Moose

No green kit! We now have a chance!

Yeah, I don't know what it is about that guy that enrages me so much. Needless to say, I don't listen to it anymore

Another exhibit in the ever mounting pile of evidence that Ekitike is comfortably the better player for them. Isak is no longer competing for the role of 1st choice striker, he's now been reduced to being wheeled out to saunter around for 15/20 minutes once the game is sewn up to remind the fans that he's still there. The Liverpool fans must despise him already!

Well, I must say that I'm very impressed that a thread about a painfully average player from one of the darkest eras in our recent history has managed to stay at the top of the forum for nearly a week and has provided some great laughs! Just think of all the fun we'll have in the DeAndre Yedlin thread when he retires!

That's exactly it, an atmosphere should reflect the rollercoaster of emotions a football match produces. It can't just be me who enjoys watching the furious and dejected reaction of the opposition fans just after we score, it's great schadenfreude, but you'd get none of that when we score against European opposition cause the gimps in the ultras section wouldn't even notice that a goal went in. As for Leverkusen being a plastic club, I've also heard that to be the case but I don't think that makes the atmosphere better or worse, all Bundesliga atmospheres are much of a muchness, I've been to Bremen vs Mainz and Frankfurt vs Hannover games, all 4 sets of fans I've witnessed in person are pretty much interchangeable with what we saw against Leverkusen, all scripted and choreographed, all generic, all pish! I know Dortmund get a lot of credit for their yellow wall but to me that's just like all the other ultra sections, just on a much larger scale.

Nailed it! Don't forget about that wee posh gimp who supports Everton who'll reference "a piece" he did for The Athletic. Absolutely baffling that a Newcastle podcast includes some Cambridge student with no connection to the club doing work experience on there, managing it around his already busy schedule of attending Extinction Rebellion rallies, ordering vanilla charcoal infused green tea soy lattés from hipster cafes and speaking to his emotional support Funko Pop about how just seeing an image of Donald Trump or Andrew Tate gives him anxiety attacks. Oh, and the intro music is pure noncery as well.

PL wise, it's flops galore. They range from 'good player but overpaid' to 'daylight robbery'. IMO, Rice is the only one close to being good value for money, time will tell for the Liverpool 3 but realistically only Ekitike has looks like he has a chance of being considers a good buy

Well Arne, I think you'll find that pretty much every club competing in Europe will have to cross that bridge at some point. Some of them with entire squads assembled for less than you paid for the rat. Perhaps fleshing out a squad which is apparently stretched too thin would've been a better way to spend >230m than buying a hobbit and a heartless twig with a groin made of spaghetti as vanity signings!

A team that is famous for scoring late goals vs a team that is infamous for conceding late goals? My FitBit isn't prepared for what's coming it's way if the scores are level after 80 mins

Tonight's game was a great example of why I don't think ultras are a net positive for the atmosphere. Aye sure, when you're in the stadium, the flags, pyro and the synchronised jumping knock your socks off for the first minute or so, then they fade into the background to the point I forget they're even there. Leverkusen scored, they didnt cheer, they kept chanting the same shit they'd been chanting for 5 minutes. We got a penalty, they didn't explode with fury at the ref, they kept chanting the same shit they'd been chanting for 5 minutes. We scored, there was no stunned silence for a few seconds followed by a rallying cry, they kept chanting the same shit they'd been chanting for 5 minutes. They scored a late equaliser, there was no "limbs", they kept chanting the same shit they'd been chanting for 5 minutes. The game finished, they didn't applaud, they kept chanting the same shit they'd been chanting for 5 minutes. Give me a crowd that ebbs and flows depending on what happens on the pitch any day of the week and twice on a Sunday, you'll get some dull atmospheres but you'll also get some cauldrons, much better than having a bunch of numpties wearing balaclavas singing from a pre-prepared song sheet

Eddie, I love you, you're my king, but for crying out loud please learn how to hold onto a lead! Thankfully our next opponents aren't renowned for their tendency to score late goals right?!

Fucking noncey goal music n all. Get to fuck!

“A penalty is never just a kick of a ball — it is the soul standing alone before destiny. In that single, trembling heartbeat, time pauses, the world watches, and the universe whispers: show us who you truly are.” — Anthonus Gordonus, Meditations on the Beautiful Game

Well, after that 1st half, I hope we've learnt that TransferMarkt is an atrocious tool to measure squad quality. That certainly didn't look like a €713m squad vs a 426m one. A grotty 1 bed flat in some wankville somewhere in London and a 5 bed detached house would be listed at similar prices on RightMove, doesn't mean they're the same quality.

I don't know what kind of team we're supposed to be. Intensity is no longer our identity due to fatigue, fine, but then what? We're not creative, we don't have any clever patterns of play, we don't out-work the opposition. What is the plan supposed to be?!

We play like we're thick. This is the problem when you build a team full of athletes and barely any artists.

Like a homeless person telling you that your wallpaper looks shit

On today's episode of "Oh no, you've got the wrong Kenneth Taylor"!

Would you rather have every song in the world covered by Smash Mouth or one song (All Star by Smash Mouth) that anyone can cover?

The alternative time line has him signing a 200k week deal with us for one more season and then he gets his big move probably on >400k per week to Barca/Bayern who would likely play to his strengths in leagues which are physically more forgiving and he'd be remembered here as the best since Shearer and go on to be a global football superstar. Instead, he scorched earthed his way to a team that didn't need him to play with team mates who didn't want him, the notoriously savage press in this country are already mocking him and labelling him as a flop and his body language doesn't indicate that he has to stomach for the fight to turn the narrative. Yes, he got his move and the riches that come with it, but make no mistake, this will be hurting him

One of the most average players I've ever seen for us. He wasn't appalling, he never did anything special, he was just always kinda there. The most notable thing about his Newcastle career is that his name is synonymous with one of the worst transfer windows in recent times.

Do we have a better squad than than every Serie A Team? On paper: possibly On grass: almost certainly not