TRon

I don't think it would need to be much of an offer either, he'll probably stay for relatively low wages. I don't think he wants to move, and it's not like there will be a queue of attractive clubs chucking big money at him.

Which is why I hope we don't go back there in January unless we KNOW Guehi wants to come here. The cartel clubs will be waiting for his price to drop, then they'll wait until Parish comes to them cap in hand requesting they give him an audience for around £45-50m. Our chance of getting him was always to pay a premium, and while it might still be possible in January, it would be dumb to make the same mistakes again.

What motivation is for them to circumvent those barriers? The PL laws will be written in such a way that the interpretation is probably left up to their own officials. To challenge them would mean taking them to court, and this is an ownership which doesn't have many friends in British football. PIF need to work with the PL as much as viable, and unfortunately, the running of the PL is dictated by the cartel clubs.

Didn't the PL move the goalposts since PIF first made those grand statements about being no 1? My impression was that PIF would have wanted to pump in a lot more investment, but we seem to have had a lot of adjustments to the rules of FFP and PSR to make it very risky to do so. You could argue they could invest in the ground, infrastructure etc, but the first impression of any club is what they are winning. I can imagine if there's no quick road to allow investment into the playing squad, then PIF might rather concentrate on other sports ventures where there are less obstacles in the way.

Great post. I also agree in large parts with Cronky's post, but I do think the game has moved beyond the manager controlling recruitment. As it is, I think the lack of movement in this transfer window might well lead to some departures of our biggest players if we don't qualify for Europe, which means we'll have to start the process over with whatever proceeds they bring in. Hopefully we'll have a storming season though and that will solve all problems in one go.

His contract is up at the end of the season. Tricky one as he's a useful squad player, but as a homegrown, any sale would be all profit which is gold for PSR purposes. He's 27 so you'd have thought he'd be getting more clubs sniffing around, but there haven't been a whole load of rumours.

Well they are giving pens for that much contact, that's the problem. If other teams are entitled to them, we need to get them as well.

It's hard to really know what PIF think. My own opinion is that they absolutely would prefer for Newcastel to be "Number 1", but they aren't the ones who have put the financial straitjacket round non-cartel clubs. Plus as an investment, it hardly hurts them if we are forced to stay within a prescribed budget. They don't really lose either way, although you could argue they would prefer us to be much bigger by winning stuff to really make the investment pay big dividends. On a lesser scale, Rueben is hardly going to be losing sleep over it either for the same reasons. If anything he's probably got less motivation to go against the PL as he isn't the one with endless finances to pump in.

He missed an absolute sitter when it was 1-1 I think. While it's true that we defended well for most of the game, if he'd put that away might have been a different story.

Was surprised to hear he was banned (?) for a week, he winds people up but he generally posts logical stuff.

It's not a tactical thing, one thing about Eddie, if we haven't played well, he's generally honest about it. But if we get the results, he's going to rightly tell everyone exactly how and why we achieved it, and the qualities which got us there.

It seems weird how much of a drop in form Trippier had over the last year or so. It's not like it was just a blip, basically all last season the set piece threat disappeared, and while he's still a good player, he basically made our right side tick in his previous two seasons. Even without the goals a lot of our great football came from his side.

Exactly. Wasn't obvious at full speed first time round, but you could see how Isak's momentum got totally unbalanced by that clip to the leg.

Revealing insight re his skill set if Dyche wanted him.

Maybe, I didn't really follow him at Everton tbh, but here he's been brilliant, ran twice as much as most other players last season.

Well at least his day of flap-handed uncertainty didn't cost us any points. Hopefully he's got that out of his system now.

I wouldn't be surprised if he's not thrilled about being asked to play RW tbh. He is ambitious and he takes his England career very seriously. Anything which might jeopardise that would cause issues. That said, he was still putting in the yards I thought, just didn't look like he knew how to play that wing and still get in on goal like he does from the left. He doesn't seem at all the type to down tools and go in a huff.

What a pass by Salah.

What Joelinton did to set the goal up kind of showcased his shortcomings. You'll never see that from Longstaff, the ability to control the ball, step away from challenges then play a killer pass to make a goal. I gett that's not his game and he has other qualities, but I strongly believe that all your CM's need to have really good close control to make the engine room tick. That said, Joelinton and Bruo were both poor today in general.

I thought Kelly looked very tidy on the ball. Considering he's a CB by trade.

Could have got well beaten tbh. I reckon Howe will be honest enough to say we weren't good as well, at least in guarded language, as he never likes to be too critical of the players.

We have to as we haven't been able to get anyone in who is genuine class.

Our best player before he went off I thought.

I don't think we've played well since we qualified for CL tbh and I've said that before. Our football is nowhere near as fluid as back then, although obviously injuries have played a big part last season. But at least we are picking up points when we aren't playing well so can't grumble, really happy with the return on that score.