Stottie

36 points needed off 29 games. Zero goals scored against Cardiff, Palace, and Brighton. 5, thinking about 6.

Anyone who says Brighton deserved to win needs to be strapped to a chair like A Clockwork Orange and watch Mat Ryan parry that shot straight to Muto on a loop. The most worrying thing for me in that match were our set pieces. The first corner after about a minute went short to Shelvey and then back to Yedlin? who crossed from about thirty yards out, a position that will be three or four times less effective than a corner.

Plenty of effort but a huge lack of quality and lots of poor decision-making. They hit one shot and its deflected in, we hit many and they aren't, so no luck either. We don't look like scoring from a set piece, which is also bad for a known struggler. Brighton were there for the taking today, so that is a big three points lost.

Lazy is the word. That was a waste of a good position.

C'mon, just one bit of luck.

We're at least doing enough to earn a bit of luck.

Dunno what's happened with our set pieces. Lascelles and Dummett are still there, and Fernandes should be useful too. They were an important source of goals last time.

They don't deserve to be ahead, put it that way.

Lots of last ditch stuff from them. Kenedy close.

Lino is on that side so should see it is not a corner. It clearly isn't on the replay. Corner or no corner, we've been terrible.

Dear oh dear

At the time, I'm pretty sure Gayle and Ritchie were top ten (top five?) highest ever transfer fees for a club in the Championship. The net spend was still minus of course thanks to Gini and Sissoko, but you'd have a hard job convincing any neutral that we scraped our way back up into the PL. The revert to bare minimum scraping has been following promotion. Instead of us kicking on, the war chest has been firmly locked and chained with the parachute and TV money inside.

He's a known fan of the mackems, but on the Guardian podcast, when asked what Aston Villa should do now, Barry Glendenning's answer was "go all out to get Rafa Benitez". Wind-up or not, I'm sure the idea will have occurred or will soon be occurring to people with better-funded football "projects" to give him. Re: the Man U game, Alex Hurst on the tf podcast said that he thought Shelvey and Diame looked knackered at the end of the first half. I didn't notice it myself, but that's the kind of thing you would pick up more in the ground than watching on tv.

An impressive number of misses flashed up before he took that.

Plea scored again yesterday, fwiw. If we don't spend the fee, Mitro effectively left on a free transfer. Rafa did so much research he got RSI from looking at players on his computer. He must have assumed we would be signing some.

Fulham keeper was completely wrongfooted there. He also looked out of position with a huge gap at the near post.

Didn't mention the Young handball in his interview, which he had a right to, but otherwise took it on the chin. Just mentioned our missed chances. Didn't rise to the "you were more attacking than in other matches" bait either.

A Cardiff or Palace don't give you the space Perez was in for our first goal or the space Muto had to turn for the second though, its a lot easier create things when the other team controls the ball I think a Cardiff do give you space, but we decided to play the ball in the air, and that's one thing they are good at. They stood off Shelvey and he pinged through balls to Perez twice in the first twenty minutes. Unfortunately he was on an off day and both chances came to nought. Much to my annoyance, we then let the game then descend into a midfield head tennis-type stalemate, until the sending off, which killed what little ambition we had.

I think that was more typical Newcastle than any major tactical failing. Typical Newcastle being Rooney arguing with the ref, and then turning around and instantly hitting the best strike of his entire fucking career. It's one thing to concede a free kick in a dangerous area, but another to concede. We did it from further out against Arsenal too, so maybe something to work on. They were both great strikes, so typical Newcastle, but if there is any marginal gain to defending them better, we should be working on it. That's two games now with fatal momentum shifts off free kicks. 90% of the teams we face this season are not going to score that Martial goal, and 90% of his Man U career he's not been doing that himself. It was just typical Newcastle to happen in this match. If we attack the weaker teams in the league as we did today, we'll win games. Either of the two goals we scored would have beaten Cardiff or Palace. Not scoring in those matches is the issue, not Man U's players turning up for a change today.

Whipped 3-2, that's a new one. I'm mimicing the media's view of the game. We were only there to make up the numbers. We win, and its Mourinho's fault, we lose and they cream their pants. The most blatant non award of a penalty this season will get no analysis.

Team with vast financial advantage and shit refereeing in their favour coming back against a Championship team is apparently a "gripping contest".

The whipping boys have been whipped. Let the cliche express begin.

Atsu looked like he was fouled from behind about 90 seconds before that.

ferk

Gifted them the chance for the first, but the execution and the execution of the second were simple financial power. World class players in action. Ritchie knocks in about a blatant as you will ever see pen at 2-0 and its game over.