The College Dropout

There isn’t the talent in the NE to do that ‘naturally’ to the level we need it. London is a top 3 youth footballing city in Europe, how do we compete with that naturally? City and Chelsea are getting the best kids from around the world. How do we compete with that ‘naturally’? Billion pound business talking about becoming #1 naturally is naive.

Investing heavily in the academy isn’t natural. We’ve not had a top academy since 19**. It’s only possible if we dope it with the best facilities, coaches and players from the country. Newcastle United are not going to close a £200m revenue gap to SPURS naturally. Spurs have compounded success, in a wealthier part of the UK and created rules to prevent easy financial doping. Let alone Arsenal and the ilk. Almost £400m revenue gap to Man City. How do we catch them naturally in 20 years? When they continue to exploit financial loopholes like multi club ownership. We do not become #1 in every department ‘naturally’. It will come at the force of PIF money, power and determination. Smell the coffee boys and girls.

Clubs will get higher gate receipts from the more and bigger matches. So far it looks more competitive than the old group stage. Only 8 automatic qualifiers adds jeopardy.

I don’t believe there’s a ‘natural’ way to catch the Cartel clubs. That’s the point of the cartel. We are going to build a stadium and spend the max we can anyway. That’s not natural.

What’s spite got to do with it? Levy is actively blocking us every way he can. Spurs is his biggest life’s work and he’s doing everything he can to ensure Spurs remain at the top table - he’ll not lose a blink of sleep if that means stopping us. He’ll actually sleep better. He’s definitely thought of us as the last thing before he sleeps at night. Or one of them at least. This is the game PIF are in.

Still the right profile of signing and plenty of time to come good. Only issue with the profile is the fee and was big. Barnes, Tonali, dare I say even Isak - wrong profile. Should’ve only signed 1, the first we did.

Tino’s a good transfer. Smart. But the fee was another premium. And we should’ve sold Trippier by now. Tonali is the Longstaff replacement but we should have signed someone else for half the money and wages. Knowing what we do now we should’ve sold Joelinton and Wilson too. Joelinton on the super max don’t make sense.

Yep.

Yeh he did. The header. I like Callum man. He was great for us. But he looks done. I wanted him to stay but that looks to have been a mistake.

Where did I say they are not making effort or go backwards? We are progressing as a club undoubtedly. There’s evidence for that. You said they are doing everything they can. Thats different from making progress? Yasir said himself he wants us to be #1 in every department. Thats not my stated ambition that’s our CEOs. And i do believe him because this seasons goals are ambitious. But I don’t think it’s possible for NUFC to be come #1 in every department moving the way we move. It’s too slow, it’s too cautious. No business in the world can become #1 from #35 in a global and competitive and saturated market without urgency, big bets and a good appetite for risk. My current view is we are ambitious but are not actioning a strategy to meet that ambition. Levy has urgency. Day one of the takeover you know he was moving. Days later they are trying to close loopholes. Saudi start buying Saudi clubs, he’s moving to close the gaps. Our rivals are urgent. Our rivals try and close loopholes. He’s doing everything he can to stop us. Everything. He’s not wasting a day or taking a chance or trying look to play nice.

Stadium - i'm hopeful here but it's taking more time than we had hoped and they initially benchmarked for Training ground - low hanging fruit. We await the big plans Exploiting loopholes - If they are not exploiting loopholes they are not doing everything they can. Sponsorships - low-hanging fruit too. Done as much as any reasonable owner would. Is the Saudi Investment Fund doing everything it can to make Newcastle #1 club in Europe? Everything? I don't have evidence of that. The evidence would say probably not.

These are mammoth signings tbf both in terms of reputation and fee. Deluxe signings. What's the phrase for this type of signing again? IMO, we shouldn't make those types of signings either or make them a season-on-season thing like we did with those 2. I don't know why we pivoted from the Botman & Bruno approach but we did pivot. But the manager refuses. He views them both as LWs, knowing he was also willing to play Isak, Willock, and Joelinton LW but unwilling to consistently play anyone bar Mutphy and Almiron at RW. That didn't make any sense. Injury crisis or injury crisis because they leave the team short. But the squad would've been more balanced with a RW for half the cost of Barnes and a CM for half the cost of Tonali and we'd have one of Minteh or Anderson on the books too. You have to remember - nobody knew that spending spree would put us in position to. breach FFP. We didn't even know points deduction was a thing. We didn;'t even get going on making silly transfers until the last 9-10 days. We mismanaged our spending and sales 100%. Right up to June too.

That's my point. They failed and we didn't capitalise. Probably costing us European football this season. What is the evidence for this? IMO the stadium, training ground, exploiting loopholes and sponsorships would give the greatest indicator.

I don't believe Eddie re: injuries too tbf.

He had B2B ACL injuries - strong mentally. But yeh... it seems like the body has completely gone. Did he have a chance to play in the CL? Definitely played at the WC.

This doesn’t seem likely as our aim is to finish in Europe this season as it was last season. You don’t sign Tonali for £60m if you’re not looking for short term success. IMO getting Ruben Neves on loan could’ve been the difference between finishing 6th or 7th and qualifying for Europe. Which may have been the difference between Tosin choosing us over Chelsea. Then having money for a RW. These are all ifs but the margins in football are so slim. If you have opportunities you take them. Aggression wins.

I’m not talking about the financial loans. I’m talking about player loans. https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/67490620.amp what does that look like to you in real terms? Atm we aren’t pursuing a slow build. We are looking for short term success by keeping all of our players in prime or past prime years. Tying some of them down to long term contracts. Pursuing £60m CBs is not a slow build. A slow build To me is a focus on youth and undervalued players. Selling our star players consistently at peak value. Having a pipeline of quality players to keep and sell, comfortable within PSR, increasing revenues with a stadium on the way. And it may take years to get the transfer approach working to the level we need. And the academy will take many years. In that time we could finish anywhere from 5-10th imo. I’m happy with that. Unless the rules change, I don’t see how our current approach is going to work (Barnes, Tonali, Guehi, Elanga, MGW, Olise).

Aye the only players that would generate a lot of PSR headroom are Bruno and Isak. Some intelligent free transfers of good older heads too. Agree what others said. We’ve signed good players but it doesn’t make sense. £100m for Tonali and Barnes.

Applogies for the snark.

Aye let’s refresh the squad but keep all the players of saleable value.

People balk at the Brighton route but they don’t realise Brightons budget is tiny. A Brighton approach with our budget would be powerful.

Villa signed Morgan Rogers from the Champ and he’s been a regular starter pretty much ever since. 20+ years ago Jenas gave us a lift off the bench regularly as a sub. I don’t think it has to be mutually exclusive. We at bringing on Almiron and starting Murphy. Adding any talent to the squad will be a bonus imo.

Also FFP was invented to curtail City and prevent new ones. Just as they were creating and implementing FFP. City accelerated the inflated sponsorships. Announced the city campus. Announced they were going multi-club. City have been aggressive and anti-establishment from day one. Their agenda and strategy is clear. Our agenda and strategy is not clear. I’m not all that bothered by the football until that is clear. I’ll enjoy it for what it is and hope for the best.

Always been the way. Littlewoods started the Liverpool dynasty was it? Levy’s taken spurs from midtable to a team just under the European elite. Blackburn, Arsenal, Newcastle, Chelsea, City all broke British transfer records while challenging for the PL. What club has risen beyond the ambitions of the owners consistently? In the entire history of the sport? Arsene Wenger stopped winning league titles when Arsenal became the 3rd-5th biggest spenders consistently. He would’ve won more with an additional £50m in wages/fees. His first winning team was the most expensive squad in the division though. There’s a number of things we could’ve been aggressive with that we haven’t. Or pushed the boundaries. Or been publicly opposed too. I won’t preemptively blame the cartel without evidence. The loan loophole from Saudi has been open this entire time. Never exploited it.

That means I’m panicking? I hold a view that a club in our position requires aggressive expansion in revenues and infrastructure if we are going to solidify ourselves as an elite club over the next 7 years. 3 years in - I don’t think we are on track to do that - as far as what we know for a fact. But I’m not panicked. There are obviously things I don’t know. Things could change quickly with a few announcements. It might just take us longer to get there. Maybe we never get there but we compete for Europe and have good cup runs - that’s probably the floor of what we will do. Some people here would have a meltdown if we sacked Howe, sold Bruno, Isak or whatever. I wouldn’t. The most important people at a club are the owners. Ours being so wealthy will put us in a better position than most owners. But imo - to get the very top - you have to be aggressive, cutting edge in some departments (transfers, youth development), move quickly l and push against the boundaries of the rules, maybe even force a change. Thats what other teams in our position have needed to do to dominate. I’ve not seen that from our owners so my expectations are capped. im not Howe dickrider but I think his job is a difficult one. High expectations without the tools to succeed. At some point, with Howe or another manager, we’ll have to redress that in leadership and ownership.