Shadow Puppets

Agree 100%

Aye it was a poor day at the office, not helped by the weird atmosphere all afternoon. On to the next one.

Aye… as I’ve said. The final bit of the jigsaw from him is solely lacking. But his all round play and how well he stretches teams and finds space is good in my opinion.

True

Nah, he and Burn were comfortably our best players today. He’s always on the move. It’s just his final ball (which I agree is a major issue). But he’s definitely not a terrible footballer.

The lack of flags, no music, no local hero, minutes silence etc were all massive factors in such a shit atmosphere.

Perhaps, but in addition to that there was no music or anything. Not even local hero. It was just dead. A forced mourning for a family that most don’t really give a shit about.

Atmosphere pre match was woeful due to no music, a (well observed) minutes silence, a really badly observed God Save The King (estimate around 80% of the crowd didn’t sing - myself included). It’s almost as if, as everyone has been saying all week, most people just don’t give a shit about all this Queen stuff. She was old. She died. Get over it. All this forced mourning bullshit is just a facade, forced down people’s throats. The downbeat atmosphere continued and the team struggled to get going as a result. As flat as I’ve heard St James’ in years to be honest.

Fucking awful atmosphere today. Just goes to show how much Wor Flags are integral to the atmosphere and teams performance.

Just crack on man… you’re all doing a great job. Glad you sat on the fence with this one. The country doesn’t need any more forced mourning.

I personally think it would be a big mistake on Wor Flags part to get pulled into the whole Queen bullshit. As someone who donates repeatedly... I don't want my money going on anything not related to NUFC ideally. We're already going to have to sit through the national anthem and minutes silence / applauses... don't make it a cringe fest.

I like Miggy personally. What he lacks in end product he more than makes up with for his contribution to the team, IMO.

Very frustrating game. Thought our overall play and philosophy was good again. Isak should have buried his chance. Hit the post. Loads of half chances. And the fucking farcical disallowed goal. Just a frustrating day all round. Hard to fault any of our players really. If the ref had any ability whatsoever we would have won 1-0 and everyone would have been saying it was a decent performance.

Yeah I would agree... I think Trips is a fantastic player all round, and a great leader, but he's been a little shaky defensively in the last few games.

He was great for team news back in the day, but his transfer "updates" are nonsense man. Literally anyone could write what he writes based on educated guesses from the press. He's having you on.

I could definitely get behind Moura on loan like. Hope that ones true.

For me, he was the main disappointment last night. Just doesn't seem to react to situations well at all. Always needs that extra second. Don't fault him for the goal, but I thought his all round play was really poor.

You do realise he's pulling your leg, right? He isn't actually ITK.

Yeah, I can't help but feel that the Tielemans chat is just agent or press driven. Doesn't seem to be anything concrete in that.

Our bench isn’t particularly weak when everyone is fully fit. I genuinely think that everyone is overstating of “weak” the squad is. It’s not. It’s just being highlighted right now because we happen to have 3 of our best players out at the same time. If everyone’s fit, our bench is significantly better.

But surely with a fully fit squad, Murphy gets very little if any game time at all. The assumption is the front 3 will be ASM, Wilson and Isak, with Fraser and Almiron as first backups.

At the end of the day, with a fully fit squad, Murphy and Wood are unlikely to feature much at all. I think people of overstating how bad our squad depth is purely because we happen to have our 3 best players out at once.

It’s a big ask, both financially and from a sheer workload perspective, to get both a starting 11 and bench significantly upgraded. We’ve done half of that in 2 windows. We are still a way off, squad wise, from competing for top 6 in my opinion, but that’s also OK. It’s going to take time.

That’s fucking outrageous that. How the hell they can confidently say that’s actually offside is beyond me.