Shadow Puppets

Eddie is now joint 1st in PL wins as NUFC manager… 1. Keegan - 83 wins (achieved in 162 games) 2. Howe - 83 wins (achieved in 176 games) 3. Robson - 83 wins (achieved in 188 games) He’s absolutely going to go down as the best and most successful manager in NUFC history, statistically. He has also won us a cup and got to two Champions Leagues in 4 years. So aye, of course he deserves a chance to right the wrongs of this season… something I’m 99.9% positive he will do. When it’s all laid out, it’s pretty ridiculous that the fanbase have managed to work themselves up into so much of a frenzy these last few weeks, in my opinion, when the facts are there for all to see. Give statistically our most successful manager (and many people’s favourite ever) more time, and he will deliver. Don’t let one bad season undo an amazing trajectory and legacy.

Am I the only person who thought he actually played quite well when he came on (miss aside)? He worked hard and got himself into good positions, and the 3rd goal doesn’t happen without his effort. Lots of convincing still to do, but better.

He was outstanding in his all round play though. An absolute menace for 45 mins. Just needs to work on his finishing.

Its obviously not a sustainable path to success, but it’s a means to an end to get through this season. You seem to be casually ignoring that we have played some of the best football an NUFC team has ever played over the last few years… something that THIS manager brought to the club. He absolutely has the ability to get us back to those levels (and surpass them), I have zero doubts in my mind. But for me we just need to scrape through to the end of the season with some positivity, however we achieve it. This summers going to be really interesting!

Seriously, what the fuck are you on about?

Can’t tell if serious. We were very very good first half… could have easily have been 3 or 4 goals up with better finishing. Second half was tough, but Brighton are decent side, and our nerves really seemed to kick in. Yet we still missed a couple of glorious chances and scored 1. So, aye, I’m happy with that.

Enjoyed watching this man in the number 10 today! Promising 👍

I thought we played and set up really well today. Better finishing and that’s a draw or a win. Can’t have too many complaints really. Looking at our form too, of all the losses since the start of the year, only two of them have been by more than one goal. That says to me that we’re not a million miles away… poor season, yes… diabolical team, nope.

Aye… that’ll be it. The one I saw was a video dated this week, but he was wearing the same thing 👍

Randomly popped up on my Instagram feed showing him walking around Soho in New York on Wednesday. Assume it was filmed this week, but I guess it could have been a older footage 🤷‍♂️… … although it aligns with the players having a few days off at the early part of this week (Bruno was in Paris).

Absolutely the most sensible approach would be to give Howe as much backing as we possibly can this summer to push on again. He’s proven time and time again how good of a manager he is. We, and he, have had poor seasons, but it seems incredibly short-sighted to lose the man who has delivered transformational change to this club over one poor season.

You’d be happy with a “younger unproven manager” over a proven manager who has delivered our very best days, proven time and time again (here and at Bournemouth) that he’s an excellent coach, one that the players love and respect… just because of one underwhelming season where we’ve still made some incredible memories? Apologies if this comes across as harsh, but I think that is absolutely mental and incredibly short sighted.

I think he’s a really really good player and very far down on the list that I’d like to see us improve upon. He’s our best finisher for a start, and one of his key strengths is that he’s almost always available to play. Hardly any injuries. I really do think that him, Thiaw and Burn to an extent are really starting to look tired though. A game everything 3-4 days since November will take it out of any player. Chuffed for him for his England call up.

Yeah, I think he’s a massively important player for us who just looks knackered.

I think Thiaw, Ramsey and Wolt have had very good spells in the team. Can absolutely see why we signed each, even if Wolt has been struggling slightly recently. Elanga has shown some improvement. Jury still out. Wissa is the massive disappointment like. Just crap.

👀

I don’t know specifically why. I grew up basically bang in the middle of Newcastle and Sunderland, with friends and family supporting both. At lot of shared heartache and two teams massively underachieving over the years makes me see them as more of a victim of modern day football and finances in not too dissimilar way to us. My actual disdain is saved for the teams who rule the roost. The ones we should truly hate for their effect on football. I obviously want to beat them every time we play and finish higher in the league for bragging rights, but they’re a small part of our journey we’re attempting to go on, and it’s far more important to look at the overall bigger picture than a couple of specific games against a rival. The bigger picture to me is that this season has been poor, but it’s a poor season with a lot of mitigating factors (mainly stemming from ownership in my opinion). Eddie has done incredibly well as our manager over the last 4 years, and in my opinion deserves our support as much as possible through a rough period. He’s still delivered some incredibly memorable nights in amongst a tough year, and I don’t really have any doubts that with a good summer we can go again and build, but it will take lots of support from the boardroom and lots of support from the fanbase to see out the season in an okay way and build from there.

I thought he was really good first half. Lost in the second half.

It’s been reported multiple times that he was massively responsible for our first two transfer windows (ie the one where most of the best signings came in).

Eddie got one or two things wrong today, but the loss in my opinion is firmly to do with certain players completely losing composure under the pressure. We seem to have lost our shithousing spark, and the energy to see out games. I still 100% support the manager, but there are obvious issues that need addressing in the summer. But he deserves a summer of the club’s full support. He’s comfortably the best manager we’ve had in my supporting lifetime, and you don’t throw away 4 years of progress over an up and down season (which can still end “ok”). But then I’m a massive NUFC fan that doesn’t particularly have that much disdain for Sunderland. I don’t think of them particularly any differently to any other PL team. I hate Man Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea far more. So the notion of losing to them twice is annoying, not good enough, but certainly not the be-all-and-end-all of whether a manager is the right man or not.

I think Elanga is showing a lot more right now to deserve support. His final decision making hasn't been great, but he's put in some very good attacking, problem-causing, performances recently. Wissa... I'm yet to see anything at all to hang your hat on.

Every time I’ve met him he’s been notably arrogant or dismissive… he completely brushed aside one of my colleagues last year who just wanted to say hello. Find his commentary and opinions a bit “old miserable bloke” for my liking, as well. His over the top criticism of Woltemade… the way he was pulling up Gordon over his (very genuine) illness this week.

Can’t stand the bloke. Awful pundit with generally awful opinions. And not a very pleasant chap in real life, sadly. Great player obviously, but my opinion of him has dropped massively since his playing days.

He's a really important player for us... even if he's having a quiet game. Ps. he was another one of the players down with the vomiting bug... he was still throwing up in the early hours of the day of the City game but then was judged to be OK.

Absolutely immense performance that. Completely dominant. We should be incredibly proud... just a shame the way it ended. On that showing, there’s absolutely no reason why we can’t go there and get a result!