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Taken on its own I could easily believe the third kit was just flirting with a bit of retro. I accept that's a thing to do right now. But taken in the context of other things like the late 70s logo being updated and placed ostentatiously behind Eales for his recent interview, I think there's definitely balloons being floated to see how the land lies. We do, after all, have marketing gurus who've already notified us our current crest is not optimised for the visually impaired, so the club will be looking to rectify that ().

You seem to be missing my point that it's an industry-wide phenomenon. It would be weird if you couldn't find other examples. I'd see it as more relevant if Man City were releasing kits with the big eagle, or Chelsea were marketing the old CFC lion logo, or Tottenham were re-establishing the complications from their old crest. Are they? Maybe they are.

You mean Leeds and Everton whose owners had failed attempts at changing their crests a few years back? I don't think anyone is claiming NUFC are unique in wanting to blur the lines of acceptability around what symbols represent the club. It's an industry-wide phenomenon.

I wouldn't necessarily see it as bad management so much as a symptom of being in a very hard, artificially complex situation. The best plumbers still get other people's shit under their fingernails.

Have there been any reports specifically commenting on it? From what I remember there's just an absence of it being mentioned, which isn't too conclusive. Re: Kelly, I'm always reluctant to give too much credit to these kinds of reports. Although, as you said recently, the sheer absence of talk about Targett interest makes you wonder if there's credence in him getting big money after all, even though I normally dismiss that as rubbish too.

I think the two key clauses in the idea are the lack of injuries and Europe. Especially Tonali, but also Pope and dare I say Hall really are going to be like new signings for us. Throw in a hugely reduced workload versus our core competitors and it starts to look interesting. But RW and lack of back up up front (Wilson barely counts) leaves us very vulnerable.

Yeah, it gives a lot of hope for the future. 5 years from now will hopefully be quite a different picture for the club.

If true, we have to hope like hell Howe had good judgement on this one, mind - considering his injury history. £7.5m+ a year on another Wilson for half a decade would be painful.

Pretty stunning if true. Hope he runs his contract out here and snaps his knee in his final week. No friendly Shortstaff treatment for him.

Wouldn't be surprised if they end up going with the 70s one in monochrome full time. Maybe with a bit of Saudi green on the magpie's wing.

Fair enough, although Kev Lawson was implying something similar in his tweet too.

Strictly speaking, we don't know whether there are any clauses attached to the Minteh sale, do we? I agree it feels unlikely that we do. But - from what I gleaned at the time - the Everton sale was set to go through, with Minteh being keen, until Brighton came in and our attention totally switched to them. So maybe the terms were preferable.

I wanted to sympathise with @Nobody's post, but yeah I had a similar thought The 'if' is gigantic.

Think it's a bit of a leap to say he's applying pressure to the club. I think he also has to give away a tiny bit to the press occasionally just to keep them onside and stop them going totally rogue. Especially at a sensitive time for the club. He would've looked daft if he'd said 'Malik who?'.

Definitely. Or the deselection of our current one, anyhow.

Direct quote from Staveley, re: whether Liverpool were approaching us and whether we were taking the possibility of Gordon leaving seriously.

Agreed, in spite of our frailties last year, we only ever really got punished for pace and agility down our left. Plus Dubravka hugging the line. In spite of their relative slowness, Schar and Botman have to go down as one of our best ever defensive partnerships. So I'm not going to worry about a lack of that with new signings too much. We're not at the level where we can sign players who tick every single box just yet, so if we get speed we'll probably lose something more tactically critical.

Inclined to think it's a clear design choice rather than a mistaken oversight at this point.

For some reason it seems like all our central defensive links - for years now - tend to be on the slower side. Do we just not rank speed that highly in our list of needs? Preferring reading of the game and reach etc.

I agree with most of that. I was inclined to sell back in January. Only thing I'd say is we don't know what we were being offered for him. There were strong media reports that Bayern's best offer was about £6m, after initially offering a loan and then £2m - a long way short of £18m. I'd snap your hand off for £18m.

I wasn't expecting him to go into this season as a starter either, in fairness. Kelly seemed like too good of a match for Eddie's preferences. But it's definitely looking like he will be now. Which is great. Boosts the idea we can get away without buying a centre back, in fact.

This is a key point.

Yes, the dynamics of the market are shaped by it's rules. PSR is dictating whether some clubs are able to spend less - or more - than usual on certain players. I'm sure it upsets the regulator but it's their own fault.

Fair enough, hadn't seen that. But the figure I was quoting was either from Hope or the Athletic (or both) - I can't remember which. Came as a shock at the time, it's somewhere in this thread, a few days after the deal was officially off.

I agree with the vast majority of that. Initially, I was just taking issue with the idea it's definitely Eddie clinging on to every player we appear to be unable to shift.