TheBrownBottle

I can’t either tbf (from my own perspective I’ve never liked 4-2-3-1 as a formation, either - but that’s entirely personal preference)

*sound of Mackem hoying up horrible takeaway*

Tbf I also don’t make it to Sunderland home matches because of the back shifts at Nissan. That and I fucking hate Sunderland. Oh, I don’t work at Nissan either. Must just be the last point, then.

A ‘double-pivot’ would imply playing deeper than playing as a conventional midfielder - particularly in a 4-2-3-1 rather than an attacking 4-3-3

For me, I don’t think playing that deep gets the best out of Bruno, and Tonali has never played that deep before either. I’d rather push both further forward and get a new holding midfielder to sit behind them

They’ll have distributed the tickets based on those numbers, including any free tickets.

Are we after Toney? Tyneside bookies would have a field day with Trippier, Tonali and Toney knocking about

98/99? Nah, no chance. He wasn’t much cop for me. Just my view, as you have yours. Never looked any good at all under Gullit

Yeah, more a ‘left midfield’ than a winger (Dalglish playing him as if he were Ginola’s replacement hardly helped). My memory on some things are fuzzy - wasn’t Speed a British record transfer paid for a midfielder at that time? Allowing for Gazza’s sale to Lazio and Paul Ince’s to Inter being sales rather than fees paid. It was a big sum of cash.

He was definitely better once moved to the middle for us, but he wasn’t played out of position on the left of midfield. He’d played there every week for Leeds, and a lot of the time for Everton. £5.5m in Jan 1998 was a shitload of money for a midfielder

David F Batty would be above Speed and Cabaye for me. Batty was an excellent footballer - only started to become what we feared in late-stage Dalglish era NUFC.

As a footballer? No chance.

Watched Speed week-in, week-out. No rose-tinted spectacles for me - he was awful for the first couple of seasons, then a good, solid PL midfielder until he left. Was never worth what we paid for him. Excellent pro, not doubts about that.

Cabaye’s above Speed for me, comfortably so.

You think we’d make a profit on Joelinton, Almiron, Wilson and Targett? I don’t think that Krabbe’s valuations look inaccurate tbh. Whether it’s better to sell them or not seems like a reasonable conversation - but none of those valuations looks crackers to me.

I’ve probably missed the point - the SOS looks pretty full there to me?

I love Gordon, I think he’s an excellent winger, and should have received an England squad call-up by now, but I don’t think he’s a particularly good striker

Oof … I think Howe’s achievements at Bournemouth comfortably outrank Postecoglou’s so far. Winning the league with Celtic isn’t exactly a challenge - winning the second division with Bournemouth is definitely more difficult than that. Winning the Asian Cup is … I mean, Qatar just won back to back titles despite being a city-state.

Murphy was on the bench mind - he did have an option today edit: didn’t realise Murphy had a knock. But honestly, even Ritchie for the last few minutes. We can’t just be burning players out

Wooooaah

It’s Australia - there’s probably giant hamsters with venom which could kill the entire population of Morpeth in a single envenomation in the wild out here.

it’s bliss, isn’t it?

Honestly lads and lasses - don’t watch it. At HT I let the dogs out for a lash, made some toast and had a cup of tea (it was 5am here). If you’re watching in the UK, try knocking the sound off the telly, and read a chapter of a book, grab a bottle and listen to some music, take the dog / cat / hamster for a five min walk round the block. Do anything but listen to the tiresome wank coming out of a bunch of bored ex-pros. Your day will be better for it.

If I had a criticism it wouldn’t be selection - it would be running players into the ground well past the point of their endurance. Gordon had ran has race and needed his head to be wobbling when he was jogging back before a sub was made. That’s how you can get fatigue injuries. We’ve got to start identifying earlier that a player is completely spent. We won so as far as I’m concerned Howe got the selection and tactics right.