Odear

An upgrade on Van Gaal but same sort of ethos/style. If the fans don't like the ways things are now, no amount of funny press conferences will appease them. If he fails here, I can't see him getting his career back on track anywhere else. He likes clubs with endless funds, but he's pretty much been at them all already so this is really make or break now.

He was a big lad as well, took some stopping once he got into stride.. and fuck me, those cross field passes. Just effortless.

This. Probably my favorite Newcastle goal ever. It never seems to get as much coverage because of who the opposition were.. if it had been a super sunday you can bet sky would still be peddling it in their ads, like they do with Philippe Albert's chip, or Shearer's volley

Not even Rafa can coach the stupid out of this player. That pish against Southampton was the worst defending I've ever seen. A bunch of school kids would know better. If he's given a new contract by Rafa I will lose all respect for the man.. but I suspect these noises are coming from his agent rather than anyone at the club

It's a good point about no tournament next summer. If any of our players who get selected in Euro squads have an excellent tournament then it'll be up to Rafa to decide if he accepts or not. That goes for Sissoko too. His attitude has been poor but I don't blame him or any of the other players, having an imbecile like John Carver telling you what to do and then McLaren soon after would leave anyone feeling a bit fucked off. Rafa likes him because he's an absolute beast.. and he's still young enough to improve. If none of these players have relegation clauses in their contracts, it will all be up to Rafa to decide.

Still waiting for the inevitable twist.. Kinda like the Sixth Sense where that dude in the wig was Bruce Willis the whole time

Even with nothing signed and announced, he's still working away like it has been.. doesn't seem like nufc, this whole professional approach. Before it would have been a case of.. "we might all meet up to discuss, when we're going to meet up to discuss when we meet up to discuss our transfer objectives"

So who does he keep? Who gets sold and who's just told to move on? I reckon he'll put most of his energy into rebuilding the youth team and putting the foundations in.. this could see Beardsley out the door along with Carr. This could literally be the first time Rafa has been given a blank canvas to work with..... the possibilities!

Can't defend him at all on that.. nasty challenge and he meant to break the guys leg.. the worst part was feigning an injury to try and get away with it. I've defended him all season, thought he'd come good.. but I don't wanna have that type of player at the club. And it seems he doesn't want to be here either, he had enough time going into that challenge to think it through a few times.. Maybe Spurs would be ahead by now if he was still on pitch..

Nothing more than a goodbye for Taylor and the rest is just an opportunity to be put in shop window. I'm not sure about Wijnaldum being kept in ahead of Perez but again, I have total faith in the manager.. whatever he's doing will be for a decent reason.

He's quite possibly the most intelligent manager we've had at the club. Chooses every word carefully. See Keegan never bothered to have things written into his contract, he needed the money and blindly trusted Ashley.. it happened all too quickly. Benitez will have every little curveball eliminated with an iron clad contract, essentially.. he's walked into the situation fully prepared after making notes of every fucking thing that's gone wrong here over the years. When Ashley said Benitez was formidable, you can bet he wasn't talking about how Benitez was with the players. Also like any good negotiator, Benitez will have asked for far more than he really needs.. the couple of weeks are so that Charnley can come back with a counter offer (which is still well inside what Rafa wants) but can make the club think they've done a good deal. And the thing is they will have. He's an exceptional manager. If this happens, this will be the club rebuilt from the ground up.. exciting times!

He's just a sum of many parts as to why this team is the biggest load of shit we've had in about 20 odd years.

I think that could be a good fit for Everton. If Rafa is gonna play the long game and genuinely wants to stay working in England, one season in the championship won't do him any harm.. unless Ashley starts his old tricks again, but let's say hypothetically that he gives Rafa free reign to reshape the club.. i would say the potential here is far more than he'd ever get at Everton, with all due respect.. they are a huge club as well. For De Boer, Everton would present a good opportunity to get his feet wet in PL management. The decline of Martinez really reinforces the notion that a manager needs 2 seasons before you really see what he's made of.. the first season is really a cocktail of them and the manager before.. Graham/O'Leary for example.. Pearson/Ranieri, Ranieri/Mourinho and to far lesser an extent, Hughton/Pardew. Moyes/Martinez is the newest example.. Moyes had a solid squad, organised in defense.. Martinez came in and added a bit of creativity to it.. but a year on he'd coached the Moyes out of them..

I remember the last time it happened, in game 37 we played Fulham at SJP and lost by a goal.. it was a toothless disgrace of a performance. Much like we were at the weekend against Villa. What really beggars belief is that we still have some of that squad still playing for us.

Glad it's decided before last day.. it's the hope that kills after all.

The only hope Everton have of winning this is if the mackems run out of steam, they've been chasing everything down since the kick off. It's not that Everton have been particularly shite or anything, just no time on the ball in the right places.. Allardyce will be more than happy with a point so only if his players get tired and game opens up will we see anything of note happening. Fair played to Norwich though, i'd actually love to see them stay up.. as relegation is the best thing for us to be honest.

Heard rumours that Ashley wanted to redesign the club badge (for cost reasons.. too many colours in the current one) I wonder if that might go ahead while we're out of the limelight.

Every club's fanbase has the expectation that their club should be doing better, with the exception of Leicester this year. In fact, I do recall reading some very anti Leicester stuff on the smb forum after last season and they were slagging off Leicester fans with this whole they think they're gonna win the league next year.. I think most of us hoped, not sure expected is the right word.. more hoped, we'd steer clear of relegation but more or less expected it to be dreary stuff with McLaren in charge after having that imbecile wheeled in front of the tv cameras week after week last season. In fairness, a good few predicted relegation.. whether they really believed it or not is a different matter.. I think it's been coming since the team that finished 5th were butchered for a quick profit. But the mackems.. they really are happy to just be a part of things.. no more and no less than what they've been doing season in season out... that's the difference between us and them. We've had someone come in many moons ago and show us that it's ok to dream of bigger things.. where the world is still flat to them. But fair played to them for staying up, they deserve it more than us and probably Norwich too.

Quite a few famous goals against us.. we've been shite all along

We'll be down before a ball is kicked in this game so it's pretty much irrelevant. As supporters we are hard done by, but the club.. it doesn't deserve to stay up. It's rotten to the core and despite the efforts of a great manager in the last few games.. it can't cover up the years of bad decision after bad decision.

I like Mitrovic, he could find his stride with English football with a year below.. did Andy Carroll wonders as well.

What a difference a day makes. Knew the minute they started fucking beach balls down at the pitch and the ref doing nothing about it, it wasn't gonna be our day. Villa defending like their premier league survival depended on it.... Well thanks for trying Rafa.

We've outworked most other teams recently.. especially in 2nd half. Rafa will have sussed where the holes are and will send us out accordingly. Mackems took a big blow just before half time, we'll see how much the pressure is getting to them now. We do need to win this though. Biggest 45 mins in years.

Happy with that line up. If it's not broke don't fuck with it