Stottie

Does anyone reckon the World Cup break is to our advantage? A chance to get lads back from injury, others to overcome fatigue, and for Eddie to work with them. With an overperforming team (which is how many view us), normally you don't want a break because it risks breaking the momentum. Personally, I do not think we are overperforming because we are near the top in lots of stats categories.

Irony overload with the most consistent (greatest??) goalscoring midfielder in modern times presiding over a team who doesn't shoot, never mind score. Irony sugar on top with Lampard taking off Iwobi, the most creative of their mids. The one time Gray did get in behind, a fine run starting with him doing Trippier inside their half, there was no-one coming in on it. Lampard himself would have lashed that in. Getting the first goal was always going to be key, and big credit to Miggy for doing it in such style.

Understat gave Everton 0.08 xG. Man U have just gone 2-0 up, so 0-0 at OT may be a better result than it seemed on Sunday. They've had 25 shots against Spurs in 70 minutes.

Fairly confident here. Everton have only conceded one first half goal in four away games, so patience may be key. I expect something akin to the Palace game, which we did enough to win but it was wrongly taken away. Everton conceded much more in the second half than Palace. so just keep plugging away. If we do score fairly early on, I'd expect us to go on to win comfortably. Last time a team outside the Top 4 scored twice against us was Leicester away nearly a year ago. It'll happen someday, but there is nothing to suggest its going to be at SJP and that Everton tonight are going to do it.

Just adding to the ESL discussion, but it was notable that the least enthused English club were Man City, followed by Abramovich's Chelsea. The clubs neutrals are told to dislike for their owner's source of wealth. All the clubs with American owners were pushing it as hard as they could.

Here's the Fred chance. I thought it looked well off in real time, but the commentators seemed more interested in having a go at Pope. Man U get 0.4 xG for a chance that would not have stood as a goal, but I'll take that so long as Schar didn't injury himself in challenging Fred.

Two super expensive wide players who wouldn't go to the byline was obvious even three beers in. Ten Haag could at least have switched them for a bit. Tifo is probably correct to highlight that their inability to play through the press prevented them the kind of 4 v 4 attacks their forwards would thrive on. Their fans may rue the absence of Eriksen to magically do something with a wonderball, but the Brazilian double pivot successfully snuffed out Bruno, and limited our attacking to mostly set pieces. No Maxi meant no defenders being sucked out to leave space for Wilson. No getting dribbled past either. We struggled to get Trippier up the pitch, so he only contributed from dead balls. They had most of the ball but their midfielders committed 8 fouls compared to 4 by ours, another reason why we struggled to get anything fluid going in open play.

In ten games so far, we've only played two of the bottom seven. https://www.soccerstats.com/team.asp?league=england&stats=9-newcastle-utd

Arguably our best away result under Howe today. The best team we've beaten away under him is (probably) Brentford.

Fred chance is probably offside. He missed so they didn't go back and draw the lines.

Antony expected assists. = 0.00 https://understat.com/match/18308 Against a 6 foot 7 makeshift leftback on a yellow card. He didn't dribble past him once. Nothing from the byline. Didn't cut in a create a decent shooting chance either. Sancho created very little too, but everyone has forgotten how good he was at Dortmund. fwiw, I reckon VAR would have to disallow the Fred chance for Rashford being offside. The check is only performed if he scores. The Rashford one was a big miss though.

Antony though, 90M and he won't run at Dan Burn. What a load of shite!

That'll dae! Until 80mins in I thought we were unlucky but the tables turned after that. We'd have pissed it with ASM.

Pretty good, had the better chances, but almost all from set pieces. From open play, not getting Trippier in their half on the right, and very little down the left. Need to take one of our chances.

Ronaldo starts. For us, Beg Jow in for Willock. Not full strength, but enough in there to trouble them. Bruno against Brazil's regular double pivot. Big chance for him to impress.

Burn out for Targett is understandable but Almiron is on too good form to rotate out. Not another injury?

We've conceded three three times in 2022, Man City x2, and Spurs. That's in 28 games. Maybe a little wager on us not conceding three might be in order. Liverpool are the only other team to score more than once and it took them 98 minutes.

Is this from that sprint back in the Wolves game, for the goal they scored after the clear push?

I'll disagree with the quote because Liverpool remained a financial powerhouse in football, selling millions of replica shirts etc. and of course attracting a high profile manager like Klopp himself, off the back of success in the 1970s and 1980s. Man U still have super high revenue despite not winning the league for 10 years. Klopp's probably doing this as a distraction to stop people analyzing what his team are doing wrong. He'd rather have some bollocks debate over money in football than 15 minute segments on MNF pointing out his team's failings, esp. the defensive ones, which are likely to affect the confidence of his players and of some fans in Klopp himself.

https://www.spotrac.com/epl/payroll/ Imagine the "Geordie twats inflating the market" comments we'd have got for paying 85M for Nunez. After their entitlement to him, I hope Bellingham stays where he is or goes to Bayern or Real Madrid. If he wants to swap third strikers, I'd happily take Jota for Chris Wood.

It's on the previous page, but Howe's record in the league is P36 W16 D10 L10 F49 A47 Pts 58 GD+2 Home is P19 W10 D7 L2 F30 A19 Pts 37 Away is P17 W6 D3 L8 F19 A28 Pts 21 Since Jan 1st Home P14 W9 D4 L1 F24 A10 Pts 31 Away P14 W6 D3 L5 F18 A19 Pts 21 (one win off zero or better GD)

It would have been ten but the passer (Eliot Anderson) took too many touches before playing Miggy in against Fulham. Had the ball been released faster, he'd have been onside and got a hat trick. Miggy looks ungainly because he is so one-footed, but he's proving to be very effective. His pressing success rate, measured by us regaining possession within five seconds, not whether a player actually wins the ball himself, is higher than Bruno's. It may look like just "running around" but it is winning us the ball back.

Allardyce, Bruce, and Souness as the worst. Casa St. James, Bruce for being a plastic Geordie who knowingly used every Southern journo trope against us fans, and Souness for also blaming the fans and "expectations". All three played terrible football. Pardew is not quite as bad due to fluking the fifth finish and having a certain degree of personal charisma and entertaining foibles. Shagging players' wives (at other clubs), "The King eats your dinner". those moves during the Cup Final, etc. Kinnear and Carver don't make the top group due to being comically short-tempered. Kinnear's potty mouth and Carver asking the away fans outside. Both totally inept. Of the two, I preferred Kinnear, and Carver was lucky to be replaced before his "I'm the best coach in the league" became too grating. Gullit gets a pass for not taking a payoff and for shagging the same barmaid down the Quay as Gazza, enabling her to tell whichever tabloid it was that Gazza was better in bed.

Just on goal difference again, but goal difference to points is one of the strongest correlations going. This is from 2011, the relative infancy of stats analysis of football, so the formula might be slightly off given how lopsided the league has since gone with a top one or two, not the top four or six of before. There are many other articles about GD and they all say the same thing = massive correlation with points, and a great predictor of who's actually good for anyone making bets. https://jameswgrayson.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/the-relationship-between-points-and-goal-difference/ Par for a goal difference of zero over a season is 52 points. For Eddie's first 36 games, points predicted off goal difference would be about 53.5 pts vs. the 56 pts gained, but that is probably because our GD has been negatively affected by the Bruce hangover wallopings. Since Eddie's points total is close to the predicted one, we can probably write off theories about unsustainably getting points from lots of flukey wins in February/March. I think it is concern over that that leads people to suggest we should aim merely for mid table and not as high as seventh or eighth. Just for fun, here's the current goal difference table. We're fourth, but are likely to be overtaken by Chelsea (great squad and Potter effect) and Liverpool who have a game in hand. Charitably cancel the Man U 4-0 loss at Brentford and they are still miles off CL. GD suggests Brighton (and us) fully deserve their position. Brentford, Leeds, Palace etc. will rise up the table. Fulham and Bournemouth will sink and the latter will probably be relegated. Leicester are near the bottom, but some combination of new goalie (has to be!) and ditching Brenda should save them.

Thanks to the October Goalfest, we now have a positive goal difference for the entire Eddie reign. League games only, starting with the Brentford 3-3. P36 W16 D10 L10 F49 A47 Pts 58 GD+2 Steve Bruce's goal difference as NUFC manager was minus forty-five.