Kid Icarus

Did I not just explain like?

It's barely an argument tbh, if players play well for England it stands to reason that they'll get picked, if they don't they won't. This idea that club form is the be-all-and-end-all is the wrong way around imo. Look at Pope, undoubtedly the best 'keeper in the league this season, would fully deserve to be England number one on club form - comes in, immediately fucks up playing for England. So do you continue playing him because he's been class for Newcastle? Or play Pickford who's not been as good at Everton but has been consistently solid for England for years? It should be obvious, you play the player who plays well for England, every time.

Definitely Sterling, sometimes Rashford, Grealish was good there coming on in the Euros. Mount shouldn't ever play there imo. Foden's an incredible talent but I feel like he's plateaued a bit this season like.

Chiesa was so fucking exciting when he came on the scene like. It'll be a crying shame if the double ACLs have ruined him.

Foden doesn't really play well for England

I can live with references like this

You could have just guessed based on the way he goes on like.

Graeme Bailey. Total know nowt gobshite.

I think this is probably me just being a misery and not looking into it properly, but from a distance I find the whole fuss around Wrexham because it's owned by a couple of celebrities canny irritating.

Talbot and Bailey belong in the Twitter bollocks thread like.

Ah okay, so not on here.

Literally no one did like

Introducing a Fan's advisory board https://www.nufc.co.uk/media/75368/nufc-fan-engagement-review-202223.pdf

Favourite win: Tough one tbh, it's very close between quite a few, but I'll go with Forest away just gone. Not winning for a while and winning in the way that we did felt significant and triumphing over adversity - I've been dining on that win for nearly a full week now and kept randmonly celebrating like it was full time for a day or two after. Favourite goal: Longstaff's 2nd against Southampton. Willock and Joelinton with lovely quick play down the wing, Almiron overlapping, played back to Longstaff in the box. Brilliant, fast football and significantly for me all pre-new ownership players, highlighting the improvements that Howe's made in those players. Who's surprised you most: It has to be Almiron, but shout outs to Pope who is miles better than I thought he'd be, Murphy in recent weeks, and on the opposite end of the scale Fraser and Targett who haven't featured like I thought they would this season. Most frustrating: Wilson, the drop off after the World Cup was almost unbelievable. Shout out to ASM for being constantly injured and never really tearing it up aside from vs Man City. Best player: I think Schar has been the most consistently of a high standard, but again other players have played very well fairly consistently: Almiron, Trippier, Bruno, Pope, Joelinton, Botman have all been great. Moment of the season: That second goal by Longstaff vs Southampton. I was gobsmacked by how good it was, I haven't seen Newcastle play like that for years. In a way it was where the wave broke at the high watermark, both in that match and the first part of the season. Our form dipped after that, but it hopefully now looks like we're back on track again. I'll add a category - Most underrated: Schar and Willock. Schar has been arguably our best player this season, yet is never really mentioned despite Pope, Trippier, Botman, and sometimes Burn and Bruno making it into best PL XIs of this season. Willock is another who might not have been as consistent as Schar has been, but has had some great moments this season, is always important to how we play and is involved in so much of the good football that we play.

Just win+shift+s and screenshot it

Mine was as well until... Feels a bit sad now though

I've slagged Spurs off all season because they're absolutely shit to watch, have been propped up by Kane, and shouldn't be anywhere near 4th, but it is still canny mad that a team sat in 4th is potentially about to sack its manager and is deemed to be in a kind of crisis with no one really thinking that's unusual.

I'll refer to the better Ian on this one. These changes are always presented with the positives, rarely the negatives, we saw that with VAR. The net benefit means that it's probably just about worth it imo, but we all know that it's nowhere near perfect in its intended form, needs to improve, and even beyond that there's an argument to be made that even when it works perfectly, it still has a negative impact in football as a spectator sport. The arguments that were made for it coming in look incredibly naive now. If we have VAR, then obviously this will happen, obviously that decision wouldn't be made, obviously things will be clearer, fairer, less biased. So now it turns out that although we have a net benefit from VAR as a whole, the wrong decisions are scrutinised even more and are even more maddening because the officials are being shown to be incompetent, indecisive, and inconsistent even when there are 5 of them, they can watch incidents frame-by-frame, and they have the rule book in front of them. Not only that, but there are repurcussions from VAR's existence, with two unwritten implications between officials that are imo clear to see in the behaviour of the officials. 1) a 'to-you-to-you' setup whereby a referee doesn't make a decision, with the implication being that if they're wrong, VAR will correct it. Meanwhile the referees non-call is implied to be a decision in itself by the referee, received in that way by the VAR and because it's not a clear and obvious error, they don't correct it. Another issue here is that despite the above, there's still clear inconsistency and displayed incompetence when the VAR does intervene and it's not a clear and obvious error, or they've flat out made the wrong decision. 2) That the referee being asked to review an incident implies that the decision should be changed. There is no impartial review taking place, the referee is watching an incident with the implication that they've made the wrong decision going through their head. So the referee reviews the incident and 9 times out of 10 they change their decision, again often exposing incompetence in a couple of different ways - one, they change their decision and it's either not clear and obvious, or completely the wrong decision (see our match vs Forest, Palace, and others), or 2 on the rare occasion that they stick with their original decision, if it's wrong or contentious it looks even more imcompetent and ridiculous because it's so rare (see foul on Traore last weekend) So we get the refs mic'd up. The idea being that at least we get a layer of transparency and know what's going on. You don't think that, just like with VAR and the issues above, there are unintended consequences that could maybe make our curiosity being immediately satisfied not worth it as a benefit? 1) when they fuck up, we get to listen to them fucking up in real time. We get to hear them misunderstand and incorrectly apply the rules. We get to hear them being indecisive and unsure, we get to hear them confidently assert that the black that we can see with our own eyes is actually white - even more maddening. 2) nothing actually changes, so we're all sat there like Matthew McConaughey screaming through the bookcase in Interstellar when they fuck up. 3) referees and the VAR will know that for every big call they make, there'll be an expectation for them to get on the mic and communicate it with millions of people listening into their conversation in real time. Consciously or unconsciously, that will impact upon the referee's and the VAR's courage to make those big calls. Who's going to stand up and make the big call, then get on the mic knowing that them not just looking stupid, but sounding stupid might become a meme? - again leading to more non decisions that should be made. 4) An additional arbitrary layer of what constitutes a decision that should be communicated over the mics And probably other consequences that we haven't even considered. And for what? So that we know what the rationale behind a decision is in real time rather than later? Something that we've never explicitly known in cases like that anyway. Total waste of time imo and opens another can of worms. It's like we learned nothing from begging for VAR to come in. At least with VAR you can argue the case for the worth of the net benefit we get from it. With this the net benefit of immediately knowing the rationale behind a decision is barely worth it for all the additional problems it would cause.

I disagree. If the commentators don't know, we still find out eventually. I also obviously understand the idea, I just think it's not worth doing for what is barely even a benefit, as it changes nothing decision-wise.

Yeah, after Trippier's free kick.

One of those ones where if you were shown it 18 months ago you'd have hyperventilated.

This one takes some beating.

I bet you'll struggle to name an all-time defender who wasn't also class on the ball.