Kid Icarus

Pound for pound in terms of achievement it's between him and Glasner imo.

Can only assume it's apathy that no one's raging over Pawson today. Never been more desperate for a ref to retire, he's possibly the worst I've seen alongside Rennie.

Totally depends I think. You can still have a poor start performance wise and pick up results before hitting form. We could have done that last season, but then weirdly had better performances and bad results for a bit. December's turn around last year was still from a base of 23 points because of our good start. In 23/24 we picked up in September, in 22/23 it was from about now in the season, so it's hard to tell. In a nutshell I think the bad starts will come with better results over time.

Me and my neighbour's streams never sync, so one of us always celebrates first then the other doesn't, maybe because the surprise is gone, I dunno. Anyway, that was the first goal in 5 years where the second person (me) still fully celebrated because despite knowing we'd scored, the surprise came from how incredible the goal itself was. Absolutely shan that he scored a goal like that for nothing more than goal difference.

Considering the end result I'd say we definitely do yeah. One man's slow start is another man's target too. Look at Liverpool, they've been shit for a team challenging for the league but are 1 point off if they win tomorrow, we've been poor for a team looking to get in the Champions League, but are 5 points off. I'd take a Howe slow start similar to Liverpool's.

As I say though, one was signed to play alongside a player we then sold, the other, as good as he's been was like Howe's 5th choice and would likely be getting bedded in and rotated had our other striker not got injured. There are fair reasons it's not clicked yet up front I think and our start hasn't been that bad overall - we're on the same points as 22/24 and have loads of rope to improve on last season - I think it's been the horrible last minute losses and couple of outright poor performances like today, all while we're still a bit of a work in progress that's been hard to bear.

Delighted with him and Thiaw has been good too, no question, it's just a difficult puzzle to solve. We really need our wingers doing more and I think you're right about Ramsey as well, providing he can stay fit.

Ironically he's not immune from criticism today, but I think criticising him for our start is harsh in the extreme like, he's had to basically completely redesign his attack having already signed one player that was presumably supposed to play alongside a striker we then went and sold. The turnover of players in the summer was large and for the most part very publicly not his first choices.

I'd cross that bridge when we come to it. He had his Bournemouth side mid-table, he has a side with the 7th highest wage bill in and around the Champions League places, I'd expect him to have a team with players good enough to win the league, in and around winning the league. As things stand, with a full squad we're nowhere near that yet, never mind one with a few key players out injured in the one position we had real strength in depth. I'd argue that if we ever got near that with these players it would be because of him, not in spite of him. I would have thought that would be obvious by now, especially considering how coveted Howe is by other club's fans.

More concerned than when Harvey Barnes was bailing us out this time last year? Howe will light a fire under them like after Brentford away imo. Today I think it's on Howe tbh, but the forward line need to do better. Weirdly I think both Woltemade and Murphy are doing their jobs properly but are letting each other down a bit. Murphy's putting in great balls Woltemade should be getting on, Woltemade's scoring and doing excellent hold up play Murphy should be running off. There's a lot of everyone coming short.

We're all just waiting for the Howe click really. In the grand scheme of things our position is fine. Weirdly I was more worried last season when we were on 12 points at this stage because the football was worse than this despite the results, then we had a run of playing well but not getting the results. Results match our performances for the most part at the moment I think, but I'm confident that when it finally clicks we'll go on another run.

Just hasn't been anywhere near the player we know so far this season.

We're a point ahead of 22/23 btw.

Fender gigs are very much a celebration of Newcastle. An alien concept to a fanbase that largely defines themselves by who they're not.

That scuffed shot from the same position he bent one in for England sort of sums him up at the moment. Likewise Bruno's performances for Brazil.

I take the point you're making but I think our problems today go way beyond that like, particularly as I think Burn going forward was probably better than anyone else, which probably says it all. There was no mitigation for the defence to midfield gap either, Welbeck was free in there all afternoon without anything changing, I still can't quite believe that.

I always forget him for some reason. Awful first half, a bit better second. Probably a 5, Barnes a 6.

Very easy like, first few matches our ex-striker was a cunt and we therefore didn't have a striker. Since then we've been a work in progress and some of your others are just not right basically, for example Bournemouth aren't a midtable team, they've only lost to Liverpool away this season. Today was the only time I think Howe has really made a clear error with our approach to a match. The Bruce and McClaren point is just completely insane - we would react differently because it would have been objectively worse and because we know they're shit, whereas Howe isn't. Can't believe I'm even justifying it with a response tbh.

One of those very rare times where I don't even know what was being tried, never mind whether it succeeded.

You and shearergol already told us so the other week. Still early days and it still couldn't be clearer that you're both more concerned with being right than Newcastle doing well.

Burn!? Yous are singling out Burn!? Wtf

Absolutely hated that like. I hate this lot. 9 times out of 10, my gripe in games we lose is mitigating reasons for why the plan didn't work: poor player performances, injuries, getting up to speed etc. Today was the 1 time out of 10 where I question the plan, because it was clear early on that it wasn't working and very little changed in terms of the things that looked wrong about us, most notably with our insistence on not sticking someone on Welbeck, despite him always playing that role against us and scoring. Even during the game, when he was playing that role well and had scored, we did nothing about it and lo-and-behold, he played that role again and scored again. Just a completely baffling approach and lack of response. Really pissed off with that tbh, Brighton always play us in this way too, strong and hunt us in packs, go down under the slightest bit of pressure themselves and get away with it. All vindicated, imo, by far the worst top-flight referee out there. Yet time and again we never look like having an answer to it and seem to persist with a sort of 'our system will supercede yours' approach. Even our goal only happened because it was a bit of genius. Feels wrong rating the players tbh, there were some okay and poor performances, but for me this is one of the very few occasions where I think the result is squarly on Howe, unfortunately. Can't ignore yet another disgraceful performance from Pawson though, you can always guarantee he'll be terrible before the match and he never ever fails to disappoint. Pope: 7.5 Trippier: 6 Thiaw: 6.5 Botman: 7 Burn: 7 Tonali: 6 Bruno: 6 Joelinton: 4 Miley: 6 Elanga: 4 Murphy: 6 Woltemade: 7

Worse than Coote

He's a textbook dirty player who dives defender, and refs always fall for it.

Like why do we do this? Just stick a player on him ffs.