TheBrownBottle

Missed more big penalties for us than he scored, unfortunately.

Could we see him actually play a few games back to back for the first time in what feels like years before this shite starts up?

Tbf which club listens to their support re which players to sign?

Everton at home last season & Fulham at home last season?

Crackers if this is the case, and I’ll never fully understand football fans wetting their knickers over transfer fees.

No-one said that. Plenty of us said he was very shaky on his debut vs Liverpool - which he was.

Playing with two centre forwards helps - and so did playing against the absolute pish which made up English football’s defences in the mid-90s. Having said that, I really don’t like inverted wingers - and I think the likes of Gordon offer very little cutting inside.

Pope has stopped doing the sweeper-keeper role of late - not sure if it’s age, instruction or insecurity. Which isn’t helping as we’re dropping deeper as a result. I’m really surprised that Howe hasn’t tried Ramsdale yet, but I’ll happily say he knows far better than I do.

Sitting deep to cover your goalkeeper’s inability to kick a football in a straight line and ceding possession at the drop of a hat isn’t outstanding defending. We’ve been playing cagey, defensive football all season and reaped the rewards for it. But we’ll be fine this season, I’ve no doubt about that. I’m just not going to deny what’s been in front of me.

I don’t think the performances have been there, and nor have the results. We look absolutely toothless upfront, shaky at the back and the midfield disappears with frightening regularity. But we’ve seen this before with Howe’s teams and it is early days yet - more than 90% of the season is still to go. We should be a long way away from questioning Howe at this point.

Arsenal’s wasteful tappy-tappy fannying about (with the accompanying soft as shite play acting) turns me into Allardyce every time we play them. I love watching us rough them up.

PIF gave Musk the money to buy Twitter and undermine western democracy, so any daft cunt on that platform hasn’t got a leg to stand on on that front

Nothing worse than a football ground in an industrial estate with a fuck off car park. Derby’s new ground instantly springs to mind on that front - I went to the Baseball Ground a couple of times and loved the feel of the place; then going to Pride Park in Xmas ‘97 and being concerned that the future of football was flat pack stadia in the middle of nowhere. It’s why I smile when people talk about football selling its soul recently - it’s been going on for decades.

The 2025 NE Journalists ‘No Shit Sherlock’ award winner

Born in Newcastle, and lived there until I was in my late 30s coming up to a decade ago. ST holder for a couple of decades. Never got glassy eyed re SJP - it doesn’t even look like the ground I started going to. The club is the support, not the ground. I’m not attached to SJP, and never was. The only parameters for a stadium for me is that it must be in Newcastle. edit: I never liked the ‘cathedral on the hill’ stuff either, miserable bastard that I am - proper George Caulkin doing diluted Nick Hornsby stuff.

Agreed mate

They did - and yes, they didn’t up with a Scrooge McDuck-style piggy bank. But they aren’t a big club, and football didn’t have the world wide reach back then. Today, it’s a different story. Adidas pay what they do because they know they can sell bucketloads of tat to the support - and the club gets a tiny share of that (usually c.7%, not sure what the exact terms are on our deal).

Fair dos

I’d like to, but who could argue with him? His grasp of football and grammar tells me that he must be expert in all things

Rogan Taylor back in the ‘90s used to argue that clubs would make far more money if they manufactured their own kit - or outsourced directly themselves. I suspect he’d still be right.

I’m a civil estimator who runs a team of more than two dozen estimators on multi-billion projects. I can say with reasonable confidence that they haven’t gone up that much.

I know it’s not rocket science; but your holiday home isn’t impacted by PSR, so there is no direct correlation.

It was one of the rulings post-Man City’s legal case vs the PL that interest on club debts are included in PSR calcs - though if not then this isn’t an issue.

It’s not clear at all. Why would a stadium built in the cheapest part of the mainland UK to build cost almost double the most expensive stadium in British history?

We don’t know that tbf. Other clubs have managed it.