the hype and shows why he's been a complete failure everywhere else he's been. Totally one-footed, tries to beat everyone himself and has a heart the size of the pea. Which he's probably sharing with Manquillo.

Drum this cunt out of the club. Up there with worst ever 90 minutes in the shirt.

Absolute travesty of a referee. Professional dog fuckers would do a better job than this.

Hayden said to be coming on. Can’t see where else other than RB unless we change systems.

Loads of players out there who just don’t fancy a fight. Kenedy and Manquillo have been utterly horrendous. Kenedy trying to do everything on his own and has done nowt. Ritchie just a nothing player when he’s got a booking as his aggression is gone. They need a right old bollocking. Pretty obvious that all team really need to do is sit on Jonjo and we can’t do nowt. Especially now instead of Lejeune playing out from the back you have us just going short back and forth or long to nowhere.

Manquillo blowing out of his arse already.

Ref clearly doesn’t want Warnock slagging him off at the end as he’s been bloody awful so far. Sad thing is Warnock will moan about everything whatever happens.

U23s drew 1-1 with WBA. Roberts scored and Longelo (the ex-West Ham summer signing) came on at half-time. Also Liam Gibson got 89 minutes following his long-term recovery from colitis (same issue Darren Fletcher struggled with). No sign of Lazaar, Saviet or Aarons mind.

Could it be an attitude based decision? Obviously he got charged with assault after a bar brawl (albeit eventually pleaded guilty to affray) and through a combination of injuries and being out of the team just hasn't pushed on anywhere near as much as people expected. Maybe Rafa felt there was something about him detrimental to the rest of the squad? He's proven before if for whatever reason he doesn't want you at the club he'll freeze you out (Colback, Mitrovic) so just seems another example of that.

Get the feeling we may see a back three introduced with Matt Ritchie as a RWB of sorts at some point relatively soon.

Why would a physio be performing an operation? This is Newcastle United we're on about. Cost cutting exercise?

One absolutely awful free kick aside, he's looked very sharp against Palace so far.

Good job we’ve got loads of cover at full back.

Shame Diame has reverted to type. Goal aside Joselu has been his usual self. When he went down injured I found myself saying “hope it’s his achilles” which is probably a tad harsh. Just don’t rate Yedlin or Clark at all, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Honestly don’t know why anyone watches the punditry. Just generally makes people more angry. Personally will watch the cricket then switch over when the players are actually coming out. The last thing I need to be watching is Sky’s build-up.

Proving himself to be as adept to punditry as he was to goalscoring.

Exactly what I feared/expected to be fair. That’s what happens if you don’t get your signings done early enough to have any pre-season. Sure the basis of the side who didn’t score in three consecutive pre-season games will turn Spurs over easy.

People slag off Dummett, but his crossing is sure as hell no worse than Yedlin's. Yedlin has a case of the Danny Simpson when he gets into the final third with the ball either hitting the first man or going to absolutely no-one,

Really hope he can turn it round, but was toilet in pre-season. Doesn’t bode well.

We’ve shown next to no ambition and are quite content to just keep treading water. There’s a question mark on loanees giving a crap about playing here other than being motivated to put themselves in the shop window for other clubs (although you could argue that’s the intention for the entirity of the club now). We’ve still got two massive question marks over our full backs, no real stength in depth in key attacking positions and have pretty much condemned ourselves to losing our manager at the end of the season unless a takeover happens. So yeah, 3/10. We didn’t lose Lascelles and didn’t massively overpay on absolute shocking footballers this time around (see Joselu).

It’s all put in as Euros so just think the conversion makes it go weird. Although saying that Mitro was pretty widely reported as £22m going to £27m with add-ons, so no idea where they’ve got that figure from.

Playing in a big match at a young age isn’t exactly indicative of quality. Renato Sanches had an utterly fantastic Euros tournament, one of the best ever for a young player. Last season he was awful for Swansea. Realistically all that matters to us is whether a player has been half decent recently and whether they can fit into Rafa’s plans.

Tragedy now is, if we do actually do alright this season it'll be another massive tick for the 'told you so' Mike Ashley apologists. Rafa's fecked either way. Do well and they'll say he was moaning about nothing, do badly and they'll just blame it on him anyway.

Lads after some sterling work by myself and Lee Charnley we've got ourselves a new left-back. He's an international with almost 30 caps and has made over 100 Premier League appearances. His name is Ciaran Clark. Yours truly, Mike

Germany is one of the ‘3 Big League’ where France isn’t, plus we paid a substantial transfer fee for Muto and have likely made him amongst the top 25% of earners at the club. That gives him enough points to qualify on appeal.