christ

I wouldn’t play him ever again. Just in case.

Being at Brighton when they decided to hoover up loads of young South American talent has really padded his CV. He’s basically Charnley with better PR. The whole ‘hub and spoke’ stuff was just management speak. He did absolutely fuck all with us other than fail to get contracts sorted. He’ll probably end up back at the FA in some capacity doing next to nowt.

I back him 100 per cent but if he doesn’t get into Europe this season (or win a cup lol) he’ll be gone. Hiring Mourinho isn’t about the football. It’s about the silly bollocks. Let’s have 18 months watching the press conferences and forget the matches.

You know how we’ve played most of this season? That happened

Yep. It was all very un-Howe like. You can tell he’s feeling the pressure.

I’m not convinced Tonali and Bruno are ever going to work together consistently in this system. One of them is always going to be out of position to some extent. You either change to a double pivot or you bench one, and it’s not going to be Bruno.

The subs really made it apparent we didn’t really have any ideas how to regain control. Just chucking players on and hoping by force of will they can conjour something. You know things have went tits up when Miggy appears.

Thing is that we’d be a damn sight worse off if it wasn’t for three of those players. Howe needs to try something different. We don’t have Trippier overlapping and whipping in cross after cross any more. That flat-ish midfield three doesn’t allow us to get the best out of Tonali or Bruno and is very easy to play through at times. If Gordon isn’t on it then we’re essentially fucked as an attacking force and Isak ends up isolated. He needs to be ruthless now.

Our own worst enemies at the moment. Brainless fucking defending. Second and third goals in particular were basic mistakes that shouldn’t happen at this level. For all the teeth gnashing about the starting lineup we looked good for large parts before the subs. Then we looked a disjointed mess when the cavalry came on.

Part of me wonders whether this is the natural response to having a club like Pep’s Man City dominating the league for so long. Their direct competition tries to ape them, and the smaller teams have to develop ways of playing to avoid being on the end of hammerings every week. As a result you have teams at the bottom half of the table who are much more capable of shutting up shop and spawning results against the less effective big sides (us, Spurs etc).

I think we just need to let the lad go. A clean break is best for everyone. As far as I’m concerned he’s a club legend. I don’t want that sullied either for the fans or him.

Problem is there needs to be something to press. It works great against the bigger teams who want to go toe-to-toe, because we can force a lot of turnovers. Other teams are happy to dig in, keep narrow and wait for us to overplay or hassle our midfield. And it works, because we’re absolutely shite at breaking teams down. It’s a huge conundrum for Howe to solve and IMO it’ll decide whether he stays here beyond the end of the season.

It was completely undermine by how much they were rallying for VAR to get involved and award Liverpool a penalty immediately after we equalised too

There’s a one-off flight from Newcastle to Jeddah on Saudia next Monday. All bookable through the Saudia website apparently. Very odd timing like.

He was absolutely sticking the lips on Big Joe after he scored and nothing was going to stop him

It’d be hilarious. From a footballing perspective it would be a disaster, but beyond that? Hilarious.

Likewise. Bit of a naughty boy. He’s in his “she’s turned the weans against me” arc. Sad to see.

Doesn’t he get his players to do mental arithmetic during training? We’re never seeing Grealish in an England shirt ever again.

Up there with ‘Sam Fender doesn’t actually like football’ as the most pathetic meltdown.

I reckon there’ll be some hasty drawing up of sponsorship deals to stress test the PL’s new approach.

Sacrificing the greatest ground location in the country for a few more pennies Honestly question the sanity of any ‘supporter’ who is willing to consider such a ridiculous solution to the stadium situation.

The thing we all know about cup games against lower league opposition is that they’re always representative of wider trends, hence the reason we won the league that season we battered Morcambe 7-0 under Bruce.

Looks the part. Interested to see what he’s like if he has to do any goalkeeping.

He’s had a shite start but the way pundits were talking up West Ham was ridiculous. They signed a load of pretty bang average players but they were meant to be in contention for the top four

Assume that means an official announcement about his contract this morning.