Forum menu
I have to admit. It would be quite amusing if Newcastle got relegated this season.
Might be possible. They’ve got a few good players (Wilson, Dubravka, Saint-Maximim) so a couple of injuries could see them in bother. That, and the rest of squad downing tools as they know they’ll be shipped out when the big signings arrive. Depends if they can sign anyone in January I guess - and if they’re in a relegation fight it may be less attractive.
Salah's goal against Watford was ridiculously good but what about that pass for Mane's goal? 😍
Incredible skills - he's on fire at the moment.
I have a feeling that Newcastle would let Bruce reach the 1000 games and then...but 8 million pay off might ease the pain.
You were right Caher. I'd quite like to see Newcastle go down TBH, would be quite hilarious.
I liked Bruce as a bloke, seems just a decent human being and he got too much abuse but I'm glad he's gone as a manager.
Just need to find a battler who can polish a turd and buy the 'right' players in January for a relegation battle. Not sure Mbappe and Couhtinio are the best fit at the moment 🙂
When are you expecting him back then?
I wonder how big Bruce’s pay off was?
Was already a tough position for Bruce with the fans, the owners and the finances at the time. I'm not convinced he did a bad job.
That said, like most British mangers, he was a bit lacking in terms of style, creative football, flair. All the British guys seem to go more for a Sam Allardyce style of play than a Pep Guardiola style. I don't know why that maybe. Maybe to do with the players they have available to them or a long term inbuilt system in their heads. But there's no real shock that foreign managers seem to do better imo
Newcastle fans have treated Bruce like absolute shit, he's done a decent job for them. Horrible way to see out your 1000th game - glad he's getting a hefty payout.
I know this is a biking website but come on? Bruce has a career as a Championship/lower prem manager and was appointed by an absent landlord of an owner on handsome terms, primarily tasked with keeping the club in the league with the minimum of investment. Whilst he did this (and last season ended with a good run, largely thanks to a loanee's goal spree to elevate us to a false position of 12th - amongst very poor competition) the football itself was the worst I can recall in 35 years of watching Newcastle United. Inheriting one of the tightest defences in the league under Rafa, in less than 2 seasons we have the worst goals conceded record and it's not as is we have scored many. He was well out of his depth, 20 years behind the curve tactically, and frankly he has 8 million reasons to put up with the grief he has had. Slagging off fans and repeating the mantra of 'just ticking along' hasn't helped his cause. Bruce was the figurehead and embodiment of the purgatory of the Ashley years. He was a stooge for the fat shopkeeper and for that reason alone, Tyneside will celebrate his departure. Onwards and upwards.
Massive sense of entitlement right there ^^^^
the football itself was the worst I can recall in 35 years of watching Newcastle United
Wow! Worse even, than when Big Sam was manager?
He was a stooge for the fat shopkeeper and for that reason alone, Tyneside will celebrate his departure. Onwards and upwards.
Good luck getting anyone decent to manage/play for you who isn't just there to get another massive payday from the bone-sawing guys.
I used to like Newcastle as a club but the way the fans have wholeheartedly embraced the Saudi cash with not a murmur of concern is gross.
Newcastle fans have treated Bruce like absolute shit,
Agreed, but far worse fates than the sack have befallen those who displease the new owners 😉
Yup Jonathan Wilson had better not go after the new manager like he has Ole at Old Trafford or they'll be getting out the bone-saw again...
Are we taking bets on when the first pundit goes missing?
I fear for Robby Savage
I'll hand deliver the invite to the Saudi embassy for a 'chat' myself!
I was thinking the same about Steve McManomanomanoman
He’s bound to end up on ‘The List’ the first time Newcastle play Liverpool 😂
The Newcastle fans treated Bruce quite badly IMO he bore a lot of the anger that should have been directed at Ashley (and even that is based on some kind of utopian history that doesn't resemble reality).
Newcastle need to go through 3 or 4 evolutions before they get to where their fans think they should be.
1st evolution to a team not battling safety and comfortably mid table.
2nd to the teams competing for top 7
3rd into the top 4
4th competing for the title
Sorry kids. Not biting. You know full well that 99% of our fans aren't so deluded. A manager who can organise 11 people on some grass would be a massive first step. Mid table next season would represent an acheivement. And before you start a gofundme for Brucey, why don't you ask Villa or Palace fans if they'd have him back? I'm sensing some Man U nostalgia in your flimsy defence of him.
All the British guys seem to go more for a Sam Allardyce style of play than a Pep Guardiola style. I don’t know why that maybe.
Bruce, Allardyce, Moyes, Pearson, Dyche, Pulis were all defenders at a time when being able to play offside and shout instructions demonstrated you had a brain in your skull.
I guess Steve will beheading home around now then.
Bruce, Allardyce, Moyes, Pearson, Dyche, Pulis were all defenders at a time when being able to play offside and shout instructions demonstrated you had a brain in your skull.
Which demonstrates my point to a great extent. Why are they getting these jobs? The roundabout they're on of crappy job and performance with a big payoff. Is it because defenders make good leaders and leaders make managers?
No idea. They played at a time when you could pass it back to your keeper and he could pick it up! At the time, tactically I think British teams were 20+ plus years behind a lot of European nations. Fortunately, people like Graham Potter and Eddie Howe are as good as many non-British contemporaries.
Wow! Worse even, than when Big Sam was manager?
Yes. I once went to Bolton to watch us play there. A team Allardyce had only recently left. I thought that was the worst game of top flight football I have ever witnessed. But at least you could see Allardyce's teams had a very clear tactic and were well trained - albeit, it wasn't pretty. I honestly couldn't tell you what style of play a Bruce team has. After the Spurs defeat he gave them 2 days off.
They covered this in depth on Five Live on Monday night. No way will Newcastle be able to use their money immediately, the players that that money buys aren't the ones you need for a relegation battle, which is what this season will be.
They're going to have to overpay on mercenaries (players and possibly manager) to keep them in the PL next next. They might be able to convince some to join for 'the project' but for that you need a vision, probably a Director of Football or maybe a manager prepared for that journey.
Then once they have secured that, in the summer they need to identify their real rivals - which are not immediately the top three or their international equivalents. It's the clubs battling for European places, 4th to 8th or so.
When Man City got the big Emirati investment, they went after, Arsenal, Everton and Villa. Barry, Milner, Toure, Lescott, Adebayor....... and then that creates the backbone that the big names can then make a difference in.
There is a blueprint and clearly it works, but it's not an immediate return. I wonder what odds you can get on a NUFC PL title this decade?
I guess Steve will beheading home around now then.
Didn't get the credit it deserves 🙂
Newcastle are at the start of a long journey, they will have to slowly build up the team, i note that other teams have outvoted them to allow sponsors to have links to the owners, so panic is already there from a lot of teams, the financial fair play rules are useful, but when used like they are, they really do protect the big 6 clubs over the rest these days.
Will be interesting to see how NUFC go about their business now, but expect them to struggle to break into the top 4 in the near future, they've also got the lack of being near London to cope with when trying to bring in bigger players.
Wow! Worse even, than when Big Sam was manager?
Far worse. Benitez's team wasn't much better to watch but were at least hard to beat and had the best defence outside the top 6 in his final season with a net profit in 3 years. Bruce has a net spend of over £110m and has the worst defence in the league this season
Spot on @theotherjonv. No one seriously expects Mbappe or Haarland. I'd take Milner as someone who would set standards and can organise.
Aren’t the rumours that they’re initially targeting Lingard and Van De Beek from Old Trafford?
Bruce has a net spend of over £110m and has the worst defence in the league this season
You’ve clearly not seen many United games this season then? Our defence is woeful and cost a hefty chunk more than that
Steve Bruce to the Telegraph after leaving Newcastle:
“I think it might be my last job. It has been very, very tough. To never really be wanted, to feel that people wanted me to fail & saying I would fail, that I was useless, a fat waste of space, a tactically inept cabbage head”.
I used to like Newcastle as a club but the way the fans have wholeheartedly embraced the Saudi cash with not a murmur of concern is gross.
Funny how the burden of maintaining morality in football and resisting the power of billionaires now falls solely on the shoulders of toon fans, rather than those of Man Utd, Man City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool et al before them. That ship sailed 20 years ago I'm afraid. But now that Newcastle have joined the billionaire owners club (Ashley didn't count) it's hilarious to see the frothing from pundits and fans/owners of other clubs because they're worried they might miss out on a champions league place. Bloody hypocrites the lot of 'em.
To be fair Daz, there are different levels of morality.
Much as I dislike the Glazers (said with suitable understatement) as far as I’m aware they’ve never dismembered a journalist, chopped anyone’s head off or launched an indiscriminate bombing campaign against a civilian population
S’all relative innit?
Well no people including me complain plenty about all the other owners too. But I'm not aware that any of them have literally crucified anyone lately.
Football is a dirty business but it just got significantly dirtier and no amount of whataboutery can dilute that fact.
But your club is happy to take £m's from Saudi Telecom over the past 12 years? Ok then. Despite the trophy signings and a returning poster boy, Man U have been on a downward trajectory for a while now, so I guess I understand your paranoia.
I’m not defending our owners. They’re a bunch of ****s
Blimey… you don’t half get tetchy about your new murderers 😉
But your club is happy to take £m’s from Saudi Telecom over the past 12 years
Oh look, whataboutery.
No one is squeaky clean but Man U fans aren't the ones in the stadium celebrating bone-saw guy's right hand man like he's the second coming. Does it not leave even the slightest bad taste in your mouth?
The sportswashing has begun already Steve Bruce's son was on 5 Live saying his dad had met the new owners and they were 'great people'. 🤢
I'd argue 99% of last weekend was about ridding ourselves of the fat shopkeeper. It was a celebration of that. Of course I'm very uncomfortable with our links to the Saudi regime as any right-minded person should be but come on, don't expect any clubs fans to be morale guardians on geo-politics when their own government sees fit to enter into billions of pounds worth of arms contracts with the same people. You can't help who support can you? At least where I come from.
S’all relative innit?
Last time I looked the rulers of Abu Dhabi were hardly handwringing liberal bed-wetters? And you do realise that the financiers and shady offshore hedge funds and banks which facilitate the deals to take over the likes of Man Utd and Liverpool are the same who also do arms deals (among other things) for the likes of Saudi Arabia? And of course russian gansters are just fluffy playboys who like driving ferarris around Kensington.
The point is that football sold its soul long ago and it's all intimiately, and incestuously connected. It's the not the fault of Newcastle fans any more than it is Man Utd/City/Liverpool/Chelsea fans, so to see fans of those latter clubs pointing the finger at newcastle fans as if they have some moral superiority is, quite frankly, bollocks.
We all know what's at play here (present company excepted, I have no doubt you guys are as concerned about human rights as I am), and it's not human rights or worries about Yemen. The other clubs just don't want someone else nudging them out of the champions league and other gravy trains.
You can’t help who support can you?
You can help whether or not you give rapturous ovations to the right hand man of a murderous dictator who strings up headless bodies in the streets though.
What our government does is awful too, but did your mother never teach you two wrongs don't make a right?
We all know what’s at play here (present company excepted, I have no doubt you guys are as concerned about human rights as I am), and it’s not human rights or worries about Yemen. The other clubs just don’t want someone else nudging them out of the champions league and other gravy trains.
This part is true but this kind of 'well everything ****ed already so who cares if it gets worse' attitude is very helpful to the rich and powerful isn't it.
You can help whether or not you give rapturous ovations to the right hand man of a murderous dictator who strings up headless bodies in the streets though.
If you really think that's what we toon fans were doing (not me I might add, I was taking my daughter to her music lesson when it was announced) then you really should have a bit of a think. It's simple snobbery.
This part is true but this kind of ‘well everything **** already so who cares if it gets worse’ attitude is very helpful to the rich and powerful isn’t it.
It is, and I look forward to fans of the current top six clubs joining with newcastle fans to call for an end to billionaires in football and a return to the old days of corrupt local industrialists going on an ego-trip to avoid paying their taxes. Hell if we're lucky we might even get back to the good ol days of amphetamine fuelled hooliganism and city centres being no-go areas on match days.
They literally gave Yasir al-Rumayyan a massive rapturous round of applause in the stadium, what are you on about?
Were they applauding the actions of an Saudi politician, or just the person who finally rid them of Ashley? I'll say again, why is it only Newcastle fans who should take a stand against billionaires in football?
But they probably did something really bad to get executed eh?
When Ali al-Nimr was 17, he says he was suddenly rammed by a Saudi Arabian government vehicle while riding his motorcycle through the eastern district of Qatif.
What happened next would change his life forever.
Al-Nimr was taken to a local police station, where he was beaten so badly he had to be transferred to a hospital, his lawyer said.
Initially, al-Nimr was hit with relatively minor charges related to his participation in the widespread 2011 to 2012 Arab Spring demonstrations against Shia repression in the eastern part of the country, where most of the population resides.
But when his uncle, the reformist Shia cleric and protest leader Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, was arrested, prosecutors ramped up their case. Instead of minor infractions related to the protests, al-Nimr now stood accused of joining a terrorist organization, throwing Molotov cocktails and arson.
After being moved to an adult prison at the age of 18, he confessed to a string of crimes under extreme torture, according to his lawyer, Taha al-Hajji. At trial, al-Nimr rescinded his confession, but this was ignored by the presiding judge, according to al-Hajji.
Then, in May 2014, al-Nimr was sentenced to death by "crucifixion," contrary to Article 37 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that no individual should be sentenced to death for crimes committed under the age of 18. Saudi Arabia is one of the 196 countries that has ratified the CRC.
Keep going with the whataboutery Daz, it's super convincing.
Were they applauding the actions of an Saudi politician, or just the person who finally rid them of Ashley?
Well, it's the same person, so.....
You're really doing some impressive mental gymnastics to try and justify this aren't you.
it’s super-convincing.
It should be, because trying to paint Newcastle fans as murderous dictator apologists is daft. As slowpuncheur said football fans are no more guilty of this than the rest of us are for the actions our own government in support of regimes like Saudi Arabia. All your doing is falling into the cliche of football tribalism and all the sillyness that goes with it. It's just football. That's all the fans care about, and all they will ever care about.