WilliamPS

I can see the subs bench winning it. Gordon and Wilson coming on at 60, as I’m not convinced by Joelinton and Murphy on the flanks will have enough. Now there’s options on the bench Howe has started to use them pretty effectively to change matches

Need two CMs that can step into the first team. Going to be unfortunate that Liverpool, Arsenal and Man Utd will also be looking at the same players. Id be amazed if Liverpool didn’t go in for Maddison.

Leicester need an outsider to change the atmosphere in the dressing room, but they may have left it too late Benitez did a great job at Newcastle- he was comically better than the managers either side of him. It was such a relief to have a professional in charge who sent his team out with a plan and incredibly well drilled after Mclaren and then we saw with Bruce what happens when you take that structure away again. However he’s coming to the end of his career, am not sure how it will work out at Leicester

City are nice to watch tbf. I don’t want City to win, but cannot bring myself to want Arsenal to beat them. all this is why Leicester winning was such a great story

One of the things the boffins have shown over the last couple of years is that the idea that safe mid table teams are easier to play than teams in relegation battles at the end of the season is false. The best gauge of how tough an opponent will be is the league table and the form table. teams scrapping for relegation are near the bottom as they’re crap, whether they’re trying or not

Hope Villa get a thrashing, but expect a v tough game. I hope Villa don’t get Europe as if they hadn’t had gerrard at the start they’d be right in the mix - better they fall short and struggle to bring in players Villa fans dislike of Newcastle shows that despite all their big talk they have a small club mentality.

Ultimately you have to get results against your rivals and that’s very much what spurs and Villa are now.

The bottom 3 won’t make 35 points so wolves just need one win, West Ham and wolves are close to sorted

Great win, great form which is great as it’s clear to get top 4 there’s going to need to be a lot more of them. Think need four points from the next two games

I flip flop - Burn has had a few near misses recently, but these are often to do with Newcastle in position, he hasn’t had that many defensive lapses and the defence as a unit is working.

Bruno and ASM are always limping around - usually it’s a magic sponge job and they’re both ready to go

Tbf Lampard is just caretaker - no chance he will get it full time. The owners probably accept top 4 is gone, and Potter was not going to mastermind beating Madrid over two legs was he? So binning now and starting to plan for next season makes some sense. Lampards job is to improve the mood music, cheer everyone up, then piss off in the summer

West Ham lose at weekend and Moyes will be gone you’d think

Been pretty sloppy on the ball after the second, need a little bit of calm and concentration West Ham have some good players, but they will get frustrated if they don’t score

Knocking spurs out the CL would be v useful for longer term prospects. Man Utd, Liverpool and Chelsea will always have bags of cash, attract players and be competitive but spurs could struggle. Ultimately if you want Newcastle to sit in the top 6 or 4 consistently it helps if one of the others implodes a bit

I remember when Newcastle went down in 2009 there were so many chances to get out of it, if you’d looked ten games out you would have said they’ll be ok the team is better than the sides around - but the wins never came. Leicester could go down in the same way. I think Everton will be fine under Dyche. Bournemouth I expect to get to about 34 points, and anyone who is below them is down. That would mean Leicester getting either 3 wins or 2 wins and 3 draws from 9 games. They should be fine but I wouldn’t put money on it.

Really hope Forest stay up, for no good reason beyond signing 25 off players was so crazy I hope it comes off

Bringing in a load of ageing players on wild contracts always raises the quality of domestic leagues, that’s why the Chinese league is now the best in the world

Agree with the posters saying it’s fair enough - there’s no way they could treat it like a normal red card It’s true that refs allow all sorts of abuse toward them, IMO they shouldn’t allow that either! Be so easy to stamp out, announce it’s a yellow for abusing the refs or surrounding them, enforce it for a few weeks, chuck in some retrospectives yellows if refs don’t do it and it’s sorted by May

That Chelsea team looks like it should be very hard to beat but not a lot of attackers on the pitch for them

The Squad lacks depth. There are only 4 midfielders and 3 start each game - so that’s 2 short minimum There are 6 forwards/wingers but you’d expect to use 5 or 6 every match, and the depth of quality isn’t there either - another 2 players short. RB depends on Ashby, can’t expect Trippier to play both league and potentially European games. CB needs 1 more, potentially a young player - remember when Liverpool risked it and only had 3 CBS, a couple of injuries and their season imploded. GK i think depends on Dubs, if he leaves Then need another backup of sufficient quality So to get the squad up to European competition level still needs about 6, and that’s with keeping on everyone who has contributed this season. It won’t all happen this summer but it’s more than tweaks. Impossible to challenge on multiple fronts without using the full 25 man squads now - especially with the new subs rules hiking the number of players used each match

Whether going to Chelsea was a help or hindrance to potters management career pretty much nobody in his place would have turned it down; a) most managers really believe they are capable of managing a top side (remember fat Sam’s claims about this) so Potter will have had the self belief to go for it b) the guaranteed £££ would have been insane. No idea what Brighton pay but I’d guess he made more in 7 months at Chelsea, including severance, than he’d have got in 10 years at Brighton Poch or Enrique are the only two sensible off that list and you know Enrique wouldn’t last long.

What exactly is the message this would send? The management are loons? Hes got 8 goals in 25 games - 1 in 3, so is scoring in a squad that lacks goals. There are only two strikers in the squad so it’s already too short up front and a replacement would cost £30m at least (Wood cost £25m).

Potter has just made an absolute fortune, and was genuinely terrible at the job, so zero sympathy from me

Good for long term but be crazy to go for potter now, he’ll need a break post Chelsea