Match Day Thread Newcastle United v Blackburn

The 'treatment' was time time wasting, by claiming the tape holding his socks up was coming lose and it required the physio(?) to come over and take it off and then tape him up again. I don't think the ref was going to him to tell him to hurry up before that either. I think the keeper was calling him over and complaining about the tape around his socks.

 

FFS
(surely that's his own fault if he can't get dressed properly)

just as well that was at the Gallowgate end and not in front of us the Leazes end was already going ballistic at the ref
as we had seen all the time wasting in the first half and nothing was done

 

The one that flummoxed me was the back pass in the first half. How was that not spotted by the ref?

 

seemingly the law states that the backpass has to be with the foot only - he can hit it with his thigh, knee or shin, but not his foot

 

Oh right. Didn't realise he hadn't kicked it with his foot.

 

no mate definitely thigh-ed it - trust me if the ref got that one wrong I would of slated him more than I had during the game

 

Mitro looked a reet lump.

 

He is, that's a game where he should be murdering their makeshift defence, he never got a kick. The rest of the teams know what a joke this player is.

 

Way too many players rotated Rafa said he didn't regret it but clearly he does.

Gamez ain't up to it, as soon as I saw his name on the line up I feared the worst. With Laecelles, Colback, Gouffran and Gayle out we'd basically removed the spine of the team and it showed. Colback obviously injured, but Gouffran shouldn't have been benched and he should have brought subs on way earlier.

Disappointing from Hayden, missed opportunity for him to stake a first team place.

It's just one loss, but Rafa's gotta learn from this, you can make major changes to the team for cup games, but it ain't safe to do it in the league.

 

The worry is we've got Christmas coming up, there is always a chance of players getting injured, and these are the players who are coming in, players that can't beat a team that will probably get relegated. Some of the players don't have the bottle for playing in front of 52,000 fans sadly, these players need sold in the summer. Perez, Mitrovic, Atsu and Mbemba seem to fall into this category. Still got a lot of tricky away games to come and players got to learn how to play when expected to win. Against Cardiff and Ipswich we knew McCarthy and Warnock would make it difficult for us.

 

Yes but we can handle one or 2 players being out, like when Gayle was out or when we beat Brighton with a few first teamers out, generally injuries should only rob us of a few players not the core of our team. The issue was yesterday he took out that core, and we looked completely different. As well removing the spine, he also took a massive risk putting Gamez in the team which didn't pay off.

Players like Laecelles, Gouffran, Colback and Gayle lift the likes of Atsu and Perez and make them perform better....we only had Shelvey in that leader role yesterday and he had an off day.

From what I saw of Ipswich and Cardiff, they wouldn't be a match for our first team.

The stat that we've won whenever Gouffran has played and not won whenever he hasn't continues...

 

Not all a bad thing for Rafa to see where we still have obvious weaknesses. He's had one transfer window with another coming up in a month. I expect some improvements to be made in January. He's still got £30 million left from the money we made on transfers in the summer.

 

These players could get injured, Brighton game was good, it didn't help yesterday that Shelvey and Ritchie had off days. The whole idea of having a squad is to cope with players being out, some of the players are not fit to wear the shirt on yesterday evidence. Atsu barely played for Everton and Bournemouth for a reason because he's ****, Perez is a bottler and will always bottle it. If were missing average players like Dummett and Colback then that's not promotion to me. 2nd half of the season we have difficult away games and the players can't stomach playing bottom teams at home like Wolves and Blackburn. Can't afford to spend too much more money in this league because we will need it if and when we go up.

 

Desperate times.

 

You're almost as bad as that twat Nev, the one who also screwed up the prediction league!