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We don’t need that either. It’ll be their third competitive game. Nothing to do with this like.

Watkins is 30.

It’s too late now. He wants out.

Who cares about this cunt now?! His name was sullied with me last week when it was clear what was happening. It has to be all about who we replace him with and we should be getting the replacement first.

You do the work beforehand. Don’t act oblivious to how transfers work.

Isak was from abroad, and we don’t know how strong the interest was from Arsenal. Regarding Gordon, people thought we were overpaying. Chelsea had shown an interest the summer before. The fact we haven’t got any of them this summer shows the targets were wrong anyway. Those clubs have more to spend this summer too.

The problem is we were never getting those players. It’s why the strategy was wrong. Hope we’ve had a reality check. If we can get the boy from Atalanta, that has the potential to be a great signing.

I think that’s a fair wage for him. Other players can’t expect that wage unless they’re in the top 5 in the position in the world too.

He has been excellent, however there seems to be a growing contingent who view anyone new or any changes above him with suspicion. The list of transfer targets this summer and last show that we need to get a grip of the situation. This appointment seems to be a good start. Hopefully the manager agrees.

Are people still wanting Eddie in control of every last thing at the football club?

Aye so he’s been telling everyone.

Bland announced him 2 minutes before he was officially announced and has spent the hour since desperately promoting how in the know he is.

I’m finding it hard to believe that Mitchell is to blame for our transfer targets. Howe talks about how much work goes in to identifying players and only having a small group of targets. Are we really to believe that it was Mitchell looking to focus on PL proven players that clubs with more resources than us were also after? To me, it’s clear that our strategy has been wrong for a while now. In the main, we should have been looking for better value abroad. We’ve nobody to blame but ourselves.

Get him in before the mackems come in and beat us to him.

Christ. That’s even worse. Not the most important thing, but we’re just inviting ridicule when we’re on the back foot as it is.

Should have done it last summer. Hugely embarrassing.

Just bid £40m for him and see what happens. Worst that can happen is City have to do the same when they’re also trying to lowball.

Where did he go? 😂

What has the comparison with Newcastle got to do with anything? Your wage bill is a long way ahead of ours. You should be miles ahead regardless of the managers tactical naivety.

Slot has had a good start, but there were real signs of tactical naivety. The cup final was a good example. Just throwing attackers on at the hour mark. There were no challengers last year and he did well riding on the Klopp wave. The jury is out.

We’re probably not in the position PIF wanted us to be in. I suspect the plan was more to have a Sporting Director or DoF as the main man ultimately in control of transfers and hiring the manager with some kind continuity regardless of who that was. The problem we had was that Bruce was so bad he needed to be replaced immediately, and the Howe was so successful, it gave him a lot of power before Ashworth or and DoF came in. Now, I don’t think any decent DoF is going to have the control they’d want as most of the power is with Howe because he’s done so well. Mitchell was probably always doomed to fail after the Howe power play last summer, but the unfortunate consequence is seemingly all power is with the manager and there’s no overall strategy. PIF should have got a grip of it a long time ago, regardless of how unpopular it would have been with the face base. Given both Ashworth and Mitchell have failed, maybe there’s part of them just not as enthused as before.

Yeah they’re both the same. Was the same in the pub crawl I was on to Ibrox a couple years ago. The football is secondary to both of them.

The difference then though was you pretty much knew we’d have no intention of spending the money.

Clubs know Chelsea, Liverpool and City have hundreds of millions in the bank, and they’re still able to buy players. City at reasonable prices too. Personally, I’d be open to selling Isak at £150m plus in normal circumstances. It could help transform the squad. My worry if we did that at the moment however is that we seem to be pretty clueless getting players in.

I’m not sure. The whole squad flew to Glasgow. He probably then took a private jet back to Newcastle taking about 40min.