80

No, unfortunately. Believe that's from the same interview where he was bigging up Mitchell and Bunce as top class, but just not necessarily right for him.

Right, but we're past talking about on pitch contributions. I don't especially disagree on that: Tonali to date, objectively speaking, is one of the worst signings in footballing history. Barnes we pretty much agree on. Livramento, I think you could argue covered his own wages through the league positioning prize and such. If we hadn't had him our availability crisis would've been even worse, and morale lower. Minteh never came on but paid for himself in spades. We started off talking about there maybe being sense in trying to snatch perceived good deals to raise the future tradability of the squad even if they weren't the most highly required players. The irony is that the most highly priced, widely respected, conventionally necessary signing was the biggest let down by a distance - the one where we didn't think we were getting a distressed sale. Superficially, it's the kind of signing we'd now expect to make following the latest pivot towards team changing talents. This actually makes pursuing value deals more defensible. Re: substantial losses, yes I'm aware. When I say we can make them, I don't mean we can just lay out £100m. But we can absorb the ongoing amortization - which is seeing us hemorrhage substantial amounts - and wages, and still invest. We're not requiring a profit this year, just a measured loss. But yeah, no top 4 next year and there's a good chance lots of our toys will be taken to cash converters. But at least we'll actually have something to pawn.

We definitely would've required sales income, and there still haven't been any willing takers for the ones we want to sell... If Barnes and Tonali are that devastating to our ongoing picture, then cumulatively Gordon, Isak, Botman, Bruno and all the rest must be much worse, and we'd recouped nothing but ASM over the three years to June. We either choose to get on the hamster wheel to gain a viable squad or we don't - as I say, even if we didn't need to sell anyone if we'd spent nothing last summer, we'd still be in the position now of needing to find replacements and backups for Trippier, Kelly, Longstaff and Gordon, in addition to RW, RCB, ST etc. It doesn't bear thinking about. We shouldn't need to do anything silly next summer - as I understand it we've now got room for substantial losses all over again. If we want to go down that route, which is another matter. Either way, we do now have a squad that's verging on being mostly sellable nowadays, which unfortunately is the highest praise in the world of fair play.

Careful or you'll get Dominic Calvert.

No, I'm not saying Minteh covered the shortfall we ended up with, but - off my memory and a fag packet - he would've covered the shortfall we STILL would've had even if we'd spent zero last summer and not got Livramento and co. We still had debts to cover from Gordon, Isak, Bruno et al. So, in a rough sense, we've swapped Elliot Anderson for Livramento, Barnes, Tonali and Minteh (Mr Walking Debt Reduction). Excluding Hall who we've only just bought, of course. On paper, that doesn't look like bad business, to be fair. It's potentially hugely inflated the amount of realisable PSR value in our squad - in 3 or 4 years' time they might still be worth £150m-200m to us, rather than zero if we'd invested nothing last summer (the Ashley trap). It's fair to call it into question though, particularly in retrospect (can't help but feel we might not be having this conversation had Tonali not been a gambler). My numbers might be a bit off as it's a few weeks since I thought about it, but you get the gist.

Yeah, it does seem as though there was a big focus on buying value. Which is a nice enough idea, but maybe wasn't right at the time. I say 'maybe' as I think I'm right in saying that even if we'd signed literally no one last summer, we'd have still required at least one major sale before the PSR deadline. So there was a solid argument for continuing the momentum and increasing the overall potential value of the squad for future windows - as worked out so well with the Minteh signing, who covered the summer on his own.

Maybe, although his card already did seem to be marked by then. Eddie never seemed happy with him. LB, from memory, seemed like our second highest priority after RW going into the summer.

Yes, I'd also assumed the plan was to go into last season almost with two competing first XIs. High rotation and interchangeability leading to high energy and consistency across competitions. So it was a bit weird when that never really happened and, consequently, the fatigue racked up. You said earlier about us apparently wanting to pivot this year to signing clear first choices, which sounds like a good idea to me. What's interesting is, really, it was last summer that was the pivot, away from firm first teamers like Isak, Botman and Trippier - while still spending big sums. I'd be interested to know how we ended up in that position and who was responsible. Because it didn't seem like an Eddie thing to do.

I genuinely respect the humility. And I agree about the RW, it was the most glaring gap going into last summer so it was odd and disappointing not to get anything there. But not totally unacceptable - I could understand if we couldn't get the right player. Which makes the Minteh thing so frustrating as he sounds like the player Eddie would grow in a test tube if he could...

Definitely seems to be more a part of things, rather than drifting around on the edges. Really good sign.

Yeah. I've been working on the assumption a) that he's pretty much fully in the loop on our financial/PSR situation, and b) that he was just playing cute when in the past he's claimed not to understand all the ins and outs of how it works. But I guess it's possible that one or both of those isn't true - more likely the former. As I understand it, strictly speaking we don't now need to sell anyone and have quite a lot of headroom, but it seems very shortsighted to not still be interested in making sales to strengthen our future position.

It was a close call for you

All that plus his current club would have seemed happy 'enough' to sell him given their circumstances. So morally he was entitled to try and look on the bright side of things if proposals were being put to him. All caveats about the truth of everything apply, of course...

Blast from the past.

Yep. "...it looked as if Newcastle might be forced to sell Gordon to ­Liverpool and a medical was pencilled in to take place in Leipzig, not far from England’s Euro 2024 base." https://www.theguardian.com/football/article/2024/jul/22/newcastle-anthony-gordon-eddie-howe-premier-league Edit: Actually, I think I might've misunderstood your post. I assumed you'd put a typo for 'Did'.

It's honestly best just to ignore them for your own state of mind. Occasionally I dip my toe in to highlight where mainstream opinion is totally off base to see if it helps anyone along e.g. Luke Edwards not ALWAYS lying, or Moussa Diaby actually not being the premier league's next big thing, but on the whole you're better off just focusing on your own thing.

I'm confident the general thrust of what you're saying is right, but given the big staffing changes at the club, I think there's more room for inaccuracy on more specific stuff nowadays. I don't think the claim is that the medical was actually booked, more just along the lines that they'd worked out a place that was available and ready to do it within the necessary timeframes if the trigger got pulled. And I doubt that's something they'd have been shouting about internally, in order to minimise any upset...

I haven't got anything against you as a poster, but I do get sick of the amount of back and forth on people's worldviews on here. Agree with the things you agree with, disagree with the rest, and let a pattern naturally emerge. There are unquestionably people on here who see this place as dueling teams of goodies and baddies, and will take whatever view they think they need to have to stay true to the cause. It's mental.

Only if people are visiting a football forum to read commentaries on other people's posting styles.

Feel like I better stop writing before I'm subject to an Umberto Eco citation.

Some do, and some are firmly living in a dreamland, too. Then there's the much overlooked others.

The report is pretty specific, and considering the circumstances surrounding it, it's worth taking seriously. Those circumstances being direct quotes from Eddie Howe: 1) overtly loving up Gordon 2) decrying the painful last days of the PSR window which many here were (are?) convinced was a financially unnecessary, elaborate ruse de guerre and 3) doing a series of on camera interviews which substantially validated Luke Edwards' reporting a few days prior about his discomfort with the changes at the club, which had, at the time, been widely dismissed as pure horseshit.

Similar, although I think the main two things are the brighter red looks less classy and the gold trim distinguishing the red and white made a difference.

At the back end of the new full length Adidas trip video.

It's now being reported a medical was penciled in to take place near the England camp in Germany, so we can't have thought any counter offer was too wild...