TRon

If they get more than £50m it will be because of his age and numbers. I don't rate him personally, but when you look at what you are paying these days then £50-60m is not an outrageous fee for a player with his attributes who MIGHT still improve.

He was well regarded at the time generally though, although more for his financial acumen that football. He brought Mitchell with him, and having them both basically leave at the same time has put us in a shit position.

Yep. Unfortunately there are no shortcuts, not the way this league is set up. UEFA is no better, it's the ESL in everything but name. You can bring in whoever you like as owner, no one is going to spend their way to success. You could argue a different owner might play a bit smarter, but we don't even know if they would aim high or just be happy to paddle along in 10th position milking the club for easy money. At least with PIF you know they will aim for best in class, even if they are out of reach because of our 2nd tier standing in the game.

One thing this summer has highlighted is just how many shite strikers the top clubs have on their books.

We haven't had any success with either of the two lists, that's the problem.

It's like NUFC have become the barometer of what makes a good player.

Only if he's any good tbh.

Think we'll rally behind the lads who are out there wearing the shirt with pride tbh.

This is what is pissing me off. But I guess it's still important to get the right players in for the sake of a couple of weeks so got to hope we have some irons in the fire.

Honestly, if he left us for Liverpool, not going to lie, I would wish an injury on him. Both parties have tried to fuck us over.

Aye. Liverpool are looking for "fair market value" and that's what makes them such a well oiled operation. Get to fuck with that and their £110m fair market bid for Isak.

What's worse is that it's written by a north east journalist. It's meaningless waffle really, doesn't add any genuine insight.

No one really knows what PIF are on board with. I am pretty sure they would spend whatever it takes in a hurry if there was an easy path to it, but given the straitjacket applied via PSR, there needs to be a longer term approach. I'm sure we would sell players if we got the right price tbh, even if we have to do it earlier than we'd like.

You can only presume if we are interested it's because Howe rates him. There is a whole load of other strikers out there which clubs like Brighton, Forest and Villa are fighting for, I'm pretty sure we could chuck our hats in the ring for those if we wanted to.

I think that was the plan under Eales, but it's shifted since Mitchell lost the powerplay with Howe. We are trying to compete with cartel clubs when the PSR system means we have next to no chance of doing it.

I think that's the plan. But we won't get to no 1 in a hurry following that, because all the cartel clubs can do it on steroids.

I would say we couldn't make the same mistake twice after the Guehi buffoonery last summer, but who knows?

We really need to work on filling out the squad and make it a priority. Signing a Callum Wilson replacement sort of takes care of the striker situation short term anyway, just get it done.

Don't watch his stuff at all but True Geordie did a great video about this the other day. Doesn't matter how many times they fail, PSR is designed to give the cartel clubs as many shots as they like until they get it right. We have no chance of competing in reality.

Aye he had more than enough time to say yes to us, and he's still hoping Man U will match our bid so he can go there.

The biggest domino is Liverpool matching our valuation, they haven't even come close yet so I don't know how you can make the leap he's as good as gone.

I thought we had given him 48hrs to make his mind up on Monday?

Man U will up their bid eventually if they think there's any chance Sesko could pick Newcastle just to get a move done.