The Premier League - 2021-2022

The funny thing is the media have been looking at the points tally without taking into account who we’ve played and the element of fortune in at least one of them, but from different angles either side of the Ranieri appointment - first it’s “They’ve made a solid start, how dare they sack him!” and now it’s “How on earth have they got to 7 points?”.

 

And the Geordie women have been asked to sharpen up their appearance too. Glad to see that Amanda Staveley, top Newcastle Utd Director is continuing to lead from the front. She's decided to chop her locks and drop her 'mad staring eyes' look. Well done Amanda, you'll fit in nicely when you next celebrate a Newcastle goal in early January!



Who's the sausage? You's the sausage.

 

I feel less sorry after hearing they fully paid up his contract for £8m. He must be devastated.

 

No worries, we'll be safe by then.

 

I don't really know enough about him to pass judgement, but I'm curious why you think that?

 

Just his playstyle + tactics just really don't suit this current Newcastle team. Obviously they're gonna try and spend money in January, but I doubt they'll be able to get the squad or enough of a squad in the January window that will suit his heavy possession style

 

That article outlines the fact that negotiations are still ongoing as to whether they will be allowed to send their players to report for Monday January 3rd, rather than Monday December 27th, based on the respective FAs' interpretations of the rules around when clubs must release players in time for the start of an international tournament and the official tournament kickoff vs the actual date of their first games.

Incredibly amusingly, it also reveals we have the most liability in terms of numbers of any team in the league to players disappearing for up to 6 weeks, and several of them are among our most impactful, or at least used, players:

 

Sarr is nigh on irreplaceable, Dennis is important, though not quite to the same extent (Cucho/JP and even Baah could do a job in his role I suppose). WTE has been our second best defender for most of his time here, and is currently the best of a bad bunch (though hopefully when Nkoulou is available he'll show his class). Masina is rubbish (albeit if Rose gets injured, who do we play there, that young lad Morris?), and the jury is out on Louza

 

Re Bruce, I saw a comparison between his record and Benitez at Newcastle and they are almost identical!

 

Yep. We'll have secured our place in the Championship for the 2022/23 season by then

 

That's a very good point. Your words "...more of a connection with the fans" is something we have been missing, not only with the head coach but throughout the club.

 

I would go with a 442 tomorrow but the 2 up top would be the wingers Sarr & Dennis pushed up onto their full backs. In midfield, I would have a narrow, diamond formation with Sissoko at the base, Tufan & Cleverley in the middle and either King or Pedro in the advanced role supporting the attack (maybe King to start and Pedro coming on later). At the back, we are not exactly spoilt for choice, I think it has to be a case of getting back to putting round pegs in round holes and at least putting players in their usual positions. So, a back 4 of Ngakia, WTE, Cathcart and Rose. I would like to see Bachmann back in goal. He proved his committment to the cause last season and he's fully motivated to do well both for us and for his Austria ambitions. 'Laughing Boy' Foster has put one foot on the ladder into his new career and has half his mind on his YouTube ambitions - we need both feet, both hands and a brain fully focussed on the job in hand, keeping goals out of our net! So a team of Bachmann; Ngakia, WTE, Cathcart, Rose; Sissoko, Cleverley, Tufan, King / Pedro; Sarr, Dennis.

 

The Geordies are equating this to the 'Kick It Out' campaign & not in a favourable manner.

As an aside isn't a b&w version of the Saudi 'dish-dash' used by their mortal enemies the Yemenis?

 

Talk Sport were up in Newcastle this morning, they had that anti-Bruce reporter on, Craig something who has a mole in the camp and regularly reported negative stories about Bruce.

He kept banging on about the pro-Bruce media conspiracy, they’re so deluded they don’t realise it’s not pro-Bruce, it’s just how normal people see things.

 

I listened to a bit of that whilst I was in the car and it's just mental - the flag-waving again, and Jim White is just eternally so far up Newcastle fans' collective ass that he's tickling their tonsils when he speaks - do we actually have to mention how phenomenally incredibly brilliant and perfect they are and what a different atmosphere they bring to every other set of fans in the world every single time the club, stadium, owners, Head Coach, or the general concept of kicking a ball is mentioned? Repulsive creature.

 

I hope Arsenal win this so Arteta is likely to remain in his job by the time we play them, but this may be yet another winnable game they mess up.

 

Villa look as bad as they did in the 19/20 season when they were down the bottom with us.

 

The ball didn’t go out of play and half time was imminent. I don’t think the wait was an issue but it’s one of those really annoying penalties to concede.

 

Targett (who is abysmal) was trying to just clear the ball and Lacazette stuck his foot in front of him from a long way back and slightly on his blind side and was kicked just before the ball. Think if the ref had stuck with his origjnal decision there wouldn’t have been a lot of arguments.

 

Dean Smith is a very average to poor coach, to be fair, so it makes sense - I also always thought the decision to spend huge amounts of money on a centre forward a year after spending huge amounts of money on a younger centre forward who has subsequently earned a place in the England squad when you only play one centre forward was a bit inexplicable and stupid/could come back to bite them in the ass, especially as they are not in Europe and so facing/provided with extra games for the two to be interchanged and each given decent amounts of minutes in the correct position.

 

She reminds me of a Madame Tussaud's waxwork that's been placed slightly too close to heat. An unsettling appearance, just very slightly off.

 

It’s the Shakespeare curse

 

I didn't think it was a pen - if anything it looked as if Lacazette trod on Targett's ankle when trying to get in front of him before he got kicked himself.

 

It reminded me a lot of the VAR decisions we were seeing last season and which seemed to have been eradicated in the first few games of this season. Worrying (but not very surprising) if the refs have slipped back into bad habits.

The VAR replays served to the ref pitch side weren’t much use either. A couple of stop-start slow motion clips didn’t really help to remind the ref that at full speed Lacazette was being very cynical and had zero chance of actually winning the ball given the way he came at it. Fair enough if Targett was late but it was essentially simultaneous contact with the player and then the ball.

 

Villa should be alright because they’re not in the chaos they were a few years ago, but we’ve seen a number of decent squads get relegated in the past.

 

Having forgotten Liverpool play Man Utd tomorrow, I was hoping they play one of the weaker teams today so we could find out whether last Saturday was more a case of them hitting form and making ourselves look bad rather than mainly us playing badly by ourselves.

They could still win convincingly at Man U though if they play anything like they did at Leicester.

 

I think we're already in a pretty good position to make this judgement ourselves, to be honest, London.