80

Rightly or wrongly I guess the idea is we want him performing functions in the middle. He's got a lot more recovery pace for dealing with a breakaway than Hall, for example.

We got well and truly tonked. I've been anticipating that for a while, which helps me not be too upset about it. No real issue, I think it was more about them being brilliant and we were never going to go 5-5-0 at home to them so imagining we would is a fool's errand. I was hoping they'd slow down but they never did. There were no major surprises, they cynically targeted our key attacking presence (no complaints), the ref let them (yes complaints) and others like Joelinton and Murphy didn't have the technical chops to pick up the slack. There's no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We can go back to playing very well against just about every other team in the league, and our next fixture ought to be the perfect reset button. Just learn what lessons we can from today and apply them to our next serious chance to better ourselves i.e. the summer.

Think this is spot on. I think a lot of coaching and consistent play, building his sense of agency in a game, got him to the level he was at, but it's been substantially blown apart by a terrible time with injuries. And space for him to receive so much attention and game time has narrowed down a lot.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/jan/17/jason-tindall-king-of-touchline-chaos-has-newcastle-barking-up-right-tree This led me to this: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/jan/28/you-never-give-up-three-generations-of-footballing-tindalls-jason-jimmy-levi Didn't know his Dad set up Senrab, and discovered Carrick and the like at West Ham. Turns out coaching's in his blood.

To be fair this place is a bastion of footballing homoeroticism, so it's not really something to pick on him over.

This might sound obvious but the whole point of the rules is that we do have to sell players we don't financially need to because those are the rules. It's not a mistake in the implementation or a deceitful trick played by those who set them. The whole idea was to create a power higher than money so that just because you can afford to keep your good player and they want to stay, it doesn't mean they're allowed to stay without permission from the higher power. I think the rules should be eliminated.

I think you're right, although it has to be considered in the context that most opponents are also struggling to make transfers, so everyone's in the same boat for having to fight against stagnation.

Hahahahaha. Then it'll be "it's working so well in the women's game (it won't be), it'd be misogynistic to assume the men can't learn something from female contributions to football".

I'd agree, but I've read they actually get on well, so maybe they're just a bit tempestuous on the pitch. Definitely seen a few fuck offs aimed at each other though

Yep, was supposedly down to our final two alongside Dougie Freedman, originally.

It's been true since about March 2023. It's just a surprising amount of people have all suddenly noticed it at once. I can't really believe he's going to stay like this, as he's always had up and down spells. My view is the pressure to produce gets to him. But all the same he's been consistently producing up spells for a while now. I still firmly think a new top quality RW will do revolutionary things for us, even if his goal contribution numbers end up being similar to what Murphy's been offering lately. But I think what @Unbelievable is saying about Murphy possibly affecting how much of our resources we should spend there is a valid point. Maybe we could do with a kid to compete with Murphy who has the right profile for a Howe team and strong underlying historic stats. Happy to get their break in the Premier League and be moulded by Eddie, from a cheaper part of the world for PSR reasons. Somewhere like Gambia...

An away win and they're 1 point behind us. It's a 6 pointer. Nothing to take lightly whatsoever.

I think we just have to conclude he's better than he was. Anticipation has improved, too, so I guess it's not just that he was injured previously, or whatever. Not perfect, but nothing like the shambles I was bracing for a few weeks ago.

This did cross my mind.

Would've thought they'd say the wages were higher to pressure other clubs to pay more, and look like better negotiators to other potential client players. Agree with most of what you're saying, by the way.

It's pretty easy to rip eachother to pieces on the details, which just makes the subject more off-putting

It all depends on the individual circumstances, but potentially, yes. A stinker is still a stinker, though.

Yes, although this falls under the nitpicker clause I added to my first post All this extra (totally accurate) stuff makes it harder for beginners to get the main idea of what's going on, that's part of why people hate the subject and switch off. The average man in the street doesn't really care if a contract extension means the annual transfer PSR drops from £10m to £5m while the wages rise from £5m to £10m, meaning the player still costs £15m a year in PSR. It's true and important for some purposes, but largely irrelevant and confusing if it's not your cup of tea.

Yeah, tons of people don't get it, which they can't really be blamed for (or pretend not to get it, in the media, which they can be blamed for...). Which wouldn't necessarily be a problem, but it adds a lot of pressure to people at every level of a club e.g. Staveley, Howe, Mitchell. All the traditional options (i.e. transfer warchests) don't work the same way anymore, but people don't know.

...And Joelinton, and Murphy, and Schar, and Krafth, and Anderson, and Sels...

That's why a number of us keep banging on about it - we're not just trying to be dickheads, it's the system In 21/22 we were paying for: Trippier, Burn and Bruno 22/23 Trippier, Burn, Bruno, Isak, Botman, Pope and Targett 23/24 Trippier, Burn, Bruno, Isak, Botman, Pope, Targett, Livramento, Gordon, Tonali and Barnes 24/25 Trippier, Burn, Bruno, Isak, Botman, Pope, Targett, Livramento, Gordon, Tonali, Barnes, Hall, Vlachodimos, Osula and Kelly (wages/signing on fee) And that's not counting any other bits I've missed out, or anything from the Ashley years like Lascelles and ASM, as @TheBrownBottle said. So every time we talk about buying someone, that list gets longer.

Basically, you're right about the three year period. Year 1 drops off when Year 4 comes along, and then Year 2 drops off when Year 5 comes along. But if you buy someone in Year 1 on a 5 year contract, in PSR you're still paying exactly the same amount for him in Year 5 as you were back at the start. E.g. a £50m transfer fee plus £5m wages per year equals a cost of £15m in Year 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (that's the £5m wages plus a portion of the transfer fee). So even though we bought Bruno, Burn and Trippier four PSR seasons ago, in PSR we're still paying the same for them now as we were originally, and will be next season too. So the amount we're spending each season in PSR-world has gone up every season, pretty much like a snowball rolling down a hill. For nitpickers, I'm just trying to keep the explanation simple and without more complications than necessary.

It does seem like that's the thought process sometimes.

This. I think he was used pretty well while with us, he just couldn't score - he enabled others to score, though. We were in Champions' League form for the 12 months he was with us, so we shouldn't have been changing much that we did.

One of the stranger transfer stories to come up. Interesting that we don't appear to have totally dismissed the interest out of hand.