ChrisMcQuillan

A draw is better if you need to finish above both of them. We don’t, we just need to finish above one of them. A win, especially for City who are going to finish above or near enough to us, helps keep Villa at a distance. Instead of having two clubs 1 or 2 points behind us after the upcoming weekend, one will be five behind if we win. That’s better for us finishing Top 5.

It’s after a certain amount of games, pretty sure. Never heard anything about it being relative to the first.

I’ve been called a bedwetter, knee jerker, all sorts. Honestly, I think this is fine. Just a bump on the road and not surprising given the schedule and manager being in hospital. Emery is a great tactician and he won today.

Could do with an update on how he's doing, or when he might be back. If he's bad, it's not impossible he'll miss the rest of the season.

Switched it off. Luckily we didn't really need to win it, and was probably the fixture we had left I was least looking forward to. I can't understand why we don't seem to have a physical conditioning report that shows that our players need to be rested after 3 games in 6 days. We always run the same team into the ground.

Normally a sign of being tactically outdone, that.

Holy shit, he gave us a free kick. Oh, then makes us retake it.

This ref... Can't believe what I'm watching, in all honesty.

This referee needs sacked.

Ref gave the exact same thing against him.

Watkins turning in the kind of performance we normally only see from giants like Welbeck and Nunez.

Not a foul.

Love that little players tactical meeting instead of celebrating.

"Newcastle will be an elite Adidas club with unique items." Walk out at Aston Villa with identical tracksuits.

Hadn't heard that, if he has.

They’ll get annihilated in the Champions League if they manage to win the final.

I’ve never, ever heard comms as bad as this.

They’ve just spunked all over the comms box.

Was a pleasure to watch him in person last night after finally winning a ballot. There was a point where the ball was in the Gallowgate/Leazes corner, and we'd just lost possession fairly early on. Tonali turned to check who was near him, saw a Palace player who would likely receive the ball next, then looked over his other shoulder to identify where the pass after that would go before their first player had even received the ball. He started positioning himself to intercept the follow-up pass. The Palace player passed as expected, and then made the follow-up pass. Tonali intercepted with ease. His reading of the game is sensational. In a split second he'd worked out the next two Palace passes and positioned himself to get the ball back before the first pass had even been played. Incredible player.

I do have a suspicion Tonali isn't on set pieces for his ability to break up counter attacks. Trippier doesn't have the pace (nor do most of the team who you wouldn't want to already be in the opponent's box).

Schar grabbed his hamstring fuck sake.

You can really tell Barnes is enjoying his football atm. For some reason I wrote "toffee" instead of football initially, but gladly caught it before posting.

Isak was obviously annoyed that Bruno didn't pass, even after he scored. Not sure I like that too much. But cracking result, this.

Smashing goal, that.