December 17th mighty Burton are at home to the Toon. Oops sorry forgot this a Premiership forum not the fizzy pop one. My mistake.
I have a very small pocket diary and that's my brother's birthday, so I have no room for that... I'll write it the day before. "Burton vs Newcastle tomorrow".
I must admit I had to chuckle this morning when I looked at the BBC live feed on their website and it said "Breaking : Newcastle and Hartlepool football fixtures released"
Well I checked their fixtures and saw that the Derby was on September 10th then realised it was not THE Derby but they were PLAYING Derby
Why I wonder - 2 mid table (or worse) teams Forgot ....of course the dark ones need the tv money & they have Sky's golden spoon in the board room. Probably be on Sky more than us - shame but I've a feeling they will find the going tough -
When you get relegated again Nah I'll be honest it's such a mish-mash of teams down there. September we play QPR, Wolves, Villa, Norwich and Derby - all recent premiership teams - and i think "**** we aren't going to find this league easy" then October we play Rotherham, Brentford, Barnsley, Ipswich and Preston and I think "**** I hope we get out of this crap league fast".
Some great away grounds and away days mate, but ****ing hell it just sounds awful. You need to get sales done and right players in cos if you don't come back forst time it becomes a real battle. I don't envy you one bit. FYI, this is the second time you've been down since we have sooooo....
Last time we were down it was great, our players are definitely better than last time (our squad had been gutted during the summer) and the manager is better equipped (for all the talk of whether Benitez has experience of this he has a hell of a lot more than Hughton did!) but our team needs to start player as a sum of its parts rather than 11 people. It could be fun if we can at least challenge for the play-offs. If we aren't in the top 6 teams though it's going to be a bloody depressing season.
Being "Better" doesn;t mean being more suited though. The players you had last time suited the drive and effort needed to get out of that division - as did the manager. This time you are ina completely unknown - you have players who couldn't be arsed in the Premier League (so why would they in the Championship) and a manager who has never been successful outside of a top team in the top division. I'd rather be in the championship with today's equivalent of Nolan etc than down there with Wijnaldum and Sissokho!
I think it's fair to say Newcastle will need some new players to come in and fill their squad out. I wouldn't look at how well equipped they are to bounce back until they're ready to go. By the same logic, Sunderland need to do some shopping before making any predictions on how their season may pan out.
I hear what you're saying but there's a good element of hindsight there. The summer after relegation we sold pretty much our entire first team (Bassong, Beye, Duff, Martins, Viduka, Owen, Geremi, Cacapa - and we had just sold Given, Milner and N'Zogbia without replacing them) and the players who carried us the following season were the 'also-rans' of our squad. Nolan was always going to be fantastic that year but the rest of our team were total gambles. Colocinni, Gutierrez and Enrique had looked mostly terrible since we signed them; Ryan Taylor looked average at best and both Butt and Smith looked past their sell by dates (hence Man Utd had indeed sold them). Our strike force was Shola (main striker), Xisco (remember him) and Andy Carroll (who at the time had less experience than Campbell does now. A few days before the season kicked off our first team lost to League 2 Leyton Orient... 6-1. As for Chris, I loved the guy as he was humble and honest. He now has lots of experience but back then he was our coach who was promoted to manager as we didn't want to pay for anyone else. We also sold of the stadium naming rights that October and the atmosphere around the club was toxic. We are in a much better position now. Not saying we'll go up, the opposition may be much better (very little knowledge on that) but there's no way on earth anyone went into the 2009 season thinking Colo, Enrique, Guti, Xisco, Shola, etc had drive and effort. Nolan yes but to be honest I really like the look and sound of Lascelles, I'd just make him captain and be done - plus Mitrovic (if he stays) has a plethora of faults but he looks a damn site more driven than Shola ever did!
Except against us eh? See what you're sayng but the team you had then had players who knew what the Championship was all about. You don;t have ay of those now. Mitrovic will probably take to it like a duck to water - well suited to the physical game and it's more physical down there than it is in the PL (just!) Lascelles looks decent enough and is a young lad so will have the drive I would think. But there are so many unknowns that, regardless of how good they are as players, the championship is not a place whiere just good football is enough - you need steel and I'm just not sure enough of your team have it at the moment going from the games I saw you in last season
