Whole performance was just disgusting and unacceptable. Mostly feel sorry for the fans who made a London-Newcastle return trip on a weeknight after work for that. Could see from the first 5 minutes there was no way were going to win. We barely had the ball and never threatened. Certainly didn't look like we were the team who had to win. Look much more like we had "nothing to play for" like people said Newcastle did. Not that it was necessarily the biggest issue today but fullbacks have to be a priority after a centre forward in the summer. Tierney and Tomiyasu don't seem able to be relied upon to remain fit for a sustained period and we just can't play this many games with Cedric and Tavares again.
After the string of 3 losses and with the next run of games being Chelsea, Man United and West Ham it looked like 4th was gone and that top 6 was even possibly at risk too. Noone could have predicted winning those next 3 which then put us back into pole position for 4th. It almost might have been easier to take to have just continued that losing run and been out of it before the Spurs game. To get so close that it looks like we should make it then collapse like this right at the end probably hurts more.
Just like the latter Wenger days, we've collapsed in the key moments again. The players are mostly all different, the coaches different, even the club's executive leadership team are different, but the result remains the same. We've collapsed. No amount of additions, departures, regime changes or consulting firms telling us what the club's "culture" is seem capable of changing that.
I know I tried to find positives after Spurs and Europa does still represent improvement from the last 2 seasons and a good result after the start of this season. But this collapse really hurts and even worse that we've handed them their ticket into the big time. But ultimately it's probably just as well we don't have to go to Bayern or Real etc with Cedric and co.
