Another week until the implosion on here potentially. There's always a silver lining. Seriously keep the faith you miserable bastards. Practice what you preach
Freely admit, if we **** up vs Everton, which is entirely a very Newcastle thing to do, I’ll be ****ing fuming. But like every disappointment it’ll pass. And heading into the last day, I’d rather be in our position than Villa, Chelsea or Forest. And I don’t think City will win again this season either.
I think Everton will get something you know. The injury situation, the pressure, the expectation, and a ****housing of some description is all going to merge into one completely distasterous final day. Then the dust will settle and it'll be seen as a fantastic season, we'll see some signings and it'll all be about next season.
Arteta kicking the ball on the pitch to stop us taking a quick throw in...bloke is an absolute bellend.
We've got tindal shushing opposition benches. It's not big deal. Arsenal were desperate today and got lucky.
Second half was disappointing but we were really good in the first half. **** Arsenal, they're gonna win **** all.
Ha, maybe. Point is football, and Newcastle, will just keep moving on, if it’s not UCL next season, it probably will be the following season. If it’s Sesko and not Isak, so be it. I maintain I’ll be furious if we fail, but if we can’t beat Everton with this much on the line then we’re clearly not good enough to qualify. We’re still in the mentality of falling that little bit short; we’re almost out the other side thanks to the LC win, but got a ways to go still.
We only got into the CL hunt because of our second half of the season..it didn't even look like we'd be in it..now we "just" need to beat the scouse mackems at home to secure it, we've done really well.
@Geordie Ginola Still, speaking to Sky Sports, Howe said: “Unfortunately for Callum, none [of the chances] fell to him. But it was a strong performance in his [Isak’s] absence.”
Duals won? Not a fan of such a vague stat..these are selective stats used to convince an already decided opinion. Gordon lost the ball 16 times for example and he's usually got one player on him. They don't provide any information that's sufficient to make any kind of fair assessment. Wilson occupied the cbs and had no service whatsoever. Newcastle were very good 1st half and Wilson was part of that, because occupying two cbs has an impact all over the pitch. Wilson did create the best chance of the game for Newcastle. Sure you can just ignore that though. They all played well and just couldn't get it in the net yesterday. If we played badly I could understand the hate campaign. I'm not saying Wilson isn't well passed his best, but people were already after him before the game started and went after him throughout..not even the players that missed chances he created or that made mistakes... That is notable.
Looking back on it now, this is the best i feel about a defeat all season. It took world class saves and an absolute stunner for Arsenal to win that. Yes we could have played better at the start of the second half but I still reckon if we'd have weathered the 2nd half start from Arsenal, we could have come back into it and found a winner ourselves. What encourages me more is looking at how we shaped up in comparison to Arsenal in all 4 games this season. We have looked better than the consistently 2nd best team in the league over the last 3 years in every meeting. When languishing under Bruce, this really would have been a backs to the wall, low block, long ball performance and we'd still have got battered. These 4 games, in my opinion, just show us how far we've come...
Think Bruno was saying it's remarkable how close we are to actually going for the very top. No first team players in two years being brought in (and even then it was kids in Tino/Hall, and Barnes....ahem.....). A few stupid defeats along the way, with Fulham, B'mth, West Ham and you could argue we should've got more from yesterday if it wasn't for a thin squad, we're 12 points better off and sat on 78. Frustrating though yesterday was, it changed nothing. 3 pts needed from the final two matches. We've shown tactical flexibility as well. That sometimes our players just don't keep up the level - Barnes, Gordon, Wilson main culprits yesterday - is something we'll improve. When we can get 7/10 players in every position, we can genuinely challenge for the league. Won't be next season - Europe will again be a distraction - but as we get experience I would imagine we'll have a title tilt within 2-3 years. All of which is probably ahead of schedule.
Love reading through the match threads the following day. This well-constructed argument from our very own Roland wins the day though.
Another thing this games shows is just how ****ing good Eddie Howe is as a manager. He decides to go 3-4-3 (offensive) / 5-4-1 (defensive) at the back, has a weeks training away from our 4-3-3 formation and beats Chelsea and gets the team playing better than Arsenal. Meanwhile in the red half of Manchester, Amorim has had over 6 months trying to get his team to play 3-4-3 and has them 16th in the table.
Oh, man, I understand the Mancs are just so fatigued by the chopping and changing but by Christ that bloke is ****ing useless, how they haven't got rid is beyond me. He has one idea in his head and has no clue what else to do. Them playing around at the back is a joke - there doesn't seem any point to their play other than "well, all the good teams do it". Other teams who do it well use it to coax a press in then play around it; Arsenal, even though we were the better side, did it to us a few times yesterday. But in Man U's formation, with too many CB's and no CM's, it's really bafflingly stupid. Their whole game plan should be about getting it up the pitch bypassing midfield as fast as possible, but in 6 months they've not changed. I've really liked that formation; we tend to do really well against strong teams with it. The only criticism has been not getting enough support for the central striker, would more of a 5-3-2 work a bit better? When we did Arsenal in the LC, we were more like that as we had 5 at the back but midfield of Gordon, Bruno, Joelinton and Tonali. Gordon had more license forward and it worked a bit more seemlessly. I can see us adopting this more next season when we have the Summer to both add the right players and work on it. I'm still unconvinced Barnes really works for us. His positioning is off quite a lot and he's a one trick pony, so I can well see him as the main outgoing player this Summer. You could see a situation where we bring in more of a supporting forward for the right. Livramento first choice RWB, Murphy understudy. We'd need someone on the left alongside the new CB, GK, RW and CF.
