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Don’t fucking christ me. Yes I do believe this. It’s as simple as if the PSR stuff wasn’t so tight and we’d be able to spend more freely then yes, we wouldn’t have to haggle as much and could have spent slightly more to get the deal done quicker.

It's pretty amazing that many seem to emphasise the latter over the former though. A 'safe' pair of hands is pointless if you've got nothing worthwhile to protect. It was obvious in December 2021 that we were predestined to have a serious run in with PSR - so long as anyone wanted us to achieve more than with Ashley, it was just a question of when and how. Building things is far far harder than sitting still and letting them rot to pieces under the guise of steady, sober leadership.

Howe did work miracles last year winning our first domestic trophy in 70 years. Playing almost all the top seven in doing so defeating arsenal away in the first leg of the semi final which majority of us thought it would be a tough ask even for a draw. Playing Liverpool in the final who we don't beat very often without botman hall and gordon at our disposal and went into it massive underdogs. It was a miracle to me anyway.

And Wilson signs a new deal.

Can you impeach an assistant head of recruitment?

I'm pretty sure there's a story when we used to train at Maiden Castle where the players would finish training and just be sharing the changing room with general public So one day two lads had just finished playing badminston and there was Ginola sitting next to them having a smoke

Staveley and Ghoduossi’s whole thing was how well connected they were to the Saudi’s/PIF. We can only speculate of course but I don’t think it’s a leap to say they’ll have had the necessary connections to get deals and financing green lit (Isak, Tonali etc.) much quicker than whoever is responsible for that now(???). It really is a shame they’re gone.

The meltdown will be on another level when we miss out on Delap, Cunha, Mbeumo and Joao Pedro and end up paying a fortune for Elanga and getting DCL on a free instead

There's nothing wrong with that, though? I'm pretty confident we're going to sign some excellent players, if we're going for players the other top clubs want them we know we're doing something right.

Just set the sport on fire and start again

Can the rueben’s not sell property to Newcastle for cheap then Newcastle hawk it PIF for £100m they’ll close the loophole fast enough if that happens

I’m curious? What happened to his desire to sign for a London team? Have we been advised otherwise?

How the fuck has football come to this?

Bit galling we’ve still got Longstaff and Willock, when this lad would have been perfect for us going forward.

Leeds IMO.

Is it the going rate? £60m+ is a huge fee and that is what it looks like it is going to. Yes there is no catalogue with prices in it, there is a price the selling club want which can be inflated and a price that a buying club is bidding which might be too low. Without Chelsea getting involved I think the deal would get done for less than it now will with their being two bidding teams. We have correctly gambled on that because if we just gave them the £60m they want we would then not be able to do other deals that want to do. There are a lot of holes in this squad to fill and we can't blow massive amounts on one position. If we bended over to Burnley, Brighton and Forest for what they "want" we would end up paying an extra £25m to our initial offers and then we would have to potentially wave goodbye to signing a centre back as a result. Therefore, we have to negotiate or move on to get everything we need.

To be fair, you can acknowledge both that, and the PSR mess last summer.

They are/have supposedly sold their women’s team to themselves

I like Andrew Santos a lot from what I’ve seen of him.

IMO we would be in a better place now if she was still here. She would’ve learnt from that and maybe needed stronger controls from PIF/Eales. Amanda-less Newcastle don’t seem to get much done business wise.

Winston Bogarde was a visionary clearly.

They will break football

They gambled and competed - ultimately fell short but they are not going to fall foul of FFP. So no worse than where they started. Have a UEFA Cup spot they wouldn’t have if they didn’t gamble. A When we qualified for the CL first time, struggled to compete in the league and in the CL - didn’t qualify for Europe and ended up selling our 2 brightest young players for less then their current market value. I think overall Howe has outperformed Emery. Can maybe argue Nickson and co. have outperformed Monchi. But the owners, money men at Villa are well ahead. They are managing what is less resources, better than us. There’s even a fan conspiracy that we won’t ever play funny PSR games (although we definitely already have - and done it badly) because of a gentleman’s agreement with the PL that allowed PIF to buy the club. People believe that because we are so stationary when it comes to circumventing PSR.

Staveley, responsible for rescuing the club from Ashley, giving hope and belief back to fans, Eddie Howe, Champions League football and inevitably her legacy led us to our first domestic trophy in 70 years. Awful person she is, boo her.

Scared me seeing this bumped