Abacus

I think it's pretty clear he can't play as a no 9. We looked all over the place with him up front. His best moment was when Wood came on and he set him away, but aside from that he had a bad one today, losing the ball all over the place. Albeit against one of the best teams in Europe, where nobody did well.

Commentator - "The thing about Newcastle is they now have a game plan to fall back on. They didn't really have that before." Testify.

Klopp desperate to moan about having to make changes due to the fixtures as he couldn't get it moved there. Also apparently moaning to the ref before the game even starts. Hope Shelvey miscues a clearance and it smashes his plastic teeth out.

I'm hoping to see Trippier against Arsenal. Would give us a look as to how far away we are from teams like that. If Wilson can make a cameo off the bench vs Burnley, all the better. After Wood has done 60 mins and scored against them.

Funniest of all; It is recognised that after several years of less-than-optimal performance, including two relegations and a failure to return to the second tier, this requires a long-term project. Yes, I'd agree that's less than optimal performance.

Or; In December 2020, the Board took the difficult decision to change the Manager and appointed Lee Johnson as Head Coach. This resulted in a significant improvement in performance of the team, but ultimately the Club failed to secure promotion. Hounded out. Or; The Board are committed to securing revenue streams outside of football. From the off-season in summer 2022 the club will host concerts in the Stadium for the first time in 3 years. Sheeran cancels. Also, one of their top 3 risks is listed as "Playing success". At least they got that right.

This is one of my favourite bits of their accounts, aside from them being worth approximately minus £7.5m; In the six months since February 2021, the Club invested in projects across all its venues, including structural steelwork, painting, a new fire panel and emergency lighting in the stadium, all of which helped to ensure the Club complied with the requirements of the safety certificate. They are bragging about a fire safety certificate.

He's making some pretty sweeping claims On this specific point, what he is saying is that the club have a debt to the owners of just over £2m. The previous £25m debt that they wrote off was the other way round - something they owed the club and decided to remove their obligation to repay. Anyway, presumably this new debt was money put into the club to keep it running and help cover it's day to day losses, which are pretty severe. Grumpy is saying is that this is OK, because the owners don't expect the club to have to repay it. They will capitalise it instead. I.e. They will issue more shares to the owners and use the money from that to pay off the debt. A bit like we did, when we issued new shares not so long ago rather than go into debt, probably to help fund the January transfer window. One possible reason they haven't already done that could be because the owners have no idea how long they will be in L1, and how much more loss they will have to cover. NB this set of accounts only runs up until July last year. That was bang in the middle of Covid. Who knows what the results are going to be like this year just gone, but they should have some more match-day income since then at least, though I'd still expect it to be grim reading. Still, I like to remember their jubilation at being "debt free, marra", when Short binned them off.

Actual confirmation starts to come through on p238, if you want to avoid 86 pages of panic as I just haven't.

It does seem genuinely more ridiculous every time I think of it

Holland

If I've told big Joe once in training, I've told him a hundred times. When there's no Colin the Caterpillars, get a double bag of Percy Pigs.

That's an incredible read, I actually got a lump in my throat reading some of that. It's so clear the difference we have now to what came before under Bruce. "Previously, players were given forfeits for training poorly, such as bringing in chocolate for their team-mates." That's one of the most laughable things I've read. But enough of him. I read an article yesterday about Pochettino leaving PSG and being 'admired' by Newcastle and my immediate thought was NO WAY. From being lukewarm when he was appointed, I now think Howe is the absolute dog's bollocks.

Everton relegated would be funny, but I'd not be gutted if any of the other two went down instead. Everton down and Sunderland up would be funny too, since they'd both squabble over being the team that were 'everyone's cup final' in the Championship. But all in all, I'd prefer to see Sunderland somehow slip out of the play off spots on the last day. Or, funnier yet, having another of their famous days out at Wembo, where they throw it all away right in the last minute live on TV.

I'm not surprised Longstaff was annoyed. Him and his brother had Bruce as their manager (or head coach, or whatever I am) right at a key point in their careers for over 2 years, just as they were breaking through. Who knows how they might have turned out if competently coached? Not saying they would have made it as world-beaters, but that's the point - we'll never know due to those wasted years. Joelinton, for example, could well have ended up on the footballing scraphead altogether due to this loafing incompetent idiot. Not only is he a thin-skinned, lazy, narcissistic, self pitying, greedy, talentless, thick, crass, lying, press-schmoozing bungler but he goes around destroying other people's careers, all seemingly without a hint of remorse.

Apparently, about 16% of the PL's revenue goes to the lower leagues, with approximately half of that in the form of parachute payments. For me, one simple thing would be to abolish parachute payments altogether and redistribute that money more fairly instead. They massively distort competition in the lower leagues and so do more harm than good. Incidentally, the sports minister also confirmed that with a new regulator any new owners and directors' test would be stricter financially on terms of sources of funding, but wouldn't impose any new rules on state ownership, which seems a pretty direct reference to us and Man City.

Really looking forward to tonight's game to see how Leeds react. It will basically decide if relegation is to be a two way handbag fight between Everton and Burnley or a 3 way shoot out, spaghetti Western style. The Shit, the Bad and the Ugly.

It could, but the ref didn't give it and it was debatable enough not to be a clear & obvious error for VAR to overturn it. The different opinions on here suggest that. If it had been given, I wouldn't expect VAR to overturn that decision either. It's one of those that falls into judgement territory so it is hardly some howling injustice. For what it's worth, I didn't think it was a pen. Didn't think it was a clear enough foul and that fingermouse was play-acting. Had it been given I'd have thought it a bit soft, but would probably have shrugged and thought 'yeah, fine'.

If Leeds lose away to Palace tomorrow, with their run in, I think those odds will shift. Brentford away is a very tough game given the way they are playing. Which leaves huge pressure on Brighton at home. I'd be looking right over my shoulder if I was a Leeds fan. Then again, we're at the point where one unexpected result for any of those teams can throw the whole thing up in the air.

The Everton forum will have melted...

Whatever, neither can catch us! And I tell you what, I'm now glad both of them are getting relegated just for messing us all around like that.

The post you quoted said Watford. Or at least it did when I read it. And it would only make sense that way when a 6 goal swing was referred to.

Hahahaha

Really don't think they should have dropped Maguire if it was just due to the bomb threats. That's just going to encourage even more lunatics online

Poor West Brom. While there's the odd fool on any forum, most of the fans there seem to have him rumbled. I particularly enjoyed this; However results and performances with a couple of exceptions have been terrible and worse still Bruce has been shown to be completely and utterly inept, he is damn near a 10 on the Pardew scale (the internationally recognised measurement for being bad at coaching football teams). I'd only quibble with the words "damn near".