Checko

Leeds?

Newcastle, Newcastle, Newcastle. Newcastle!

Love how Tonali gets booked for time wasting then still takes another 25 seconds to take the corner.

True, but it's also experience preparing for premier league games and less familiar foreign teams with limited time and extra travelling and fatigue.

I just can't get over how tiny Robertson's right arm is.

One other thing with being in the conference league: it does give the club, and particularly management, more experience of dealing with the extra european workload over a season. Eddie's only had one 6 game European run in his career. Given how it looks like our previous finals experience helped us a lot with the League cup this year, just getting the extra experience would be a good thing. Whether it would be worth it I dunno, but experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

Probably, there was maybe a 30s VAR pause for Isak's disallowed goal. 30-60s for Isak's actual goal as pretty long celebrations. Joelinton/Isak injury a minute and a half at least, probably the same for Sandro when Bruno slid into him. 3 sub instances for Liverpool and 3 for us. Think you add 30s for each of those, plus Isak had gone down for a bit before he went off and Murphy was hobbling around like a limp chicken so maybe even longer for slow subs. Plus bits added here and there for general timewasting.

Still can't believe we actually did a thing!

You do wonder, if we just had Salah at RW how many more points we'd have.

Absolutely, anyone saying 'oh it was just the League Cup' can fuck right off. Put aside getting rid of our Wembley hoodoo, look who wins the League Cup. It's almost always a really top team. It's fucking hard to win it, there are no easy byes against amateurs. And we had to knock out 5 Premier League teams to win this, the worst of which was a solid Brentford team in 11th [at time of the final]. We knocked out the actual top four league teams to win this. We beat a top Arsenal side home and away in the semis, then clearly outplayed the runaway league leaders at Wembley to win this. This was objectively an incredible cup win. Our unique historic baggage just adds that extra layer of momentusness.

One thing we learnt yesterday: turns out the 'old back post to Williamson' move was legit.

I've woken up both hungover and still drunk and I regret nothing.

Eddie Fucking Howe. So pleased for him, he's just a class act.

The week Dan Burn's having you feel like he's probably already bought a winning Euromillions ticket, and tonight he & his wife will probably conceive the second coming of Christ.

FUCKING BLAAAAARAHGELKNMSWD;LF,MSD.SASDLEKNRGKJEBNKJND WJIJE OIWEJOIWE JKHBQWDOIJWE[DPWS;LM,S][DLVCX POWKP# OKJ ]W[ P;L ;OKL 2OK ; EK'; WE,.#[; [3PL24[POKNSD.,M 11!!!!!!¬¬!!!11!111111

Really solid performance so far. We're certainly not blowing them away but we deserve the lead. They're obviously going to have some chances second half, but a Wembley goal, fuck me. Was thinking earlier, all we need is one really good kick from a set piece and then one really good header. And it happened.

I'm going to move the sofa a couple of feet from the wall, huddle behind it poking my head out every few minutes until the end of the game, then spend the rest of the day drinking or masturbating to oblivion, depending on the outcome.

Dunno how Dubs managed to give them the ball in the first place. No need to lose posession there.

I feel like our shooting practice in training is us just trying to shoot at our own feet.

Should be pointed out, where a player commits a foul to stop a promising attack but advantage is played (i.e. the attack isn't stopped) then the player isn't cautioned: "Advantage If the referee plays the advantage for an offence for which a caution/sending-off would have been issued had play been stopped, this caution/sending-off must be issued when the ball is next out of play. However, if the offence was denying the opposing team an obvious goal-scoring opportunity, the player is cautioned for unsporting behaviour; if the offence was interfering with or stopping a promising attack, the player is not cautioned."

Brilliant free kick from Bruno though.

Looks off to me

Pretty boring game tbh. The defensive gameplan is fine and for the most part they didn't seem threatening, but then neither did we. Main issue is we're just so bad at posession football that if there isn't a quick counter on we're completely toothless. It's exactly the same system that's struggled with this for years: one DM comes deep to get the ball, everyone else spread so far apart every pass is risky and there's no-one close to win any second ball. Basically we set up to counter attack when we're trying to pass out and it doesn't work, and has never really worked for posession ball. We need some variety in our offensive game plan. Not just today but in general.

Soup is massively underrated.

We're going to make the Premier League pay for Odysseas!