John P

Obligation to buy would suggest he's a goner, as even if it's a 'play a certain number of games' clause he's been first choice for them. Can't remember who reported the obligation part mind.

Dries fucking Mertens

Apparently will evaluate the position in their midsummer night's dream.

I saw the replay of the second goal and couldn't figure out why the keeper went straight out to the AR to complain ... I assumed he thought Murphy was offside. Couldn't see where the keeper had the ball at all I also thought this when I saw them going mental immediately after the goal. Assumed they were appealing for an offside, still didn't realise what they were appealing for until the commentator mentioned it on one of the replays of the goal. Was really fucking weird, the keeper barely had one hand on the ball, never mind two.

Jonathan Pearce seems to have a bit of a soft spot for us. I remember watching champions league qualifiers(?) on channel 5 and him going mental when Nobby scored, think it was in Zagreb?? EDIT: may have been Ketsbaia actually, either way, he went absolutely nuts.

Please, let's not talk about Williamson's heading. It immediately makes me think of the floated set penis.

I remember going to one of those open training sessions at St James' when Keegan was back and Forster practising his kicking was hilarious. Could barely get it off the ground.

Yes, yes and yes again. It was f***ing s**** last night. Felt like I spent a third of the game listening to the crowd reaction to try and work out what was happening on the pitch. Meanwhile the Sky cameras are going for a super zoom on David Stockdale.

Knockaert really has a rather annoying face doesn't he?

'You're not telling me that Batshuayi would score 20 goals in the Championship.' Er, he probably fucking would Ray.

Nobby wasn't a luxury player, he did a job at right back for a while and wouldn't shirk his defensive duties playing on the wing either. He was just a quality player, technically superb and a really intelligent footballer.

Anita is back in training so hopefully he can do a job for a couple of weeks.

Clattenburg at the press conference: "I'm from a city called Newcastle... anyone who knows England well, we have the best football team."

Gone to Saudi Arabia to earn a shitload of money and escape the constant media attention on refs in this country, can't really blame him.

Cameron Jerome, one of those strikers who is utter horseshit but gives us massive problems / scores every time we play against him. Fucking infuriating.

The run Huddersfield are on is similar to the run Brighton were on recently whereby they are scoring a few late goals to snatch wins. Runs like that can't go on forever, it just isn't sustainable, so I expect them to have a bit of a dip soon like Brighton are having.

Scary to think where we'd be now if it wasn't for him.

The next 4 away games are obviously really tough and we want to be winning them, but I can see Rafa setting us up very cautiously for these games with the primary objective being not to lose the game. They are 4 vitally important games but they aren't must win, so long as we can get through those games without letting all those teams make too much ground on us we'll be in a great position. We're tough to break down away from home so a couple of draws from those games would do us fine.

In a word, no.

I bet Obertan will be decent in this league. Nailed on to score against us.

That'll be the investment of roughly -£30m then?

Ayoze seems to have lost a lot of his agility that he had when he first joined. He often looks slow and cumbersome in possession now and very indecisive, so different to his first season when everything he did was done quickly. From my memory he often did quick little one touch turns to shift the ball, haven't seen him do that for ages.

Just seen the interview. Fuuuuuuuuuck.

Relatively encouraging if Rafa is confident.