TRon

Khusanov will turn out to be a top CB IMO, he was on our radar for good reason I reckon. Players like this sometimes need to mature to see what they are capable of. Just look at Ekiteke.

Disagree, you could buy a good young prospect who could grow into that role.

Other teams have improved since then, what worked for us that season would not necessarily work for us again. I think Howe has recognised that, and it's why Longstaff hasn't featured much. I remember everyone saying how integral Longstaff was in getting us CL last time round, but he's barely kicked a ball this time round and we've still qualified. I'm sure he can still be a useful squad player, but if he's not getting regular football he probably should be looking for first team football elsewhere.

Can Mbuemo actually play as an out and out striker? I saw this argument in favour of Gordon as well a couple of seasons ago, but in reality Gordon is no sort of striker.

Depends if he's happy with it. I always got the feeling he'd rather sit on the bench at Newcastle than move away for first team football somewhere else.

Yeah I really liked how they combined the press with some wonderful ability to retain possession through precision football on the floor. It's not that far of what Eddie is trying to do IMO, but obviously they have a higher calibre of players to work with. It's the diametric opposite of the hoofball Pards used to implement here.

Inter aren't an exciting side but they got took apart by precision football. If they were that easy to beat they wouldn't have got to the final.

If he wants to leave then there's not much point in keeping him.

They are playing great football like, pretty hard to despise that.

Maybe there's some transfer targets going under the radar then, all we've heard about so far are the likes of Guehi, Trafford, Delap and Mbuemo.

He's really underrated on here I think, but if Man U can get good money for a 30 yr old it absolutely makes sense to cash in.

I think those are all important inputs, especially when it comes to looking abroad. Howe generally wants proven PL quality which means buying Mbuemo at say £40m instead of £15m a year earlier when he's not proven he can adapt. That's just an example to make a point, it's not a legally binding statement with exact prices and quotes to back it up.

Pope's a good keeper, more than good enough for another season or two. We'd only be signing an understudy anyway, and if the Trafford price has gone higher than we originally budgeted for, then we might look at someone a bit less established.

Makes sense tbh. He seems like the type of twat who would prefer to sit on the bench in London than come and build a proper career at Newcastle.

I didn't say we can't get work done, I just said it's not helpful that we can't seem to get a DOF established long term since the takeover. How can changing personnel in such an important area be unimportant? Otherwise why even appoint one? Mitchell was brought in specifically to identify good value transfer targets as far as I'm aware. If we don't need that then was that not a required appointment?

Always a risk when we jump to make new threads based on hope more than anything more concrete.

I think we might end up sticking with Pope anyway tbh, if the budget for new players is limited. A lot will depend on who's available once the cartel clubs have done their buying, same as every year. I think our main priorities might end up being a right sided CB and forward. If we have money left over after getting those, then we might look at keepers.

I don't really care about the clash of egos to be honest, but it is getting tiresome that we keep having to appoint new DOFs every season, and then when it comes to rebuilding the squad, every summer we seem to be back to square one. It's not helpful.

Can't be arsed fretting about it tbh. Whatever the figure is we'll have to make it work. I am pretty sure we'd spend a lot more given some wiggle room by PSR, but if we are limited to £100m then I trust the club to make the right signings.

I hope they sign him, would be great to see him relegated along with the rest of them.

Man U have reportedly got the same figure and are signing Cunha and/or Delap. We could make a couple of big moves depending on contract situations, unfortunately our spending is restricted by league rules.

Think that figure has been bandied around for a couple of months now, him saying it means fuck all really. It's just an educated guess, but probably near enough the ball park figure.

Whatever. In the end it came down to the owners obviously decided they would rather lose the DoF than Eddie.

Full control or strong influence is just semantics at this point. Howe wanted more say than Eales envisioned, let's just agree on that. My guess is that Mitchell is more used to working with a different model where he does all the buying and selling, the manager just has to coach whatever he's got to work with. Again, that's not an absolute, just a general idea of how things would operate.