mondonewc

Maddison and Van Der Veen both out until New Year, Maddison could be for as long as 3 months.

@jack jshared it here Hadn't realised he'd shared the link there as well before me lol, just got excited when a found it and came to this thread first

Just FYI, Man U are priced around 2/1 to qualify and we are 9/4 so basically nothing in it according to the bookies.

Seemed like they didn't care at all. I had fun getting in the home end, got there about an hour early, got scanned in for the South Stand, and then told I had to go back out and walk around to the North Stand... you can see how this is going to go wrong! So obviously get to the North Stand and the ticket won't let me scan in twice, not speaking English and keeping my head down to get in the ground going really well ffs (Had probably 6-7 beers at this time and can handle my water so wasn't just being a moron ) Got sent somewhere to get it fixed and the guy at first didn't seem like he had any interest in helping, thankfully kept cool and he finally co-operated, then we have to go through the rigmarole of the huge queue and search etc again (3rd time now). Such a sweat on the last attempt thinking good chance not getting in, would've put a real dampener on the trip not getting in for this reason. Finally got in and sorted with about 5 minutes to spare, loads of people wearing Newcastle tops, singing in the stands etc, was mental, think it might've gotten nasty if the result had gone differently.

I realise this isn't "match atmosphere" specific lol so there was maybe a better channel to post it in but enjoy anyways

On a more positive note, this was fucking amazing from Keith Barrett, what a legend! (Would love to see the full version if someone can find it)

He didn't mishear haha.... Kraft and Dummett at the back duh duh... Tino on the overlap duh duh... Ritchie's staying 10 more years duh duh... Geordie boys are on the beers duh duh...

I was in the home end and it was surreal, black and white everywhere, people singing Toon songs on the terraces, Dortmund fans didn't give a fuck, seemed to just think we were nuts lol. Half time we took over the place, was class. Away end seemed real quite in 2nd half, as mentioned heard there was a lot of bother and bunch of fighting, no fucking need.

Imagine thinking two years ago we could be in the Champions League, play Dortmund away, and have 10+ first team players missing through injury and still be competitive. No complaints, we go again!

Top boy, was on our flight out from Manchester, must've took pictures with 100 people and looked like he loved doing every one of them, chatted with him for a bit and super humble, nice person, legend!

In order of league table for goal difference: Spurs +13 Arsenal +15 City +15 Liverpool +14 Villa +12 Them cunts -4 Us +15 They're a fucking myth man, so lucky it's unreal.

How is Paulinha serious, so poor jesus!

Paddy Power has us and Chelsea both priced up at 10/3 to win the whole thing, we are best priced 4/1, them 7/2. Imagine the absolute scenes if we beat Liverpool in the final. ONE TIME MAN!

Chelsea's home record is terrible, the sweat is real, we can do these for sure.

What a night!

What a first half performance, Livramento looks class, great goal Hall as well, so good!

Apologies as convo moved on little but just to follow up... Regards a DM, it would be interesting if thats the plan after splashing out on Tonali. We are pretty stacked for midfielders for the to be a priority. Think for both this and striker point you suggested, its super important to get the balance right and have 20-22 players feeling there's genuine competition for places. Let's say we sign a striker, what would you have in mind? We play with one Striker so its going to cause a major problem for example if Wilson thought be was 3rd in the pecking order, dont think he would accept that and nor do I think we want to risk losing him at this stage when he's doing an amazing job for us and still crushing. I agree we want an upgrade in Miggy position, think Miggy/Murphy combo makes new #1 GK role slightly higher priority but no strong opinion on that. I would imagine next season Hall will be a lot more involved and thus Burn becomes good option for backup CB. I don't have a huge depth of knowledge on GK's outside of the Premier League, but I'm sure there's enough top class GK's who we can attract to the club that we could find one who's right to upgrade the position, with Pope hopefully staying as backup.

As a football fan, solely looking at the two games in isolation without the future impact results can have, I really can't get my head around how Arsenal next Saturday is so much more important than this game on Wednesday. Of course, those other factors matter, but for people to be happy to just basically sack this game off is absurd to me. If we win we are three games away from lifting the cup and we've knocked out two of the favourites to win it, I don't give a shit that it's "only" the Carabao Cup, we haven't won nowt for fucking forever, as if we can be picky! It's a stretch but I'd go as far as to say there's an argument that this game is bigger than Dortmund the following week, getting that monkey off our back and winning a trophy is fucking monumental for this club, the players, the staff, everyone. Would absolutely love it if we go there and do them on Wednesday.

We just paid 30+ million twice to add two backup players to the squad, albeit with the hope of both having high future potential, I can't see why we wouldn't then happily pay 50-60m for the right goalkeeper if we can find him, in such a crucial position.

What would he be a scapegoat for? We are doing amazing, few if any thought after two years that we'd have got this far so quickly, and very few I believe genuinely think we're going to become the new Man City within the next couple of years, it's clearly not realistic, we are on a long journey and there'll be many highs and lows to come. Personally, I think it's fine to discuss who we should aim to improve on to make those next steps, 100% we should be supporting the players we have, not berating them if they make one mistake and such nonsense like that, but having a discussion of how we can improve seems reasonable to me. People will have different opinions on what's the best approach to get us to where we want to be, if like myself you want to mainly focus on improving the first 11, which of course also improves the squad overall, then it's very difficult to make an argument that Pope shouldn't be high up on that list.

Top top performance today, what a player!

I have zero interest in searching for a scapegoat to blame for us not winning today. However, I genuinely have no idea where people are coming from to be so defensive regards Pope, yes he's been a good keeper in his time here, yes he seems like an all-round good egg, but if we're aiming to become a legitimate force and actually compete to win things he's not part of that future, I don't even see how that's debatable? A question to those who think Pope is great and feel questioning his position is wrong, who are you suggesting we upgrade prior to addressing him? Possibly Miggy and Burn, nobody else surely? His distribution from his feet is poor, every time he has the ball at his feet and he's being pressured he looks so uncomfortable, this today with punching for no reason when he can catch is a common occurrence, it happened Wednesday and again tonight, and tonight we got punished for it. I have zero interest in attacking Nick Pope, I appreciate all he's done for the club to get us to this stage, but if we have the money we believe we have and we continue to strive to be better he will have to be replaced, that doesn't make us bad fans or lacking loyalty to have this mindset, it's just logical!

We can 100% go there and turn them over in two weeks. Bookies have us and Dortmund as joint 2nd fav to qualify now at evens, we can definitely still get through this group, and I wouldn't be too disappointed with 3rd either, European football in the New Year and in a competition we actually have a realistic chance of going very deep in and competing to win it. Chins up, we go again!

@IsaakAs said, be careful with Uber, speaking from experience outside of major cities it's definitely not guaranteed you'll get one. And top man @LFEE, amazing gesture, nice one!

I wouldn't be against signing him, think he's better than many give him credit for. He's had spells of being a very good player so if Howe and Co. thought he was the way to go I'd be fully on board, as I say though, do think it's much more likely just lazy journalism.