McEwan

He's starting today!

Yeah, I didn't see the logic of leaving Hayden out of the squad in favor of a 5th keeper. Even if he's basically crap, you'd think a backup DM would be more useful and there are times when you might have him on the bench depending on injuries and suspensions. Whereas there is truly no point in carrying 5 keepers on the 25-man squad.

Good with his feet today but he didn't have to make one single save, let's not get carried away.

Emergency CB Joelinton?

It's going to be Mourinho, isn't it.

No CBs on the bench (Alex Murphy I guess would be the only possibility?)

Hayden had an assist for Jamaica today and played the whole match.

Why couldn't we loan him out and split the wages with the loanee team? Even splitting it unevenly, it would be better than us paying him the full amount to do nothing as we are now.

He's played in at least one recent game for the under-21s. https://www.newcastleunited.com/en/news/halifax-town-1-newcastle-united-under-21s-2

Under normal circumstances it's hard to see a young manager of a good PL team wanting to leave to manage England. But if Howe thinks he's likely to be sacked this season or in the summer, then it makes sense for him to get in front of it and take the England job now. Then he'd have a guaranteed job through the summer of 2026 and unless 2026 is a disaster, likely the summer of 2028 at which point he can see what's available. If he stays at Newcastle and does get sacked, it may be hard to find something comparable. But in any case I think the fee the PIF would want for Howe would be too high for the FA anyway.

Why does that have to be the case? Why can't they have a different list of pen-takers for each game depending on the matchup against the opposing keeper? Gordon might be a better penalty-taker against most keepers but in this case, Pickford probably has some advantage against him being his former club teammate and current country teammate.

If this link is true, NUFC still owes him around ~$2m all together for the rest of this season and next season. He'll never make anywhere near that much again, so there's not much incentive for him to take anything less. https://www.spotrac.com/epl/player/_/id/15450/isaac-hayden

Games like this are why I would have even kept Isaac Hayden in the squad rather than a 5th keeper.