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I explained what I thought you were saying in a later post. If I misunderstood, fair enough.

We're probably one of the few clubs who could legitimately claim our staff hadn't noticed our players were asthmatic in recent years

Sounds good to me. The contract durations lately have seemed very sensible.

Would be fascinated to hear an in depth interview with him one day after he's retired.

Good on Matt Richie for doing Bruce's job for him, too.

My interpretation was that he was accusing you of having same level of thought as 'proper football men' like Steve Bruce and Graeme Souness, and aren't enlightened enough to see the clarity and wisdom statistics offer. GSCE Sociology logic.

That's a bollocks thing to say in this instance. Not least because the Allardyces of the world manipulate and hide behind statistics all the while.

His own dedicated thread where I don't have to look at him or see people defending him from people who aren't there would be great, please.

...And if he doesn't respect and take guidance from Trippier then he's a gonner...

He's looked more of an unknown quantity there, for me. And he still has the option to cut in on his left, it's just not the default move.

That's my thoughts too overall. I wonder if that's the kind of thing Howe was hinting at when talking about trying to find squad improvements in less obvious areas of the squad the other day.

Just wondering what the reaction to trading Barnes for Maxi + 10-15m would be then

So... Who considers Barnes an upgrade on Maxi all things considered?

Oh, leaving right now? Ok, you might be right, I would be gobsmacked Yeah, it's pretty easy to make the argument he's worth more than £100m to us today because he's talismanic to people outside our club of where we're going. Lose that and what are we?

I don't think that's true. I agree with the whole of the rest of your post, and Bruno is my answer to that question too, but there's no use in letting yourself get despondent about something like that happening, the pessimism is self-fulfilling. If he ever left, there's a decent chance it would be for £100m+, so the question to ask is what we could achieve with that money. Again, I think your description of him as stardust is spot on, but it was dreamy sentiment that saw Robson blocked from selling an ageing Shearer to Liverpool and future-proofing the team, and the rest is history. If the club wants to be bigger than an iconic player, it needs to act like it's bigger than an iconic player.

Yes... The risk will be if nerves and frustration creep in if we can't break them down in attack.

Bearing in mind he grew up supporting them, was there never any serious talk about Howe going there?

Well, I'm responding to people in general just because of how fast this thread moves, but you're saying three signings should be made if the club is ambitious. I disagree with that and think the narrative building up that not signing lots equals lacking ambition is poisonous. In fairness, I'm ignoring loans as an option, but that would be a good move for one signing at least, I agree. I picked three heavily discussed, relatively run of the mill players to demonstrate how easy making imperfect signings is. My point is if Jack Harrison is £30m+, and Toney is £50m+ in today's market (according to the press), bringing in improvements is going to be tough and/or expensive and FFP-draining. From the little I know, Sesko for £30m+ looks to be a great move, but again, that's easier said than done Time will tell, but today it doesn't look like there are many desirable players in the positions we need under £30m each. It makes Bruno look absolutely bonkers value. The wing looks to be the easiest position to improve given our squad, I can buy a Cornet or Sarr helping us out there, but again, we have people mithering on about such signings just treading water for us.

Yes, pretty much. Unlike Ashley, they actually are putting their own money into the club as things stand. We can reassess once the club has been fully scraped off the floor. Easier said than done, spaffing £125m minimum on Ivan Toney, Jack Harrison and Pacqueta to keep up appearances. In my view there's only a guaranteed hit rate of 1 in 3 on those signings. Well, the free market involves being free to walk away and let others drown in their own over heated speculation too. We're an actor in the market and help set the price by saying 'nope, that's not worth it to us'. Are we falling behind Everton when they buy Dele Alli for £40m or are we falling ahead of them? Are we falling behind or ahead of Forest when they pay Bruno's wages + 50% for Jesse Lingard? It's all judgement and choices.

You're both missing the point, we need to be thinking sonar - https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:0.2/centery:54.4/zoom:7

I've never really known NUFC to do that in my lifetime We're a momentum heavy club. When things are going ok, they end up going way better than ok... Thing is, to be serious, it's a pretty fine line between worrying about relegation and pushing for Europe (pushing, not qualifying). If we remove the threat of the former, we pretty much automatically introduce the joy/stress of the latter.

You're pushing it now.

Agreed. As you say about the cups, people shouldn't forget them either. I'd take 11th and a cup with the resulting Europe all day long in our circumstances.

I wouldn't say the Evertons and Aston Villas are clubs we want to model ourselves on. The management are just trying to be discerning - get the next 24 months of recruitment wrong and we could fuck the following 48 months. Half a decade of lost progress. Keep our powder dry and we've still got options. I've wondered about saying this previously, but haven't wanted to panic the panickers, or sound gloomier than I actually am, but we should prepare for the possibility that some of our first star signings won't stay with us all the way through our ascent. An Andy Cole moment. I'm hearing people getting paranoid about losing Botman, Bruno or Trippier if we're not in Europe next season and that we need to spend spend spend to avoid that. Well, I don't really believe that's the case, but even if it was, so be it. Better that than rushing and fucking ourselves. As it is, I think Trippier is with us for the long haul, and I think we should do EVERYTHING in our power to keep Bruno, but all big clubs have lost players they'd rather have kept at some point. It's part of footballing life. But for the first time in a decade, we're reliably signing players who will keep or sizably increase their value, and not need to be jettisoned in a priced-in relegation firesale at some point. Furthermore, we can be confident any proceeds genuinely would be reinvested back into the club to continue it's upwards trajectory.

I have no doubt there would be takers for him next summer, also. All the signs I've seen are that he wants to play ball with the club and it's eventual direction, so I'm not upset by this.