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On a vaguely related subject, was that Hall with the line breaking pass for Isak's goal?

Yeah, I'm hesitant to take the report too seriously for that reason...

Yeah that was interesting. It was so stereotypical it read like a parody. I was almost wondering if Mitchell, as an outsider, had been taken in by our online fans.

Well, if I take all that as being legit, it sounds pretty positive and the club is handling things well.

Yes, although I'm hoping Eddie has worked that out himself, to be honest.

Yeah, I don't think it has to be that strange for a performance director to be responsible for injuries. There's a wide array of things that I wouldn't expect a manager to be intimately involved with e.g. nutrition, training facilities, post match recovery plans, which all feed in to injury records. Dictating the number of minutes a manager can use a first team player for would be a different order of magnitude, of course, and definitely something Eddie would want reassurances on.

I think so, but as with sporting directors and such, job titles can be quite misleading in terms of the breadth and strength of their responsibilities. So you have to look at each one individually.

Regarding Hughes, Howe had already had his feet under the table at Bournemouth for most of a decade, including as Hughes' manager, before he got that job, mind. So I think we can assume Eddie had pretty much designed that job as he wanted it to be. I definitely think he's up for collaboration and 'give and take', which to me is the right approach. There's so much talk about PIF's 'process-driven' approach though that it makes me fear they want a hard delineation of duties, with responsibility for recruitment being taken away from the 'coach'.

He's pretty much explicitly saying the opposite of that, mind. If he did somehow leave, it sounds plausible he wouldn't take the England job either - if some suits are telling him certain players are mandatory selections for commercial reasons.

I do really hope Eddie isn't responsible for keeping Wilson here over the past few months. As things stand I'm happily working under the assumption it's just media chat and the issue is just finding a club that will take him.

V.early days but he looked sweet on the ball on the vids I watched a few weeks back. Very Schar-esque.

Got to say I'd like to have signings in sooner, if only to guarantee evading an ongoing saga about not being Eddie fit for most of the season...

I think his comments were about as warm as could be. He was pretty effusive in his praise for Mitchell and especially Bunce. There's no doubt for me that he pretty desperately wants to stay here, but I think he's fighting to make sure his own role, as he understands it should be, is sustainable in the newly conceived structure. I got the impression he thought the hires were very strong and justifiable for the club, and he'd be happy for us if it worked, even if it entailed him coming to the end of his own path with us due to incompatibility. He respects the moves. But he's working to try and make sure that path doesn't come to an end any time soon, while trying to protect his livelihood if it doesn't work out.

I think those are pretty mild comments, and fundamentally right. If the club is wanting to move to a model where the 'coach' just turns up in July to find out what he's been given for the next 12 months, I'd be kicking off on his behalf. The Byzantine stuff doesn't interest me.

“There’s absolutely no point in me saying I’m happy staying at ­Newcastle if the dynamic isn’t right” “Early dealings with James Bunce have been top class. My early impression is he’s going to be fantastic, but it’s a new ­relationship and we have to see how we work together. Without going into too much detail the boundaries of relationship and how they’re going to work is slightly unclear.” There's no way these comments aren't newsworthy to Newcastle fans even if Southgate were staying on for another few years. It's a Newcastle story, not an England story. Whether talksport is paying attention or not is irrelevant.

I'm confident he would've made his comments a lot fluffier if he'd wanted to, I agree he's brilliant at coming out with weightless content. Which is why it's striking he's set up a load of headlines here.

It clearly wasn't a brainfart. He's gone out of his way to make the same point in multiple set piece interviews.

To be fair, I think it's easier said than done for a few reasons - there can be a mammoth amount of scenarios to set protocols for. There's quite a lot of complexity in these situations. There's an argument for doing what they see as strategically right and letting the cards fall as they may, with the presumption people will adapt around the new structure. I can potentially sympathise with everyone in this scenario. My bias is towards something closer to the traditional strong manager that Eddie seems to prefer to be. But football operations at the highest level are gigantic nowadays, so even in that situation I think to be successful you have to have huge amounts of delegation. But personally I don't like having relatively unaccountable 'directors' having the whiphand over 'head coaches'.

Nah, not at all. Whenever similar things have come up previously he's made comments to the effect of he's "here for as long as the club see fit to employ him". It's "never say never", but with the emphasis on him needing to fulfil the club's ambitions to remain here. He's never repeatedly made pointed comments about whether he and the club's outlooks are going to be the right fit for eachother; that's unprecedented so far as I'm aware. Particularly when the start of the season is a handful of weeks away.

He's clearly a bit unsettled, which can't be too surprising. It's a separate matter from the England job. He doesn't want to leave in the slightest, but hopes his concerns are addressed satisfactorily for him. He's a very careful communicator, the caveats about his future are there for a reason.

Yes, if you're telling me it's RW or CB, I'll take RW. It'll be a game changer.

Yeah I'd start preparing for the worst if that was the quote. I don't think it will be though. I don't think he'll flatly say he won't accept an offer however, simply on the grounds it'd be out of place if they haven't made an offer - it would be shitting on whoever eventually gets the job. So he might not be as categorical as some would like. But I expect it will be clear enough reading between the lines.

I was wondering something similar. Can we break the man

I can see the logic in this.

He did make it upstairs but didn't quite make the toilet, poor bairn