benjii

Because procurement law is not criminal law.

What does "already proven" mean in the context of a Premier League striker? Anyone proven to score goals regularly in the PL will be well out of our budget. So, what, Glenn Murray, Chris Woods, Ashley Barnes? We won't be signing a "proven" striker. Frankly, if Ings is leaving then as soon as we get a few more points on the board we should Hojbjerg him and give Tella and Nlundulu as many minutes as possible to see what they can do.

Do their fans still think Hojbjerg is great?

A wet fanny can take a hell of a pounding.

Our shape is a complete mess. Gonna concede a bunch unless we're very lucky.

Can't see it. You'd surely play Stephens there ahead of either of those. It will be Djenepo at RWB and it will be a mess. Also, Redmond over Adams is a mistake.

This.

LOlz

Yeah, cracks me up. "I fast for 16 hours". I.e. I eat dinner at 8.00 pm and then have lunch at 12:00 but skip breakfast. Fucking magic fast, that. Almost Saintly.

We didn’t get the fanny though. 😔

You don't have to be a dick or be "nasty" to be a captain, you just have to be able to keep calm, communicate, set the tempo and keep doing the basic things well under pressure. I am not sure it is leadership, per se, that we miss, it is more mental toughness. The problem we have is that we have a number of players who are capable of doing really impressive things on their day, but regularly mis-execute simple actions when under pressure. They will play a ten yard pass just behind their team-mate, killing a move. They will take a sloppy second touch when they need to move the ball on. It manifests in different ways in different players. Romeu is "nasty" but that yellow card he picked up yesterday was stupid and an example of someone making a poor choice in a moment of pressure. He knew he was taking a yellow when he made that challenge but there was no need to do so; it wasn't a foul that needed to be made, it was early in the match and he was on a knife-edge for the rest of the match as a result. Redmond needed to play an easy 15 yard pass in front of Ings but chopped it too square. Adams has no composure on his left foot. Armstrong delays the pass for too long when carrying the ball laterally across the pitch. Djenepo's legs behave like he has just fallen out of a deer's fanny. Ditto Walcott often. Mental strength is about composure and consistency. You can achieve that whether you are "nice" or "nasty" but you need to set the example and you need to be consistent in your own application. The reason the best captains are the best captains is because they are dependable. Team mates look at them and they know exactly what they will get.

We could lose every match from now on and I think we would still finish above WBA and Sheff U and we'd probably also have about a 40% chance of finishing above Fulham too. Maybe we will lose 21 matches in a row and stay up.

He makes the simple look difficult.

Get Adams on for Redmond or Djenepo. It's another game there for the taking but our lack of quality in the final third is painful.

The only way to achieve sustained PL success is by spunking money as part of a vanity project, and for that you need multi-billionaires. That's just a fact. You are about to witness two of the most expensive mid-table mediocrity campaigns in history thanks to Everton and Villa. The best way to generate a return on an English football club is to do what Markus did and buy a lower league team with good infrastructure cheaply and then do what Kat did and get rid ASAP once in the PL. Frankly, any takeover financed through investments from private equity or similar is doomed to failure if it doesn't flip the club on to someone else within a few years and whether that happens to plan or not will be more down to luck than judgment. Plans to create an international web of clubs sound nice - and I guess it's an upgrade on Gao's "vision", which is non-existent - but won't create any kind of meaningful brand and won't have a direct impact on the first team. Unless we spaff significant amounts of money on the first team we will be a mid-table club who might occasionally have a good season but may also get relegated the next. I don't rate Gao at all, as an owner, but he does at least have skin in the game. I would rather him than a cabal of people with less to lose as individuals being spun meaningless visions by a Yank who probably doesn't really understand the game in England at all. I'd actually be up for a ramshackle, "fan on the board", fans co-op structure for a few years. Won't happen, but would be a laugh and would connect the club back to the community. It would lead to relegation, but that will happen sooner or later anyway.

Indeed. Thursday night is absolutely the worst time to give him his debut after all this time. He's on a hiding to nothing in a one-off event. Stick with Vest and Bednarek. Jan will be keen to make amends. Give Salisu a go at the weekend. With KWP back, Diallo, Walcott and Armstrong out then the team pretty much picks itself. The only real decision is what side to play Djenepo and Redmond. As a complete wild card, I guess a youngster could play in one of those positions, Tella, maybe.

Plus all the other better clubs, with more money, not wanting him as well. Apart from all that, could happen.

Absolutely mental.

Boomers doing boomer things.

Seen quite a bit of criticism of Ings recently, people alleging he is way off his best etc. I think it's unfair. Against Villa he single-handedly created the penalty [that we obviously should have been awarded] and he stuck the ball in the net. Had the officials done their job properly, he could well have won us the match. Yesterday we looked pretty good going forwards and his effort that came back off the post was a very decent effort in the circumstances. He could well have had three more goals (let's assume he scores the penalty against Villa) from our last three games with very fine margins / decisions going against him. He's still a very good striker and arguably too good for a bog-standard mid-table team. Very unlikely that we will find anyone as good as him for £20m or less and, as we all know, that's the market we will be looking for a replacement in. If it wasn't for him and JWP we would be struggling massively.

Just watched a replay about 1,000 times then got the red card out.

That's pathetic all round. Terrible free kick. Then they give it back to us. Instead of attacking Redmond goes back pointlessly. Then we do that with it.

Unfortunately, if you think the current set of vaccines are going to spell the complete end of restrictions any time soon, and via some sort of "back to normal, it's all over" big-bang announcement, I think you will be sadly disappointed. It will be a long time before any of these things happen: - we have a clear view on the effectiveness of vaccines in stopping transmission - we have a clear view on the extent to which transmission is driving mutations which are less susceptible to the vaccine - we have a clear view on the long-term non-fatal damage done by the virus - enough people around the world are vaccinated with a proven vaccine for seamless inter-continental travel to return It feels to me as though there are bound to be relaxing and reimposing of various restrictions - perhaps on a localised basis - for another couple of years. Whilst I'm sure every effort will be made to allow people to meet each other and go to bars / restaurants etc. I think the days of packed venues and carefree travel, other than to a small number of niche locations that can't afford not to have tourists (e.g. Maldives), are over for the foreseeable future. It absolutely sucks and please, for goodness sake, we have to hope the UK government has learnt some lessons from this and will implement them so when this happens again we can get proper track, trace and containment processes in place. That said, I want to go the pub with a bunch of friends I haven't seen for ages, I want to attend some live-music and sporting events, and I want to be able to travel internationally without the hassle of possible border closures etc. whilst there.

Good news if KWP and Rom are back. I doubt we will rush Vest straight back in now we know Bednarek is available. Shame about Armstrong but at least we have other options in wide mid. I reckon it'll be: McCarthy KWP, Stephens, Bednarek, Bertrand JWP, Romeu Minamino, Redmond Adams, Ings

Very hard to figure out how to set up for this, assuming Bednarek can't play. I doubt we will win the appeal because they can find a way to justify the decision the way the law is written and I don't think they will be reviewing whether it was a foul or not. But, will the appeal be concluded in time? If not, presumably he can play at the weekend and we might be able to time the suspension alongside Vestergaard returning? Anyways, without Diallo, Romeu and Jankewitz, JWP has to play in midfield so that means Ramsey must play. I don't think it's fair to throw Tchaepchat in - he didn't look ready the other night and if we play too many youngsters again we might get stuffed which would be pretty embarrassing considering Newcastle are one of the dourest attacking teams in the league. I quite fancy switching to a back 3 as others have suggested. Ramsay, Stephens and Bertrand. It does mean playing two of Redmond, Armstrong or Djenepo as wing backs but at least they are senior players and not youngsters being rushed through. It also means we would be vulnerable to long diagonals towards a target man but there's not a lot we can do about that. I'd go with the following, on the basis that Djenepo is a bit of a defensive liability when starting and should be kept as far up the pitch as possible - he can't tackle or press without constantly giving fouls away. -----------------McCarthy------------------ -----Ramsay----Stephens------Bertrand--- Armstrong--------JWP------------Redmond ------------Djenepo----Minamoto--------- -----------Adams--------Ings------------- If we can keep the ball there's plenty in that XI to cause some damage. Important not to give away cheap free kicks because we look pretty weak in the air.