punkiller1981

Nobody can resurrect his career because he is rubbish. £40 million for 4 years out of date reputation is madness and sums up why Everton are where they are. funny to watch from our point of view though

Agreed the standard of the bottom 5 (including Leeds in that) is truly pathetic. Any side that can get to the end of January and have 2 wins all season should be dead and buried. it still could go either way for them though a couple of quick wins in the next few they will be ok lose them and head into the horrid run of fixtures they have in a few weeks and it could unravel fairly quickly. Plus Burnley have 3 games in hand over them and they play Watford at home next

No chance. If he did go this has nothing to do with it

Played defensive midfield for Fulham

I thinks it’s called lazy journalism. Gerrard used to manage rangers so can’t possibly have any clue about players from other teams so will only look at rangers players. He worked with players at rangers that were appropriate to the level they were playing in. Now he is in the premier league and the level of quality is upped ten/twenty fold so he and his team have looked at players that suit that level of quality. it’s funny to see that the centre half Goldstone was one the press were saying we would sign is now being chased by two championship clubs! It’s like they think we are still at that level sometimes and not massively on the up with great owners with deep pockets. fwiw I never thought goldstone would be looked at by us because he is rubbish

Bear in mind he scored in the last game he played on his own up front against Brentford. I think given Watkins finishing is poor most of the time I would try Ings. Something about Watkins play this season is worrying me

Don’t won’t to pile into the guy but the chance when he got in behind Mina was good movement followed by an average touch and an awful finish. the one that bothered me most was the header that Pickford saved, not because he didn’t bury the header which he should have done but because he was never onside! He was looking across the line the whole time and he was miles offside. Brainless football

Agree Everton didn’t really open us up and if that was then throwing everything at us then they are in a world of trouble because they have so little quality with perhaps the exception of the young lad Gordon. they do look like relegation candidates currently to me

Ugly horrible game, Everton taking the Wimbledon early 90’s style whack it long and scrap for 50/50’s. Only bits of quality came from us and they were few and far between. i thought the were some fairly average performance such as mcginn’s second half and Watkins. Phil looked a bit rusty today and not his type of game at all but all in all this as many have said is the type of game we would have folded in the past so pleased with the points. final thought did Mings have a fiver on the draw? Last 15 minutes he was going for all sorts of headers that he didn’t need to go near and leaving massive gaps. I think that’s why Hause came on

Class act committing to a place he belongs seems like sensible but sensational business for both parties. if there is no sale price clause then he is going to cost to much to buy for almost any club in the world

I agree with that sentiment and who does he play instead of st maximan? i am both surprised by the fact that Newcastle haven’t had a better transfer window with only a week or so to go and they haven’t signed players in my view that are guaranteed to keep them up. But also not surprised because they are a bit of a shambles both in set up and how the rich people are running the club plus on balance they are still more likely to go down than stop up but hey anything is possible

Can you imagine the improvement I training levels with winners like saurez. Phil. Digne and Ashley young (he has one as much as any of the others) in the group. I think that winning mentality is something any team that wants to succeed need and the loss of game time against increase in mental approach and professionalism might be worth it. It might not too, I don’t know but that’s what we pay Gerrard to work out

Love how mental clubs like every still think this guy is a decent manger when his last ten years show he is an anti football relic who drops into clubs causes chaos and leaves (bit like Rafa to be fair). He is not of the current football world anymore but you know the usual suspects in the media like Robbie savage will be saying “look at what he has won”

I think you only needs to look at his numbers last year to this year to see the trajectory. I felt last year he was nice and tidy but lacked a bit of something! Maybe a bit of physicality. This season he has progressed at an astonishing rate and for me he is our nailed in starting Centre midfield engine. Yes he has the odd patch were he is a bit quiet but he is 20 years old that's inevitable. In three years time this kid is going to be a top class international

Mistake aside I thought he was very good and also quicker than I realised

Is this based on the fact that Man City and West Ham moved into their respective stadiums following large athletics events ? The difference being that the Etihad was built purposely for the commonwealth games and the London stadium was built for the Olympics. The Alexandra stadium already exists and is a permanent athletics stadium which will have a very nice refurbishment and temporary additional seating. It will continue to be the main Uk athletics stadium after the games so unlike the other two the is no need to find a use for the stadium as it already has one

Looking at our set piece delivery yesterday I can’t wait to have the option of Digne and phil on the dead ball

Served his purpose here and has probably over stayed his usefulness by 6 months or so. The playing squad had developed beyond the need for him and he is just taking a place up

I dont think Ramsey helped the situation by facing away from the goal and facing Cavani. Had he been facing the goal and got himself in the way of Cavani I think the goal would have stood. Still think Cavani went down cheaply though

The problem with that is your left with a load of players that are good in the championship but can’t get a kick in the prem (Tom Cairney at Fulham springs to mind with one year on one year off) and you can’t offload them because you over pay on wages to get them in the first place. Not a problem for Newcastle in terms of finding them but in terms of FFP it’s a big problem. I do think them going down even with their owners would be a bit of a disaster and elongate the process of premier league domination.

I imagine the idea of moving to the north east for a freezing winter to play for a guy he had probably never heard of and play for a team that is still almost certainly getting relegated probably played a part in him not wanting to go there. I imagine a relatively pressure free environment (in comparison to the Barca bubble) will give him an opportunity to express himself for a manger that wants and believes In him. I think the cost of wages etc is majority covered in the new spark in interest and exposure a marquee statement signing this would bring. It’s low risk for me with a potentially massive upside

I know this is one really for the VAR thread but why was it even needed bad refs are bad because they don’t understand football, seeing it again on tv doesn’t make there decisions any better. I’m firmly in the camp of football wasn’t broken and was actually doing ok before VAR and with VAR the product had got so much worse

Probably make the game a bit better I think VAR makes the game so much worse

My god deli Alli really is a shit footballer. Unless they have no other players I can’t see why yet another manger thinks they will make him into a player.

I hadn’t realised the was a VAR thread until today so sorry I am very late to the party with this. FWIW i hated the idea of VAR coming in perhaps with the exception of automatic goal line technology but for everything else I think it makes the game fundamentally worse and I can’t see any justification for it other than those who say at least we get the right decision in the end. I don’t think quiet often we do get the right decision most of the time because we still have incompetent arrogant refs watching a tv and being given another opportunity to make a wrong decision while in slow motion while taking 5 minutes out of the game. We seem to have accepted that because refs are really poor that’s a reason for VAR rather than saying your a shit ref get out the game and we will train up some competent refs. secondly if it does have to stay and is genuinely here to correct clear and obvious errors then give the VAR one additional look at real speed not slow mo as that shows a completely distorted vision of reality and context, if they then don’t see an error carry on. Nothing for me kills a game as a sporting piece of entertainment than the game stopping so a ref can go frame by frame back and forth looking for the faintest touch on the ball. Add into that the joy and spontaneous celebration that gets ripped out of the game when a goal is scored and sky are straight away going VAR will check that. My real feel for it is the game wasn’t broken in the first place it was highly entertaining including the quirks of poor reffing and with VAR it’s less entertaining it’s more dull and personally I watch less football since VAR has been introduced, I watch every Villa game of course but I do watch less other games because it’s sucked the entertainment out of it for me. I also don’t buy into the idea it works well in rugby and cricket either. In rugby I often end up turning it off when I’m watching a really good try scored and then the ref comes on the Mike and says can you check for a forward pass about 9 minutes ago in the first phase of play. Why but if you thought it was a forward pass blow up for a forward pass at the time. Cricket is a bit better because it’s stop start but still going to edgbaston to watch the test England get an lbw we all cheer and then the batter challenges the decision. So next time I don’t cheer when we get an edge or lbw because im waiting for it to be overturned. sorry for the rant im just In the camp of I wasn’t aware football was broken before VAR and im in the camp if I’d rather be entertained than have every decision spot on especially when they are always still so subjective. I don’t believe refs cheat or are biased even though it looks like that sometime, I think they are just poor and they are still poor no matter how many replays they see.