AV82

Our defenders must be **** shattered after every game with all the sprinting back.

Our weakest member of our proper defence + 4th choice CB + 5th choice CB + our attacking LB. Forest with the wind in their sails.
 

This is gonna be a tough 45.

It's absolutely awesome to have him back in with the rest of the team but let's not get too excited, he could easily still be a good 2-3 months away.

Hang on we can't play Chambers or KKH in these matches? That could bite us in the ass couldn't it..

In before the 'stats dont mean everyfin'. Yes, yes, I agree, but it is surprising to see these statistics. Maybe he got them the wrong way around? 

9 minutes ago, DJ_Villain said:

I don’t give a sugar coated word removed about his personal success when it is for the benefit of Man City…

If he had gone abroad and done it for Inter, Bayern, Real etc, I would have cheered him on and supported him…

but **** Man City, their owners, their players, their employees and their fans…

Cool.

Pau, Lenglet about to become the slowest defensive pairing ever fielded in the history of football. 

9 hours ago, Villan_of_oz said:

His price would have gone down not up, definitely right time. We are a better balanced team without him.

He worked hard and would be a delight to watch in our 4-4-2 either on the left or as a 10 however what the rest of the team (and manager) would look like without us bagging that 100m does raise an interesting question. Who know's where we'd be right now but if there are Villans out there who hate him for the move it boggles the mind with the hindsight of Emery's reign, nevermind his personal success.

You're right, he left at the perfect time and uniquely we've both benefitted — I'd trade Grealish for Pau, Tielemans, Kamara, Bailey and Emery in a heartbeat. 100m for an academy player goes a long, long way.

A man can dream though, if there was any hope of bringing him back in the summer I say go for it. F*** it.

3 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

If we've got an option to buy back then it's perfectly fine business.

It's just a loan twisted to help with FFP. Nobody would be batting an eyelid if we'd loaned him out. They'd be saying how brilliant a decision it was

There does seem to be a lot of smoke around 'if Hull City get promoted' and you know the saying..

It's not unlikely we start next season wanting to get rid of Archer while watching on with jealousy as someone else signs Philogene for 20m+ but equally it's not out of this world to imagine the clause being bullshit, Hull making it through the play-offs or us simply matching any bid for him if they don't get promoted.

What we can confidently say is that Emery rates him and we'll do whatever it takes to have him back in claret & blue in the summer if it works financially.

Surely we're not that stupid. He looked electric pre-season, and to then wager it all on Hull getting promoted? Doesn't make sense.

1 minute ago, Stevo985 said:

Don’t forget Pau is about to return. So we’re losing Konsa and gaining Pau. 
 

Ramsey is hopefully getting back to his old self. 
 

And most importantly our performance last night was actually good  

 

we had a slump last season and finished incredibly strongly  

There are positives. 

Kamara will be tough to replace but you're on the money with that mate. Many of our supporters reactions have been, as usual, over the top.

Early days but some positive words in here:

20 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Just to try and calm some of the absolute hysteria going on here.

 

 

Newcastle's form so far this season would have them finish on 57 points.
57. That's it. That's only 11 points more than we already have.
11 from 14 games is less than 0.8PPG for us. That isn't just relegation form, it's COMFORTABLE relegation form.

For comparison, in our current slump (I'm counting this from the Brentford game on 17th December to last night, a period of 8 games) we are averaging 1.375 PPG.
To put that in perspective, in case that doesn't sound like a lot, the form we'd need to slump to (0.8PPG) to fail to hit 57 points is the equivalent of 29 points over a full season.
The form we are currently achieving (1.375) is the equivalent of 52 points over a season.

Even in our current slump, we are achieving form equivalent to 52 points per season.

 

Man Utd's form this season would take them to 65 points this season. 
Our current form of 1.375 points per game would take our total to... 65 points.

So even if we saw no improvement whatsoever from our last 8 games for the rest of the season, we'd still pip them to 5th.

 

 

 

Obviously these aren't perfect comparisons as it assumes Newcastle and Man Utd continue their form exactly. But hopefully it shows how much of a swing it would take for us to fall that low.
Even just a small improvement from our current form would make it a HUGE task for Man utd to overhaul us.

If we hit 1.5PPG for the rest of the season, we'll get 5th place. And that's not a huge ask

 

Talks of 7th or 8th place are absolute hysteria, imo

Great post. I just hope Kamara and Konsa aren't out for the rest of the season otherwise we might get worse before we get better.

Sign him and Ollie up for finishing school please.

9 minutes ago, tomav84 said:

but he walked down the tunnel under his own power so it can't be that bad can it?

It's very common for people with ACL tears to be able to walk just fine after. I hope it's not true but him walking down the tunnel unfortunately doesn't say a whole lot.

Just now, AVTuco said:

Not sure how, but we're mentally fragile again. A team that only plays when they're behind. No urgency or will to win. 

Pivotal game ending in a loss. 

We fell apart when McGinn and Bailey went off. Regardless of whether it was the right decision or not it's no surprise that a misfiring Diaby and a non-existant Zaniolo took the wind out of our sails.

Some of the jigsaw is back together. Once he finds his feet in front of goal once again he'll go wild.

We completely deserved to run away with this match tonight. A mixture of inept, corrupt officials and some of our boys misfiring yet again sees us fall laughably short.

Disgraceful refereeing. 

Just now, Callum said:

There’s only so much you can pin on the ref tonight. Yet again we’ve fumbled the bag through our own individual errors. 

I'd have taken a 0-0 happily with us rueing missed chances. This is something else.

1 minute ago, MCU said:

Stand by what I said… how on earth can you expect to compete for 4th, 5th when you squander chance after chance. 

Ref.

Corrupt.

Corrupt.

Shameful display from this ref.

Say what you will about Kamara but boy are we missing him in the middle right now.

Will the commentators get their tongue out of United's arse for one bastard second?