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Unusual way to come out

Can we all just agree that it's time to close down the Newcastle Forum section of Toontastic. The club is 100% deceased at this point.

He’s not giving Bruce 90million. Bruce will be given some players that Rafa wouldn’t have accepted in a month of fuckin Sundays

He didn't, but he added an extra sprinkling of powdered shit by refusing to actually say "racism", or as he called it, "the 'R' word". Because apparently the word "racism" itself needs to be censored because that's how sensitive our best friend in the world is.

Hope he flops

You could buy almost 3 Rondons for that

George Caulkin: In February last year, I was asked to write a piece about Aston Villa. They were second in the Sky Bet Championship and so the time seemed right to appraise how they’d got there and their readiness or otherwise to return to the Premier League. Speak to people in and around the club, I was told, gauge the mood, reflect the atmosphere. Perhaps I could give Steve Bruce a ring; after all, I’d known him for a long time. That last bit, though, was not on the agenda. Joe, Bruce’s dad, had just died and Sheenagh, his mother, was in hospital with a serious illness (from which she never recovered), and Villa’s manager was reeling, juggling his work with thrice-weekly trips up the motorway from his home in Cheshire back to Tyneside, where he was born and his parents still lived. In those circumstances, pushing for an interview would not have felt appropriate. So I talked to a couple of fans, arranged a chat with a member of Villa’s coaching staff and decided to drive to Birmingham, to stroll around Villa Park and to pop in to Bruce’s regular pre-match conference. I sent him a text as a courtesy, just to let him know I’d be there. Within 30 seconds, he rang. “Why are you coming all the way down here, son?” he asked, even though he was in the middle of the same journey. “Save yourself the bother. What do you need?” By the time the article appeared in the paper, it was no longer about Aston Villa. Bruce spoke searingly about “the horrible pain in the stomach that grief gives you,” his sense of “powerlessness.” Towards the end, Joe would often ask his son why he still put himself through the wringer of management. “It was his way of saying, ‘What are you doing, Steve? Are you mad?’” Bruce said. “We all ask that question of ourselves sometimes.” Perhaps this is not much of an anecdote but, in my experience, it is a small illustration of the kind of man Bruce is; considerate, helpful and fundamentally decent. None of which are qualifications to manage Newcastle United, although that is precisely the point. The people who say that Bruce is not good enough for Newcastle have got it all wrong; he is too good. Way too good for Mike Ashley’s works team. There are two reasons why Bruce, who has signed a three-year contract as head coach, should not be within a million miles of the job at St James’ Park. The first is that if Newcastle had even a modicum of ambition then Rafa Benítez would still be in the role, but after having the wit to appoint a manager who could still see the club in terms of potential and stature, they failed to understand what it entailed. That to improve means investment, imagination, speed of thought. After Benítez, almost any manager would represent a step down, but he was the exception at Newcastle not the rule. Take the Spaniard out of it and Bruce is following Alan Pardew and Steve McClaren, all English, all experienced, all greeted with either bemusement or hostility. In both emotional and footballing terms, Benítez held the club together, keeping them in the Premier League and giving supporters a reason to believe. That glue has dissolved. And so the second reason is more personal. Ashley’s Newcastle chews good people up; Benitez, Chris Hughton, Alan Shearer, Kevin Keegan. If anyone thinks it will be different with Bruce ... well, the last 12 years provides compelling, distressing precedent. At best, the club is unconventional and at worst it is dysfunctional, incapable of putting two good decisions together. Something always lurks around the corner. The mood is noxious. Newcastle have lost Benítez, Ayoze Pérez has been sold to Leicester City for £30 million, Salomón Rondón, so impressive on loan from West Bromwich Albion last season, is not returning and they are yet to sign a player. Plenty of supporters are jettisoning season tickets, others are campaigning for a boycott of Newcastle’s first home match of the season. This is not fertile territory for optimism. It will be said that Bruce knows what he is getting into, that by working for Ashley he is complicit with the regime, but nobody knows; not really. Benítez believed he was joining a club with designs on Europe, but is now working in China. McClaren believed he could change things; within months of his appointment, he and Paul Simpson, were given written warnings after the first-team coach spoke about transfers in public. Bruce will back himself and so he should. “This is my boyhood club and it was my dad’s club, so this is a very special moment for me and my family,” he said today. Sheffield Wednesday and their supporters have a right to feel bruised, particularly regarding the timing of Bruce’s arrival and departure, but the 58-year-old has a chance to go home, into the Premier League. Like all managers, he will look at the peril and reckon he can wrestle with it. New additions will arrive, belatedly. Newcastle have long been fixated on Joelinton, Hoffenheim’s Brazilian forward, who will cost around £36 million. They pressed the 22-year-old on Benítez, who demurred; he liked the player, but not at anything like that price and, if there was that much money available, why not let him spent it on his own choices? Who makes the recruitment decisions will be interesting. And what about the club’s ‘takeover?’ Where does that now stand? At this mute club that shuns responsibility, everything Bruce says will be dissected and thrown back at him. He will be a very different figurehead to Benítez and, initially at least, the atmosphere will be toxic. As nufc.com, the independent fans website, put it, “this is the very opposite of ambition, but an appointment that nicely mirrors our grubby, unloved, derided shell of a football club”. I wish Bruce luck and victories. And I wish he wasn’t there.

Derby fan here, but I've followed the fortunes of Newcastle as a second team since I was a kid due to other family members from up your way. Our record was 11 points. The most embarrassing thing about that record for you is that we only won one game all season and it was against you. Newcastle were the only team not to beat us at least once that season and we took four of our eleven points from you lads. We had hope Huddersfield were going to beat it last year, but they managed to just scrape over the points total. We've got some other records if you want to try and take some of them though - fewest number of wins (home, away and total), most consecutive games without a win (its 32, but technically we could still continue that record if we ever get promoted again), most defeats, fewest goals scored, most goals conceded, worst goal difference and fewest clean sheets. I don't think you will be in danger of beating it - we basically didn't buy any players after fluking our way to promotion with a lunatic manager and had just been purchased by a bunch of con artists (most of whom are now in prison) for £1 who sold all our "best" players for a handful of magic beans. You've got the selling all your best players and not buying anyone parts sorted, but I think you should be competitive even with Bruce as manager. Having said that I don't think you will stay up if the squad stays as is.

Not a chance I'm getting called late to the party by Johnny Hates Jazz here. Outrageous.

Alreet Sir Jimmy Renton.

If the 500 teenagers that got on my bus today were to post in here, the answer would certainly be "Lynx Africa and I'm going to spray the full can on myself"

He never really got the hang of this football lark.

The brilliant thing is even his edit about Ashley finally understanding what's needed has turned out to be wrong.

I honestly wonder how many of the players that have come through our academy have even made a decent career of it in the lower leagues? Ivan Toney seems to be having a decent time and Sammy is bouncing around Championship clubs but how many of them are floating around the Northern League when they were tipped for success?

He basically wants to sign a player for fuck all, see him have a good season and flog him. Cabaye was like a wet dream for him, in that sense. What makes him even more backward is that if he had any kind of long term thinking, he’d have invested in the academy 12 years ago and would be raking it in off the kids who would have come through properly.

Or he’s a massive cunt with a dick the size of a mushroom. This is all about him calling the shots imo. He’s not going to be dictated to by a Spanish cunt or them Geordie cunts. It’s Mike’s way or the highway. * shoots an imaginary gun at the mirror *

Probably cheaper just to hang a sign round your neck stating 'I'm a cunt'.

It's not these politicians that scare me. It's the huge number of the public who blindly follow them. How can you cheer the utter garbage they come out with. And then, of you point this out to them, they gammon flounce, like Farage there. Looks like he is going to explode, he's incandescent with rage.

Because we can flog him for massive money just like we did Cabella and Thauvin and Yanga-Mbwia and Haidara and De Jong and Mbemba and

Newcastle United, summer 2019:

Funny how it's always a "her", too.

His hands are so hairy I doubt he could fit them into his pocket

Only Captain Lager himself, Bryan Robson has a worse record apparently

Sort of explains Sherwood's success as a manager, doesn't it

Be interesting to see if Bruce is expected to put his hand in his pocket for transfers

We even had the prior fucking generations dinosaur Joe Kinnear. Bruce is definitely among the bottom of that lot, I think I saw a stat somewhere that he has the worst or 2nd worst record of PL managers with 200+ games.

I'll believe this when he's standing with a black and white shirt with a sponsor no cunt can read.

Well he'll definitely fail the automatic criteria since hes never played for Brazil, probably be passed through on appeal though.

I might not be one of the 'we' people you refer to Dr. Gloom, unless he has a coronary PDQ like.

If it’s true (no wait, come back) that Bruce Wants Charlie Austin, I still say he might come in. We’ve been linked with him for years so someone, somewhere likes him. He’s better than Joselu at least...

You’re so right about the injuries

i mean, fuck the fat cunt. he can do his best to destroy the club but i'm fucked if i'm going anywhere. maybe not the best logic, but it's our club, not his, and we'll be here long after he has a coronary

Christ, we need players but we’re not that desperate.

Love how any time Keys posts some bollocks half the replies are about him shagging his daughters mate, and the rest about his hirsute hands

Joelinton has been left out of today’s squad for a friendly as he has s said to meet representatives of Mike Ashley’s Newcuntle to discuss a transfer according to the press down here. Hoffenheim are holding out for more than 40m Euro.

In his defence, Tim Sherwood is thick as pigshit

Did Sheff Weds not accept their resignations? I hope they take Ashley to the fuckin cleaners...

A great bunch of lads.

FYP

i'm not surprised the players aren't trying - no one will want to pick up an injury and risk their chances of getting a move away from the sinking ship

It’s a new low. We’re a bad joke, and the joke’s on us.

He can get fucked too

this is gonna be hilarious. perhaps even funnier than the big wheel episode of bottom.

Bad time of year to be calling us brethren. I think he nails it as British exceptionalism. So many people in the UK who never lived during the age of the empire have absolutely no idea of their country's place in the world. Yes, the UK is one of the bigger players but it no longer sits in the top tier of nations. Being part of the EU meant we were at least part of one of the major players, without them we have very little real influence.