Varadi

Neither was ours tbf Reckon the psychological damage from tonight's fisting gives us a decent extra advantage for the weekend.

That was my first thought, sells it to a dodgy consortium who then go on to piss off Rafa and he leaves as well...

I think Ashley will stick to the original plan of the club being self-funding, which means Rafa will get all the available profits to spend as he sees fit. Should be a dramatic improvement on chancers like Pardew being handed players he hasn't got a clue how to use with no discernible long term plan in place.

He could have played deep for us but it wouldn't have turned the rest of the team into Liverpool standard superstars. Apart from Colback of course. Yes. That's why I said it works for him, at Liverpool. So you now rate him then? I don't know what the 'real' Wijnaldum is tbh. For us he was an attacking player. And he spent most of his time hiding. At Liverpool he's playing in a role we never gave him, in a specialist system with much better players around him. So I don't know. It seems to be working so far at Liverpool. I don't rate Henderson higher than Wijnaldum and he seems successful in the same system. Where's he playing at Liverpool then, surely not DM? Seems interesting to buy him and not have him trying to score goals like but maybe that's why Klopp is England manager and I'm not. He's been playing as one of the middle 3 in a 4-3-3

OptaJoe ‏@OptaJoe 24m24 minutes ago 7 - Dwight Gayle has scored seven goals in his last four Championship games for Newcastle. Form.

In 92-93 we had 33 points at this stage - won the first 11 then lost game 12.

Well that didn't take long

Don't think he looks like Rafa at all tbh.

Aye, the bottom half of the "Premier" league is full of shite this year - teams like the mackems, Hull, Burnley, WBA, Boro, Watford, Bournemouth and Stoke while the Championship has some proper big old clubs like us, Villa, Leeds, Forest, Norwich and Sheff Wed.

Well that was fucking awful. Still I'm sure Southampton vs Burnley will get the heart rate going again....

Didnt like. Any decent keeper would save that. He was basically there full o s**** Should've caught it tbh

Aye. It's almost as if Rafa Benitez is a better judge of a player than some of the lads on here.

I think the table is a bit misleading right now, if you look at who we have played. We've played all bar Brum in the top 9, while only played 3 teams in the bottom 9. Where as Norwich each week seem to have an easy game (except when they played us of course), they've done very well, but I think they've been helped massively with the fixture list. I think we are a class above everyone in the division, there will be times we don't get a result but that will be largely down to our own failing rather than being beaten by a team with more quality. If you take away those shit first 2 games we've W8 D1 L1 and scored 24 goals - I reckon we're going to be OK.

After their decent start they've only managed 1 point from their last 5 games and are shipping a fair few goals as well. Reckon we'll take this 2-0.

I love that we've scored 25 league goals already - last season we didn't reach that many until February.

Looks like the high intensity training sessions are really doing the trick https://twitter.com/caulkinthetimes/status/785784012879060992

You must know what's coming

Nice. So of the keepers who started over 15 games, he had a better ratio than Guzan & Boruc. I think people were swayed by the fact he did actually make quite a few saves but he was playing behind such a terrible defence there was no shortage of opportunities. I also remember some of his clangers, like standing rooted to the spot as Shaqiri scored the winner at Stoke. Only thing Eliott has going for him over the others is decent distribution, his throwing in particular is very good. Darlow looks comfortably the best all round keeper for me (excluding Krul obviously)

Averaging a goal every 99 minutes played - not bad.

They never win any games this early so their season hasn't really started yet. Still only 1 win from safety, the lower half of the league looks so shit this year: Hull Burnley Bournemouth Swansea Stoke West Brom Boro Watford West Ham Could all go down.

Didn't watch their game but just saw that Spurs had 74% possession and 30 shots. Not looking good for this lot.

I'm sure they'll put at least 7 past them when they play in the cup next week then

The goals we've scored from corners with Rafa must be getting close to the total managed under Pardew already ffs

Defoe just needs a dodgy run of form and they're in big trouble. The lad is almost 34, strikers can decline pretty rapidly at that age...

Quality assist tbf