ilikenewcastle

I cannot begin to imagine how badly we'd be doing under Pardew, McClaren or Carver with this squad. What a beautiful human being he is.

He's not a hell of a lot better than them to be fair.

Think that he's a right c*** like. It's never his fault when his team loses and this whole myth of Stoke playing some sort of tika-taka stuff because he's signed a couple of diminutive attacking midfielders is totally bollocks. Last season he was still playing Glenn Whelan and Jon Walters ffs. Agree with this, can't stand the man. I hate the way the media goes on about what a good job he's done and how he's changed the way Stoke play. They're still a midtable nothing club as they were under Pulis (who made a far greater impact on Stoke City then Hughes ever will). I'm just glad there weren't any slightly dodgy ref decisions that went against them yesterday or we'd never hear the end of it.

Funny as f**k. Hard to explain what Hogan's doing there.

Brucey for me. Can't see Grayson going unless things get really bad. Can they afford it? Who'd replace him?

He'll do fine. Hodgson at average/crap clubs is a way more successful manager than Hodgson at good clubs.

European qualifying is just fine. The same debate always happens whenever England win a game, it's as if we're not allowed to play at the World Cup unless we beat Spain, Germany, France and Italy. We happened to get an easy group this time thanks to the draw, but we could have easily been drawn with Italy or France. And anyway, there's no real way to make it easier when 13 European teams qualify. If we have your smaller, more evenly matched groups, we'd still be in exactly the same sort of group we're in now - just without Malta and Lithuania and we'd still qualify easily and nobody would be satisfied...!

That's not a bad article. He's spent money on utter s****. This is spot on. Last season’s Championship winning campaign was for the most part, a series of uninspiring performances with the Newcastle manager’s negative tactics grinding out results when a more expansive attacking formation – especially at home – would surely have brought the same end result but with a flourish, rather than a sense of relief. Some signings haven't been great, but he signed players last year to do a job - get promotion. We did it very comfortably and had money to spare from the players we sold last year. We started this season with a championship squad and Rafa has had peanuts (in PL terms) to try and sort it out. Also worth remembering he generally hasn't been able to bring in the players he wants. Seen a few people criticise Rafa for poor transfers lately and it's a load of c**p. Yes there have been some odd ones, but does he really deserve to be criticised to this extent when A. his transfers did their job last year B. He's so far not performed miracles with a typically pathetic Ashley budget?

You'll not meet many in your own bubble tbh. Venture onto reddit, Twitter, or Facebook and you'll not have to look very hard though. After Ashley's interview it was harder to find people disagreeing with him, I honestly couldn't believe what I was seeing. Reddit is full on dark web internet weirdo isn't it? Doubt anyone there has set foot in SJP. We've definitely got plenty of oddballs like, although I don't think a significant percentage are defensive of Ashley at all. Nah, Reddit's great. Unfortunately r/nufc seems to have its fair share of not so much Ashley apologists, but Ashley gullible-ists. Just look under any critical tweet by martin hardy, and also after the TV interview. That was 100 percent match going fans. Lots of "fair play to Ashley" and "stop making stuff up to be negative!" It's the 'we're not Man City' stuff that gets me. It's so obviously very basic bullshit and so easy to counter argue, and yet you still get it repeated back to you by Newcastle fans themselves, which is gut-wrenching to read. I've just got into a debate with some utter moron on Facebook who likened having an owner other than Ashley as 'playing Russian roulette' I'm honestly not even kidding. :lol: iirc there was loads of "better the devil you know" when we were rumoured with a takeover. After ten years of Ashley. Mind blowing The David Sneddon thread. https://www.facebook.com/AshleyOutdotcom/ Enjoy. I'm done trying to reason with these people, as you can probably tell. We've won the financially viable cup! I honestly don't know why some people support a club.

That PR bloke would have set that up and then convinced Mike it was the way to go. Pressure was building due to Rafa's excellent relationship with fans and press. Yep. Sad part is a fairly sizeable proportion of our fan base has fell for it hook, line and sinker. That's a large part of the reason that I can't see him ever being serious about selling us. He's got it far too easy. He's got it insanely easy and it genuinely makes me sick. If we lose to Forest, many fans will not blame Ashley for not building an adequate squad and treating the cups like they're a distraction. Instead, the club will be praised for losing to lower league opposition so we can concentrate on that important 17th place finish. Ashley has exposed the pathetic, spineless attitude of many of our fans. It's no wonder we never win owt and are lumbered with Ashley for another 10 years. Some people even blaming Rafa for this season so far more than they blame Ashley. we're f****d.

When? 11-12. Nothing sensational of course, but effective.

I can remember Perch having a brief spell where he was an effective part of the team. Can't say the same for Anita (certainly in the PL).

As far as I'm concerned, he could have got promoted with 60 points and he wouldn't deserve any stick. Not than I'm saying he's completely immune from any criticism, but if we go up, we're a Premier League team with genuine hope of doing something worthwhile. That's all I ever wanted from Rafa this season.

8. 9 if Derby win.

I agree last night was one of his better games, but anyone saying he was 'excellent' has criminally low expectations of our players, or (as is often the case with Mitrovic fans), they're just determined to label every one of his appearances as a success.

Impossible to call. How many points would you be satisfied with from the next 3 games?

If Leicester had finished 17th last season, Ranieri might have stood a better chance of surviving being 17th now. Crazy.

If I see anyone saying we should forget this game and concentrate on the league, I will terminate them...

Chill. We've got loads of money and if that win today sets us off on a run that takes us up, it's 4m well spent. Murphy showing it's a good idea to sign quality (for this level) players for the bench, surprised at how many seemed to disagree with that when he came in

The 16 team Euros and 32 team world cups were perfect. Goodbye groups of death, hello Tahiti v Libya.

I can't see the likes of Leeds/Reading/Huddersfield being consistent enough to catch us even if we play at 6/10 for the rest of the season. I agree that if we do end up in the play offs we stand 0 chance.

2003 home game are you alluding to? Swear there was a late Pedersen handball goal against us int he Souness era. Possibly helped get him sacked though...

They'll stay up. Anyone who thinks they won't hasn't been watching for the last 5 years. Please don't anybody get their hopes up.

Quite simply, he hasn't. Great week against the mighty Preston mind. Agreed. People see what they want to see with Mitrovic. Winning a header = great potential! 1 goal means all his misses are forgiven for the next 2 months. He's a good lad and I wish him well, but don't see him as a successful player in the prem.

9 for me, but I think Brighton will win the league.