Wallsendmag

Flip flips on (your words), downed tools. Pretty much same thing really.

Well isn't that a damning indictment of Howe and his squad if they downed tools with 2 months and 8 games of the season still to play whilst sat in 9th position. Plenty of other PL teams have more players at the World Cup than we have, including those 12 miles down the road, and didn't seem to suffer with the same lack of effort.

The next mistake you've made is taking the utter cesspit that is Twitter seriously It's full attention seekers farming for interaction.

It's easy enough to go back 2 years on this very thread (I've done it) and see for yourself that there wasn't "loads" of people on his back at all for the 7th place finish so yet again you're talking shite I'm afraid.

I lost all faith in the possession stat having much meaning when we battered Brendan Rodgers' Swansea team 2-0 with 25% or so of it.

That's just an assumption from yourself as we didn't get an extra 4 points and finish 8th, we finished 12th. So it's basically irrelevant. What we do know as fact is that when we finished 7th 2 seasons ago (level on points with 8th) there wasn't really any whinging or Howe out noises at all. Certainly anyone with that view was massively in the minority. I'll be honest I can't even think of anyone who wanted him sacked after that and why would they? Last season was nowhere near good enough. The football was poor and loads of other flaws in our game, mentally (throwing away leads, conceding last minute goals and technically (awful ball retention) I don't think you'd get much argument against that. The debate is whether Howe can turn it around or not. The signs haven't been promising in my opinion. A lot of his backers said we'd see a big improvement when we reverted to 1 game per week after going out of Europe with 2 months of the season to play. Some even thought it would help us push for European qualification again. Didn't happen.

Real. Seen the interview.

I was in there for the Liverpool game last season. Atmosphere was excellent.

We finished 7th 2 seasons ago (same amount of points as 8th place) and people were genuinely satisfied. As it happens we didn't finish 8th this season so I'm unsure as to what his point was, if there was one.

Correct decision. Nowhere near good enough.

You were making a point?

You can't use the "too many games excuse" for a shit season and then fail to include all the defeats in those extra cup games though

We also finished 5 points off 16th. We lost 23 games, spent obscene money on rubbish, let Sunderland walk over us twice, and lost more points from winning positions than any other team. Finishing 4 points behind 8th in 12th position isn't anything to crow about but you carry on polishing that turd of yours.

Because regardless of who comes in, without Europe and after a big splurge last season, our pull (and budget) may not be great and I also don't envisage much of a difference in style of play either. Our recruitment methods and the aforementioned style of play needs a shift, I'm not confident that is going to happen with the present personnel in place. Probably just a hangover from last season tbf. After the Barcelona debacle, although I said on here that I didn't really expect a strong end to the season, I did hope for one and to finish with a continuation of the malaise that was setting in was really disappointing.

We were pretty poor from August though. We won 1 of our first games (an undeserved 1-0 at home to Wolves).