St. Maximin

Are we really mid table on paper though? Starting eleven you could argue, but there’s a real lack of depth in the squad with too many Championship players. Lose Wilson and ASM to injury (inevitable) and we have Gayle and Joelinton playing. Wouldn’t say there’s enough depth elsewhere either tbh. Given the injuries we had 12th was an overachievement last year. We just happened to be terrible for most of the season and over-reliant on luck. Those things can’t last forever.

Probably asking a really basic year old question here… but what’s the issue with the KSA being director anyway? Why would they not pass the test? Or maybe I have completely misunderstood stuff

Those missed sitters are pretty entertaining tbf.

Being sacked by Derby three times is pretty impressive mind.

To me that’s been the obvious formation for ages but never gets tried. Wilson up top, Gayle if/when he’s injured… ASM and Fraser/Murphy on the wings, Miggy in CAM with Joelinton as cover in those positions also. Shelvey nowhere near the pitch. Makes a bit too much sense though tbh.

He was more talented yes, but there are multiple reasons he didn’t fulfil his potential and I’m sure his attitude is one of them. ASM is a ‘better’ player in that he’s more effective.

Maybe they just have a different opinion? Or should they all be thrown into the idiotic gammon category because they don’t have your insight? It’s highly possible to appreciate some fine things Southgate has done as England manager, respect him for the top bloke he is and also criticise him for his errors. In my view it’s hard to argue with his record but he also got a lot wrong at the Euros given our attacking talent and home advantage, in particular the final.

This is true but inevitably you will need adequate cover for injuries and our options were seriously poor when the few genuinely great players were injured. I think there were plenty of other decent players in those teams and also the likes of Palace and even Fulham crazily 17 points below us (was thinking Ings for example as this was last season), but those aside I think these teams had so much more depth that weak PL players could slot in without looking too badly exposed. Our starting XI I’d say is top 12, but we had players like Shelvey, Joelinton, Ritchie, Clark, Carroll, Hendrick and Gayle getting way too much pitch time for their ability, at times with a few on at the same time. I appreciate coaching and tactics did have an issue in not helping their performances. 12th isn’t an overachievement on paper for our squad, but given the injuries we had I think it probably was given how much we rely on Wilson and ASM, plus our better centre-backs. The performances were of course dreadful by and large and perhaps Bruce and his team contributed to our injury problems, when you consider how much better off we were under Rafa.

Yeah I would say so too but I think when you consider our whole squad, it’s still worryingly thin in terms of adequate cover. Take the star players out and you have Championship at best players covering. I still don’t think we’re much different to the weakest teams - even the likes of Wolves, Southampton, Brighton et al were below us last season and had plenty of players we’d love to have in our starting line-up/bench. Not defending Bruce’s bizarre/non-existent tactics, but 12th was an overachievement last year when you consider that ASM and Wilson missed plenty of games each. It’s only a mid-table squad in the same way the six teams below us could easily have been also.

We do? It stopped working quickly. No real strikers and no real wingers. If we had Pep Guardiola and his Barca attackers then fair enough, but not with ours sadly. Even if it means not playing Miggy as 10, I think we’d have to resort to a more simple 4-3-3 or like what Rafa had when we signed Miggy. He wasn’t a number 10 exactly for him either I thought. Bruce (and maybe Jones too) has tried a range of formations that showed some initial success before becoming confusing and ineffective. At times the ‘Rafa tactics’ worked well. He tried a back four and we thumped Bournemouth. He played the split-strikers role and we blew Everton away. He played the current formation at the end of last season and we had some great results. Eventually they all stopped working, with the lack of organisation and plan becoming evident as well as the players’ limitations being exposed. Sure we will try something else soon and expect a similar trend

Perhaps, but not for that Greenwood goal. Overture that and you’re rewarding a dive surely.

In Bruce's defence (yeah I know), playing Murphy and Ritchie at wing-back worked out pretty well at the end of last season. Murphy isn't the best defensively but I think did a job as a RWB (as opposed to RB), whereas Ritchie payed a key role in our revival last season and isn't normally this crap at LWB. Playing those players alongside that back three was asking for trouble though. I didn't get it - were Lascelles and Schar injured? Clark and Krafth are Championship at best. We have Dummett who plays LCB well, but is injury-prone. Aside from that we had Lejeune, but let him go without replacing him, which is crazy in my view.

Imagine getting all upset because people went to a match anyway It’s just bizarre. They aren’t the scumbags here and have a right to do it.

Yeah, he’s always looked very suspect defensively, but gets away with it because he’s a ‘grafter’. I’m pretty terrible at football but I’m sure there’s more to defending than grafting. Today though he was a new level of rubbish. He is a leader though and I think helped the team out in the relegation fight. However, he shouldn’t be playing there regularly in any Prem team. Crazy we haven’t upgraded.

That didn’t look like a penalty but Murphy’s reaction didn’t look like one of a man who knows he’s innocent surely? Either way I’ve been hearing from fans who went about what a great game it was. Wish I had that level of positivity. It was no doubt a great game for the neutral, but we completely fell apart after a positive first-half, went two goals down and virtually gave up for the last fifteen minutes. Even with that penalty decision the defending was pathetic. With that line-up who’d have thought? Also shout out to Matt Ritchie for his game changing contributions

Pretends to read Orwell maybe. Probably is more articulate than a lot of English players though, but that says more about them. He’s still a horrendous human being and the obsession some fans have with him is bizarre. He wasn’t good that often and spent a lot of his time here in jail.

I agree on the current joke of a manager but at the same time I think that was partly fuelled by the fans’ reactions at first. He’s just completely lacking in class and continued the comparisons rather than trying to make amends for being clueless.

I am speaking what I feel is the truth mate. I just mean my angle on here is criticising the reaction he gets to criticism/defences he receives, because I feel they are fair points worth considering on a forum that is very pro-Rafa. If the forum hated him for some bizarre reason I’d be more inclined to defend him. Just feel there’s room for nuance and happy for you to disagree with my views also as it’s never exciting if we all agree

No that actually wasn’t even a stupid post though was it? That criticism just gets laughed off almost proves the point, though I know it’s not as simple as that. People talk about him like he’s some miracle worker who constantly had the team overachieving, when it wasn’t quite as simple. The point a lot home defeats is fair and at times in the Prem we had some dreadful runs of form. I mean we were pretty much neck on neck for safety with Cardiff one year until the closing weeks, but I’m sure we all thought our squad was much better than theirs and that Warnock wasn’t a genius. I know we won it in the end, but we were also poor at times in the Championship; hardly walking it like under Hughton despite a better squad. I’m throughly with you on his vision for the club and the shocking investment opportunities he had. His fan engagement was brilliant also and deserved better. But in the interest of balance, he always had a defence. No shots on target at hone to Fulham? Team in relegation form? Well his hands are tied so he can’t do better. Can’t say I fully support some views like that, or the reaction here to an opinion. However… I should also point out I’m deliberately creating debate when my views on the guy are pretty much the same as the majority here. If this was a forum that loved to slate him I’d be arguing differently. But I think a different perspective, whether or not you agree, is healthy.

I mean I haven’t been here long and I’m not going to defend this new guy’s behaviour, but I do feel like you have to following certain narratives on here, whether it’s about Rafa, Bruce or other things like politics, or you’re in line for a hammering. It wouldn’t be fun if everyone agreed and nobody should expect you to. I often like to take a different position for balance because while I’m a huge fan of what Rafa did on and off the pitch, it almost feels like he’s beyond criticism from Newcastle fans and he’s always got an excuse to hide behind regarding investment etc. Controversially I sometimes defend Bruce also, but that’s more because I don’t think the investment argument is that simple when you look at the players both managers have had despite the difference in amount spent. Bruce is still an idiot of course.

Same here imo. We had one of the best two or three squads there and hosted 6/7 games. Getting to the final shouldn’t really be seen as an achievement they should be proud of. Germany, who I do feel are better than some make out, were our only other major challenge on paper and we still had a big home advantage. Southgate’s cautious approach often made sense with hindsight, but with the players we had, it would count for nothing unless we won the whole thing. It’s not like we had a bad defence anyway!

Yeah I didn’t think he was good, though I thought he’d take the last as I remembered him winning a shootout with one. Also thought Grealish has taken them for Villa also, but if they’re the best in training then I get why they were the five. Just seemed odd Saka was last.

I don’t get why people are criticising the other experienced players for not taking penalties. It’s the manager’s choice as he’s confirmed and the players clearly respect him. The whole “player power” stuff was seen as a problem years ago - they shouldn’t be overriding his decisions. Also as a man who has won the League Cup in a shootout and responded to the media brilliantly in recent years, I really doubt Sterling refused a penalty to throw a 19 year-old (who could conceivably also get racist abuse from morons) under the bus.

Southgate impresses me so much in how he conducts himself on and off the pitch, gains the players’ respects and engages with the media. For those reasons and the recent tournament runs it’s hard to argue against keeping him. I think he’s also been exposed tactically and this was so similar to the Croatia game in how we made ourselves the dominated team with few ideas after an early lead, rather than capitalising. Also I get that in a big tournament you often have to be conservative, but this was too much. We should be building the team around the likes of Sancho, Foden and Grealish for years to come, but his reluctance to find roles for them, even as subs earlier on, I find very frustrating. The obsession with playing Mount also I don’t get. He is also a brilliant player but I see nothing in him that says he needs to start every game, especially as a winger over the aforementioned players. I still think it it’s typical of the English mindset to be be over-reliant on the reliable model-pro over anyone remotely maverick. It’s been a brilliant tournament and loved following England throughout, but without doubt the best team won. Well done Italy.

The penalty seems unnecessarily polarising to me. Having watched a few replays I’m tempted to say it was soft but not convinced it was a ‘blatant dive’. Sterling was definitely looking for it, as any attacking player would be, but I don’t think that’s much different to penalties we see all the time, so we just have to accept if it wasn’t a penalty then it was cheating that has become widely accepted in the game. It just happened to be at a very crucial stage in the game and tournament. No clear and obvious ref error for me so I think VAR probably wouldn’t have differed to the ref either way.