Bruno Guimaraes calls for fans to give Nick Pope a break after huge howler in goal for Newcastle United last night
Newcastle United lost their second game of the Champions League campaign on Tuesday night, falling to a 2-1 defeat to Marseille despite taking an early lead.
The Magpies had plenty of chances to add to their lead in the first half, but once again they weren't decisive enough in front of goal, with Anthony Gordon wasting a glorious chance on the stroke of half time.
Then, just to compound that even more, it took just 36 seconds for Marseille to level things after the restart, after Nick Pope was caught in no-man's land, miles out of his area, making it way too easy for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to equalise.
Five minutes later, the former Arsenal man was on the scoresheet again, and the game ended 2-1.
Bruno Guiamaraes tries to spread the blame for the latest Newcastle defeat
While we, many other outlets, and pretty much every Newcastle fan and anyone who saw the game hold Nick Pope responsible, Newcastle captain Bruno Guimaraes says the whole team is to blame. Speaking to the media after the game (via The Chronicle), he accused his teammates of sleeping early in the second half.
"We know that Popey has already saved us many, many times. This happened to me, it happened to him, it already happened to Dan Burn, so we have to keep going. We cannot blame it on one player.
"I think the whole team was sleeping in the second half. And it's not about one player, it's about the whole team.
"We cannot concede the goals the way we did today."
It was 100% Nick Pope's fault. Sorry, Bruno
It takes more than just one man's mistake to bring down the team like that, sure, but that first goal was all Pope. Malick Thiaw was screaming at him to get back in his area.
There's no guarantee that Thiaw would have dealt with the attack, but Pope would have been a lot more effective were he in his goal, that much we know for certain.
Obviously, as we said about Howe, Bruno isn't going to publicly slam his teammate for a mistake, but even he must know where the blame lies.
At least the memes have been gold today.
