Away Toon

Now that's a goal

Newcastle United are monitoring Dominic Calvert-Lewin's situation at Everton as the England striker, 26, is on their list of potential targets for next summer. (TeamTalk) Love a bit of monitoring. A good player, if he could stay fit which seemingly he can't he could be a great player.

Surely even the worst players that went to Saudi are being paid more than anyone at NUFC, never mind someone like Neves who is probably on double our highest paid player.

Is he playing well for Brazil? Does he play the same deep lying role as he does for us? His team don't seem very good at the moment.

Has he actually apologized?

A fit and motivated Phillips is an elite 6, at his best better than Rice when they played together for England. I don't think that either Willock of Joe are particularly good in midfield so not sure why you would want them in there.

Why did we not buy Paqueta?

Liverpool's bench is interesting today, we are not the only club with a lot of injuries.

I know that we are incredibly stretched and the squad in thread bare but even when everyone is fit there are questions about what the best position is for lots of our players. Hall doesn't look like a great LB prospect at this point. Is this his preferred position or just an assumption that this is the position we are buying him to grow into? Also seemingly without anyone really knowing their best position is Willock, Gordon and Joelinton. I'm sure Bruno would be a better 8 than a 6 but until Miley is ready for the DM position or we buy someone like Phillips he'll have to play there. That presumes that Miley is a 6? It's all very well having players who are flexible, but IMO Gordon will never be a CF, Big Joe never a top class midfielder, Willock I've no idea at all what he's meant to be. Apart from being invisible most of the time. It's quite possible than Gordon, Willock, Joelinton and Barnes are all at their best in the same position which is very unlikely to be a good thing. We also need to evolve our playing style if we are going to continue having top 4 aspirations every season. This rigid 433, high press, physicality is our identity, is all very well against the poorer teams but doesn't work against the best ones and if it means your players end up dropping like flies there has to be a plan B. We need IMO to evolve into a possession based team but that requires much better technical players than the ones we have. It's much less knackering having the ball than chasing around looking for it. Anyhow onwards and upwards.

Though Willock was the worst player on the pitch, but then again until the 80th minute I didn't think he was.

I mean we could rotate more.

I mean we are playing with 9 and a half men. Ritchie being the half. Nothing can convince me that Willock is actually on the pitch.

I thought Pedro was the one to get but seemingly in the end we lost interest. How is he doing at Brighton?

Neves has pretty much all the same strengths and weaknesses as Bruno. Together although technically they would be excellent, out of possession both are slow and lack athleticism. I'd like to see us sign and a number 6 and let Bruno off the leash to get forward and cause some havoc which he's shown he can do.

I'd be going all out in the cup and picking the strongest team available. If we continue to pick up injuries we are going to finish somewhere between 6-8th in the league. You get no medals for that.

Burn is on toast here, get a sub on.

Shite from Pope, then Bruno and then Burn. They look like going on to win this.

We are very open and needs some subs on quickly.

Lots of conjecture as normal in the murky world of football and very few answers. The one person we are sure who knew of his gambling problems was Tonali himself plus the people he used to place bets. Did Milan or the Italian authorities know about any of this before he was transferred? Did either Tonali or his agent declare anything to NUFC before he signed his contract. Without knowing answers to these questions we have no idea if compensation, loss of wages, fines etc. is applicable. If Tonali didn't mention anything to NUFC before he signed his contract it is potentially null and void due to all kinds of breaches of employment law. The big issue is that we paid or are paying in installments 55m quid for someone who either lied, mislead or we knew but signed him anyhow. The truth as always in football might never come out.

I've never thought he could play in a central three to the standard we need going forward. Wide left forward or on the bench for me.

Maybe Milan will give us a full refund. We can claim damaged goods. Maybe a little extra as compensation.

His wife is a bunny.

Everytime I've seen Ortega play his distribution is as good as any goalkeeper I've ever seen.

Wrong Brazilian.

Dembele up against Dan Burn should be interesting.