TheBrownBottle

I’m not willing to put everything down to bad luck, and I’m also not willing to pin everything on Howe’s methods. I don’t like it all being pinned on ‘bad luck’, because that’s unlikely to fix owt. I do think the truth will be somewhere between the two - Howe’s version of gegenpressing must require unbelievable fitness levels and have high demands of the body even of professional athletes. But some of the injuries we’ve had have also just been rotten luck.

I was there that day! Rob Lee howitzer with a couple of mins left, too edit: what should have been an enjoyably mad game was ruined by a lot of racist chanting from the Newcastle end. ‘Town full of p***s’. Fucking abysmal

I'm going to add a happy one - Steve Walsh's bizarre tackle / backpass OG, Leicester away final day of the 91/92 season. It sent me and my cousins crackers in my granddad's kitchen - he jumped and smashed the radio by knocking it off the table (or he broke the wireless in the scullery, as he would have said). Had to scramble into the living room to check on Grandstand that the game had ended. I know we didn't need a winner it turned out, but we didn't know that then ...

For context, we took 12 points from our last eight games (three wins, three draws) - and I'd say that the next eight are roughly equivalent. It is probably the teams coming up behind us that we need to be more worried about than WHU, in all honesty, and we don't actually know how many points are needed for 7th yet. I still think we might just do it - though not if the injuries continue ...

Nowt worse than megaphones and trumpets

Honestly, I think Schar has been under par for a couple of months. All just opinions, of course.

Sorry, when did this happen?

Local lads always get the most grief - always have done. Schar has been pants for some time, but you’ll not see much on him. Willock has been well below par since his return, but it’s pretty quiet on that front. Longstaff is a bang-average PL midfielder. Our squad is light already, and he’s a HG which is a big necessity for Europe. Unless we’re offered daft money, I don’t see why we’d sell at this point.

Fucking love the ice man, me. He needs wrapping in cotton wool and given any new deal he wants tbh. I still think the Bruno is the more likely ‘big name’ sale in the summer (if there is one). Obviously, would rather that there aren’t any of our better players going.

Ashley continues to fuck us, frankly. The contracts offered seemed crackers even at the time.

It’s Howe protecting the player - and tbf, we don’t need the manager to tell us what we saw

You can’t legislate for what Dummett did - it wasn’t even about Dummett being old or shite, it was fucking brain dead. That should’ve been a reasonably comfortable 1-0, Howe can’t be responsible for informing experienced footballers that doing a cross-face chicken wing on an opposition attacker in the penalty area is suicidal play

I honestly don’t remember a time when that wasn’t a foul. He had him in a headlock man

1) You're making an assumption about a new stadium's capacity 2) Don't know how many different ways this needs to be explained - the issue is corporate revenue including other amenities, not matchday ticket sales. If you think that a new stadium just equals extra season tickets, then you've missed the point entirely. SJP's corporate is not even close to what the Big Six have, and never will be.

But obviously spending hundreds of millions to grab an extra c8k seats - the cheapest in the ground - makes perfect sense. Just say the Gallowgate extension is feasible - the additional ticket revenue would likely be around 5m per season. It would take a similar time to what you've stated to pay for itself. And the FFP reg you've cited would comfortably be covered by adding c.20k seats and vast swathes of additional corporate. TBF, this is all based on failed 'ITK' Ando7, who has stayed away since getting the end of the 2022 summer transfer window completely wrong.

Which may not be the worst thing, tbh - they have went very, very quiet and Bloomberg and the FT were reporting a week or so ago that PIF are having some issues. I don't see how they increase revenue streams to catch the Sky Six other than squeezing the support for more cash if they just extend the Gallowgate. SJP is seriously outdated. I still don't buy it, I'm struggling to see how it can be done without either removing the Metro station - cantilevering over the station would surely be too wide a span.

I'd be interested to see how they'll achieve it tbh And if true, kiss goodbye to entering the 'big six' - it would suggest a drawing back of ambition

Wet Lines (Don't Do It)

the best part of that post was the number of follow-ups pointing out that sunderland had won ... utterly obsessed

Eddie should try playing 'fog man back'

Yep. And it’s no different from what’s went before - the difference being that in the past, the tournaments weren’t as bloated with so many beatable sides. The Euros are a joke at this point. Here’s England’s KO record post-1966: 1968 Yugoslavia (L) 1970 W Germany (L) 1986 Paraguay (W), Argentina (L) 1990 Belgium (W), Cameroon (W) W Germany (L) 1996 Spain (W) Germany (L) 1998 Argentina (L) 2002 Denmark (W) Brazil (L) 2004 Portugal (L) 2006 Ecuador (W) Portugal (L) 2010 Germany (L) 2012 Italy (L) 2016 Iceland (L) 2018 Colombia (W), Sweden (W), Croatia (L) 2020 Germany (W), Ukraine, (W), Denmqrk (W), Italy (L) 2022 Senegal (W), France (L) England in that entire period have beaten major nations twice in KO football - Spain at Euro 96, Germany at Euro 20. Both at Wembley, which likely isn’t coincidence - and that Germany side was utterly shite (Spain at Euro ‘96 weren’t much better). Yugoslavia at Euro ‘68 and Iceland at Euro ‘16 are the only fixtures on that list where the result didn’t go the way most would have expected. We don’t beat better teams, and nothing has changed under Southgate.

Feeling very little confidence for this one, so that’s probably a good thing for all concerned, as my predictions are usually off

Yep, me too. Genuinely think that a fit and firing Isak is the closest I’ve seen to Henry, and he’s got his best years ahead of him. He’s going to be one of the world’s best centre forwards in the coming years - we don’t have anyone else where that applies. Hope he’s with us for the long haul, but no idea if he will be.

Southgate has the benefit of a group of young players who won the U-17, U-20 WCs and U-19 Euros. He’s won knockouts against Colombia, Sweden, Denmark, Ukraine, Senegal and the worst German team since the 1940s - that’s about as favourable as you can get. As soon as we played a genuinely top side - Croatia, Italy, France - we don’t win. Absolutely 100% par for the course in terms of England’s history. England have not historically underachieved - they’ve pretty much always performed broadly to par. They generally reach the knockouts of major tournaments, before losing to the first top side that they meet. They’re middleweights not heavyweights in international football. The difference at the moment is that England have possibly the best available selection in forward positions in world football, yet to watch a Southgate team you’d never know it. That 2016 Iceland team finished above Holland and Turkey in qualifying, and above Portugal in the group stage. They weren’t muppets; that doesn’t mean England played well, but they hardly deserve the implicit disrespect.

Given his availability, it would be for me too. I’ve never been 100% sure on my position re anyone who isn’t English managing England. Can’t be arsed with the xenophobic shite, but I do also think that all national teams should represent the best that the country has to offer in all roles of the game. It makes me uncomfortable when I see African and Asian countries with a European coach (even with successes like Hiddink etc), so it really should be the case that England can find an Englishman to manage them.