Altamullan

bit of spark in stadium...c'mon lads!!

Praying for freakish early goal...anything to settle nerves (crowd and players).

kin hell yellow fest ref again?

Crowd seems quiet/anxious...hope they get an incident to get them going.

Have to admit, my "Oh no, we're doomed..." frame of mind will be in full flow if we don't put in the kind of 90 minute performance we've shown glimpses of. Oh, and win.... make tha t WIN, yes WIN ye fuckers! Three big, full-fat, juicy, succulent, carvery (note Y) esque, don't spare the gravy love, points. Howay the lads!!!

My pre-match optimism is rearing it's cruel head...there's a good time coming, though we may not live to see it!

does seem a tad static/defensive. Appreciate SMc must be fucking shitting himself at the thought of losing, but we'll need Perez, Sissoko and Wijnaldum to be at their creative best.

Colback will definitely be in there, so swap him for Cisse, stick Wijnaldum left and Perez up top and I reckon that might be it. Would prefer your version Imre... "Ferrari...Ferrari!"

Thinking: Sissoko Tiote Wijnaldum Perez Cisse Mitrovic

I'm veering between confidently anxious and anxiously confident, about today. But would like to place an order for a nice confidence building win, please. Just in time for next Sunday's shenanigans (less than 166 hours to kick-off in the dark place). Thank you very much.

Good feelings about Mitro against Norwich. Howay 'Sandar' bite the heed off a Canary!

Hold the line fella, it's not over til the fat cunt smirks...

This; except score. Three nil the lads.

Have a friend who is Forest fan & following the signings he was very disparaging of Lascelles but raved about Darlow: saw him as already better than Krul (not that he'd seen much of Tim). Looks like I'll get a chance to make my own mind up (at some point this season).

had the same thought when I heard about Aguero. De Bruyne played well second half, but it was Silva and Aguero who destroyed us. I actually would have fancied us to hang on and win without those two (and Toure and Kompany).

It is lovely to read of something commemorative like this happening. Hope you bear that in mind when considering kicking one another! That said, good punch-up afterwards is fine in my book Only kidding, hope you all have a wonderful time. Good on ye chaps.

Great article with great, albeit slightly depressing, context....

Had the same reaction... tend to fear the worst with Paul.

Gameweek 9 Spurs 2-2 Liverpool Chelsea 3-1 Aston Villa Crystal Palace 1-1 West Ham Everton 0-1 Man Utd Man City 2-0 Bournemouth Southampton 1-0 Leicester West Brom 2-1 Sunderland Watford 0-2 Arsenal Newcastle 3-0 Norwich Swansea 2-1 Stoke

Week 8 Only 3 ten pointers this week, with the highest scoring game returning a stingy 88 points; half as much as it has been (... sadly this was our game, unsurprisingly nobody guessed the score!). Well done to the seven ‘20 plus’ predictors—quite an achievement with this lot of results—particularly NUFC54 (29) and Magpie (25). IMO, Supertoon edges tgarve for crystal ball of the week; they both were the only ones to predict a correct score in a particular game (Bournemouth game and Sunderland game, respectively) though Supertoon doubled –up. Average score this week was 16.5, and our ‘Group Guess’ produced a solid 19 points. Lawro would have done well (22) and his guest Osi Umenyiora (from London, American based, so I gave him Man U as nom...) would have got 13. Thought I would look at which team has returned the most number of points this season for us (who we have found most predicable) and which the least. If all were equally predicable, they would each have returned 5% of the points: Arsenal have been most predicable with a 7% return (Man Utd, next with 5.5%) and West Ham least predicable returning 1.9% of our points (The Toon were 14th with 4.4%).

Pessimistic = fatalistic, gloomy, defeatist, demoralized, hopeless, glum, suspicious, distrustful, alarmist.... Can't agree with you if you don't think that is an inaccurate take on previous posts. Though can't disagree with much else you say, LA. Things have been horrific for so long -- this article captures it for me: http://www.themag.co.uk/2015/10/newcastle-united-the-four-key-relationships-that-are-all-broken/? -- that it is easy to go beyond the normal despondency anyone would feel at being bottom of the league after 8 games. I just happen to think given what been happening with the squad, the fact we've played last season's top four, we have some decent signings, and this looks like Perez's season to establish himself, that things will pick-up. I am still personally looking forward to games in a way I haven't for a few seasons (perhaps in itself testimony to how s*** it has been). Trust me, can't imagine many feeling worse than me if we're relegated, or even lose to the Makems again. Just in the meanwhile, I intend to cross that bridge when/if we come to it and try and enjoy football again.

Top article. The cracks (chasms?) in relationships are always make worse by stress. Can't imagine even 'Relate' sorting us out if we don't win 2 (or 3, hopefully) of the next 3 games. If we do, I reckon the fans-players relationship will be out of the huffy bed. The fans-board/ownership is past saving.

It seesm to me that El Cid uses ‘facts’ the way a drunk uses a lamp-post: for support rather than illumination. We played very well, in spells, against two very good sides in Chelsea and Man City. We also drew at Old Trafford (hen’s teeth time) and although I didn’t see the game, the highlights/result against a good Swansea side looked ok to me. The actual facts seem selected to support a doom and gloom argument he seems intent on making, no doubt because that is all he can see. Fair enough, we're not all balanced thinkers; but some of the stuff focussed on is in the past and seems irrelevant, except for in how it decreases fans tolerance and players confidence: “like 1 win in 20...what I can say for certainty is that we will concede goals galore with this team as has been proven season after season” ...I look and WATCH this team and say can we score goals consistently and in numbers and I would say certainly no to the second part and arguably no to the first also... The majority of occasions we have been required to score more than one to even just get a result not even a win - can you see that really changing?” Cisse has been in miserable form/had a supreme lip-on, Mitrovic has been missing for half of the games and is still settling in. I really like the look of him, Wijnaldum and Mbemba, and am still hopeful (God forgive me for using the H word...) re Thauvin. So yes, I can see it changing. “...there is no way you or anyone else can tell me the see anything else when you look at what Ive pointed out above. This club is in total disarray from the top to the bottom and no matter what your opinion is in that it won't change... My opinion is based on fact.” This opinion to me, seems based on emotive language and an unhealthy dose of pissed-off-ed-ness (we’ve all had a touch of that lurgy El Cid) FWIW, to pick up another point (above) I think Palace, Southampton, West Ham, Tottenham and Everton have better sides than us at the moment, but I do think we can win 9 or 10 games, and actually do so with a bit of style—which I also expect to see leaking into the other 20 games, at times. That said, we don’t get 7 points from the next three games, I’ll be back on and also in full-on "We're Doomed" mode/as pessimistic as El Cid. If I am, it will still be opinion and catastrophic crystal ball gazing, not reality/facts.

Well I'm all for a bit of diversity me, a paranoid schizophrenic here.... a depressive there. All good. What isn't so good, is not being able to accept others have a different opinion, and not being able to see that yours, however strongly felt, is just that felt.

http://assets-s3.mensjournal.com/img/essential/holidays-in-a-glass/618_348_holidays-in-a-glass.jpg "Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And days o’ lang syne!"