Infinitely Content

He's well turned out, no question, I just like it when midfielders and strikers can run and protect the ball a bit.

My optimism was very much hinged on Gordon playing up top and Joelinton being in the midfield. Not really looking forward to watching Woltemade regardless of where he plays, everything that was good about us at the weekend, epitomised by Joelinton, is everything he's not.

Joelinton scores tonight.

Whenever I watch clips of him, I get frustrated that I don't have a poetic enough vocabulary to express how I feel about him. I fucking love him. In fact, it seems I love him even more with time, as when I see his clips looking older and less comparatively high-res, there's a certain nostalgia thrown into the equation and a feeling that he was the embodiment of everything I love about football and Newcastle United. The way things are going, I'm not sure we'll ever see the likes of him grace the league again. Cherki may be the closest, but he can't hold a candle to Hatem. Untouchable.

I believe him, his team were mostly shite last season too.

"I don't know where we are goin' now" Spurs stadium DJ playing Dakota by Stereophonics at full time must be trolling the poor bastards left in the stands, probably the same bloke who gave Frank his coffee in an Arsenal cup.

Think that's just people tbh, we are velcro for negativity, teflon for positivity.

For me, he's the most talented, highest potential player we've signed since the takeover. Genuinely world class level potential in his position, and he's not far off that standard already at only 21 years old. And yet I still hear about this apparent debate over who should play left back for England, with Miles Lewis-Skelly, Nico O'Reilly, even Djed Spence sometimes mentioned before Lewis Hall. I shouldn't be surprised though, it's the same people and pundits who never recognised how good Fabian Schar was and focussed instead on Botman a few years back - they're generally clueless and don't actually watch football outside of the big games despite it being literally their job.

His decision to bring Willock on was a fantastic bit of management, he seemed to instruct Willock to use his power and running and give him a tireless 45 minutes acting as both midfielder in the 3 and then creating an attacking 3 when in possession to compensate for Barnes being off. Made it almost unnoticeable that we only had 10 men.

Best goal I can remember us scoring in a good year or maybe two. Proper old school bit of individual brilliance. One for the highlight reels.

Best player on the pitch tonight, and seriously underrated by large parts of our fanbase after his injuries. Still an imperious midfielder and invaluable player for us.

The officials probably know it's not a dive but the convoluted rules mean they can't correct their decision. Another match fucked by referees in a game we all watch for it to be decided by players.

I like his attempt but in his approach towards simplicity, the badge has lost a bit of presence and distinction and there's a few design flaws in there too, the disappearing castle and shading on the lion creating an imbalance. Also, there's a few tiny gaps on his redesign eg. between the bottom of the seahorses and the main crest, which would create reproduction issues when stitched and actually add to costs instead of reducing them which is part of the reason for them wanting to change it in the first place. He's obviously a good designer though, if he just stayed more faithful to the original proportions, strokes and balance whilst cleaning parts of it up as he has done well enough, it'd be spot on.

Can't shake the feeling that Thiaw/Botman just isn't quite good enough yet, especially when compared with the levels Schar and Burn reached for us. One could argue Thiaw and Botman are individually or technically better, but as a pairing and factoring in the intangibles such as mentality, consistency, leadership, I don't think either of them are even close to Schar or Burn.

This season is by far the least I've watched games outside of our own in a good 10-15 years. I think I've watched maybe 5 or 6 in their entirety. Used to be 2-3 over a single weekend. Not because I don't have time, but rather because the Premier League feels generally dull, pedantic, over-structured and lacking in unorthodox, maverick type players.

I think of it as making compromises, adaptations and compensations in certain positions to get the best out of a certain highly gifted and match winning player. That player has to be Ben Arfa levels of talent though imo, for instance he's so good you don't ask him to track back and instead put a highly defensively minded full back behind him. The rest of the team then focuses on getting him the ball in 1 on 1 situations. Liverpool were a bit like this with Salah for a while, choosing a striker like Firmino who was less concerned about scoring, more concerned about creating space for Salah to move into and exploit.

True, although even if they make the knockouts and go out early, he will be given time off after the tournament, I'm sure it's usually around 2 weeks minimum which will take us well into July and may only have about 2 weeks with the team in pre-season as a result.

Probably worth bearing in mind that he also likely won't have much of a pre-season with us next season either given he will be with Germany at the World Cup potentially going fairly deep into the tournament.

My thoughts on Woltemade are that he's so lacking physically that he needs to be exceptional technically to compensate, and he's just not from what I've seen. I'm having to really stretch my imagination to see how it works out here for both him and us as a team.

Definitely looks more himself now he's able to receive the ball facing the game rather than battling with centre backs which was becoming a highly frustrating watch. He produced some lovely moments tonight, and now he needs to develop his ability to make timely runs into the box and start getting on the end of moves and becoming more of a goal threat. The confidence he's gaining by seeing more of the ball should hopefully aid in this over the coming months. I used to enjoy watching Milinkovic-Savic for Serbia who was more imposing and box-to-box than Woltemade but similar in his massive frame and delicate footwork which made him a unique challenge for the opposition between the lines and he chipped in with plenty of goals over his career. Still not sure where he goes from here, whether it's like a Benzema arc whose goals dried up for a few seasons and he dropped back as a playmaker, before combining those skills with his previous finishing instincts to become a complete striker and one of the best in the world in his latter years.

As South Tyneside's premier keeper in the c.04-05 season, and Pavel Srnicek's apprentice, I can say that double save wasn't hugely impressive and many of his other saves tonight have been a lot more skilful.

Barnes is class. It's massively discrediting to him to say he only has cutting inside to his game. He's scored a wide variety of goals this season and has mostly been excellent in general play too.

Insane from Ramsey there

Delighted to see this beautiful bastard back. McCoist on mute, this song on repeat whilst watching the closing minutes.