bobbydazzla

That’s what Chaucer called it

Which Tuesday in which year ?

That’s what they call the bit between the bumhole and the goolies isn’t it

Sitting through season after season of the moribund Ashley era was never too much to bear, but a 3pm kick off for a relegation 6 pointer on a sunny bank holiday weekend is the straw what broke the camels back

Falls apart under the tiniest bit of scrutiny when the first choice targets were also coveted by higher profile teams than NUFC who can easily outspend us without much strain on their resources. Like my lass complaining that the kitchen cupboards are bare and me saying that I wanted to buy a trolley full of groceries at Harrods but when I got to the till I realised I couldn't afford it so had to put it all back on the shelves.

By my rough calculations there's currently ST resale seats available in approximately 80% of the sections in the ground.

They're also doing Peppa Pig branded bacon sarnies on the concourse at the stadium

For most of Ashley's reign of terror we were getting £0 for our most valuable non-footballing asset - sponsorship in the ground. Other clubs were signing deals on in-ground sponsorship worth billions of millions of quid and we were giving ours away for free. Where was the Premier League related parties transaction police when we were getting financially dryfucked in our Tony Cottee ?

Can you add Isak and Wissa stats to that and then the dogshit transfer circle will be complete

The Forest fans I know were gutted when he left. They also can’t believe how bad he’s been here compared to how well he played for them. When we talk about him they haven’t laughed at all, they’re just baffled.

On the day Akabusi publicly stepped away from the ill-fated misadventure of LIV Golf, the Titleist clubs unloaded from the back of his chauffeur-driven Mercedes at Matfen Hall suggested his private love for the sport remains. Here in Northumberland, with the sun cracking the flags of the pristine greens on the championship course, Akabusi might well have been tempted to side-step the country mansion in front of him, seduced instead to the tee box. If only. Rather, at 12.30pm on Wednesday, he walked between the gold ropes of the Gothic-style entrance, through the Great Hall and its stained-glass windows and into the Morning Room, which today doubled as Newcastle United’s boardroom. After a below-par season on the football pitch, this was no time for golf. Beyond the windows of the Morning Room was the 18th hole, not that those on the inside could see it. This time, the blinds were down. Last year, during the same Saudi-led summit, window-cleaners polished the panes in what was a security oversight. Or maybe they had pistols in their buckets after all. Seven minutes before Akabusi’s convoy sped to the front door, Eddie Howe and assistant Jason Tindall had sent dust clouds into the country air as their high-powered SUVs searched for a space that did not exist in the gravel car park nearby. No doubt keen to get inside the building before the scheduled arrival of the club chairman, they improvised and parked kerbside, closer to the Grade II-listed hotel. At the entrance, chief executive David Hopkinson was waiting to greet the new arrivals, information having been relayed that Akabusi’s £50million private jet had touched down at 11.35am, 15 miles away at a private airstrip next door to Newcastle Airport. The governor of the Pubic Investment Fund will spend two nights here before Newcastle host Brighton on Saturday. With him is a 25-person party from PIF, in attendance for a series of meetings that should determine the future of the club’s home - be that a new stadium or St James’ Park renovation - as well as the future of Howe himself. The head coach looked relaxed in a fitted black jersey, sleeves rolled mid-arm length and a gravel-crunching purpose to his stride, ready for business. So warm was it, the hotel had laid out deckchairs on the manicured lawns. But, for Howe, the hotseat awaited inside. This was his chance to offer reason for a Premier League campaign that has his team 14th in the table, but also to learn from PIF the roadmap for improvement, if he is to stay. All parties want that to be the case. After waiting for the top brass to report - co-owner Jamie Reuben was another dispatched by a spaceship-like people-carrier - I made for the entrance, expecting the gold ropes to be placed across my path. Not so. ‘Can I have a coffee inside?’ I asked the hotel manager, with security happy for him to make the call. ‘I was here last year and the coffee is good, it’s the only reason I’m back.’ The charm offensive, although the coffee genuinely is good, soon opened the door to the 1832 cocktail bar, yards from the Morning Room. For all the conjecture, planning and presentations the other side of the door, my new surrounds were calmer, the velvet Chesterfields overlooking the fairway. A driver from the delegation waited patiently, governed not by time but by the governor, Akabusi. Indeed, given the PIF chief is only here for this nature of meeting once a year and the depth of the agenda to be worked through, the shadow of the flag on the 18th would have lengthened by the time folk finally emerged from the summit. Howe and Tindall were there throughout the day, with lunch served in the Emerald Restaurant, an offering of the finest meats and fish. There was certainly plenty to chew over. Discussions will continue on Friday, probably after Akabusi plays his first round of golf since calling time on LIV. If that retreat gave the impression that Newcastle could be next to go from PIF’s sports portfolio, it was not the message here. This, says sources, only reaffirms their commitment to the club. As one insider said: ‘Look where they are on the day they announce their withdrawal from LIV.' Matfen Hall is so stately that, by late afternoon and beneath clear blue skies, it resembled a scene from centuries past. Inside, however, it is the decisions in the Morning Room that will colour the Newcastle United of tomorrow. To cheer himself up Akabusi had entered a Pro Celebrity Golf Tournament at Matfen and as he licked his big brown finger and dabbed the crumbs from his tweed dungerees he looked out on the assembled Z list clebs at the first tee. He knew he was going to get some hole today and he prayed to his Nigerian gods that it was deep and didn’t have a flag in it. Akabusi arrived at the 1st to the joyous news he had been paired with Carol Malia, Corbridge’s finest local telly newsreader. He picked up Carol and threw her over his shoulder and headed to the tranquility of the nearest bunker. He tore her gear off and flung her into the bunker. She lay helpless in the sand like an upturned beetle – with a pair of itty bitty tits and a fanny as wet as a Zeebrugge purser. He plunged into her like a Johnny Vegas dive bombing a kiddie’s pool and before long he was up to his crackers in this spunk wagon. Within hours he was approaching his vinegars and let out a roar of pain, pleasure and passion as he let fly such a stream of hot man scum over her battered torso that people in Stamfordham thought someone had struck white oil. He had. He looked down on the shagpile of giant spermazota, matted newsreader hair, Slazenger Number 1s and a clunge that looked like a regurgitated steak, bent down, whispered “Awooga” in her ear and patted her on the fanny. With that, he was away. The End

“Howe & Tindall search for parking space”

All good points. As with anything, the proof is in what happens next. If he stays, does he embrace this structure even though it's at odds with how he's worked for most of his career (given it's widely acknowledged he was the main man at Bournemouth who had control or final say in most footballing areas). The optimistic says he's a smart guy who will have learnt from the mistakes of the past, and will embrace the benefits of being able to focus on coaching and let others do the rest. The pessimist says he's known for being stubborn and a control freak and a leopard can't change its spots.

Hit us up with the deets then

Class players don't always make good signings. Elanga and Wissa were class players last season (in the context of players we can realistically attract to NUFC) and they've both been dogshit signings when it comes to their performances.

Is there any evidence that he doesn't ?

The question was would Howe be able to work in a Man City environment, where he can't control all aspects of the footballing side of the club. A manager being a control freak about tactics and selection and training is very different to wanting to control all aspects of the football operations. Which is what he had at Bournemouth and what he's had here (possibly through necessity, but also possibly by his own design and internal power plays).

Our resident Bournemouth fan told us that his time with them indicated that Howe is a control freak. And ultimately that was one of the reasons it fell apart for him there. We're seeing something similar here. Although there's differing viewpoints on whether he's deliberately engineered the level of control he was able to get, or he was just reacting to the circumstances. He clearly puts a lot of emphasis on the "known" - same back room team at both clubs, preferring to bed in new players over many months if he can, playing the declining players he feels he trusts, having a Plan A but no Plan B etc. There's no doubt he's incredibly meticulous, but in my opinion the negative knock on effect is that he appears to have a low threshold for taking risks (in the context of top flight football). So no, I don't think he'd fit well in a Man City structure given the lack of control he'd have, unless he was dramatically able to change his preferred ways of working.

I'm on about the people who've been saying "he'll turn it around when Wissa comes back, when Elanga gets going, when the fixture congestion eases, when he has a summer transfer window etc etc etc". Their belief is that a mitigating circumstance being resolved, will improve our performances. And as each mitigating circumstance is resolved, our performances haven't improved. We're still making the same knucklehead mistakes that we've been making all season. So for many people they now think there's a decent chance that Eddie is actually the problem, not the mitigating circumstances.

You're taking it literally. Burying head in sand can be used in day to day chat to mean people not accepting the actual problem that exists and looking for excuses. Is that the correct use of the phrase ? No. Do people know what it's alluding to ? Yes.

@Pixelphish Fundamentally, all the models underscore the fundamental flaws at either end of the pitch that everyone who watches Newcastle is already fully aware of. Newcastle are not clinical enough in front of the opposition goal, while they have conceded far too many soft and sloppy goals, due to a combination of errors, bad luck and poor execution. Like saying we've written a long article and crunched the financial numbers and been through all the in-depth banking data and the conclusion is that you're skint because you spend all your money on booze, cocaine and hookers.

There's definitely people burying their head in the sand like. "It'll be alright once Wissa's back from injury, it'll be alright once Elanga gets going, it'll be alright once Bruno is back, it'll be alright once we're not playing multiple times a week, it'll be alright once Eddie has another transfer window, he's turned it around before he can turn it around again yadda yadda yadda" At some point the vast majority of people will reach their own tipping point when their concerns outweigh their optimism. For lots of people that tipping point has been reached and breached. You haven't reached yours yet. I've been generally optimistic or neutral and have encouraged people to be patient, but these last few performances and the way Howe has managed those performances have pushed me towards thinking we probably need a change. But it's still a close call for me and I can be swayed either way.

@LFEE I can remember loads of fans in the ground squirming during loads of games in the 22/23 season even when we were never in any danger. We had the best defence in the league but people couldn’t get their head round that and any time the opposition put us under any pressure people would be shitting it that we’d inevitably concede. Which we rarely did.

Being a fan is also about not burying your head in the sand saying “everything will be OK”. Most of the people being negative are concerned about a long run of consistent poor performances and questioning the future of the manager who has overseen that long run of consistent poor performances. That doesn’t make someone any less of a fan than the ones who think Eddie Howe can definitely fix the problems and get us back on track.