Yep. They are probably our direct competition for top 8 aspirations, their rightful position should be around 10-12th IMO, they had a good season last time round.
Not disagreeing with the gist of your post, but Willock not being top class isn't going to make Longstaff any better. Neither of them are good enough to make a real difference. Not sure Longstaff has ever been played as DM either.
One of the NUFC youtubers is now claiming the price for Paqueta is a lot higher than the supposed £30m+ being bandied about anyway, according to his sources. He might be talking crap of course, but that always seemed a suspiciously low figure anyway. I can't see that deal happening.
I think we'll defend fairly deep, maybe go 5-3-1 for this one. Howe likes to attack, but he's not stupid, so the main emphasis will be to plug the gaps, and yes, hope for a bit of magic from Maxi. Pard-tastic.
He's usually the only man in the box and thus easily marked by a couple of centre backs. When the crosses come in there needs to be other forwards arriving in the box on the opposite side. You can't expect him to produce magical finishes out of the hat every week.
He's trying tbf, he's just not much good at it. His delivery is generally pish if and when it arrives. His game is more about running and dribbling this way and that. If you want someone to beat one man, or sometimes two, he's your guy.
Gordon, like Harrison yesterday, looked a million miles ahead of our wide options. Like Maddison though, just seems like we are chasing players we can't land.
I thought he was ok tbh. No threat on goal, but he seems to be playing more of an all round midfield role these days, putting in more of a shift defensively rather than getting on the end of chances like when he was here on loan.