Howay

Aye would be good to have some genuine pace back there, as you say it’s the one thing our back line really lacks currently, their positioning is brilliant but it’s always good insurance to have someone that’s fucking rapid. It’s still mental to just look forward to the window, we know we will get some top class talent as we have in the previous two windows.

Gvardiol 🙏. Imagine Gvardiol and Botman as our CB pair both left footed but one can dream.

This tbh, look across all International jobs and it’s not exactly a who’s who of top managers. You have Southgate, Martinez, Luis Enrique, Dechamps, LVG, Flick, and Fernando Santos in charge of some of the top European sides at the World Cup, I wouldn’t really put any of them in contention for top jobs these days bar maybe Flick (admittedly not sure how his time at Bayern was other than they won a decent amount). Even a side like Brazil has a journeyman like Tite, then Argentina have Scaloni who seems to be a product of the Argentina set up in a similar fashion to Southgate being from the England set up. Howe is a hands on manager, I don’t see him taking a job like that at this stage in his career. If it goes tits up he’s lost all the praise he’s built up on the back of the Bournemouth and Newcastle jobs in the eyes of football anyway.

Special mention to the bloke claiming Shearer isn’t “classy” because he didn’t mention Sorensen saving it (why the fuck would he?) yet starting the sentence by referring to Shearer as “Arsehole”, that’s definitely classy marra do they engage their brains for a fucking second? Aye I think the lack of giving much of a fuck about their players is likely due to them being largely irrelevant, or average at best. Cattermole was a nob but he was also a dreadful player, if he was also a brilliant player who helped make them a good side we would probably be arsed about him more. They also really fucking hate when people are negative about their club (which is the cause of the hate for Barton), I think largely because they don’t get talked about much if we went on about people that are negative about NUFC the way they do about negative comments regarding SAFC we’d lose our fucking minds. They can call this deluded but we’re a far better known and discussed club, personally I think whenever they try to compare themselves to our stature they’re the deluded ones. I find them a crease tbh, I’ve said before we couldn’t wish for better local rivals. No matter how shit it got under Ashley they never once capitalized and kicked on, they basically were right there in the toilet with us and then got even worse . I mean I suppose it’s no wonder they seem to go on that Ashley was some great owner when you consider we finished 5th under him (higher than they’ve ever come in the PL era) and played more European games than they have in their entire history - despite that he goes down as a shit stain on our club. It’s going to be all part of the fun watching them lose their fucking heads in the coming years when we go up the gears as a club under this ownership, and the coverage we get switches to be positive, and glowing their hatred list will grow and grow .

I saw him as the Willock replacement, and then get a DM to replace Longstaff/Shelvey. Maddison is also capable of playing on the wings which gives us that flexibility too. Isak seems to be able to play across the forward line going off what Wilson said on his podcast a while back. Left back is another area we will probably want to look to improve soon, Burn does well there but if we had a player who could also be a threat in attack like Trippier there we’d be adding another problem for opponents to deal with.

The saddest part about that is it’s probably made up . If it was true he’d be having a laugh about it and not be so weird and condescending about his supposed friend “rampant mag” ffs . I mean if a league win from over 20 years ago is what they have to hang their hat on they can have it, we got to watch the best striker this country has ever produced ply his trade for over a decade, while they watched… Kevin Phillips

Isn’t our womens team in the fourth tier or something? They’ve lost the fucking plot if they think this is the Avenue to attack us.

If there’s any hope we sign Maddison he should be our number 1 target imo. The bloke is fucking proven to be top drawer in the PL, is also still young, and from everything I can tell has a good attitude in terms of professionalism (obviously there’s stuff in the press about him but overall he seems to always be available for games and puts in consistently class performances).

I’ve been largely critical of Southgate throughout his tenure, I think he’s done a good job of building a team rather than a collection of individuals and fostering a “club” type mentality which is something a lot of international sides lack. His failings imo have been tactical, the main one for me was as you highlighted his switching to a back 5 whenever he encountered a tough opponent - he finally didn’t do that and we gave (imo) the best team in international football a game (which I think we edged). He was let down massively by two blokes who he puts faith in and shouldn’t (Pickford and Maguire), which is definitely partially on him as he has other options and should have explored them. This is the first tournament since 2018 where I’ve actually wanted him to continue as the growth we’ve shown was evident to me, we controlled games and comfortably beat sides whereas in prior tournaments we suffocated opponents and didn’t score much, and then as mentioned we went toe to toe with France. I felt he should have been more aggressive with his changes, perhaps Foden into CM for Henderson and then bringing on Grealish/Maddison/Rashford, but at the end of the day as you say this one was very very fine margins. France got a number of lucky drops in the box where the ball was so close to being put in but bobbled to a French defender or was deflected away. The Italy and Croatia games were carbon copies in that we scored and looked good then sat back and invited pressure, this one showed growth and hopefully it continues. Agree on the last point too as I think squad wise we will be improving so I don’t see this one as our last chance, we have Rice, and Bellingham in CM who are both very young and will mature, players like Harvey Elliott coming through who will take over for possibly more limited CMs like Phillips and Henderson. Foden, Rashford, Saka, Maddison getting more experience along with possibly Sancho recovering form and others coming through. Defensively players like Guehi and Tomori are young and will prove better than Maguire.

For fucks sake, they could have at least pretended given their faux indignation about us. What a pathetic bunch, love that them, the scousers, and man yoooo fans have all shown their true opinions with the mere whiff of these type of owners being involved in something they give a shit about. Why are they so obsessed with him? Also, imo he absolutely should have got to the first goal I’m fully confident that if that was Ramsdale or Pope that wouldn’t have went in. So rather than their dreamed hero his mistake, along with Maguire, cost England.

Why are they still talking about Benitez? Imagine us lot arguing about the merits of Jack Ross and Alex Neil.

Are they watching the World Cup? Do they watch the Premier League? It’s not whataboutery it’s the exact same thing NUFC fans are “engaging” in. The argument would then be extent, so a match going fan is more involved than someone watching on TV, sure but at the end of the day they’re the ones turning these things into black and white discussions and therefore it’s a right or wrong thing there’s no middle ground or lesser level of involvement. The whataboutism shite is simply because they don’t want to have an actual discussion they just want to use this whole thing to retake their imaginary moral high ground. They’re welcome to it while they watch their utterly irrelevant poxy little club and we can watch one of the best teams in world football (not yet but future).

If this was a thread on RTG they’d already all be legitimately angry about the Newcastle goalkeeper errors that led to Frances imaginary goals.

Fucking hell, the mackems must be buzzing they’ll get to watch even more of us!

This bloke is fucking beyond parody. This is the exact argument NUFC fans make and he always had a massive problem with.

What’s their obsession with referring to themselves as the best fans, and saying they’re known for it? I really don’t think they have the reputation they think they do. They do get good attendance figures for the most part, I’m not disputing that, but they very regularly abandon their side - it’s only when they decide to “show they’re better than the mags” or big pushes like Methvens whole break the attendance record for a third tier game that they get these bumper crowds. I mean even when they were turning things around to a degree in League One the minute results levelled off/a rough spell they all packed in going and abused the manager. Players and managers have consistently shown a desire to get the fuck out of the place. I mean Alex Neil walked out on them for the fucking Stoke job yet they still have this delusion they’re some massive draw . I honestly think they view themselves as the same as NUFC in terms of stature, how neutrals perceive them, etc simply because they’re close to us (in terms of distance) and see/hear about us a lot - when in reality there’s a fucking chasm between the two clubs even before the Saudi takeover.

It’s just impossible for them to be rational about any thing to do with NUFC. I’ve never seen us sign a player and the assessment be anything other than he’s shite, there’s one that fancies himself like some European hipster know it all and he’s fucking hopeless at judging players we buy too. We could sign Lionel Messi and Mbappe in the summer and ready to groom would be adamant they’re both actually shit.

They’re going to have to go and lecture Athletic fans on why they should actually love Sunderland and hate us. They will likely have to start with who the fuck Sunderland are “you’s probably narrr us from our massive Netflix documentary”

I honestly don’t think he would do it. I don’t think international football is the draw it once was, look across all the nations now and there’s not really any top managers in their prime. It would drive a bloke like Howe mad tbh, we’ve all read and heard about how hands on and hard working he is - the England role isn’t suited to that at all there’s very limited coaching in that role as you get the players so rarely. I also do think he knows the chance he has here too, this is a role where his only limit is his own ability really he will be able to attract the players he wants, become a legend at a club, etc. The England job could be an option in 20 year when he’s won 17 titles with us.

Add it to the list of shite they come out with that’s just wrong. I’ll also add on that even if it was true what does it matter? People from Newcastle are known as Geordies regardless of where the word started. I love that they will just casually throw out that they’d just go and hammer a side that’s third in the PL and has lost something daft like 5 games all year and they all just give it a nod . They’ve lost all understanding of football on that forum now “aye marra ah saw that Bruno come on for Brazil, all the marras that plays for wuh would have his life man eeeees crap, also ahve heard he actually is a massive lads fan and spends all his time in Pennywell says he wishes the lads could afford him but he needs to pay for his dads taxi or sommat so he’s just mugging the mags off by winning loads of games for them. FTM”

Plans to beat it already in motion

Spot on. I get frustrated that any complaint about Southgate is directed to either a “you expect to thump everyone” or “he got to a final and semi final” response. I don’t expect England to go round smacking everyone 3-0 but we go many games without a fucking proper chance on goal and with the players he has at his disposal it’s a joke. His past tournament finishes have clearly been good, but there’s still frustration there - there were massive tactical failings on his part in both games and he did nowt to build confidence with performances in the lead up, despite a lot of weak opposition. I’ve said it before and some find it harsh but imo he left a fucking ton on the table in those tournaments. He also gets a ton of credit in the whole “doesn’t have much to pick from” stakes when it’s entirely unwarranted. He has the keepers from the top and 3rd top teams, he picks Pickford without fail. He could select a bloke that has won an Italian title, a renewed Smalling who Jose loves, Webster, White, or Burn - all three have been fantastic over the last two seasons, instead he picks a bloke that doesn’t play for his club and defends the decision as “he’s never let me down” that’s not improvement, those players may work better but you’re not fucking trying. The same way that he threw Phillips and Rice together for years (even so desperate to do it this tournament that he brought Phillips with his whole 2 minutes of PL footy this season), didn’t bother trying Ward-Prowse or other CMs. The bloke is stubborn, rigid, makes fucking terrible in game subs, tactically he’s terrified of losing to the point he stifles all of the attacking talent he has. I’m just glad I don’t have to particularly worry, I don’t rate him one bit and while it used to bother me when people told me I was wrong before we were treat to more of his stifling shite footy, now we have Eddie Howe and I can’t wait for this crap tournament to be over.