TheBrownBottle

Expectations aren’t being managed if you’re aiming to finish higher. This is likely to be a much tougher season than last year. Some players are likely to ‘return to the mean’, other clubs will be used to our players and style of play, there’s more games (tough ones), other clubs now view us as a big game, etc etc.

They should be - it’s about right. Top 8 minimum, then as high as possible above that.

I do find the whining for a new contract more annoying than his form dip tbh - the timing is spectacularly poor. There’s an excellent player there in Bruno, and form dips do occur - hopefully this one ends soon.

Sorry, which trophy were we playing for today? Post-match adrenaline overpowering the other senses a bit here. The trophy drought pisses us all off, but NUFC aren’t winning the PL this season - nor were they likely to before today. Howe’s got us back up amongst it - and while I think today was one of those days where Howe got a few things wrong, I think he’s proven he’ll get the vast majority of things right.

That’s precisely what I was implying

If I had a mild criticism of Howe, rather tactics it would be that I was anticipating exactly those subs at exactly those moments - and if I’m anticipating it, Klopp will definitely anticipate it. Sometimes the subs seemed to be made regardless of what’s happening in front of us. Ah well, one of those days - we’ll win more than we lose this season.

Love how Burn is copping the blame for the Liverpool winner, when it was a brainless half-arsed pass which caught the back line pushing up

Inevitable. Stupid lazy pass by Bruno

Twice you’ve written this now. Keep your wig on. You’re talking about the bloke who has us competing witn this lot

Botman needs to clear his lines like

How much ‘state funding’ have we actually received? There will be a current investment figure. I bet it’s still in the tens of millions. Rather less than when Real Madrid sold its training ground to the Spanish govt to pay for a nine-figure debt.

Yeah, I think that’s right. Wilson is right up there in terms of my favourite no.9s for NUFC, but he was very low risk (other than injury record)

The actual top six, not the Sky Six

Aye, like that Ali Dia bloke at Southampton he looked like a Sunday league player who’d blagged his way into a top flight squad. But unlike Dia, he managed to play reasonably regularly. Pingel is the worst player I’ve seen in B&W bar none. Looking at some of the names being cited on here for centre forwards makes me wish I’d been born ten years later - if Rivière and De Jong are as bad as you’ve seen, you’re a lucky sod

Billy Shitehurst was the first NUFC no.9 I ever saw. All uphill from there Pingel is almost impossible to put into words. I’m not even sure grainy VHS tape from that season would really cover it, as TV footage never really shows a player’s performance in the way that watching in the flesh does. He was hopeless on the ball, but he may actually be the worst footballer in history off the ball. Poor fucker was absolutely clueless

Yep, even in the doldrums of the old second division after relegation in 88/89 we had good centre forwards - NUFC generally does. Makes the worst ones look ten times worse - if Pingel had been a centre half, he might only be in the worst five …

Frank Pingel was absolutely fucking horrific. Ball just seemed to bounce off him. I’ve never seen a more lost-looking player on a football pitch.

I suspect any Mag whose memories stretch back to the late ‘70s would have a very different XI. Mine stretches to the mid-late ‘80s and I’m not sure if there’d be many post-‘92. Fumaca was everyone’s favourite joke, but didn’t play enough times to cement his place. Pretty much any XI which could be named over the last 30 years would beat the worst side fielded from ‘88-‘92. Bad signings, on the other, would be pretty much entirely post-‘92 …

Love Willock, me. I still think if he can refind his shooting boots he’s an England squad regular.

The glossy stuff won’t be him - but I can’t imagine a social media handler firing off that reply to NUFC360.

Yep, right bunch of cunts was my memory.

It’s not reflective of my experiences with actual red scousers, either. Always had decent crack with them. The plastics tend to be massive weapons, though.

1 Mackems 2 Leeds 3 Man Utd I’m still a mag of my generation, I think - young’uns will no doubt have other preferences. I always enjoyed the pisstaking with the smoggies - but it always felt like they disliked us far more than we disliked them. Of course, running the gauntlet outside the Riverside was never fun …

Hang on - you’ve just described the current CL …

KSA’s league would still need to justify the expenditure in some way or form. Paying 10x what European clubs will play to persuade a player to sign isn’t sustainable, as the revenue streams won’t ever exist to meet that. So it becomes a case of how long the KSA govt wants to prop this up. Maybe that is forever; I doubt it, though.