The College Dropout

So they are getting 50% more than us.

Who is panicking?

No idea. They did announce they were going multi-club after 3 years. Ah brill. 3 years is a good amount of time to have no concrete plans about stadium man. I do not doubt that they will. But the slowness is not a good sign. Owners need to be aggressive in this game. They aren't doing that.

I expect Saka to start but I’d go to Son. Better fixtures over the next 3 or 4. That is if you’re planning to roll Soonish as you might want Saka back kinda soon.

And we should be copying them.

The champ is having a bit of a mare. 50/50 decisions have been backfiring consistently. Still confident of a top 200k finish. Target of top 50k is still possible but I’m going to need make some ground by the new year. I’m tired of being the wrong side of Palmer so will bring him in this week. Son is a temptation. But a Palmer brace in a 3-1 win for Chelsea without him in my FPL will ruin my entire weekend. Also need a cheapish defender. Ait-Nouri is exciting and wolves have good fixtures for a long time. But Wolves haven’t shown any ability to defend. I do eventually want a Forest and/or Everton defender because you can trust Dyche and Nuno long term. But don’t love either fixture set. I read a stat that said DCL was the biggest underachiever of Xg in the PL last season. He’s been fucking awful. Missed 2 sitters this weekend too. That was a bad decision based on that stat. But I’m keeping him for the next 2. If he doesn’t get a return, he’s out. I’m sick of him.

I’m not certain about that. but if ROI is the primary purpose of their investment. Turning Newcastle into a footballing powerhouse is perhaps not the wisest allocation of funds and effort for PIF. I’m not convinced we have joined up thinking with PIF.

Currently spurs pretty much have to have the 6th largest wage bill. By some distance. Anchoring would push the wage bills up and have spurs competing with more PL clubs on wages.

They’re not. It’s the red tops and Levy primarily.

Will the Everton owners turn a significant profit? You can’t compare us to all the clubs happy just to be on the PL gravy train. Thats what Ashley was doing with us and he had leverage of brand and fanbase. The comparisons are Chelsea, City, Villa and Everton. Established PL clubs (City less so) trying to break into the footballing elite. IIRC Villa were purchased in the Champ as a distressed asset.

The delays are not good indicators. But the new board member is. My best case scenario is PIF are just slow and risk-averse.

And Ashley didn’t invest. We’re talking about new stadium, new training facilities, youth development- best in class. The Etihad Campus cost £600m. How much money do you think they have spent off the books? Im not saying we can’t eventually become a decent investment. But it’s going to take a ton of money, will and commitment. I’ve not seen the will yet.

Man U, Arsenal and Liverpool are different propositions. They already have brand value, fanbase, academies and revenues. There’s loads of low hanging fruit for them. Im talking about clubs that need to be built like ours.

If you look at City and Chelsea (and all the undercover spending) do you think their owners turn a genuine profit vs 10% they would get in the stock market?

I have my doubts about PIF. Both in terms of interest and competency. Football clubs require 100% commitment. The 2 clubs that have grown most from investment in the last 25 years have the best 2 academies in the country. Even clubs like Brighton and Brentford have overachieved through analytics. I’ve not seen from PIF what will get us a competitive advantage. Spending what we can under PSR isn’t anything significant. Have we even tried to loan players from Saudi? and then at the same time they are demanding European football from the manager? I don’t see the strategy or the joined up thinking. It’s been 3 years. Staveley and co. had their issues. But we knew they were passionate.

The ability to pass is pretty key for a modern 6. Longstaff would struggle. Shelvey could pass. Also Shelvey days. He sat deep. It wasn’t a flat 3. He as behind 2 others to patrol that gap. Then we abandoned that concept.

It’s also a bad foot to start with a new manager. The need for instant over achievement.

Which I think is the wrong approach from the leadership. If Howe had scope to develop players we could take more gambles in the renter market. Demanding European football means immediate improvement from signings.

Aye we aren’t in the same boat as Spurs. Spurs have also spent €420m in just over a year. Roughly double our spend in that period. Spurs have spent €100m on teenagers.

Seemed like it was though. We ended up only seriously chasing 1 other defender. For our entire budget.

We’ve landed the worst PSR deal by far. A net £15m for Anderson isn’t looking like great business at all. Everybody else signed players with potential.

Tonali and Barnes in particular. Never going to increase in value. I think the demand for European football is a big cause of our issues. I like the look of Buonanotte, Minteh, Gravenberch style signings. But they might take 2-3 years to fruition. Our transfer approach seems to prioritise the now which is why we spend massive fees on established players. I’m happy to take a long term build view. I don’t see the Tonali and Guehi model working.

Even footballing it makes sense for him. The 2 players ahead of him are injury prone. And Chelsea would expect to qualify for Europe every season and go deep. 3rd choice CBs at successful clubs tend to play a lot. The biggest risk was the Chelsea project combusting.

It’s going to take some time for us to leverage that type of thing regularly. Gravenberch is a little like Isak or Coutinho in that he was a wonder kid who had a big move that didn’t entirely pan out. Still young enough to become a top talent. Liverpool can spend €40m euros on him without massive pressure. FFP makes that a big transfer for us and we would want to be more risk averse atm. But we need calculated gambles on undervalued assets. And of course the academy is leagues behind. Curtis Jones would be our best youth product in 30 years. He’s not even top 5 for Liverpool. Maybe not even top 10 yet.

Aye last season we had bad injuries but Schar, Bruno, Gordon and Isak were among the best in the league. Not the case this season.