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they appear to be winding themselves up on rtg this morning in to forming a deep hatred and eternal rivalry with tinpot luton. their grudge games now start off on the south coast at portsmouth, head up to bedfordshire, cross over to the midlands for a dust up with jimmy hill's boys before heading north again for a stop off in the potteries. they're forging an unlikely truce with the smoggies at the minute and are desperate to see them disperse of the sky blues before gaining a wembley triumph against the evil hatters. they need to be very careful do the mackems or the only friends they'll have left in the entire football world will be bilbao.

So far we’ve had - drop Bruno - Play 5-3-2 - play Almiron CM - throw in manquillo against Mitoma - play trippier in Longstaff role in DM Either you lot are crumbling under pressure or you’ve been smoking crack.

A bit like the Ajax side that reached consecutive Champions League finals in the mid-90s - their big challenge going forward will be how they rebuild after the biggest clubs in Europe have taken their best players.

That’s the joke mate

They’re an amazing young team who play some of the best free-flowing, attacking football anyone has ever seen. They also finished 11 points behind tinpot Luton who play league one hoof ball and were the poorer side for about 75% of a two-legged playoff. They were 22 points (or needed 8 of their losses converted to 7 wins and a draw) from getting the tally Sheff Utd amassed to get an automatic promotion spot. Schrödinger's Black Cat 👍🏻

Does this mean Wedding Season can start early this year?

Lovely stuff. They had some knacker from Roker Report on the radio yesterday saying things like “it’s unbelievable, I’ve never seen us play football this good, it’s incredible” and I thought “you scraped into 6th and you have a bit of a pace on the counter attack” The standards are so low and you just have to look at what happened last night when faced with a strong, athletic side. Makes me think that they might not beat us after all

Not now, Keto

I'm hoping for us to rub it in on Thursday night by producing some classic mag behaviour, adding to our tally of 63 lucky goals and landing our 19th lucky win of the season in what has been an absolutely awful Premier league season where everyone has underperformed, especially against us.

Eddie says fuck you all

They are going to struggle to find a manager who can get his head around this new type of football they've invented. Maybe they should employ Chat GPT?

tidied

Ah god, they’re going to get a “highly rated” young coach from abroad and do it all wrong, aren’t they? Please say yes

Mowbray set to be sacked according to Talksport.

Jimmy is a top bloke, paralyzed in a car crash.

According to Gabbiadni on Total Sport they have invented a new way of playing football keeping hold of the ball and 'Those Cruyff passes where you let it through your legs and kick it' Silly CUNT

Klopp's being banned from the touchline from the 29th May till the 11th August. Unprecedented punishment for the Liverpool boss.

Mowbray is a good looking boro lad tbh

You know that they're toxic.

if you look at their home form over the last 8 games of the season they were 22nd out of 24 teams. Which is weird given what fantastic support they get at the SoL.

I land in toon around 4, meeting some mates for an early Chinese and got the day off work Friday so el vino will flow. Should be a few pints deep by kick off. I’m just going to try and enjoy it and make a racket, win, lose or draw. Howe said today that pressure is a privilege. Even if we lose, fuck it. Did anyone predict top 4 at the start of the season?

Tbh I think it's cowardly to attack an unarmed man.

You’d be laughing anyway. HMHM (and Cock-eyed Mala, golf legend) just reinforce that

Apparently it's all part of The Project. The only place on the internet that discusses this project is the SMB. From what I can gather, it means investing in the academy or players from the lower leagues, letting the players develop a bit, and selling them if they are any good, then getting all your best players on loan from PL clubs and not buying them, and then rinse and repeat. And a mandatory manager change of once a season, although two or three changes is preferred. Then somehow you are challenging in the upper midtable premier league like Brighton, without actually being there. Or something?

We are on the outskirts of playa del ingles. Fondle ahoy

I heard that this Kevin Louise Dreyfus kid is going to be their next manager because his mam will stop his pocket money if he doesn't get a job or tidy his room. 🤷‍♂️ But yeah, this is fucking mental. He may be the ugliest man in football, but he did a great job getting this lot to the play offs and is well liked and respected. I did think he would struggle next year for a variety of reasons, but it's highly unlikely a replacement will do better imo.

Germany, Austria, what's the difference?

This friendship will last forever, since they’ve got no hope of ever playing them competitively

Joelinton has still been playing his game, which is more free roaming. It works around the structure of Longstaff and Bruno, but when Joe Willock comes in instead of Sean we suddenly have two midfield players who both like to push forward (often down the left). The result is that there's more open space in our midfield for our opposition to attack into. Add to that that Bruno has been off the pace recently with his persistent ankle problem and our defense is being called on more regularly than they were earlier in the season. This is why we've conceded more. We don't have another player like Longstaff really. I just haven't seen it from Anderson and expecting Willock or Joe to change their style of play and positioning at this stage of the season is a big ask. If we had other reliable options at right back I wouldn't mind seeing how Trippier went in that Longstaff role but I don't fancy the risk of bringing in match shy Manquillo or Targett on the wrong side.

It’s been the best season since about 2002 and dropping out of the top 4 won’t change that, so who cares really? It’s been mint craic.

Man City bumming Real Madrid (for now) & Coventry ( ) beating Boro.

Looking at their team, that Diallo kid, (flatters to deceive for me) not theirs, Roberts looks canny tricky and could do OK with better players around him so he doesn't have to try and do it all himself and their right back looked OK too, they could struggle to keep the latter two tbh. As Alex says, they were well off the pace this season and next season could be a rebuild again where they need to improve the areas that were lacking this season AND possibly replace the better performers from this season. That's a big ask.

I see the link a bit like McTominay. I.e. buying from a direct rival, mid-20s, premier league-proven, etc. all means the fee would be massively inflated. It just doesn’t seem to fit the transfer policy at all. You could point to Burn and Wood but the former was a bargain who wanted to come home and the latter was a necessity in the circumstances. It’s not a case of turning my nose up at him because he would actually improve the starting XI but you’d imagine Ashworth would be looking at better value abroad. Especially as we seem determined to stay within the FFP regs.

the tragic thing is the basques are blissfully unaware of just how matey they're supposed to be.

Chuck in Manquillo against Mitoma who's been ripping apart some of the best RBs in the league? Nothing that could go wrong there

I do agree with that, no doubt we've lost shape with Longstaff's absence. But Joe's also been making more unforced errors like the horrendous tackle against Leeds. Tells you there's mental and physical fatigue there. You could of course still argue being out of position can lead to getting sucked into such mistakes, I think he's been at his best for us down the left.

Was this posted before or after the match?

They're at the denying reality stage.

Eric Gates! Kate Adie! Adam Johnson! Micky Gray! Jackie Milburn! (as a boy) Wearside Jack! Niall Quinn! Steve Cram! Durham Cathedral! Athletic Bilbao! Total football! Your boys took one hell of a beating tonight