54

Perfect use

What he did with Lejeune was genuinely horrible, he'd just come back from a ACL injury, he then immediately played him in 3 games back to back all within 6 days, only for him to naturally make a mistake in the third, and him to never really be used again. I always forget about Fede, but he had a few spells where he was our best defender too.

They wouldn't, it was more that when these things happen the clubs in question always threaten to fight it, act like its entirely unjust and everyone is against theme, whereas here they have just owned up to the mistake, and got on with it. I'm basically just picturing the Liverpool and Arsenal statements a while back.

Not often you get clubs owning an issue like this and not threatening to sue etc:

Worth remembering what working with Bruce and his team did to Longstaff mentally, this is about an incident about half way through Bruce's tenure: "I keep a lot of things bottled up. I'm quite quiet in that way. Whether that's emotions…" he pauses. "I don't really like speaking to people about stuff, for whatever reason. I suppose everyone's different. "It probably comes to a point for everyone when things can spill over, and eventually that did. But that needed to happen. I look back now, and that needed to happen, or else I would have just kept going in the spiral I was going. Nothing would have changed and, ultimately, there comes a point when you have to change, stuff has to start changing. "We went for breakfast in Tynemouth and at the table we were speaking. I'd played the day before, but I hadn't been great. We spoke, but I couldn't eat my breakfast. I could feel myself welling up at the table. I can't remember what we were speaking about. It was just speaking. Eventually we left. "I got upstairs in my house and spoke to my dad for ten minutes. I burst out crying. I was in a pretty bad way." "My dad was there for us at that time. Sometimes you just need a big hug," he smiles. "It was probably the day which turned everything around for me. "I'd say I'm always quite stubborn. But I knew that day when I spoke to my dad and Matty, it stripped everything back. They're the most honest people. It was just us in the room. My brother left and I spoke to my dad for ten minutes. That was as close to rock bottom as I've been. "It was that day, actually, that Matt Ritchie – out of the blue – sent us a message and said, 'do this – you need to speak to him (the psychologist)'. I was able to build from that. It's just built, built, built over time. Little building blocks. Getting back in the squad for a game, getting back in the team – it's all been little building blocks."

And we don't sign players properly?

A red for that? Fucking hell

Love how we're the ones that everyone bangs on about, despite the fact we've not done it yet and other clubs have on multiple occasions

Ohhh look at this place getting all fancy with Spotify embedding.

If reading that right, isn't that just stating the obvious?

The thing is I don't think it's fair to compare players of a different generation to that of the current one as naturally as time goes by, footballers are going to get better as technology and physical understanding improves, and what someone in a certain position is expected to do, differs so wildly from one generation to another. So if you're doing it based purely on today's standards you'd basically just pick the current squad, these sorts of things are always subjective to the eye of the person making the teams and what they remember and perceive, there isn't a right or wrong answer really. Take Given for example, I don't think anyone is arguing he'd be a top class keeper in today's game, but at the time he was around he was.

My personal Favourite XI: Given Trippier Colo Schar Enrique Tiote Cabaye Bruno Ben Arfa Shearer Robert

9 different scorers too.

Not playing today so getting a week off.

France absolutely destroying the colonies.

Gateshead 2-0 up away to second placed Barnet.

Why this game and not the 3-1 win over Italy which we dominated?

Wait VAR didn't overturn that? That's mental really

That's one of them, that should be given by the letter of the law, but I'm glad Kane was booked as he has left his foot in trying to get contact from the keeper. That said, if Newcastle hadn't been given that, I'd have been livid

Just seen Sebastian Haller scored for Ivory Coast, proper threw me, as in my head for whatever reason, he was Dutch

They'd not scored a competitive goal in 16 games, now they've scored two in two, its big news tbh.

San Mario scored another goal today

Called up to the Sweden squad.