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The funny thing is if he's doing brilliant job, that will potentially involve spending very little money on a small amount of untested unknowns. Which will piss everyone off.

He said it, but I think we all assumed that was him being diplomatic

Yeah, same. I've always been very protective of him re: people assuming things like this are all his fault for that reason, but you can't deny it looks dodgy. But he must have cycled through loads of past it players and considered long term finances a ton as he took Bournemouth up the ranks.

Targett is pretty perfect for us if he ever resolves his fitness issues. That 'if' is ludicrous, though.

Yeah, that's all perfectly logical. It's a high agency thing for him/us to do, to be fair. Rather than just hanging around while the situation rots. Not exactly backing himself to overcome the situation, mind, if true.

I agree more with Kaka and IanW. But we don't know what the views are behind the scenes. Don't even know if Kelly is entertaining all this if course, that's just a guess. Just continue to find this whole situation surprising. Not necessarily a bad thing, mind... Might be Mitchell doing some brilliant work to boost our PSR.

Juventus more than Fenerbahce obviously, but if a player is talking to possibly multiple suitors 6 months after joining a club - presumably on a major deal - to be managed by someone he says he has a lot of respect for, it's unusual. It isn't like this is some starlet who has Real Madrid sniffing because they've taken the league by storm after joining us from Fleetwood in the summer. The assumption seems to be that if anything we're quietly offering him around, but maybe it's the other way?

Traditionally this is around the time someone says clubs only make an approach once reps from the player have confirmed he's keen on the move. So... Could that be the case with Kelly? Would be interesting to hear what he makes of all this.

Yeah, I don't know why the fatigue thing is so contentious. Either they were or they weren't, it doesn't really matter whether they 'should' have been tired. Then we can debate if the reasons for it are legitimate or not.

Yes, but who is doing this? I'll give you Stifler, and I'll bet there's some entertainers on Twitter doing it. But who else?

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.