Championship 2021-2022

Aye, I left him off that list on purpose as it makes sense for them to offer him a new deal and is different to the aging has beens on that list! Whether he'll accept or not is another story.

 

Looks like the three promoted teams aren’t as cut and dry as I thought. The thing is though, who else could be going up in West Brom’s place? The other teams are either surprise packages and may not last the distance or just inconsistent (and none of their goal differences are great).

 

Luton may replace us in the prem at the end of the season.

 

Interesting to note that they’re now at the same point as we were when we started the 2000/01 season 15 games unbeaten with 39 points (two points more than Bournemouth have) before unravelling spectacularly to not even reach the play-offs. In our case, the signs were there that we wouldn’t be able to keep it up (having to outscore teams to win or getting outplayed some games, getting lucky wins via late goals against Barnsley and Bolton, woeful home performances in the League Cup which suggested a questionable attitude). If Preston win at Muff tonight, that will show there are chinks in their armour, but as you said they don’t seem to be showing any significant signs they’ll slip down the table - they had a couple of dodgy results early in the season, drawing 2-2 at home to Blackpool after being 2-0 up and getting thrashed at Norwich in the League Cup, but they’ve probably strengthened since then and the Championship doesn’t have the depth of quality it did in 2000/01.

 

Don't even joke about that

 

It's so stressful, wanting Muff to lose while knowing that that defeat would benefit The Snake.

Mind you, Muff's plsying culture may have changed now Parker is in charge. I won't give them the benefit of the doubt until I've seen them over 90 minutes though - amd I hope that won't happen for a long time. And in any case, their fans will still be arseholes.

 

The championship table isn’t worth looking at until we’re well over half way through the season. We all know its an absolute slog and things can change very quickly. I think Reading aside that year when they got well over 100 points, every team has a slump.

 

Not sure it does? If that group were on £9.5m a year then the gruesome twosome consumed £7.5m a year on their own!

 

I said it puts it into perspective, I didn't say it made us look great . It does show that we aren't the only ones who make this kind of mistake and bear in mind Stoke have had a few seasons in the champ now. At least we've dealt with most of our "waster" issues pretty effectively this summer, even if not at zero cost.

 

Mitrovic already on 19 league goals for the season. That’s pretty bonkers by 3 November!

 

This is the games he's played this season for those of us (like myself) who didn't believe he could score that many this early in the season:

https://www.soccerbase.com/players/player.sd?player_id=67457

Yet he only scored two league goals in the Prem last season! Has he improved that much, or is it an indication of how big the gap is between the Championship and the Prem, or both?

 

He was alright in the Prem until last season, play to his strengths and he'll get enough goals for sure

 

Hopefully Preston did to Bournemouth tonight what Sheffield Wednesday did to us almost 21 years ago.

 

The Silva effect. What a coach. 7-0 away at Blackburn. 43 goals already this season. Not only dominating but entertaining. Something we can only dream of.

 

We could never dream of attracting such a promising coach. Get real.

 

Just bumped in to a Newcastle season ticket holding colleague who's down here for meetings, so obviously asked him about the takeover etc. He told me that Newcastle United are now 13-14 times richer than Man City and is delighted with the takeover. The Eddie Howe thing is a huge disappointment but he said no matter who comes in they're just number 1 of many. He fully expects to see silverware in the next 5 years which he never thought he'd be able to say in his lifetime.
I asked him about the fair play restrictions to which he replied that they've got about £600 million to play with.
Then I asked him about relegation to which he replied, "so what"? Seems like the Geordies really don't care if they go down or not because they know it'll be for one season only and they'll likely win every game in the Championship before going on to dominate the Premier League the season afterwards.

Literally nothing I could say made a dent in his optimism and joy at this.

 

Did you ask him about the fact that his club is now effectively owned by the Saudi state and all that goes with that? Most football fans would be delighted that their club is suddenly much richer than it used to be - it happened to us in a small way, after all - but there must be some Newcastle fans who are uncomfortable about who owns them.

 

You should have suggested he meet Khashoggi’s family. Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve all had a permanent mental block put on that subject as part of the takeover.

 

Nothing about the deal bothered him whatsoever, it seems the lure of silverware overwhelmed any other moral sense he may have had, and he's an intelligent bloke!

Just realised I posted this in the Championship thread, any chance it can be moved?

 

They are having the season we could and should have had last year.

But we decided to huff and puff our way unconvincingly to second place and lose to luton town instead.

The watford way.

 

Certainly, Newcastle is expected to make several hundred million in transfers, and to perform better than many Premier League teams. Still, money in soccer solves a lot of issues. And the Saudis will not skimp

 

Well we largely have Ivic to thank for not getting first place.

In fairness to Xisco, he was the right manager at the right time and for the right length of time. Had he been appointed earlier, Brentford might have caught us, as towards the end of last season performances were slipping (as demonstrated even in games when we were picking up points, like Sheff Wednesday, Boro, Millwall, even Reading which was basically won by two pieces of magic before we hung on) and there were signs teams were beginning to work him out.

 

No, we lost the next four games (might've been even worse if the Burnley home game hadn't been postponed), and although we picked up a little during the turn of the year you know what happened next.

Our 4-0 win was against Grimsby after we were humbled by Man Utd's second string team in the League Cup, and despite that result some people think the cup game may have been the catalyst for the team's slide down the table as it may have knocked their confidence and desire to bounce straight back up to the Prem.

 

Bassini circling Birmingham:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/foot...21.2132561565.1636709451-313080735.1589199802

 

Troy knows who he is and they'll dump the idea very quickly. He won't let Baz lay a finger on his beloved Brum.

 

If it's true - and lets face it, it involves Baz and so it almost certainly isn't - then it's 100% up the foreign owners who they sell to, not Troy. Who knows if they'd be tempted? And I doubt a bunch of millionaires from Hong Kong are going to not do a deal because one of their players is against it. In reality he'd have to orchestrate his own rival consortium.

 

Just seen this in the Birmingham Mail. Took me by surprise.