The Prophet

Lots of chat about Gordon in contract talks, but wasn't Isak at the beginning of the summer. I wonder if it's been agreed and they're waiting to announce it.

Roy Keane was rambling on about Howe's body language. Any idea what he was talking about?

All good points.

Decent read. Someone else will need to work their magic with the link.

Thought the timing if the Tonali sub was alright. Gave the crowd a lift and brought fresh legs into the midfield. Taking account of the game plan it was noticeable we started and finished strongly again, following the subs. Clearly some of the lads still need more gametime to get up to speed.

From the Athletic: More worryingly, Newcastle’s passing accuracy is a lowly 74.3 per cent — the worst in the division. In the opposition half, it is just 65.6 per cent, better only than Everton’s 65.2. Against Tottenham, both figures were even lower, at 71.3 per cent and 60.8 per cent respectively. Their attempted passes total of 930 is the lowest in the Premier League this season. Same for the 691 passes they have completed. Without labouring the point it's the biggest area of improvement for me. Particularly with a few away games coming up.

PIF are most likely pleased with Eales because the club, their investment, continues to increase in value. Apparently PIF are over for a standard annual review, so you'd imagine progress in commercial revenue, the stadium, navigating PSR, working relationships and improving the first team squad will be covered. The idea he's going to be peddled over a bad transfer window is fantasy land. If things begin to stagnate across the board over the next year, it might be a different story.

He's not had a bad start of the season at all, but even in his limited minutes, Sandro looks different gravy.

Been planned for a while by all accounts.

Looks like he's lacking a bit of confidence. Its not just a lack of service, he generally just looks a bit uncharacteristicly uncomposed. He'll be back, I'm sure.

Defends more like a centre back than a full back, but solid overall. We're yet to see the passing range he displayed at Bournemouth, he kept it pretty simple overall.

Clinical as fuck.

“I don’t think we’re playing as we’d like, that’s obvious,” he said. Howe confessed that Anthony Gordon is undercooked after a stop-start summer with England rather than suffering from a lack of focus after those unsettling links to Liverpool. “I don’t think we’re playing with enough control or enough composure but what we are showing is the defensive and aggressive qualities you need to win football matches" Totally fair commentary, as ever.

He was superb today.

My biggest grumble is still about how poor we are at keeping the ball. We've never been brilliant at it, but it's been noticeable bad so far. Obviously, taking account of today's game plan too.

Did Salah say he was leaving at the end of the season?

Possibly bad choice of words, but we were under the cosh for a decent spell, even if they didn't make the most of it.

It was a means to an end. Last season the way to play Spurs was to let them have the ball and play on the counter. We didn't look convincing at times, but on the end the game plan worked. It's been a rough week for Howe and he has some unsettled lads in that dressing room. Our first choice CB pairing are out, last season's best player is undercooked and our striker is lacking confidence. The fact we were able to grind out a result speaks volumes about the character of the lads. We know we will have to and we can improve, but taking everything into account I'm not going to grumble about the performance today, it's a massive result.

Agreed, did exactly the same last season too.

Nope, hilarious.

He's putting the graft in, it's blatantly the lack of any kind of meaningful pre-season, he looks well off it.