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Gottlob

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Everything posted by Gottlob

  1. Gottlob

    St James' Park

    I've only been to one American stadium and the experience compared to St James' Park was night and day. Open interiors and walkable concourses rather than cramped corridors littered with betting slips and spilled beers, snaked by queuing punters who wait desperately for a slot at the steel urinals as the stench of hot piss fills the air. A plethora of food and drink options, retail opportunities and enough time and space to enjoy it all in a casual, even carnivalesque sort of atmosphere where the sport was the focus but not the be-all and end-all. Newcastle absolutely needs a new stadium with more eating options. I'd personally opt for a taco bar as well as some of the more traditional 'Geordie' options like Craster Kippers and pease pudding, and I'd also like the stadium to include one of those shoot-to-win basketball arcades.
  2. I'll let other people do the fancy signings, because I do think we'll be after a right-sided forward, an accomplished or aspiring young centre-back, and though I dread to say it, I can see Bruno going and us paying a hefty wedge for his replacement while still leaving a little bit of cash spare in the piggy bank. Instead what I'll do is focus on some of those lesser lights who might still brighten a damp winter morning, not merely filling in come another injury crisis or adding a bit of something different off the bench but providing real competition each and every week. These are signings who won't get anybody's pulses going but should prove crucial for squad balance without costing the earth. The first name I'm liking is Fagioli from Juventus, a talented young all-around midfielder who can do the dirty work but also shows good ball control and balance. He'd be able to fill in pretty much anywhere you'd like. The second is Adam Armstrong, a home-grown, one of the top scorers in the Championship this season, a versatile frontman who unlike so many other options provides genuine striking ability, and possibly available come the end of the season if Southampton's promotion challenge continues to falter. I'm making no bones about it, for me Adam Armstrong is a must-have. And the third name is the out-of-sorts Palace left back Jeffrey Schlupp.
  3. Our bad run of form started with a couple of whoopings against Everton and Tottenham in which Joelinton played the full ninety minutes. He also featured against Nottingham Forest and played for most of the defeat against Liverpool. Discounting the Forest game, we let in 11 goals over those 3 matches. Going back 12 games to the Everton match, we sit 17th in the form table with 11 points from 12 matches and a league-leading 31 goals against. That isn't down to any one player or any one player's absence. It's a collective failure born of an unprecedented injury crisis, fatigue, a loss of form and the ensuing loss of confidence, and our inability so far to mitigate any of those things, change things up or find real room for improvement. Howe ultimately bears responsibility for how easy we've been to play against and for our inability to keep the football.
  4. You have to remember that while everyone has embraced the 'hub of a wheel' analogy because it's so nice and pithy, by Ashworth's own reckoning he is also like the little plastic thing that holds all of the variously coloured cheeses in Trivial Pursuit. I think it's that aspect of his skillset which is going to prove much harder for us to replace.
  5. I just wish I'd have been in the room when Ashworth was forced to deliver the news to His Excellency. No doubt Al-Rumayyan ate his asshole alive, with a tongue lit by the fire of a thousand Saudi oil rigs!
  6. Definitely one for the 'most punchable faces' thread.
  7. Gottlob

    Lewis Hall

    If you want to understand what's happening with Lewis Hall look no further than a diminutive Scot who's never wished anybody harm, and is now kicking up a storm on the south coast for Southampton. Yes I'm talking about Ryan Fraser, who once had the temerity to try on a pair of boots half a size too large and was ruthlessly punished for it. This iteration of Eddie Howe at least seems to need a leper, a pariah, an outcast who the other players can look at and say 'there but for the grace of God', and after spurning 'the Scottish Messi' it turns out Lewis Hall was next on the chopping block. He's a mild-mannered lad who gives it his all, but nothing he does is ever good enough, and he gets no minutes and no chances as a sort of perennial kick up the backside of the other players.
  8. Jose Mourinho gets the sack and within days the club have emerged from their wintry hibernation to start hawking some of Eddie's head boys in Trippier, Wilson and Almiron. It's cynical to think but then again we live in cynical times: a club that seems to have hit the buffers of financial fair play and come to the end of its first Saudi-led cycle, needing to boost its profile in order to attract sponsorships and other corporate hangers-on, now looks towards one of the game's biggest names who still maintains a global cabal of cult-like followers. Is there a quicker, easier and dirtier way to boost our profile while bleating out the signal 'look at us, we're a bunch of winners'?
  9. We've moved on from that now. We're talking about selling Longstaff for £30 million over a five year contract. Taking amortaniseation into account, that gives us £150 million to spend as a lump sum to do as we wish.
  10. I love Friends but never got into Frasier, although I saw one scene from an episode that was airing on television a few weeks ago which was very funny, where Frasier and Niles demonstrate the change in their singing voices as they descend into or ascend from a crouch position. The comedy from the nineties that I feel like I ought to watch is The Larry Sanders Show. Will anybody vouch for it?
  11. If we're selling Longstaff I'd hope for something in the region of £30 million on a five-year contract. With the amortisation added, the amount we'd have to spend would beggar belief no less than it would defy expectation.
  12. If we sell Trippier to Bayern for £20 million on a three-year contract by my own reckoning the amorterisation alone gives us £60 million to spend. That could buy four players worth £60 million on four year contracts or six players worth £60 million on six year contracts. It's an absolute no brainer, though I'm not sure Trippier's missus would be best pleased as every Oktoberfest he might find himself up to his ears in buxom Bavarian beauties!
  13. I prefer to rewatch Seinfeld myself. A microcosm of New York City in which the globular becomes molecular. A reification of the mundane whereby the sheer matter of life and those interstices between dramas and other entertainments become the raw material of art itself. Even some thirty years later I laugh every time. And utterly impossible without the man whose name adorns the masthead. Still love you Jerry.
  14. A large object, in this case taking the form of an older child, blocks out the sun causing the minor party to fade and wither. This was common parlance, otherwise known as 'scientific fact', until the late nineties when Richard Williams said 'watch out for Venus's sister'. Everybody scoffed and said 'no fuckin' way!' but then Serena Williams came along and from that point another idea has taken root, which holds that the younger is always the better sibling.
  15. This is the long and short of it. Heading into the summer transfer window, I wanted us to buy a starting right winger, defensive midfielder and left back, then look towards cover at the striker and centre back positions. Instead we bought another left winger, an identikit centre midfielder, and an aspiring right back. I felt we'd found a bit of value in the transfer market and I was happy that we'd doubled down on our strengths, but it turns out I was right all along and should never have doubted myself.
  16. When Denilson became the most expensive player in the world in the late nineties, it seemed inevitable at least to me that he'd be Brazil's next big flair player, tearing it up for years to come alongside Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Roberto Carlos. Then Adriano briefly looked like he'd be the dominant striker of his generation given his pace, strength and that stonking left foot. It's a slightly different question but I remember Alexander Baumjohann being highly rated as a youth and for his potential on Pro Evolution Soccer, potential which seemed more likely to come to fruition when he was signed for a brief spell by Bayern Munich. For us Hugo Viana is the one that stands out. I still think he's one of the best passers I've seen and was ahead of the game when he joined us for the way he could pass the ball into feet and find space and look to build triangles. I still wonder how he'd have fared at the right club or a good few years later as ball retention and midfield threes became more popular. The other answer is obviously Adam Armstrong, who looked like and still very well might prove a reincarnation of Sergio Aguero.
  17. 'Pagliuca' is synonymous with 'goalkeeper' for me, probably because the 1994 World Cup was the first major international tournament that I was old enough to grasp. I have fond memories of all the big names from that tournament, like Maradona, Stoichkov and Hagi, then Bebeto, Dunga and Aldair from Brazil, plus their goalkeeper Claudio Taffarel, who I didn't realise was now with Liverpool. From the same era I remember a Newcastle reserve game where a group of youths in front of me and my Dad spent pretty much the whole match drawling out 'Super Duper Hooper!'. And that we signed John Burridge a couple of times when he was in his forties and still plying his trade as an emergency goalkeeper. Plus caps were pretty common on goalkeepers in the nineties, which rightly or wrongly I particularly associate with the Americans Kasey Keller and Brad Friedel.
  18. Gottlob

    Harvey Barnes

    I'm glad we haven't had to see Allan 'Sicknote' Saint-Maximin perform any of his pointless stepovers this season, but on a positive note at least Harvey Barnes has had enough time to perfect the mental geometries of the one-two.
  19. He's going to eat his asshole alive and there's no two ways about it. He's. Going. To. Eat. Eddie. Howe's. Asshole. Alive.
  20. Yep. I don't know why so many people still don't get this. Al-Rumayyan is the type of guy who'll spend well over $3 billion solely in a bid to secure Augusta National membership. He's a reasonable man and I'm sure will have tempered expectations for this season, but if he was planning on attending the Champions League final in Munich as the special guest of honour next year and we don't make the grade, you'd better believe that using your own terminology for a second, he'll eat Eddie Howe's asshole alive, and then probably run down the chain of command until his appetite is sated.
  21. Gottlob

    St James' Park

    I went to a baseball match in America once and really enjoyed one of those Philadelphia cheese steak sandwiches. Is there any chance that in a new stadium there'd be something like a sandwich stall where we'd be able to get one of those Philadelphia cheese steak subs, and then go back to our seats and eat it with enough room to neither infringe on the next person's arm space or get any of the juice on our trousers?
  22. Gottlob

    Nick Pope

    It's a shame it has to be this way, but the best we can probably hope for now is that he heals up well, comes on as a sub for a round of applause in the last game of the season, then proves fit enough for us to sell on in the summer for a handsome profit. It's like Lord Byron said, 'Fare thee well, Nick Pope! And if for ever, still for ever fare thee well'.
  23. Gottlob

    Anthony Gordon

    You wish for my own sake that I was on the wind-up!
  24. Gottlob

    Anthony Gordon

    He was excellent for three of our goals yesterday, but Adam Armstrong scored another cracker for Southampton, so right now I'd say they're running neck and neck. Can you imagine these two studs playing together? But given his form so far this season, it is fair to say that swapping Gordon for Armstrong in the summer, even on loan, wouldn't have been the right move. It would have been like robbing Peter to pay Paul. If we still want to snag Adam Armstrong on a cut-price deal, I reckon we'll have to use Harvey Barnes now as the makeweight.
  25. When I posted previously about Anthony Gordon he was indeed our seventh-choice wide player - behind Almiron and Murphy on the right hand side and Saint-Maximin, Isak and some combination of Joelinton and Willock on the left, which is not to mention Elliot Anderson - and heading into the summer I saw a player low on form who could have used a confidence-boosting spell in the lower division. If you see the wonders which Eddie Howe has wrought with Gordon I ask couldn't he have achieved the same sort of results with Adam Armstrong, especially since as I've already mentioned in some of the aspects of his game as well as the general vicinity of his height he bears a marked resemblance to Sergio Aguero? But you can all continue to laugh, knowing that your laughter and japes bear the stench of gallows humour given that the opportunity to sign Adam Armstrong (for some cash plus Anthony Gordon on loan) has surely passed us by now that he's back banging those goals in for Southampton. Regarding the left back conundrum, I've also been a longtime admirer of Jeffrey Schlupp. Granted that stretches back to the time before time, which is to say pre-Saudi takeover. But if we could schlepp Schlupp from Leicestershire in the January transfer window way up north, he might still be able to get his Swedish spark out just in time for the sledding season.
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