Wallsendmag

Still remember years ago being at a lose end one Wednesday afternoon and decideded to have a walk along to watch the U18s play at Little Benton which is just a 5 minute walk away. Leaving the house my next door neighbour was in his front garden and asked where I was off to. Told him where and he said "keep an eye out for a young lad called Elliot Anderson. He's only 16 but he's some player and he's starting to play in the U18s. He used to play with my young 'un. He's unbelievable!" He came on as a sub in the 2nd half and did well, especially considering he was up against lads mainly older than him but even then you'd never believe that 6 or so years later he'd be getting successive MOTM awards for England! Wish we hadn't been forced to sell him although then again maybe he wouldn't have had the same opportunities to develop here as he's had at Forest. Anyway great to see a local lad doing so well.

Still remember our first season back in the Prem in 93/94. We went down to Goodison in the December, beat them 2-0. Think the crowd was around 25,000 and that's only because they gave us 6k tickets and we sold the lot. They were getting sub 15k crowds for Premier League football around that time against the likes of Southampton.

Mate at work is a North Shields season ticket holder. Supposed to be going down to Northallerton on Saturday but says he's having 2nd thoughts about it now the soft shite

Sunderland at Everton when they weren't doing very well. 450 mackems in the away end.

Everton at Sunderland when they weren't doing very well under Roberto Martinez. Less than 1k turned out.

The system is well and truely broken and as I found out yesterday they have no intention of doing anything about it. Ballot success rates are dropping for everyone it would appear (going by my experience and that of people I know) and availability for the members general sale is nowhere near what it was. In the past if you got on and were in the first 5/6k you knew you'd get a ticket somewhere. My mate got 3,000 odd for Wolves and nowt left when he got on. Resale used to be decent but can't even get a sniff of a ticket through that anymore. Makes the fact that they don't seem to be making any noteable progress on a new stadium all the more bizarre.

It's a cock waving exercise for them. Nothing more. That was always the dream "one more seat than Newcastle". That was their ambition. They couldn't care less if it's half full every week as long as they feel they've got one over on us.

They had a home attendance of under 3,500 less than 4 years ago for a 1st team fixture. That's their hardcore support there. Those who will turn up no matter what. If it was any other fanbase claiming they need a bigger stadium when they've filled their current one for fewer than 3% of the games it's hosted (since capacity was increased to 48,000) you'd think they were taking the piss, but with this lot you know they're deadly serious

That's where they let themselves down imo. Flights from Edinburgh tend to be far cheaper, and parking there is much more reasonable than Newcastle. As I result we use Edinburgh Airport as much as we do Newcastle, if not more, even for destinations that we can reach from Newcastle. Helps that Edinburgh are far better served by Ryanair and Easyjet as well mind!

If other accents I regularly hear there are anything to go by there's always plenty of people from Yorkshire and Scotland use Newcastle airport frequently as well.

I called in with a bunch of flowers for Jan back in February and in March I got a Pot 6 Cup Final ticket. It does make you wonder.

Aye sounds like you've been black balled bobby lad.

Success for Barcelona! 1/3 for me this season.

Is this their latest identity crisis? That'll be the sea that's eaten away at most of their catchment area then.

Tbf any new stadium wasn't (and still isn't) even in the identifying and proceeding with a suitable site stage. If Isak really thought he'd be around for all that to happen, likely a couple of years and then for it to be build, likely a further 3 or 4 years on top of that, then he's a bit of a daft cunt really. Any new signing we make, even now, is 99% not going to be playing his home games for Newcastle anywhere other than at SJP.

Think it's also a generational thing. Players/people are different nowadays. For example I doubt someone like Roy Keane or Tony Adams would have felt the same as Gordon and Botman do. I'm going to try hard to not get too wound up about it

Done the same as Gordon basically.

Aye suppose so. Just seems to be have done for effect and just inflames things unnecessarily especially at a time where Gordon is hardly flavour of the month himself. No doubt there'll be other players that have dropped him a private good luck text, I'm certainly not naive enough to think the players are as emotional about it as the supporters are, but if we don't know about that then it doesn't matter!

Totally unnecessary as well. I'm sure hes got his mobile number ffs.

Exactly. A private text message would have sufficed the fucking tit.

Don't think many people will just let it go. People still talk about Supermac leaving for Arsenal for £333,333.33 all those years ago! I suspect after everything that's happened it'll rumble on for a while tbh. No problem with that. I'm too young to remember Supermac leaving but my dad reckons the city went into mourning for a bit! The nearest comparison i can make personally is Andy Cole to Man Utd. I'll be honest that felt much worse but maybe that's cos I was a lot younger and more involved. Remember Waddle (vaguely), Beardsley and Gazza leaving but we were a selling club back then.

Nobody really knows anything tbh. We're all just guessing really and will have our own thoughts about it. Ultimately Isak got what he wanted, his agent got what he wanted, Liverpool got what they wanted, the Premier League got what they wanted, and we lost our most valuable player to a rival club. Always going to leave a bitter taste in the mouth.

Usually an agent will earn around 10% of the transfer fee. Very much doubt Isak paid him around £12m out of his own pocket. I'd certainly need some solid documentation to believe that!

It's usually the selling club who cover the agents fees like.

Think most of us gave him the benefit of the doubt. Thought he was playing through injury because Wilson couldn't play 90 mins. Indeed it now looks like he simply downed tools to make him summer move easier. Interesting to see what PIF make of all this. When they bought the club 4 years ago and the chairman said he wanted to be number 1, I doubt he realised there'd be rules quickly put into place meaning that he'd have to sell his star player to a rival.