Whitley mag

What a man and legend.

What the King says.

Few negative Nannie’s in here and without going all Ando7 keep the faith. Training ground news on way shortly and lots going on behind the scenes with new stadium. It’ll be worth the wait and transformative.

I don’t need stats just the eye test. He was box office and the most intelligent footballer I’ve seen in a black and white shirt.

Peter Beardsley.

I think it’s more likely to be someone like Kees Smit who’s been linked today. If we want to bridge this gap we need to take a gamble on young players with a potentially very high ceiling.

The squad is decent but probably just not decent enough to fight on all fronts. On paper it looks better than last time we were in the CL but in reality the first 11 appears considerably weaker for a variety of reasons. The manager has to take a large part of the responsibility though having presided over the window and spent a record sum for the club. When only 2 of your signings have impacted the first team positively it’s going to raise serious questions. There’s a lot riding on Ramsey, Wissa and Elanga showing just something over the next couple of months to justify their price tags.

I mean Pete’s a shit source right?

Each to their own but he’s bang on the money.

Good watch and makes some very valid points.

Couldn’t put it any better superb.

If we’d forced him to stay and he’d ended up missing this many games and being shite, he’d be getting pelters and we’d be questioning the decision not to get rid. It was the right decision just a shame we didn’t have a cohesive plan and DOF in place to spend it wisely.

I’m pretty certain we aren’t going down but things could get slightly worse before they get better again looking at the fixtures. It’s going to take cool heads and the match going fan base to really rally behind the club. I do think with our backs to the wall the support will rally behind Howe and the team in upcoming games. I’m not confident as some in here that he’ll turn this around completely, the boom and bust cycle certainly needs addressing and as much as I expect him to steady the ship, I would also not be surprised if he ran out of steam and ideas like happened at Bournemouth.

I don’t think he’s stood out as particularly bad and can see why some think he looks tidy. However, was he really the profile of midfielder we needed? We’ve been easy to play through for a while and have lacked creativity. At 45 million it looks like a luxury signing to pad out the squad and as a previous poster has pointed out the mackems signed Xhaka and Sadiki for about 35 million. Where paying a huge price for not having a DOF in place during the summer.

Think Martin Hardy wrote an article in the Times that his job was in danger at the time. All managers are capable of shit spells and the best will find a way out the other side. I think this is the first real test for Howe at Newcastle, summer business that he overseen is rightly being questioned and for the first time the team doesn’t seem to have any direction under him. At the very least he needs to steady the ship between now and Xmas. Some tricky fixtures coming up and the pressure will continue to mount if we don’t pick up results quickly. Could go either way for me, he either goes on a run boosted by Wissa’s imminent return, or are we going to see the Howe at Bournemouth who ran out of steam. How much did the illness take out of him earlier in the year, easy to forget he was hospitalised. I do think the fans need to back him to the hilt in next few matches though, we’ve had a great 4 years and it’s time for the fans to stand up and be counted now when things aren’t going so well.

Should have been dropped after West Ham. Makes some decent stops but it’s pretty pointless when it’s undone by soft goals. If he’s going for that throw in today he needs to make sure he’s getting there, was so many bodies it was brainless and he should have just stayed on his line.

Service to Isak was shite a lot of the time and now Wolt is suffering the same.

We don’t press with the same intensity and haven’t evolved our game to pass the ball better. Its very muddled and forgetting the new signings for a moment, some of our established pros like Bruno, Trippier and Joelinton now look miles off it.

I’ll be happy when we get to 40 points at the moment, think we all need to reset our expectations for this season.

Should be starting at centre half alongside Thiaw, been absolutely hung out to dry feel sorry for him.

I think he’s fallen into a trap where it’s not about how his team play, it’s about stopping the opposition. We don’t seem to have any patterns of play attacking wise and even Tonali didn’t really look like he knew what he was meant to be doing at times today. It’s a fucking mess and he’s got a huge job on his hands to turn this around.

He’s bang average and nothing more than a squad player. We needed a Joelinton upgrade to move us forward, such a lazy and unimaginative signing.

He’s got enough credit in the bank to see out the season unless things really nose dive further. This is undoubtedly the lowest point in his time here though and it’s to be hoped it’s not reminiscent of his last season at Bournemouth when he ran out of steam and ideas. Still of the opinion he should never have had total control over transfers and the club have really fucked up if this doesn’t improve.

Looking forward to see how we respond today, feels like a big game in the context of the season. Lose today and I’m resigned to a season of mediocrity in the league, unless we go on an extraordinary run of results.

We can’t stretch teams on the break like we did with Isak. I think if you’re playing Woltemade away from home you need serious pace out wide and at least one of the midfield 3 able to run beyond him regularly.