ponsaelius

More pace on the counter vs Barca.

Some horrifically one sided ties between top tier teams and teams from smaller nations so far in these knock-outs. Sad state of affairs.

Leefal

Fully deserved lead.

Another hot take but Suarez is shite these days.

https://streamable.com/eza92

Every other game going their way. Ridiculous.

What a weird comment to make. Aye, they are nowhere near the Guardiola team, but that was one of the best teams ever, of course that wasn't sustainable forever. They still lead La Liga by about a million points and have lost one competitive game all season IIRC. They're doing well in the league, but there's no way this team wins the CL. Be a different story if they can get Dembele and Coutinho properly integrated next season, maybe.

Barca are such a shadow of their teams in the recent past.

Besiktas down to 10 in the other game.

Completely understand the logic behind signing Paulinho, but he looks so awkward on the ball compared to other Barca players.

Barcelona are terrible away in the CL. Be surprised if it's anything other than a Chelsea win.

In graph form:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Newcastle_United_F.C._seasons Looking at this and top scorer statistics, we could be on for our lowest top scorer in the entire history of the club. 7 goals in 1892-93 (a 10 game Northern League season), 1980-81, 1997-98 and 2000-01 is the current joint record. You'd not fancy any of our current lot to reach that (Joselu and Perez are both on 4 at the moment).

I mean you have to look at the fact that Fletcher, Maja and Asoro have only scored a goal each all season. That's 3 goals in 41 cumulative appearances, and two of those are 19 year old kids. By comparison Grabban and Vaughan contributed 14 goals for them in the first half of the season. Unless somebody starts bucking the trend, or they can get more from midfield, it's hard to see where goals are going to come from to keep them up.

The thing that suggests they'll go down is they've been down there all season, and lost their only reliable source of goals in January, so you'd argue it's unlikely they'll change form that has lasted for 32 games - as the bookies odds suggest. It's certainly not an impossibility that they'll get out of it though.

Andres Townsend and Michael Hector fall into this category.

Micah Richards at Fiorentina.

For those who don't remember Wasn't Galatasary mind. Was Ankara side Ankaragucu. Good article here: https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/sep/03/darius-vassell-goat-sacrificed-book-ankaragucu

Outscored teammates Paulo Dybala and Andrea Belotti that season, which is a pretty funny statistic. Abel Hernandez was their top scorer.

Wigan's record this century makes an absolute mockery of ours.

Wigan is tiny and the club was non-league for most of its history. A 25k seater is too big and the product of Dave Whelan financing them up the leagues. Oldham and Rochdale wouldn't sell out a 25k seater either so it hardly seems fair to criticise Wigan.

Potentially. On the bench from the start.

I much prefer Mitrovic to Joselu like, but I really think Joselu is an unbelievable shitcunt.