stozo

There are three alternative options we could have pursued in January 1. Buy a player we really want at an inflated price, likely meaning one fewer signing in the summer. 2. Loan a player, likely sign one fewer player in the summer and not even own that player next season. 3. Sign someone for less who isn’t really good enough long term but can fill a short term gap on a five year deal and hope we can resolve the problem by selling them in 1-2 years. And again also sign one fewer player in the summer. All three of those are poor options. It is not neglect to decide not to do one of them. People blather on about Villa doing this or that - they are going to miss the CL for the second season running (look at the table - their advantage over Man U, Chelsea and Liverpool has collapsed over the past month). That is directly because they fucked themselves by overspending in their CL season and making short term decisions which have hampered them.

Have to say that the morning after, the thing I am most annoyed about is the HT and FT booing. Some fans are acting so bloody entitled. I’ve watched a lot of dire Newcastle performances over the past 30 years and I don’t think yesterday would even make the Top 100 of bad performances in that time. We lost a tight game by a single late goal, that’s not a boo-worthy performance. Anyone thinking about booing should reflect on the booing that took place late in the SBR reign. The fans turned on him and that set in process a chain of events that ultimately led to our relegation four and a half years later. Be very careful what you wish for.

Sorry may not have been clear - what I’m saying is VAR did check but very likely got it wrong. By the definition of the law, if they felt it was a non-deliberate handball and the arm was where it was then they should have overturned the penalty award.

The other bloody frustrating thing about tonight (that just seems to have been glossed over) is I am fairly sure PGMOL will rule VAR should have intervened on the Brentford penalty. VAR judged it a non-deliberate handball, and as the rules stand you can’t give a non-deliberate handball if the arm is in to the body. If the VAR had given deliberate handball - judging Murphy was bringing his arm in to block the ball - then it would have been a penalty. But as VAR has interpreted (according to the PL Match Centre) it doesn’t meet the threshold for a penalty and they’ve got it wrong.

I think the intersection of tactics and psychology with this team is really interesting at the moment. I feel like we are still hoping we have a CL chance and that’s creating some really poor tactical choices. Trippier is obviously huge at fault for the third goal but equally we are 5x5 in our own half, which is a recipe for disaster. A point would not have been a disaster but I feel like psychologically we are chasing games like today when really we shouldn’t be. You obviously want to win at home but sometimes you just need to accept we’re in a really difficult place and going completely gung-ho is not the right move.

It’s quite simple though that today it’s down to being a bare bones in defence and having no other RB option. Nothing we did defensively was bad - apart from three occasions where Dango put Trippier on toast.

I agree with you but fixing the attack is going to be a process. Second half today was an improvement. It’s going to probably take 12-18 months to get attack functioning anywhere near like what it was. Sad reality is what we have lost is one of the Top 5 strikers in the world and he’s been replaced with a bunch of players who are most definitely in the category of ‘probably good but not elite’ with the hope that some of them (e.g. Woltemade could one day become elite).

Said it in the Tripper thread but what's Howe supposed to be playing? He's bang out of options. The #1 problem we have is we are struggling in attack and all of our non-Trippier options totally kneecap our attack further.

Yeah - and Thiaw at RB is incredibly limiting for our right side attack as virtually removes any threat of overlaps, underlaps and full back crosses. Let's just hope Miley is back soon.

Honestly what was actively bad about our general play today? Off the top of my head - a shot cleared off the line from Wissa, a fantastic Kelleher save from Thiaw, brilliant Elanga cross which leads to Bruno penalty award, great chance for Thiaw at the end which is 100% scoreable (and unfortunately falls to our central defender) and a good set piece goal. Did we carve them open in attack? Probably not, but we created more than enough to merit our two goals. So then you look at the defensive side - did we have any problems whatsoever apart from three instances of Dango v Trippier? No. We would have absolutely won that game had Tino or Miley been in at RB.

Jak Alnwick. That is all. Tripps was diabolically bad today, but very, very little we can do until either Tino or Miley return. I mean MAYBE there is an option to play as we did at the end with Hall RB and Burn LB but I don't think that's going to go much better (worse attack on both the left and right).

Everyone will go mental and overreact but that was a largely decent performance that was completely undone by Kieran Trippier getting absolutely annihilated by Dango. I actually think, by our admittedly low standards, that second half was one of our best attacking performances in a while. Elanga looked dangerous, Bruno kept things moving, tons of energy from Osula and Woltemade got into some nice spaces. But that was all undone by the fact Trippier just couldn't deal with Dango.

I think that’s a bit unfair on Howe. The reason he hasn’t been moved on is because he has no sale value and therefore any player we buy to replace would have taken money away from other positions. It’s the same with Schär and Burn.

Saved us in the first season post-takeover but alas he is totally cooked as a Premier League player now.

We had one of the most promising RW's in Europe. And then we ran into a PSR wall and had to sell him. I think people underestimate the damage PSR has done to us. We caught up with the top clubs relatively quickly post-takeover but at the expense that it's kneecapped our growth in the next period.

Finished 1-1. Season over.

I think you underestimate the complexity of planning for a window. The challenge in the last window, and we will have moving forward, is we don't know who the Big Five (and to a lesser extent Spurs & Villa) will actually go after. You can shop in smaller markets (the Brighton et al. approach) but as I've said before, Brighton have finished behind us in every season under Howe. There are very, very few players who sit in the category of 'not coveted by the Big Five and would make a big impact in a first season at Newcastle'.

Give me five players playing for City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Man U, Liverpool who were 'unknown' or not viewed as already among Europe's most promising players and then went into the first XI of those clubs in their first season. I think you would struggle to name three.

I love people knocking the scouting as if our interest in Ekitike, Sesko, Joao Pedro, Mbuemo etc. was not very well reported. The scouting was solid, it was just that when push came to shove we didn't have the cash. And what we've done is bought a bunch of players who are the next level down. And that shows on nights like tonight. We unfortunately play in the most competitive league in the world against at least five sides who are in the top 10 of global football. The drop off of even being just a little bit off the pace is brutal.

I imagine the reason is we’re going for it on Wednesday and planning to play Woltemade and Wissa together.

It’s very similar to Isak and Wissa though. If we sell now, we will have to pay over the odds to get someone in before the end of a window. Nobody is going to want to do business at reasonable prices in the last 48 hours. And if we don’t replace, we leave ourselves very exposed. We’d currently have 4 fit midfielders (assuming Bruno is fine), so literally one injury away from the same midfield three having to play full 90s twice a week for potentially several months.

You mean like we fended off Liverpool for Alexander Isak this summer? Or like we're going to fend off City for Livramento this coming summer? The key point here is Brighton's model is a flywheel. To acquire the new talent, you have to sell the old talent to fund the new purchases. You are actually more vulnerable to losing your best players in that model - your choice is basically sell the top talent or don't bring in the new talent.

Let's give the example of a very widely reported January - Joaquin Seys. You might say, bring that forward - but why would Club Brugge do business with us unless we pay a hefty premium? They are sitting 1 point below the CL knockout play-off places with 1 game to go and they are 2 points off USG at the top of the league. So it's absolutely not in their interest to sell their starting left back at anything less than absolute top dollar. And if we pay over the odds to get him in January, that's less money to spend on other targets in the summer. People also need to realise the financials on PSR AND SCR (both PL and UEFA) are complex to the point where, unless you can guarantee you can keep repeating the Isak trick of a £70m accounting profit regularly, then we do need to be careful. Especially given it's highly uncertain which (if any) European competition we'll be in next season which can mean £0-£30m+ difference in revenue and the fact that we don't know how far we'll get in the CL this year, which again has the potential to be millions in difference in revenue.

The full line is correct though 'There is a small pool of players who will make us better'. It's all about trade-offs. We could absolutely buy young, lesser established (and thus cheaper) players who need developing - but they will likely have less impact and the short-term risk profile is far higher. And in a world where PSR/SCR is a major concern, you can't afford many fuck ups. Everyone lauds the Brighton model - but Brighton have finished below us in each and every season in Howe, the Champions League qualification count is 2-0 and the trophy count is 1-0. I'd also say for all the moans, our transfer business post-takeover has very easily been one of the best in the Premier League. We don't miss very often.

Lewis Hall was an absolute car crash in his opening 6 months with us. You are already seeing small improvements in the games of Elanga and Ramsey - admittedly it's them going from poor to average/inconsistent but both have shown more in recent weeks. The strikers are actually the hardest piece of the puzzle but it's obvious the Isak situation and missing out on our top targets severely forced our hand. Clearly the plan with Woltemade was get the highest ability young striker possible, and then figure things out afterwards. And then Wissa is a very expensive insurance policy in that (a) he was one of the few high ability PL strikers available and (b) him being a known quantity in the PL de-risked the Woltemade gamble a bit.