Having ventured over, I quite like this postGo check out their thread for the game
Seen one Aussie mag on TikTok saying they were ROBBED
It was clearly a close game. I mean after all losing by 5 goals is clearly close isnt it?
I mean it wasnt like once Barca were 5 goals ahead they went into training mode.
Make them work for it, close the passing lanes, hit them on the break at pace and get bodies in the box for corners. The longer we stay tight the more the pressure will build on their gobshite players. I can see one of them getting a red by the way. Linton or Gordon are my predictions.
www.nytimes.com
More pressure on themPutting the pressure on themselves to get the win against us
‘We let our fans down’: Newcastle and the importance of turning up against Sunderland
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By George Caulkin
March 20, 2026Updated 6:15 am GMT
After losing what Eddie Howe termed their “most important match in our recent history” just days earlier, Newcastle United now face the biggest game of their season.
This is the inherent paradox of the Tyne-Wear derby, a mucky, cacophonous little fixture a million miles away from the glitz of a Champions League knockout tie in Barcelona, but which, when it comes to agenda-shaping, mood-shifting and foundation-shaking, remains untouchable.
Sunderland are lurking and, perhaps for the first time under Howe’s management, Newcastle are in deficit, needing a response (yet again) after a chastening night in Europe. But more than that, they need a win. In the reverse fixture at the Stadium of Light three months ago, they got it all wrong: tone, attitude, setup, execution, result — a huge divergence from the basic standards expected by their supporters.
“We let our fans down,” a senior figure in the dressing room says, speaking under the condition of anonymity to The Athletic to protect relationships. “We can’t afford to do that again.”
Newcastle were not united, but untied; undercooked and picked apart by their local rivals. A repeat in Sunday’s rematch would blitz any possible mitigation. As Howe put it to reporters after the 8-3 aggregate defeat to Barcelona: “We’ve got to play as if our lives depend upon it”, which did not feel like an overstatement.
A decade on from Sunderland’s previous visit to St James’ Park — and 16 years after Newcastle last beat them there — the stakes are high, less in terms of tangible reward, but for the usual things like bragging rights and local pride and one-upmanship. Layered on top of that, in thick, heavy slices, is momentum: either positive or negative.
There have been some dark and difficult moments along the way: off-days, poor performances and slack defeats as a team of disruptors attempt to embed themselves among the elite. Howe’s first excursion into the Champions League stretched the squad to translucency, while executive churn, financial restrictions and then a summer of carnage in the transfer market have been challenges to overcome. This season has often felt like a test of endurance.
At home to Brentford and then Everton last month, boos greeted the final whistle, a jarring sound that spoke of weary frustration; so many games, so many familiar failings for a transitional side lacking a focal point and a clear identity, who had been fighting across four fronts and were now losing and flailing. Yet this was a shared experience, somehow, not two camps pitted against each other.
Something similar applied to Newcastle’s first appearance in the Carabao Cup final in 2023, when they lost 2-0 to Manchester United. The team were meek in defeat, but after a weekend carousing and communing in central London, Newcastle fans arrived at Wembley with a collective hangover. Emotionally, everyone was spent. It had felt like a generational moment, but the outcome was familiar. A resolution was made: next time, it won’t be like this.
On Wearside on December 14, Newcastle lost 1-0. The derby was sandwiched between a Champions League fixture away to Bayer Leverkusen and a Carabao Cup quarter-final at home to Fulham. From an academic perspective, the notion of priorities became interesting; silverware to defend, Europe and prestige and financial gain to consider, versus a grotty, parochial skirmish with a newly-promoted side. Hadn’t Newcastle outgrown this?
And then the match kicked off, Newcastle were passive and on the back foot, and the idea of football as an academic exercise was obliterated. Nick Woltemade’s headed own-goal was a stunning, gory encapsulation of self-harm. The brutal lesson: if playing Sunderland wasn’t actually their priority this season, they still had to perform as though it was. They still had to make a tackle, to commit themselves, to impose themselves.
“During Eddie’s reign, there have been defeats and bad days, but I can’t actually think of another specific occasion when this team has felt miles away from the minimum expectation in terms of effort and intent,” Lisa Mole, the chair of Newcastle United Supporters Trust, tells The Athletic. “Even when they’ve lost games, most of the time they’ve still shown the basics — energy, aggression, trying to impose themselves, having a proper go.
“That’s why the reverse fixture stood out so much. It wasn’t just the result, it was the feeling that the tone of the game was wrong from a Newcastle perspective — like the team never really connected with what the occasion demanded.”“
Post-takeover, the first team have led everything at Newcastle; a steely band of runners and swarmers pulling the rest of the club along in their wake, reforging what it stood for. This was a role-reversal, an outlier. They did not seem to get it.
This disconnect lingered.
Bruno Guimaraes, Newcastle’s captain, told reporters after the match: “The whole message in the changing room today was, ‘Do it for the fans’ and we didn’t. It’s so embarrassing for me and frustrating, because we know we have a better team than them.” He called the performance “a mess”, and it came with an addendum. “We were not there,“ he said. “No shooting, no crossing, no passing.”
While Guimaraes later softened his emotional language on social media, it brought a mild if pointed retort from Howe.
“I don’t think the other parts of his original comments were wrong, but we weren’t a mess,” he said to journalists. “We were very well organised. We just didn’t deliver the performance that we wanted to.”
According to the same senior figure quoted earlier, it wasn’t a lack of energy or endeavour or focus that did for Newcastle, but rather the opposite. This reading feels counterintuitive, but to their mind, the proximity of Wednesday’s match in Barcelona “might help us not to overhype it, as happened in the first game”, although, admittedly, this was from a conversation that took place before that harrowing result at the Camp Nou.
Howe had spoken a lot before that first Sunderland fixture about Newcastle’s “arousal levels”. “If you don’t get the arousal levels right and you hype the players up too much, we can go out and not perform, because we’re overthinking things, we’re not playing the game, we’re playing the atmosphere, and you need cool heads,” he said. “You also need to have the fire in there. If the fire’s not there in this type of game, then you’re not going to perform either.”
Fire? There was barely a flicker. Arousal levels: flaccid.
If there have been too many mini-resets for the comfort of the supporters, a strength of Howe’s Newcastle has been absorbing lessons and responding, at least some of the time. For their second Carabao Cup final at Wembley, against Liverpool a year ago, there was ferocity on and off the pitch. They saved themselves for the match. They were ruthless and clinical and finished as deserved 2-1 winners. It is not so easy when you are running on empty, but that is the blueprint.
In the immediate aftermath of Barcelona, not much was being done to downplay Sunderland.
Asked if Newcastle’s players understood the derby’s significance, Anthony Elanga told the club’s official website: “A hundred per cent. It’s the biggest game of the season. We owe it to the fans, especially after the first time we played Sunderland.” Howe, too, called it “probably the most important game of our league campaign”.
Do they have the capacity to confront it head-on?
“I’ve got no problem with picking myself up, it’s more the players,” Howe said. “I’m able to move quite quickly through the game and the review process, and now it’s all about the future. It’s about Sunderland, learning from (Barcelona) and evolving and changing where we need to. It’s about making sure we’re mentally and physically ready for the next game, which is going to be a huge game for us and the whole city.”
Winning on Sunday would not answer every question about a patchwork side, a team of question marks, an unfinished jigsaw, but it would cement Newcastle’s place in the top half of the Premier League and put them within touching distance of a return to European competition for next season. Everyone could take a breath, and with their demented schedule now reduced to a single competition, Howe will get precious time on the training pitch to work, hone and improve his players. It is where he comes alive.
But lose again? Well, this is where things get murky. An unwieldy game can have unforeseeable consequences. It is not a day to disrespect or underestimate, and this is what the December match felt like, whether wittingly or otherwise. More of that would make the international break that follows feverish and intolerable, “20 days of transfer and managerial speculation to be chewed over, never mind crowing from the red and whites”, as Nufc.com, the independent fan site, put it.
“The point about Sunday is that whatever the result ends up being, Newcastle have to turn up,” says Mole. “The performance has to match the occasion. Fans don’t expect perfection, but they do expect to see a team that understands the moment, plays with intensity and shows they’re ready for the fight. If they do that, the crowd will respond. If they don’t, it becomes a very different atmosphere very quickly.”
Newcastle need to play as if they do, but lives will not depend upon it. Livelihoods are a different matter.
‘We let our fans down’: Newcastle and the importance of turning up against Sunderland
Newcastle face Sunderland on Sunday. They cannot afford another game like the previous one against their neighbours and arch-rivals...
Putting the pressure on themselves to get the win against us
‘We let our fans down’: Newcastle and the importance of turning up against Sunderland
You must log in or register to see images
By George Caulkin
March 20, 2026Updated 6:15 am GMT
After losing what Eddie Howe termed their “most important match in our recent history” just days earlier, Newcastle United now face the biggest game of their season.
This is the inherent paradox of the Tyne-Wear derby, a mucky, cacophonous little fixture a million miles away from the glitz of a Champions League knockout tie in Barcelona, but which, when it comes to agenda-shaping, mood-shifting and foundation-shaking, remains untouchable.
Sunderland are lurking and, perhaps for the first time under Howe’s management, Newcastle are in deficit, needing a response (yet again) after a chastening night in Europe. But more than that, they need a win. In the reverse fixture at the Stadium of Light three months ago, they got it all wrong: tone, attitude, setup, execution, result — a huge divergence from the basic standards expected by their supporters.
“We let our fans down,” a senior figure in the dressing room says, speaking under the condition of anonymity to The Athletic to protect relationships. “We can’t afford to do that again.”
Newcastle were not united, but untied; undercooked and picked apart by their local rivals. A repeat in Sunday’s rematch would blitz any possible mitigation. As Howe put it to reporters after the 8-3 aggregate defeat to Barcelona: “We’ve got to play as if our lives depend upon it”, which did not feel like an overstatement.
A decade on from Sunderland’s previous visit to St James’ Park — and 16 years after Newcastle last beat them there — the stakes are high, less in terms of tangible reward, but for the usual things like bragging rights and local pride and one-upmanship. Layered on top of that, in thick, heavy slices, is momentum: either positive or negative.
There have been some dark and difficult moments along the way: off-days, poor performances and slack defeats as a team of disruptors attempt to embed themselves among the elite. Howe’s first excursion into the Champions League stretched the squad to translucency, while executive churn, financial restrictions and then a summer of carnage in the transfer market have been challenges to overcome. This season has often felt like a test of endurance.
At home to Brentford and then Everton last month, boos greeted the final whistle, a jarring sound that spoke of weary frustration; so many games, so many familiar failings for a transitional side lacking a focal point and a clear identity, who had been fighting across four fronts and were now losing and flailing. Yet this was a shared experience, somehow, not two camps pitted against each other.
Something similar applied to Newcastle’s first appearance in the Carabao Cup final in 2023, when they lost 2-0 to Manchester United. The team were meek in defeat, but after a weekend carousing and communing in central London, Newcastle fans arrived at Wembley with a collective hangover. Emotionally, everyone was spent. It had felt like a generational moment, but the outcome was familiar. A resolution was made: next time, it won’t be like this.
On Wearside on December 14, Newcastle lost 1-0. The derby was sandwiched between a Champions League fixture away to Bayer Leverkusen and a Carabao Cup quarter-final at home to Fulham. From an academic perspective, the notion of priorities became interesting; silverware to defend, Europe and prestige and financial gain to consider, versus a grotty, parochial skirmish with a newly-promoted side. Hadn’t Newcastle outgrown this?
And then the match kicked off, Newcastle were passive and on the back foot, and the idea of football as an academic exercise was obliterated. Nick Woltemade’s headed own-goal was a stunning, gory encapsulation of self-harm. The brutal lesson: if playing Sunderland wasn’t actually their priority this season, they still had to perform as though it was. They still had to make a tackle, to commit themselves, to impose themselves.
“During Eddie’s reign, there have been defeats and bad days, but I can’t actually think of another specific occasion when this team has felt miles away from the minimum expectation in terms of effort and intent,” Lisa Mole, the chair of Newcastle United Supporters Trust, tells The Athletic. “Even when they’ve lost games, most of the time they’ve still shown the basics — energy, aggression, trying to impose themselves, having a proper go.
“That’s why the reverse fixture stood out so much. It wasn’t just the result, it was the feeling that the tone of the game was wrong from a Newcastle perspective — like the team never really connected with what the occasion demanded.”“
Post-takeover, the first team have led everything at Newcastle; a steely band of runners and swarmers pulling the rest of the club along in their wake, reforging what it stood for. This was a role-reversal, an outlier. They did not seem to get it.
This disconnect lingered.
Bruno Guimaraes, Newcastle’s captain, told reporters after the match: “The whole message in the changing room today was, ‘Do it for the fans’ and we didn’t. It’s so embarrassing for me and frustrating, because we know we have a better team than them.” He called the performance “a mess”, and it came with an addendum. “We were not there,“ he said. “No shooting, no crossing, no passing.”
While Guimaraes later softened his emotional language on social media, it brought a mild if pointed retort from Howe.
“I don’t think the other parts of his original comments were wrong, but we weren’t a mess,” he said to journalists. “We were very well organised. We just didn’t deliver the performance that we wanted to.”
According to the same senior figure quoted earlier, it wasn’t a lack of energy or endeavour or focus that did for Newcastle, but rather the opposite. This reading feels counterintuitive, but to their mind, the proximity of Wednesday’s match in Barcelona “might help us not to overhype it, as happened in the first game”, although, admittedly, this was from a conversation that took place before that harrowing result at the Camp Nou.
Howe had spoken a lot before that first Sunderland fixture about Newcastle’s “arousal levels”. “If you don’t get the arousal levels right and you hype the players up too much, we can go out and not perform, because we’re overthinking things, we’re not playing the game, we’re playing the atmosphere, and you need cool heads,” he said. “You also need to have the fire in there. If the fire’s not there in this type of game, then you’re not going to perform either.”
Fire? There was barely a flicker. Arousal levels: flaccid.
If there have been too many mini-resets for the comfort of the supporters, a strength of Howe’s Newcastle has been absorbing lessons and responding, at least some of the time. For their second Carabao Cup final at Wembley, against Liverpool a year ago, there was ferocity on and off the pitch. They saved themselves for the match. They were ruthless and clinical and finished as deserved 2-1 winners. It is not so easy when you are running on empty, but that is the blueprint.
In the immediate aftermath of Barcelona, not much was being done to downplay Sunderland.
Asked if Newcastle’s players understood the derby’s significance, Anthony Elanga told the club’s official website: “A hundred per cent. It’s the biggest game of the season. We owe it to the fans, especially after the first time we played Sunderland.” Howe, too, called it “probably the most important game of our league campaign”.
Do they have the capacity to confront it head-on?
“I’ve got no problem with picking myself up, it’s more the players,” Howe said. “I’m able to move quite quickly through the game and the review process, and now it’s all about the future. It’s about Sunderland, learning from (Barcelona) and evolving and changing where we need to. It’s about making sure we’re mentally and physically ready for the next game, which is going to be a huge game for us and the whole city.”
Winning on Sunday would not answer every question about a patchwork side, a team of question marks, an unfinished jigsaw, but it would cement Newcastle’s place in the top half of the Premier League and put them within touching distance of a return to European competition for next season. Everyone could take a breath, and with their demented schedule now reduced to a single competition, Howe will get precious time on the training pitch to work, hone and improve his players. It is where he comes alive.
But lose again? Well, this is where things get murky. An unwieldy game can have unforeseeable consequences. It is not a day to disrespect or underestimate, and this is what the December match felt like, whether wittingly or otherwise. More of that would make the international break that follows feverish and intolerable, “20 days of transfer and managerial speculation to be chewed over, never mind crowing from the red and whites”, as Nufc.com, the independent fan site, put it.
“The point about Sunday is that whatever the result ends up being, Newcastle have to turn up,” says Mole. “The performance has to match the occasion. Fans don’t expect perfection, but they do expect to see a team that understands the moment, plays with intensity and shows they’re ready for the fight. If they do that, the crowd will respond. If they don’t, it becomes a very different atmosphere very quickly.”
Newcastle need to play as if they do, but lives will not depend upon it. Livelihoods are a different matter.
‘We let our fans down’: Newcastle and the importance of turning up against Sunderland
Newcastle face Sunderland on Sunday. They cannot afford another game like the previous one against their neighbours and arch-rivals...
No surprise...Shearer's best mate....he rarely has anything good to say about us.
