TheBrownBottle

‘Charlie is stable’ was never true at any point

Almost as if that has something to do with their midfielders being accurate in their passing ability.

That’s true. I mean, you’d think the owners would have the change to pay for a new surface, especially as it’s PSR-neutral. Almost as if …

No idea whose idea it was, but that isn’t a stadium built for football - and it’s not even in Newcastle. We shouldn’t be playing south of the Tyne.

There’s no guarantee we’re getting Conference League

If he won’t sign a new contract then this is the last summer when we can seriously cash in on him. Ball is in his court.

I reckon I’d expect more output playing in a weaker league than what he was racking up in England (which was never earth-shattering)

Horrible to hear what his kids have experience, just awful The subject of him coming back is a separate matter, though. He’s spent the last couple of years doing not much in the Saudi, Turkish and Mexican leagues - are people serious in thinking he’d do a job in the PL? I’d say what he has achieved since is proof of the correctness of Howe’s decision

He just had too many better centre halves ahead of him - but all the best to the lad

Someone posted a video of his goals for Brentford a couple of pages back it that seemed to be a hallmark of most of his goals in all honesty. Mind, score 20+ bundled tap-ins a season and I’ll be ok with that! The problem is if he isn’t scoring regularly, then he’s just strolling about and chewing gum …

Yeah, I thought he got it pretty spot-on - it was a disastrous two-minute collective switch-off which caused it to unravel Second half was a poor showing for me

I put ‘Happy with him but I have some gripes’ if it needs to be open

Which is fair enough - but if Howe requires it for his methods to work, then he’s hit his managerial ceiling

You do understand that this is not an argument in favour of Howe being a manager who should be at a club with ambitions of being in Europe consistently? As long as we’re out of the cups quickly and have no European football then everything will be tickety-boo?

Literally no-one has said it is similar to the Ashley era

Completely disagree

We are literally no closer now than when Ashley bought the club. In the 2008 Deloitte rich list, NUFC were the 17th richest club in the world based on turnover. In the 2026 rich list, NUFC are … *drum roll* … 17th. Most of us grown ups have seen this before - we are miles away from being no.1 or even being talked about in that bracket. edit: the point being that NUFC is roughly where it should be without the depressive effects of Ashley. To get to the elite clubs, the club would need a steroid-style injection of serious cash invested in infrastructure as well as shitloads of commercial deals on everything we can. We’re nearly half a decade in and there’s nowt on most of those fronts. We’re achieving what could be achieved with any owner that isn’t Ashley.

I still think the owners are the ones who created the expectations in the first place. I’ve seen more members of the owner group and the executives talking about being ‘number one’ and competing for the title than I have any supporters. It ramps up the pressure on the manager regardless of wider context (PSR etc). The press also do a dogshit job (no surprises) of explaining PSR and estimating headroom. I’ve seen Custis and Hope in the last day go on about signing players - Custis admitting he didn’t know how it worked in the same sentence. It’s not fucking rocket science.

Defenders (and goalkeepers) are defined by their mistakes - all can make them, but the fewer you make the better you are. The lad looks rick-prone, though I still think Trippier had more to do with the second goal.

Fucking hell I thought the smiley face would be enough to show I’m not being serious. I’ve never been arsed about Ekitike, I think he’s a cunt.

Which he isn’t. Tonali is 26th in the PL in terms of mins played by midfielders. Szloboslai, Wirtz and Gravenberch - who all played against us - have all played a lot more mins than Tonali this season and I haven’t seen this excuse offered up for them. He’s been shite for a while and is completely out of form, yet we’ll pick him every time regardless. The problem is players being undroppable.

I honestly don’t understand what you’re talking about here - what politics? Which defectors?

Can’t help thinking that we’d have been better off taking the money used on Woltemade to secure a transfer agreement for Ekitike, then taking Wissa’s TF & salary and offering them to Ekitike. I’m confident if we’d offered Ekitike £10m a year more than Liverpool he’d have considered signing

How much did he have last night, then?

Get messel in the shop window, la