TRon

Time to get on the Action Jackson train.

You would have thought for £50-60m you could get a half decent striker abroad. Even if they aren't PL proven, they should be better up front than Gordon. As it is, looks like the final move might be just to cough up whatever it takes to bring in Jackson. Yes they are going to have our pants down, but with 5 days to go, that's just how it's panned out.

They've looked poor in the two games I've seen so far. Lots of energy but not much conviction in front of goal. If we had a competent striker I'd be disappointed with anything less than a win. Feels like a lot of points could be squandered due to Isak downing tools.

I wasn't referring to Mitchell at all, if I was I would have named him directly. As far as I'm concerned we've been operating without a DOF for a year now.

I think we might actually go into the new season with no striker now. Jackson's price will now be hiked up and we'll probably walk away and pin our hopes on Isak getting back onboard.

Sounds about right. We are suffering big time by not having an experienced DOF in place who would read the room better.

At least he's available.

Tbf we tried to do this with Ekitike, but should also have looked at players the cartel clubs didn't have their hooks in.

He'll go down as the greatest manager in Newcastle's history.

We'd (rightly) prefer Larsen or Wissa, but if those deals aren't happening we might still have sounded Chelsea out behind the scenes.

Those connections mean at least we can deal with Chelsea without them trying to pull our eyes out, unlike cartel clubs like Man U or Liverpool.

This is the key here. Chelsea need to sell him, they have no desire to keep him. We can probably negotiate a reasonable fee if Bayern don't want to pay through the nose either. Plus he's only 24 so we shouldn't have to take too much of a loss on him if we decide he's not for us after a season.

Loved reading that. He got it.

Or we could move onto a striker we can actually get through the door. The last thing we want is a repeat of last summer's fiasco where we hung on for Guehi when they never had any intention to sell unless we paid something stupid like £80m.

Depends what that means really. Could be the day the deal gets agreed, or could be the day we say that's as high as we go. In which case we could still be hanging on a few more days to see if Wolves change their mind.

I'm not a fan of Jackson by any means, in fact I remember being at odds with TCD who seemed to rate him a year ago. But he seems to be rated by Howe, and Emery wants to take him to Villa, and he had him under his wing at Villareal so he must think there's something there. I'd certainly rather he was starting up front than Osula.

Playing Osula until January would mean writing off our season basically.

Also there must be a good chance we don't get either Larsen or Wissa as their clubs aren't selling unless we pay something totally stupid, because they won't be able to find replacement strikers themselves. Chelsea don't have that issue, they have so many strikers they don't know what to do with them.

They know we are desperate for a striker and will pay a higher fee.

I think it would be a lot to put on a 17 year old to be starting games for Newcastle while Isak is not available. We need a PL ready striker to act as Wilson's replacement.

Liverpool aren't helping themselves by throwing lowball bids which don't appear serious in the first place. I saw Keith Downie saying he thinks we might sell for around £130m but that would make Liverpool and Isak look like they had won. I just don't know where he is getting this thinking from, it makes no sense at all. His premise is that we could spend £100m on Wissa and Larsen, both players who won't hold resale value because of age, and let Isak go for £130m while he's still 25? The logic is bonkers.

Most of the clubs in for Jackson were looking for loan deals, not sure what Bayern are offering but when they see big offers for Larsen and Wissa being turned down, Chelsea probably reckon they can get £60m from us for Jackson.

All in on Wissa or Larsen by the looks of it. So looks like we might be paying up to £70m to get a striker through the door.

How awful does it look when your manager can't watch his own players taking penalties? It doesn't scream leadership does it.