SteV

Ah, of course. The Keith Bishop controls everybody and everything theory.

In fairness we'd only have to be one win better off to be fifth, so perhaps you could justifiably claim "top 7" or something along those lines. It just baffles me how many folk seem to take someone saying Bruce has done 'alright' or 'ok' as them saying 'he's better than Rafa'. Bizarre. Do Luke Edwards and Mark Douglas need to make it even more obvious for you to get it? You do realise that they (particularly Douglas) were actually massively pro-Rafa? I know Edwards has been weirdly OTT in his defense of Bruce so far this season, but again i'll come back to the point that so many find hard to grasp - if you're pro-Bruce (or even fairly neutral) that does not make you anti-Rafa. Clearly, i'm wasting my time pointing that out to some on here tho.

In fairness we'd only have to be one win better off to be fifth, so perhaps you could justifiably claim "top 7" or something along those lines. It just baffles me how many folk seem to take someone saying Bruce has done 'alright' or 'ok' as them saying 'he's better than Rafa'. Bizarre.

Douglas wasn't arguing that tho. The point was raised that Rafa would have THIS team higher, so same players, he disagreed. Now you can certainly argue against that opinion, but let's not distort what was actually being discussed.

What do you expect from people that get their opinion from what they’ve read in Mike Ashley’s mouthpiece = The Chronicle. According to Mark Douglas we would have less points with Rafa if he had our most expensive Newcastle lineup since promotion that Bruce has. Even though Benitez won 4 of his first 7 Premier League games when we got promoted and had the same 15 point totals at this stage. And Rafa did it with £5m Joselu upfront. Have you got a link to the bit in bold? Also we won 3 of our first 7 that season, but i'm just being pedantic pointing that out. It’s in the replies to his full credit Bruce tweet. Some Newcastle fan said I’d argue Rafa would have us higher with this squad and he went “I wouldn’t”. Won 4 of our first 8 you’re right Thanks, i'll have a look. If I'm going to continue to be pedantic, it was 4 of our first 9...

What do you expect from people that get their opinion from what they’ve read in Mike Ashley’s mouthpiece = The Chronicle. According to Mark Douglas we would have less points with Rafa if he had our most expensive Newcastle lineup since promotion that Bruce has. Even though Benitez won 4 of his first 7 Premier League games when we got promoted and had the same 15 point totals at this stage. And Rafa did it with £5m Joselu upfront. Have you got a link to the bit in bold? Also we won 3 of our first 7 that season, but i'm just being pedantic pointing that out.

Yeah, but is the club self-sufficient? If it's not, and it certainly wasn't anywhere near that when they took over, someone's footing those losses, and they mount up pretty quickly. There's a reason they need to go up or get shot of it come the end of the season... Be surprised if it's anywhere near being self sufficient and one of their main income streams vanishes next year. Exactly, and if anybody thinks these two are hanging round to keep footing the bill the way Short did, they've got another thing coming.

Yeah, but is the club self-sufficient? If it's not, and it certainly wasn't anywhere near that when they took over, someone's footing those losses, and they mount up pretty quickly. There's a reason they need to go up or get shot of it come the end of the season...

I don't think so. You look at what Rafa was especially good at, particularly in his time here, and that was getting average players to perform above what you would expect, through repeatedly drilling them to play in a certain way. He always used to bemoan "individual errors" (he dropped Yedlin for a while because of them), and unfortunately with Titus.....

I understand the dislike/mistrust of having Steve Bruce as our manager. I think some of the criticism is OTT, others clearly disagree. My point was more just because someone (usually as journalist) appears to write/say something vaguely pro-Bruce, they are not then by default, automatically anti-Rafa. You are allowed to have loved Rafa, but still hope Bruce is successful....

Coloccinis passing was outstanding. To the point where a lot of people wanted to try him as a defensive midfielder. Lejeune probably has better long range passing but Colo could pass the ball out of tight situations and find a team mate in situations where I think Lejeune would just have to play the ball out for a throw in or corner just to avoid the risk of losing the ball to a pressing player. Yeah, that's fair. So far it appears Colo had much the better feet, so in tight situations he would distribute better. Lejeune's long range distribution is as good as we've had at CB though, maybe Bramble runs him close, but I don't think he had the consistency to match Lejeune.

Because they are trying to big Bruce up, as they do with all our managers. Let’s not pretend there wasn’t plenty of similar articles written about Rafa (granted you might say more deservingly so...), but praising Bruce has nothing to do with being anti-Benitez, at least not amongst local journos anyway, who were generally massively pro-Benitez when he was here.

There’s literally nothing in that article that is anti-Benitez. Just because someone writes something that is pro-Bruce, doesn’t make them anti-Benitez.

Like how the mackems have got their club back? The downturn in fortunes at safc at DID actually bring a change of owners. The new ones have turned out to be no better and there's no guarantees but I'd certainly like to take a chance on a new owner. Obviously everybody would like a new owner. Some would say at any cost, I disagree. It probably comes down to whether you think we will ever be sold whilst a PL club. A lot of people would say no, which I understand ('SD gravy train' etc etc), I'm just of the opinion that one day someone will meet his (ludicrous) asking price, and that is clearly a more desirable scenario to having to fall to hideous depths and spending god knows how long building ourselves back up.

How truly, truly PATHETIC it is, that we should have to even 'think' about that. How low have we fallen, it is a constant embarrassment !! We finished 13th and made an FA Cup Final with Barnes & Shearer scoring 7 each in all comps. We’d kill for a season like that now. Wiki says Barnes got 6 goals for us (pedantic i know ) 6 league, 1 cup wasn’t it? Sure he scored in the Champions League. Yep, in the dead rubber at home to Kiev.

Lejeune has better distribution, both in terms of range and consistency, I feel you could say that from what we've seen of him. I don't think there are many other aspects you could say he's clearly superior, at least not from the limited amount we've seen so far.

Erm, they are currently on 0 in a row...

Like how the mackems have got their club back?

He refers to him as "Big Flo".

NUFC.com is just two lads running a website. Yes they make some dollars from advertising etc. If you think they have any kind of agenda other than supporting Newcastle United, you’re sadly mistaken.

LAWRO'S PREDICTION The Cherries have kept three clean sheets in a row now, which is important for them because I would always back them to score. Prediction: 0-2 06/10/2019 Arsenal 1 - 0 Bournemouth 19/10/2019 Bournemouth 0 - 0 Norwich City 26/10/2019 Watford 0 - 0 Bournemouth 02/11/2019 Bournemouth 1 - 0 Manchester United

Well, yes, in that sense I can see how it’s culpable. Although Clattenburg did an interview with Craig Hope in the Mail insisting it was the correct decision according to the rules.

That one had nothing to do with VAR though, did it? Other than the fact they should actually have used it.

Exactly this, in a nutshell.

But we’ve gone down twice, and still, here we are. So I fail to see how that is “much better”?