HawK

Willock trying his best to give away multiple penalties atm

With Burn at LB and Joelinton as the left sided midfielder, Maxi effectively has a free role on LW with next to no defensive responsibilities. No brainer for me. Our strongest lineup blatantly has both Maxi and Isak in, but Howe doesn't want to upset the team morale/spirit on this long unbeaten run. He has previous for doggedly sticking to a winning solution.

Nor Willock nor Longstaff.

We need to play with a lot more patience. We're launching tonnes of 10% balls forward and rushing things.

Almiron and Joelinton in training under Bruce and then Howe

I don't get the take that being sceptical/against this sort of signing immediately translates to then not supporting him as a player if he pulls on the black and white stripes. You can do both.

If that's financially possible, of course. If not, and I could pick one, it wouldn't be Gordon. Unless the board are going whole-hog on trying to get us over the line for CL this season, and we can't quite afford Maddison now but we can get Gordon in, I can get behind that reasoning. I just don't rate Gordon that highly. I also don't get the 'it's not my money so I don't care' argument either. The amount of money spent directly relates to future recruitment capability. And if the people typing 'a lot of fans', 'everyone saying', 'bed wetters' could man up and actually quote the people they disagree with, it'd lead to healthier discourse than just mob-based 'they took our jobs' posts.

Who are these fans?

The debatable issue is if the amount of funds available is limited, due to FFP, actual funds available or whatever, is whether spending X on player A or Y on player B helps the team more. In isolation, a deal for £25m for Anthony Gordon might be a good shout. But if we have an amount of money, then spending a chunk of that money on Anthony Gordon which then precludes us from then signing James Maddison because we then don't have enough left to pay is what I dislike. This is the either/or argument, it has nothing to do with player similarity or position. Purely from a budget and positional priority perspective.

Ofc they're different, but it's a big chunk of money. For budget reasons, if it's a case of either or, I know who I'd rather we signed.

So much better than Gordon, if we sign Gordon and then Maddison goes somewhere else before the start of next season for similar money I won't lie, I'd be very disappointed.

Looks like the bairn of Longstaff and Anderson

I think Danny Ings just wants to play for every club that plays in claret and blue. He'll have a retirement gig at Scunny on his way out.

I mean, I think anyone watching the match knew what he did. Jacob's biggest issue is his ball retention. He has no awareness of players closing him down or where teammates are for a safe layoff. He runs into dead ends and doesn't have the nous to win a throw or a corner off of it. He tries hard, he supported Newcastle as a kid, and he has exactly the right attitude. He's just not of the standard we need. I wish him no ill will, but we need to be doing better than Jacob Murphy. And that was before the takeover.

Good of you to foreshadow the move with your Forrest-themed avatar.

I won't pretend to understand how cash later is better than cash now for our current FFP restriction considerations, but I'm sure they know what they're doing.

Yep, loan just in name then.

Anyone keeping track on how Joe White is doing down at Exeter?

Wow that reads like he's not coming back. Is it a loan in words only? The clause must be something like, must turn up to training or something.

I fell in love with him the minute I saw his outburst that was caught on video about the team not performing as well as they could during the Bruce era. Saw the man cared a great deal and had pride in himself and his team said everything short of Bruce being shit, you could tell that was right on his lips but didn't want to talk himself out of the team. Of course after that, he didn't get in the team much anyway. I do want him shooting more, he's such a great striker of the ball and tends to keep it down with ease.

Boggles the mind how Joelinton's massive frame can't strike a ball more than 9 miles an hour and someone like Robert seemingly had horseshoes in his boots

Letting him go before we have a replacement lined up/in is dangerous from a financial perspective, it weakens our buying position, however I trust the club. I also agree that for the princely sum of £15m and taking Wood off of us, they can now be called Nottm Forrest. Thanks Chris, you were a donkey but you did let the ball hit you on the head sometimes. For that I guess I'm grateful for your presence in our Lazurus-esque resurrection in the past 12 months.

Krafth was amazing for us. Absolute revelation, doesn't get mentioned because he's been out forever.

Made my day

The Sunderland thread has gone off on a bit of a tangent towards this discussion and got me thinking there could be some interesting origin stories from some of the supporters on here. Mine is here - https://newcastle-online.org/topic/37260-sunderland/?do=findComment&comment=7415468 How did you end up supporting Newcastle United?