At least Roy made the substitution relatively early. God it’s so painful watching us play without a playmaker. Hardly surprising we are struggling for any fluency. Weirdly a draw is probably what we needed for Roy (in whom we trust...) to start Meyer.

I've been a big critic of benteke, but we are worse off without him. We have no focal point in attack. Players were looking to put the ball into thd box and there's no one there, so we end up trying to play quick one twos to get thd ball into thd box, which doesn't work. Sad state of affairs really.

Was there a flag though to save his blushes ? Said on the BBC text that one was raised, not mentioned on the highlights. Pretty much summed us up in the performance, an air of panic with no real composure in front of goal. Not burying anything at the moment.

“ [T]here are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know.But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know. ”
—United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld

This post has been merged from a topic called 'Did Shelvey shoot' by Midlands Eagle

ISTR many years ago Arse scored a goal they weren't "supposed" to in circumstances like these. A quick Google reminds me that it was Kanu in 1999 who played on and Overmars who scored against Sheffield United in the Fifth Round of the FA Cup; the match was replayed at the suggestion of Arsene Wenger. The excuse was made for Kanu that he had recently arrived on the banana boat and didn't know the custom; Overmars could legitimately make no such claim. Arsenal won the rematch 2-1.

The answer to the OP's question is that the goal of course would have stood. The situation of "giving the ball back" is an unwritten rule of etiquette and isn't covered by the Laws.

Edited by chateauferret (23 Sep 2018 10.46am)

============
The Ferret
============

This post has been merged from a topic called 'Did Shelvey shoot' by Midlands Eagle

He didn't shoot, and he apologised for slicing it wide of Wayne. The minute it went out for a goal kick Lascelles also waved all the other Newcastle players back from the high press they were normally doing on our goal kicks. Pretty sure it was just an accident.

Employee of the month is a good example of how someone can be both a winner and a loser at the same time.

Thing is, with the other players in the team we really should be contributing more goals from elsewhere.

Zaha is obviously the focal point, but there aren't many teams who have a 20 goal striker who gets them out of trouble. Players like Townsend and PVA have shown they can finish but they seem a bit shot-shy at the moment.

As big as Benteke's problems are, it's starting to look like there is also a lack of confidence throughout the team.

Employee of the month is a good example of how someone can be both a winner and a loser at the same time.