Smal

Rio Ferdinand is such a dumb cunt, like. Imagine picking Watkins ahead of Wilson or Isak in any scenario.

Will be interested to see how our midfield gets on. Longstaff's been great but they're our best 3 individuals, undoubtedly

Maguire used to be good

He's pretty much as good at passing as Partey is imo and Arteta is a good coach so will improve him further. Rice has never had a particularly amazing coach in his career, so there'll be loads of room for improvement with him. His passing is underrated anyway because we don't see the best of him for England - he has an 87% completion rate despite attempting a lot of medium and long passes. A club like Arsenal will probably be desperate to phase Partey out. It's not good for the brand.

They've been linked with him for a while and it's his most likely destination imo. He'd be a great fit there and could replace Partey or Xhaka in their XI.

Some City fans on another forum were saying the other day that he’s been their best defender and possibly even their best player overall this season, which seems mad considering who’s up front.

Maybe City will decide that they don't need Ake and we could get Gvardiol

If Gvardiol goes to Man City then Ake might be available. He's been tremendous this season though so maybe not.

He's not in that he's not all about running and fouling, but Thiago is still extremely capable defensively and is a very good presser. Maddison... is not.

Probably ok actually. Burn into CB and Targett at LB was extremely solid for the last 5 months of last season. Wilson to replace Isak is not a disaster either.

Maddison is basically the antithesis of a Klopp midfielder. I can't see that at all.

From the mirror: https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/declan-rice-transfer-newcastle-howe-29709304?1=

could even move Schar into midfield so Joelinton/Willock could play on the wing

he will have to do a lot of work to get his body capable of running more. He can do it with more conditioning work I'm sure, but it's definitely frustrating at the moment. Bruce not getting them in for training more than once a week really won't have helped any of these players. Going from that to Howe's methods will be killing their muscles.

If they won it we'd get 5 CL entries though, I think? Might be wrong, I'm not used to thinking about the CL

I would kind of like Lampard to do well enough to get the job full time. One less team to worry about next season if he does.

Swear this game is on 2x speed

the quality in this game is on a completely different level to anything I’ve seen this season so far

They’ll fail to get Kane and then bring the rapist* back. Banter club. *Alarming that I could be talking about two different players here.

If we make Europe I don’t think we need to think in terms of a first XI. Everyone will get plenty of game time and there’d need to be more rotation.

Gabriel is not very good

Bruno and Joelinton definitely looked like they would make an incredible double pivot. On paper it makes sense, but it was great to see how good it was in practice.

Ando for Anderson's miss

Forgot Charnley went to Forest as a consultant. Those Wood and Shelvey signings seem to be going well.