TRon

Not much we can do about it. The players who are at the elite clubs cost mega money and are on huge wages. Without rich owners sinking their money into the squad - which we can't do because of PSR - there's no way to get those players at Newcastle in the short term.

Don't worry, Murphy will still be here. Maybe we can bring out the big guns for the Man U fixture.

I still think we might buy a no 10 type if there's one available of a decent quality.

He swerves in a surprisingly wicked first time cross as well. Think he is being seriously underrated by a few in general.

Pretty good tbf but my eyes were a bit crossed by the time I reached the bottom of the list.

https://youtu.be/VKxbu8-y4Ig

Plus it would be nice to hear of some of these better value transfer targets if they are out there. Would make us all feel a lot better about not getting Pedro, Mbuemo, Delap etc. For example, some podcaster mentioned Evan Guessand, a striker/wide man that Roma and Brighton are targeting at €25 million who he thought would be a great alternative to Pedro. No idea if he's any good, but if Brighton are in there, we probably should be as well.

Our reputation has nosedived in the last week or so.

The other options seem to have similar price tags and/or have just about every cartel club throwing their hats in the ring as well. Semenyo, Kudus, Mbuemo, Pedro etc. After that we are moving into unknown category, I mentioned this earlier. We'd probably be looking at the same players Forest, Bournemouth, Brighton etc are looking at to replace the overpriced PL players.

It was a tyre blowout as well, not much you can do to mitigate against that. I still remember a few years back being driven in a jeep in the Atlas mountains on a narrow road with no barriers, and thinking fuck me, a tyre blowout and that could be it. You can't wrap your head around it if you think about it too much.

That's the thing, all these players - and you can add Kudus to that list - are coming with huge fees mostly, and you have the top clubs all seemingly wanting a right sided forward. Even Chelsea who already have Madueke are rumoured to want Kudus. The only route as far as I can see it is to buy a relatively lesser known player who's not PL proven and hope he comes off. I thought Mitchell was supposed to source these type of players but he's gone now, so fuck knows what plan B is at the moment.

Absolutely this. When watching PSG in the CL final I was struck with how quick and precise all their passing was from back to front. You need players with technique for sure, but it's also about how the team can work as a unit to break down tight spaces, that can mean quick passing and movement, and pace is certainly an asset which helps.

Murphy's got poor ball control under pressure which makes possession an issue. He doesn't carry the ball particularly well either, I would argue Livramento is better in that regard. I don't think it's right at all to call Elanga a younger Murphy. That's not me having a go at Murphy either, he's got strengths which counterbalance his weaknesses, but for us to improve against the low block we need players who can help with ball retention.

Even that's hard to do without pace, would take a pretty special player who can do it, and would cost quite a lot I imagine.

That provides a bit more of a risky policy where you are going for unproven players. No other top club bought him either remember. I think we may end up having to go this route anyway as there is no way we can get 4 players with our budget if we are going to be quoted £60-70m for every PL based player. How that will work with Mitchell gone is going to be interesting though.

Fucking hell. I only just tuned in to a podcast which mentioned him as someone we might have looked at as a signing this summer. What a tragedy for him and his family.

We might just have bought him because he was free and we knew we could make a profit when we sold him as a result of that.

That would be pretty negligent tbh, but there's no way of knowing if it's true. I would imagine we should have a pretty good idea of whether players are coming or not, we defnitely should have had an idea with Delap and Pedro, in which case we should not be allowing secondary targets to go elsewhere. But we have no idea if that's happened or if it's just paranoid nonsense.

I think we probably have missed out on our top targets but how realistic they were is the question. If the biggest clubs in the world/cartel clubs are after the same players then we aren't necessarily going to be favourites for the signatures.

That's what I thought.

There's a DOF vacancy at Newcastle, you need to elbow your way to the front of the queue and get in Yasir's face to tell him what's what.

Are we a bigger draw than Juventus? Genuine query, I know the Italian league has less money, but they are still a massive club.

This is where I am at as well. I think it's fine to express views let's be clear. But at the end of the day mine is that PIF due to their nature are going to be ambitious and want the best. Even if they put national interests first, our success is still pivotal to them while the PL is the worldwide draw it is. I think they will appoint experts to make the big decisions, and trust they will know a lot better than we do how to execute accordingly.

I expect us to do this later in the window tbh. I'm sure Eddie would prefer to sign the likes of Mbuemo and Pedro, but once those possibilities have gone, then we can start bolstering the squad with the best of the rest.

It's a fair aim. PIF might not have executed it perfectly, but the way I see it, there's no better alternative out there, so I just hope they have our best interests at heart. As much as any modern day ownership can anyway.