TheBrownBottle

Best avoid that pesky European football malarkey then

This is the one which usually makes me scratch my head. Yes, supporters will have their own opinions re who should be in / out of the side, but Howe is clearly going to pick the side he thinks has the best chance of getting a result. If the results aren’t there, the manager will get criticised, of course. But personally I completely saw Howe’s logic re Hall / BDB. And it isn’t as if the back line has been so good this season that the players in it were undroppable. Hall has been off the boil for a while. NB this doesn’t mean I agree with Howe’s comments re Hall. Not sure if they were particularly helpful. But he knows the player; I don’t. Maybe he’s the sort of character who responds to that.

I was responding to: “The sensible amongst us probably balance out what benefit is to be gained from getting “difficult” questions asked/answered and the knowledge gained as opposed to where that leads a further line of questioning and the problems it can create.” You said ‘the sensible amongst us’. I’d dispute that.

They’re meant to be journalists, not supporters. It’s not their job to worry about any of the above.

I still think that some of the other local hacks are pushing him to the front to ask the questions they don’t have the bollocks to ask The problem is that Ryder can mangle the simplest sentence very easily

Remember when Sky tried this American shite back when they first bought the rights to the breakaway PL back in ‘92? It was dropped quickly because it was shite then. And it’s still shite now. Shame on any soppy cunt who told the club ‘that’s a great idea’.

Net spend is hardly rubbish; we could’ve chosen to do what Villa did and blown them out of the water. We chose to spend our money on fees and not escalating wages. Transfer spend and wages come out of the same pot

it really doesn’t, UEFA are such little tinkers

Only if Villa finish 5th. If they finish 4th then - hilariously - England loses a place

PSR is another perfectly valid reason not to. One of the great ironies of the team’s disastrous performance this season is that it’s made it pretty much impossible to sack the manager without risking breaching PSR

in all seriousness, I think we’ll win and it’ll be tight. 2-1 to us.

They’ve got a massive European game a couple of days before, and have a small squad, so if I’ve understood how this works, they can’t possibly put in any kind of performance against us, and we’ll be aal owa them 4-0 to us

The designs were class. The quality? Those early batches were terrible - my blue star home shirt that I got at the end of 92/93 was clicked to buggery within weeks They fixed the issue later so that the blue away and green third kit tops I had didn’t click at all

Ah, got you - thought you meant former NUFC managers. Pep has never managed in a derby where the local rivals are also both club’s biggest rivals - he’s never experienced anything like that. Man City aren’t the club Man Utd want to beat the most. I wonder if he’d have said similar about games vs R Madrid when he was at Barcelona? The North London Derby is as wet as they come tbh - and Spurs weren’t anywhere near Arsenal for most of the time when Wenger was there. We definitely looked like we weren’t playing with much pressure on us in those matches - both performances were limp. We didn’t look like a side folding under pressure - we looked like a side who didn’t realise there was pressure.

Like who?

Tbh this is the only thing re NUFC where anyone not from an NE postcode should keep their opinions very firmly to themselves. If you think that surrendering to that lot twice in a season (they weren’t just losses, they were pathetic, limp, gutless, cowardly displays of ineptitude) is of no import or is no different to losing to any other side then I’m at a complete loss. They were an absolute disgrace - and the only thing I’ll ever give Gullit credit for is that he walked after a pathetic derby defeat. That’s what actual integrity looks like.

Happy to refer to net spend where appropriate - but it is meaningless when you’ve misspent what was spent. The team was likely to get worse, agreed - but to this extent? No, I don’t think there’s a justification for that. It might actually indicate that Howe’s side was completely reliant on a couple of players if anything - that having a player like Isak massively papered over huge cracks. It’s not indicative of great management.

Named for the suburb of Luz, of course. Which makes the Mackems’ pilfering of it all the stupider.

I know where you’re coming from, but it’s still the name of my city on the name of the club. And if isn’t the supporters’ money that matters, might be worth letting the club know that, as they push up ticket prices again in the poorest region of the mainland UK.

If he’d managed it on a shoestring, I’d be in complete agreement. But he didn’t - this wasn’t a miraculous climb up the table. We’ve spent a crazy amount of money in a short period of time. Par in an ordinary season (assuming that the Sky Six get their shit together) would be about 7th. I’d say the absolute minimum would be a top half finish. Howe isn’t being criticised for not achieving what he has previously - he’s being criticised for overseeing a league season on a par with some of our worst since the PL breakaway, despite spending a quarter of a billion last summer to try and improve the squad.

Also seems to be the scenario which hasn’t been well contemplated. If the trend continues as it has, then - after spending the summer budget - he’ll be out before Xmas. That ‘credit in the bank’ has disappeared, and he’s back to having to prove himself. What should be hoped is that this time he has actually learned some lessons. There is no justification for watching the turgid shite we’ve witnessed this season. It would be great if he can get everything back on track. It probably helps that some of the pressure is lifted - it’s pretty obvious at this point that he isn’t ‘elite’, so expectations re the club can be corrected. PIF and that daft Canadian knacker aren’t serious, so they can happily be tuned-out going forwards.

I don’t think winning the UEFA Cup is more difficult, but I do think it’s far more prestigious than a league cup win

I’d revisit this at the end of May - if they win the UEFA Cup it’ll surpass what we’ve done.

Complete wet fart of a second half - funny thing is that you know Ossie wouldn’t have said ‘just sit on it lads, tuck in tight and don’t give them space’