OTF

Aye, VAR had a look as well, just to humour us.

ASM, highlights already.

Excellent, Michael Owen in the studio. The host on the cutaway to an ad break just said "Newcastle looking to get a second win over Bruce". Thought it was a mistake at first but he's actually spot on.

Says it all that the new manager already realises that his best tactic is to attempt to revive the tactics of the previous manager. Quite how he will do that will his obvious lack of tactical nous is the question. More likely it's so he can somehow blame Rafa when we inevitably lose.

Hope Dutts can rise to the occasion. Normally I'd be right up for us playing this lot at home in the form they're in, but form is largely irrelevant when you're playing us, and I'm still on the "it's better for the club if we lose" tract anyway. So, like the last match I'm just hoping I get something entertaining again.

Even with the result I much preferred watching the Leicester game.

Lascelles was having a lengthy discussion with Perez after the game, with his hand over his mouth so cameras couldn't pick up what he was saying. Perez didn't bother to cover his mouth.

It was certainly more entertaining than our last match. It is wrong that I almost enjoyed this result?

I can't see, but am ready to be proved wrong, how this can be worse than our last match regardless of the final score.

Shots of empty seats were the only highlight.

An actual fox would have done it. HOST: "Michael, I'll start with you, as a former Newcastle player what would you make of that negative approach?" Michael Owen: "Well, it was negative"

At what stage will they bring out the curtain and put us down?

With no chance of parole.

It's hard to imagine 11 professional football players looking less cohesive. That said with Bruce at the helm we may not need to imagine. Something to look forward to....

Absolutely, we're terrible.

We'll all remember where we were and what we were doing on the night Andy Carroll made the bench at St James' against Brighton.

S. Taylor Love your posts Diego, I hope to visit St James one day, hopefully when Ashley is just a dark memory. Closest I've been is watching them play a pre-season game in NZ where I got to see Steven Taylor's pearly whites up close and personal. He must have liked it there.

Watford were terrible and yet we didn't win. No point in arguing over your interpretations of games under Rafa. You could cherry pick loads of games where the performances were subjectively worse but this would have been a match that Rafa targeted for 3 points. Bruce did as well, of course. I'd say in terms of personnel played it was fine, it was the players that didn't perform and win the game.

Perez was rubbish and Rafa's tactics too negative.

That Villa disallowed goal is ridiculous. To me it looked like Grealish was fouled, probably twice. He went down AFTER making the pass which was scored from.

They were there for the taking, even with their lucky goal. Discontent swelling, as it should be.

Muto had to pull the trigger earlier there. Good ball and run though.

Someone has to have a quiet word with Willems about that facial hair, it's bordering on cruelty otherwise.

Lascelles galloping down the wing, plays a perfectly weighted through ball for Atsu, who gets in behind and chooses his pass. Unfortunately Almiron's curse prevents him from scoring.

Almiron... oh dear.