I have just been keeping on top of emails as and when I could. It’s weird I am burning up but freezing cold aswell. No cough though. I do have a sore throat. Dizzy.
What a pile of ****. Anderson looked decent in spells. Murphy looked dog ****. Wood looked worse than dog ****, Joelinton didn't exactly pull up any trees, Trips at fault for the goal and a glaring lack of being able to move up the gears throughout.
I really hope against Benfica he learns to play the utter **** team one half and the half decent team the other half rather than trying to mix it up like a blind kid at the pick n mix.
From what I gathered from the match is that we seem to hold the ball better (bound to happen upgrading players like Bruno) but struggled with creativity. Was impressed with Anderson really hope we don’t send him out on loan.
Only a friendly so don't want to overblow it but I do feel we were punching well above our level last season and that the reality of this squad is somewhere between the 1st half season disaster and the 2nd half season revival. We've seen enough of Murphy, Ritchie, Shelvey, Lascelles, Wood, Dummett, Krafth, Longstaff, etc. to see what level they're at and whilst it's not possible to swap your entire team, some of these names should be nowhere near a PL team with ambitions of top 8. Better to get these eye-openers in now, hopefully the board/manager will act with a lot more urgency.
I completely agree that list of players simply isn't good enough. The fact there's folk out there that still keep thinking the are of any use I find startling. They're dross
This has been the bedrock of Newcastle for the best part of a decade. Hopefully Howe doesn't think Almiron, Fraser, Murphy, Shelvey, Wood and even arguably ASM are the answer. We've all been let down by that solution multiple times in the past.
There was some half decent build up play and a few times where the final ball played was executed well but just blocked at the last second before reaching its intended target. Good defending as opposed to poor play. That being said, the intended target was Chris Wood and he was just a great big puddle of wet dog ****.
