Leaderboard

I was going to go out for a run, but I didn’t bother replying and became disabled.

‘Thank you for coming in today, Mr. 69. I think we’ll end the job interview there.’

Please let us beat you on Saturday. No-one wants West Ham or Villa to stay up. You have the opportunity to be heroes for life, remembered forever as legends, as the team that sent West Ham and Villa down. All you have to do is let us win. Pass the message on to Bruce and for flip sake please do not play ASM. Another made up “picked up a knock” excuse will do fine. Thanks. Kind regards Watford FC

That's my thoughts, anyway. No idea what Caulkin's article says?

And the bloke pointing out that the “Spitfire” on his left shoulder is a Messerschmidt 109.

I liked the comment asking why Jo Brand was smoking a cigar

Edwards being the chief example of one of those who can't admit they are wrong.

Craig knows whats up. Buy the Daily Mail y'all.

Let's do the time walk again!

Messi and Iniesta (via a time machine). Jesus Christ, you must be one of these fellas who wanks thinking about their own wife. Set your sights a little higher.

Give him a break, he’s a changed man. He hasn’t fucked any of his daughter’s mates since she left school.

MFed your post.

"They are the kind of words, the kind of sentiments that Newcastle United supporters long to hear. They crave it; they crave being the kind of football club that people take notice of for reasons unconnected to crisis, disillusion, anger and frayed relationships. How would it feel to be “brilliant”, and “fantastic”, again? To be praised for the “goals they’ve scored and the performances they’ve delivered”, over the course of “a wonderful season?” Well, we have the answer now. It feels like you’ve been tonked 5-0 at Manchester City, with 26 per cent possession and one shot on target. It feels like 13th in the table. It feels like 10,000 free part-season tickets, in the days when anyone was counting human bodies shuffling through turnstiles. It feels like scoring 18 league goals at home (only two teams have managed less). It feels like conceding 35 away (no teams have managed more). It feels like this fetid state of limbo; three months of frustration as the Premier League have deliberated over the Owners’ and Directors’ Test, teetering on top of 13 years of truncated ambition, institutionalised mediocrity, an acceptance of ticking over. It feels a lot like Mike Ashley. It feels a lot like “the best league in the world”, where existing is the only thing that matters. To be brutally honest, it feels pretty fucking miserable. This is not a hatchet job on Steve McManaman who, in the course of his co-commentary of Newcastle’s miserable performance at the Etihad Stadium, uttered the phrases listed above. Broadcasting is full of perils, just like writing (and if I ever file a report free of error, it will be the first time, trust me), and being a general “expert” on every team cannot be easy, but this was just so catastrophically wrong and cock-eyed that it almost sucked the breath from your lungs. In the interests of balance, BT Sport also delivered an alternative point of view; Jake Humphreys, their presenter, donned his spacesuit, entered this parallel universe of McManaman’s and dragged the conversation back to planet Earth. “Survival can’t count as success for Newcastle,” he said on Twitter. Lynsey Hipgrave, a BT colleague and Newcastle fan, would have had something to say about it, too. But it is instructive to consider why or how McManaman could have said what he did and then double down on it. How can this skewed version of reality even be a thing? Perhaps he was reflecting on the recent form of Allan Saint-Maximin and Newcastle’s uptick in results since returning from lockdown. Perhaps he was by swayed by the 4-1 dismantling of Bournemouth and that beguiling glimpse of football. Perhaps he just hasn’t been paying attention. Perhaps, to be really generous, it was a reflection of the peculiar, heightened circumstances that have engulfed Newcastle this season and there was a hint of that in his praise for the “absolutely amazing” job Steve Bruce has done. There is merit in that argument if you compare how untethered the club was last summer and their position of relative comfort now, although the hyperbolic nature of the language makes people hunker down in opposing trenches. A short pre-season, a record £40 million centre-forward who is allergic to scoring, losing the majority of your goals, having the sense to discard your tactics, twice, in search of positive results, finding a way to win, insulating players from the madness of Newcastle; for all of these things, Bruce deserves credit. He has come home to Tyneside, navigated a treacherous stretch of water and kept his humanity and sense of perspective intact. When the takeover finally happens, Bruce will merit gratitude because this could have played out to a very different backdrop. With his own position being speculated over, his team have shrugged off excuses and maintained order. But he has also been honest. He knows as well as anybody that his team have been awful to watch for much of the season (and they truly have). It’s not what he wants. It’s not even close. What has been really peculiar is how Bruce has become a battleground for Newcastle fans and the wider world; every defeat and he’s the worst manager in the world and every victory he’s doing better than Rafa Benitez, as if the two men are somehow competing with each other rather than with rival clubs during different seasons. Lack of empathy from other supporters is fine, because that’s football and it’s what we all do, but from pundits it is both idle and mired in ignorance. Bruce arrived at St James’ Park at a dreadful, disheartening moment (wakey wakey, those free season tickets were not a coincidence). Some of the language which coincided with his appointment was raw and loaded, but the context was important. For some supporters, Benitez leaving was the final straw, the point at which any pretence of ambition under Ashley was gone. Was that unfair on Bruce as an individual? Yes, but again, it was also understandable. Will Bruce have changed some minds? Probably, and good on him. For all the stress and tribulations, he has relished being home and he is proud to be manager of the club he supported as a kid. He has proved some people wrong and has definitely done better than many of us feared a few months ago. He is not a saviour and he is not a fraud. He is a decent manager and a decent man doing a decent job. With all of this – Bruce, the football, the takeover, this season, Ashley, everything – it can feel like there’s something the world sees and a different reality that Newcastle fans confront. The involvement of Saudi Arabian money in the takeover has thrown responsibility on supporters when they have no power, no responsibility at all. OK, we’ll listen about piracy. OK, we’ll educate ourselves about human rights. But why do so few people hear them in return? Where have they been for the last decade and more? This has not been a brilliant or fantastic season for Newcastle. It has been dreadful in large parts, certainly in terms of quality. There have been some fine results and brilliant moments but great performances over 90 minutes can be reduced to a solitary finger on a solitary hand. It has been a season of people deciding to walk away, long before they were kept out anyway, where a limping FA Cup run brought replays against Rochdale and Oxford United. This has not been wonderful, because Newcastle are completely stripped of wonder and have been for years; if you don’t recognise that, you have simply not kept up. You have not listened. You have not been watching. Thirteenth and safe is not something to celebrate, not something to be proud of, particularly in the aftermath of a hammering which Bruce acknowledged was “painful”. There will always be people who look at Newcastle’s history and claim that supporters are deluded for expecting more; that aside from a brief, blissful spasm from the early 1990s onwards, irrelevance is their birthright. For all we might argue that Kevin Keegan and Sir Bobby Robson illustrated what the club can be when it really tries or point out there’s nothing wrong with wanting better, none of that really matters. It is all up for debate. What does matter is reality. What matters is the truth. And words like McManaman’s bend it, serving to perpetuate this myth of chugging along in the Premier League being something to be thankful for, or of Newcastle fans being ungrateful or ungracious or misty-eyed. The only good thing about this season is that it is nearly over and that the clock is ticking on Ashley’s ownership. Because there is nothing wonderful about being shit."

Mourinho is the perfect manager for spurs mind.

Kevin Campbell has come as Brother Mouzone

Combine that with your Eat out to help out voucher and you can go berserk

Going by the state of that, I'm pretty sure it was a Spanish Granny that crafted the fucker in the first place.

About halfway through the lockdown I started squeezing pillows and our winter walking jackets. I’ve been feeling down ever since.

To help send aston ville down we may need some bribe money... 15 pence should cover it

@Meenzer Lady Antebellum... Change their name to Lady A as part of the BLM stuff, then discover there's a black blues singer that already uses that name (and has done for decades). So they sue her.

He’s lost the fucking plot, man

One of the shitter Bond films imo

https://www.safc.com/news/club-news/2020/july/academy-manager-vacancy

Apart from our resident contrary dickhead (not CT, the other one), I don’t think I’ve spoken to anyone who is a Newcastle fan who thinks Bruce is any good or that we haven’t been lucky this season. I’ve no doubt there’ll be fans who disagree because there’s loads of fans at every club who know the square root of fuck all about the game. But Edwards seems to be vastly overestimating the amount of people who agree with him. Probably similar to how he views his own popularity, importance and intelligence

What a snowflake

Old people, man. They simply cannot be trusted to do anything right.

This all but confirms you're not a proper jock.

I think it's a possibility, unlikely but still possible. The de facto leader of this country is already unelected. The government have been systematically attacking the institutions responsible for checks and balances for years now, it's just become normal and nobody bats an eyelid anymore. The propaganda machine is in fulll swing. Of course, nothing like this has ever happened before, has it? Or maybe I've been listening to too much Radiohead this morning.

Lovely to see his fellow journos take a pop at Edwards. Is he now the most pre-eminent, baldy arsehole covering the cathedral on the hill?

I look forward to the follow up survey on the misunderstood brown rat

I’m slightly disappointed that there’s no link to a shitty dissertation survey.

Uhhh...

26% possession isn't a problem if your plan is to go there and stay compact with a plan to frustrate. That's not what we saw last night though. It was just a bang average team made to look worse by a lack of effort.

Aye that’s the bloke Now we know & at least Toonpack won’t need to go on an 8000 mile journey to get his guitar fixed

Thank fuck we’re fantastic or else this could be a real embarrassment.

We didn’t have a team sheet today it was a fuckin suicide note. Away to Man City, let’s play one of only two fit centre backs in midfield and play a shite full back at centre half. A fuckin half wit could’ve fuckin predicted this, which is ironic because a fuckin half wit also picked the side

How can Mcmanaman say weve been fantastic? Does Brewcie has a dossier on Peados or summit?

Tbh the cricket was 0-1 for ages today

Whoops, CT got a hold of my account there.

Going for a bank holiday Monday curry for my birthday thanks to these savings. Wow, what a government. Not like Team Nasty!!!

Chance would be a fine thing

Another blow for your lot.

In the grand scheme of things, even tough we think NUFC is the most important part if this, it isn't. The TV rights are hugely a more important issue to sort out than our ownership, and hugely complicated, financially and politically. We are on the market for 300m, its chickenfeed compared to the TV rights