ponsaelius

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.

Apparently he’s said he won’t play for Jamaica until they improve. ...you could, ya know, make them better by playing for them, Leon. I'm sure his complaints were about the infrastructure and the dysfunctional nature of the FA, rather than the quality of the team. That's not something that he can necessarily do anything about and as sad as it is to see minnows lose quality players, it is sometimes understandable on an individual level. No doubt there is an element of individualistic career based motivation too, mind. However if a football association is corrupt and shambolic it just encourages such a decision.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/bayer-leverkusen-leon-bailey-england-12042341 Would be a good addition

Doesn't score enough goals. He'd be an improvement as a target man compared to what we've got but his Joselu like record this season is one of the reasons they're bottom of the league.

I think the domestic rights will plateau now and potentially begin to slide. A lot of people with streaming boxes or at least saying no to subscribing to 2 providers. However the international rights probably have unlimited growth potential inhibited only by time zone differences.

Easy to engage in schadenfreude over Sturridge but our striker signing hasn't even made the pitch yet. It's almost like scrambling around for scraps on loan at the end of the transfer window leaves you signing unfit, unwanted rubbish.

It's a huge game. Win it and you'd fancy us to kick on and be relatively comfortable, lose it and then we've got Liverpool away and probably back into the bottom 3.

I completely agree it's best to not get carried away. However, neither Darlow or Elliot have given that much of a composed and all round goalkeeping display this season.