Wallsendmag

Just got the unsuccessful email for Bournemouth. Reckon there'll be a decent chance for general sale for this one though as they'll only sell 3 blocks at most.

Bad transport connections to the Durham pit villages is their latest excuse for the midweek no shows. You'd think with all these "branches" they have they would consider running buses to enable all these MLFs to go along to support their team.

Aye got to say I've never not gone to a football match I've had a ticket for due to the weather in my entire life. Fact is if they've announced a 39k crowd yesterday, then near enough 50% of all ticket holders have decided to give it a swerve

You're setting your benchmark based on 14 years of Mike Ashley but that's fine I guess.

He's overseen the rise and now he's overseeing the decline. I said on here after the Brighton game (and it's the only time I've ever said it) but I felt he'd taken this team as far as he could and it would be downhill from here on in. Last season was poor, but there was mitigating circumstances. European distractions and injuries, plus Tonali. This season the fixture list is light and the injuries have been few. Only really Botman missing out of regular 1st teamers, maybe Wilson but Isak plays ahead of him anyway. Performances are even worse than last season though and worse still we've gone from having the tightest defence 2 years ago to leaking goals left, right and centre. We aren't going down. We aren't qualifying for Europe. Personally I'd keep him till the end of the season and then shake his hand and pay him off. I actually think that's what they'll do as well. I think they'll try for Mourinho and I also think he'd walk here from Turkey for a job he's always wanted. My choice however would be Iraola at Bournemouth. He's different class and I'd love to see what he could do with a bigger budget.

They've literally near enough doubled the actual attendance there hahaha

About 22k there. How they had the nerve to have a pop at us cos some of our fans left early v West Ham when they don't even turn up in the first place is beyond me. And the less said about their "atmosphere" the better

I've always thought that. Changed my opinion somewhat yesterday. Had absolutely cracking seats row K seats 121, 122. Bang on halfway line. View was superb. Atmosphere up there was pretty decent. Pockets of singing rather than en masse apart from just after we scored our goals. What you do see is how bad other parts of the ground are. Leazes End is beyond pathetic other than the East Corner and the Gallowgate starts off great at the Strawberry Corner and visibly deteriorates the closer you get to the Milburn Stand to the point where it becomes as bad as the Leazes End. Can't see Upper tier. Atmosphere overall I thought was pretty mixed. Not great but not poor either. Liverpool fans were loud on the occasions they did sing but that wasn't all that often. I'd say average age of fan around where we were was probably mid/late 20s.

You'd hope that would be the case but you never know these days. If we can't get up for a game v Liverpool there is a problem mind.

Ah right. I remember one of them wrongly sending Coloccini off at the SoL and one of them having to take a break from refereeing for a while after some controversy over allegedly getting too close to a dog but can't remember which was which.

Ah great. Is he the one who likes dogs?

I suspect we'll need a half decent ref tonight to stand any chance and there's not many of those around, especially when the opposition is Liverpool. Any idea who it is?

£4 reduction on league prices then!

Wasn't sold out. Just over 50k there iirc. Think only Barcelona sold out and that wasn't until the day before the game. Only 48k at Juventus and 40k v Feyenoord, Kiev, Leverkusen. People complained ticket prices were too high and back then ITV would have had the rights for the CL so would have been accessible to all.

Fact is that their support doesn't come close to ours and throughout history very rarely has. Over the past 100+ seasons they've averaged more than us 16 times, 3 of them at the end of the 90s when the SoL was bigger than SJP. It's occasions like this where this really hits hard. Both at home on the same day, at the same time, in the same competition. We'll have double their crowd at worst despite charging much more for tickets. In fact should stadium capacity allow we'd have at least 3 times more as we'll be sold out. Anyway, roll on the excuses. They're always a laugh

They'll be charging the very minimum that you can for a 3rd round cup game, probably £10/£15 and a fiver for kids whilst we'll charge £30/£35 and £15 for kids. We'll have 52,000 there and they'll probably have around 15/20k there. They won't like that.

They'll beat you. Personally prefer playing teams we've never played before rather than a team from the same league we'll play at least 2 other times during the season.

Wow.

Tougher 3rd round draw than last year but still expect to win it.

Tbf Keegan not coming is something that's completely out of their control. I chucked in 20 quid for the display for him but not arsed in the slightest that it's not happening now. Well not on Wednesday anyway. It'll be used for future displays so it's not like it goes to waste.

Think it looked worse because it always looks bad when a keeper is beaten at his near post but I agree it was a very good header. Difficult one to stop.

I'm on about the Barcelona match in the CL when they beat us 2-0 and Kluivert was unplayable that night. Scored their first goal and we couldn't get near him all night. He got a standing ovation when he got subbed. Aye we beat Juventus 1-0 and got battered 4-1 v Inter. Bellamy got sent off after about 5 mins for kicking out at one of their players. Shearer didn't get sent off.

2/10. Think we've already dropped too many points against poor opposition and still have to go away to Man City, Man Utd, Spurs, Arsenal, Liverpool and Villa so think we'll fall short again but you never know.

Think it was the CL game. We lost 2-0. He was outstanding that night.