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Surely it was this lad?

“Tojo, General Tojo, General Tojo, Tojo’s got no limits…”

It’s all cool. As long as we lock away his “General Yamashita’s black and white army flag” for the upcoming visit to Singapore, we should be golden.

Depends if there's a disconnect between Howe and whoever is doing the transfer deals. We lost out on Pedro but that's as much because he wanted to go to Chelsea than any other reason. I'm not sure we can do much about situations like that if we are competing with the biggest spenders in the PL. If we start getting a bit more creative in the transfer market and look further afield we could probably get 3-4 decent signings but they might not be PL hardened. Is everyone on the same page with that though?

3 years?

The wages and you don't even really have to play. Just sit in London making nearly a million pounds a month.

Craig Hope lives for something like this. Probably cut short his holiday to write something up.

Agree. Each club develops an identity over time and ours giving the success is turning into what Howe is delivering. Hard pressing, runners, aggressive play. He’s stamped his style successfully that should now be our identity for many years to come and DoF comes in that compliments that. We can then moan in 2031 when some manager comes in playing tippy tappy bollocks that it’s not the Newcastle way.

Lovely. Can see the embarrassing headlines in the Daily Heil coming out way. Just have played safe by just having 2 minutes of digs at the 5 Steve’s of the Apocalypse.

Well, that is pretty embarassing but hopefully, won't overshadow what a great vid it was anyways. What was Sandro wearing with the Trefoil on the back?

I just don't see how there's any excuse. We've literally done fuck all for the best part of 3 years and we seem to be as ill-prepared as it's possible to be. Obviously we can't legislate for other clubs coming in for players, but why haven't we been sounding out their agents beforehand?

Confirmed as because of the flag

“Same as last year, lads?” It’s genuinely quite hard to believe we haven’t identified other/better players than the ones we’ve been chasing for multiple transfer windows. Are Elanga, Pedro, Trafford etc the best we can find? And if they are, why are we fucking around over minimal amounts of money? We will obviously have other options but given our activity they’re clearly not considered better than the usual names.

Interesting, I just ordered the Third Shirt (pretty spiffy) and there were no duties added in. This not made in China?

I reckon £200k-£300k a week in wages is a bigger pull than us winning the carabao cup last season.

Probably said this before but getting the cup, CL and an elite manager were meant to be major pulls for players this window. Doesn't seem like anyone gives a fuck about any of them, which is fine as it's out of our hands. Maybe we're naive to the mindset of a modern footballer. But we probably need to swallow our pride and drop down to the next group of players quality wise, where we'll compete against Brighton, Forest and Villa.

Howe is in charge of transfers now though is he not ? We really don’t know who’s to blame for not signing anyone, if he’s narrowed in on PL players which we can’t afford then surely he’s to blame ? On the other hand if it’s because we have no structure in place without a DOF, or it’s because PIF’s processes are causing the problem then yeah Howe must be getting pissed off. Trouble at the min is we have no idea who is to blame for the inaction.

Agreed - which is why I’d look to find a DoF with a similar football style / philosophy and appoint him on that basis

What does move fast mean ? Surely all we can do is put a bid in and see what happens.

Yeah i understand the role. Problem is that we hired a manager first and hes class.

Ha ha. I’m not sure if he was, I give him stick cos of the way he went on when they scored late on in the Europa league game.

Tbf the point of a good DoF is to get an entire footballing philosophy ingrained at the club, so that all the clubs teams from youth teams to first team play in the same way, and the club signs players in line with that philosophy - and not the whims of individual managers. Plenty of the most successful clubs do this - it reduces the risks of managerial appointments, as they become more like coaches. If Howe were to leave and be replaced by a manager with a different style, then loads of the players Howe loved might just become surplus very quickly, and it costs a fortune while we sell and buy a new team. We’ve seen it before of course - going from KK to Dalglish to Gullit to Robson - that’s the danger. To me, you’d want a DoF willing to adopt Howe’s style throughout the club, so that any successor will be in the ‘Howe mould’.

I think the element that makes it concerning for me was Howe saying he wanted us to move fast. This has not been fast. The concern is compounded by the fact that Howe integrates players into the squad slower than almost any other manager so the longer it takes for us to sign players, the longer it will be before we see them / see them up to full speed

He should be looking how Eddie revived Isaks career to make him one of the most sought after strikers in the world