charlierc

Either one winning the play-offs is a hugely impressive story, albeit also sees them guaranteed to be put in as favourites to go down next season. Luton have it particularly interesting given they'll also need to spend a bit to bring their ground up to PL standards. I suspect Southampton, Leicester and whichever one of Leeds or Everton goes down (I feel like it's now between those two, anyway) is gonna be gunning it to go for an immediate return. Whether they manage it is ofc another question. Plus Norwich and Watford wildly underperformed this season, Middlesbrough and West Brom probably still have the gumption for another go and there's usually a decent wildcard somewhere in there (maybe Bristol City if they wisely reinvest the Semenyo and Scott money?) We've never had 3 teams relegated from the Premier League immediately bounce back, mind. I think the lockdown season was near when Bournemouth nearly followed Norwich and Watford only to fall in the play-offs. So there is still some competitiveness.

Blimey for a US festival that's pretty cheap.

One of my favourites in lockdown so would be quite tempted

Interesting. I guess logically it wouldn't be that long of a hop. Have Foos confirmed who the new drummer is? ... wait, what?

I've only been once back in February of this year. Didn't have any major complaints - sound was good, crowd was up for it (too up for it given Frank Turner had to stop a song due to some antics going on), and got in/out without too much hassle. Maybe others haven't had it so lucky.

The only grudge worth having is a long-held one right? After all I'm still unimpressed by Sam Allardyce primarily thanks to him being Newcastle manager in 2007 and being the only manager to lose a game in the 2007/08 season to the record-breakingly bad Derby County team.

We should be. There's several ways of looking at it in fairness - that run of draws in Jan/Feb really ate into our momentum and threatened to undo it all, then a run of 8 wins in 9 saw us leap the competition and if nothing else guarantees we'll be finishing in the top six, but losing Sean Longstaff and Bruno Guimaraes struggling with a recurring problem means our midfield is limping over the line. I think it'll be OK, and our final 3 are winnable, though equally, Brighton might still be fierce to protect their own European dreams and Leicester have decent attacking players (hell we've been linked with at least 3 of them, many of whom will be available if they contrive to sink beneath the waves). Scrolling Twitter in the game was something, mind. Just lots and lots of criticism like it's the Steve Bruce era again.

I've not seen Editors live before but do have a fondness for singles on their first 3 albums, and Roadmender is close to me (went there for Frank Turner in February). So... could be persuadable.

I saw Electric Six at the Milton Keynes venue they're playing on this tour a couple of years back. They're actually quite good fun, to the point where I thought that one obvious song of theirs was the weakest of the night. Already spotted a sold out icon on this one though. Meh.

I guess this counts as confirmation that they're not breaking up after the surreal antics we saw in Manchester the other night and that their touring commitments for the rest of the year will carry on.

I think we may have let Leeds a little off the hook by stumbling to a 2-2 draw. Didn't watch live but seems like we gave them two sloppy goals, which is less than ideal that our defence has gone from near-impenetrable in the first half of the season to now on a lengthy run since getting a clean sheet. Now I guess I'm hoping for Wolves or Leicester to do Newcastle a favour for the rest of the weekend, and not exactly being confident. Though tbf the fact a run of 8 wins in 9 before Arsenal last week even got us this far is still something, even if it's not relaxing to be in this business end chase ha. Reminds me of 2016/17 when we nearly blew automatic promotion to the Premier League in the final weeks. It does seem like it's going to tighten up a little given Everton have the slightly daunting challenge of Man City tomorrow, even if they might have one eye on the second leg against Real Madrid this week, while Forest's awful away form means I can't be certain they'll beat Chelsea today. It's a 2 from 4 imo, given Southampton are pretty much done and will be done with a draw/loss today.

Certainly one can't help but think that barring an extraordinary turnaround, the second leg of Sheffield Wednesday v Peterborough is going to be entirely pointless. Wednesday must be so annoyed that they got a record points total acquired by a team that didn't go up automatically, then cave in for their first play-off tie.

Was about to ask if anyone on this forum was there last night to witness whatever the hell this was.

I'm genuinely puzzled as to what this is trying to show.

It is still fascinating tbf to look at 2020's line-ups as the ghosts of festivals that would've happened in another reality.

Miami was a curious race in a way but I wonder if that's as much just people dissatisfied with Red Bull being F1 and everyone else being F1.5. I enjoyed it more than the dour round in Baku last week, but that isn't saying much.

With both losing yesterday, it's now even squeakier. Different varieties of defeat of course. Arsenal made the most of getting a goal start in the first 10-15 minutes and Ramsdale just couldn't be beaten, while De Gea's concession was remarkably bad.

Well this relationship feels broken beyond repair and unlikely to be extended into a third season. Even if Barcelona can't afford to bring him back

One of the most puzzling moves of all - no mean feat given how sacking crazy this season has been. Javi Gracia hasn't done very well, but a new manager getting only 4 games never feels like it goes well, and also feels very much like a hard pivot away for what Leeds fans want.

Yeah that sprint quali stuff was a strange one. On paper it didn't seem like a bad idea but in practice it just added to the sense of being beaten over the head with a pretty mediocre season so far. I missed the sprint and seemed to miss the fun of Verstappen v Russell, but that was about it. And with the RB stuff, fingers crossed Perez can do more at non-street tracks to give us a Hamilton v Rosberg kind of fight. It seems to me as though all the downforce taken off to make them better wheel-to-wheel racers as was the intent in 2022 has been put back on. Leclerc's pole-time in Baku was the fastest ever for that track, and it seemed as though cars just couldn't follow one another well, similar to the 2017-21 cars and continuing a theme seen in Bahrain and Saudi where overtaking was trickier than in 2022. Bodes well for Miami, which got a bit of a kicking from fans last year for being overhyped (though in retrospect actually wasn't the worst race ever).

I remember Alan Pardew many years ago blaming the Notting Hill Carnival for Newcastle losing a game at Chelsea. Least we haven't reached that bizarre stage with Klopp yet ... although give it time. Maybe he'll blame Eurovision as a distraction if they lose any of the games played around the city hosting that.

It's an easy out. Wolves and Fulham's managers have been doing this spiel for most of the season as well, but much as the referees aren't perfect and in some cases have made some pretty poor errors this season, it's still not evidence of a conspiracy and it's kinda getting tedious. And I say this as someone who can point at 4/5 refereeing fuck-ups in Newcastle games this season if I fancied a whine.

It's similar for the Toon tbf - 3 wins is probably gonna be enough. Liverpool do play twice before we do next so there is an opportunity for them to eat up some of the gap, but if we can beat Leeds, Leicester and Chelsea, it should touch-wood be enough. Arsenal and Brighton are the two I'm slightly more worried about in our run-in, but it's in our hands and as long as we got our shit side out at Villa, it should be OK. I think if Liverpool had started this run of recent form after the 7-0 rather than seemingly losing their way for a few weeks after, it might be more interesting.

Coming back from 3-0 down to equalise is at least something. Conceding to make it 4-3 straight away also feels like a very Spurs thing to do. I mean it's an improvement on their 6-1 mauling by Newcastle last weekend, but it still isn't exactly enough to stop everyone else mocking them.

Certainly Australia's chaos had more to it than this one in Baku, which ended up just showing the worst traits of both the new sprint format and the track. Though Checo at least indicates we could still have a title fight of some kind, assuming he can close the gap to Verstappen on the courses that aren't street circuits. This, meanwhile, was pretty unacceptable, but at least we avoided anything nasty happening.