Mick

What was he told?

They named a fee, we didn't match it.

You don't know what was said to Debuchy, we do know the fee wasn't matched.

I hate hypothetical scenarios but here goes. Seydoux: Mathieu, you're not leaving until we bring in cover. Debuchy: OK Seydoux, but I'm going when you bring another defender in. Seydoux: Fair enough Mathieu, you can go when that happens. Debuchy: Seydoux, you've brought in a defender, can I leave now? Seydoux: No, Newcastle hasn’t matched the fee we are asking for you.

So we were waiting for him to kick off and didn't move on because we thought that he would? It happens but not every transfer goes that way.

How am I supposed to know the reason for that?

A fee was quoted and we didn't match it, how do you know that wasn't the last reason given to Debuchy?

Why would we believe our first choice was going to join when we'd had bids turned down?

Who has bid £6 million for him?

How do you know what Debuchy meant? They may have used the fee as the last reason for all you know. The only thing we do know for sure is that we didn't meet his clubs valuation of him.

I don't believe their price was their price tbh (at least the one quoted to the press). Debuchy himself said they kept giving him different excuses as to why he can't leave, why should we believe we weren't given the same patter? They had just got a s*** load of money for one of their players, his contract doesn't run out for years, if they didn't want to sell the only issue they had was convincing Debuchy they were trying to give him his wish which they obviously didn't do convincingly enough but they still win because he didn't kick up much of a fuss. The failure is not moving on to another target rather than not signing Debuchy imo, not that it will stop some going on for the next season about how we would have had him if the stumped up *insert complete guess of an amount here*. Why shouldn't people think that the mentioned fee which we didn't offer was genuine? A fee of the equivalent to £6 million was mentioned and we didn’t bid that much so how do you know that £6 million wouldn’t have got him? The highest offer I've seen from us was less than £5,500,000.

I know this is a pain in the arse for someobdy, any chance of gethering possible ways of travelling and put them in the opening post?

On that basis we'll get Debuchy in January for £4 million.

Buying Debuchy wouldn't be for the sake if it and don't think just because a failure turns into a positive in one transfer window means it will again.

That's part of the problem, the club hasn't grown, we're better off financially beause of cost cutting and not because of growth.

Surely you're not trying to say finishing 5th is better than 4th and 3rd. How did you get that from that? You've used our 5th place finish as a reason for us keeping our better players while mentioning players leaving teams who finished above us.

Surely you're not trying to say finishing 5th is better than 4th and 3rd.

I'm sure that's true but we haven't taken advantage of what we did and we could end up suffering for that.

I don't think anybody was trying to down the achievements of last season. I think it was more about our lack of ambition this season and our failure to try and move on from where we finished. Hopefully we'll pull a signing out of nowhere this evening who will improve us and we'll all look daft, I doubt it though.

Do you seriously think our better players are happy to just plod on irrespective of where the club is heading? Why do you think the top clubs get the better players if players aren’t bothered about trying to win things?

I hope we're not going to have to get used to losing our better players again because I doubt that they'll be looking at us today and thinking we're going places as a club.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

You don't finish 5th and just think that it's job done though and we're unlikely to match that this season with our current squad and number of games to play. Finishing 5th was totally unexpected and we should have tried to build on it and we haven't. Bringing players in is easier when you qualify for Europe than it is when finishing in the chasing pack. The ambition of the club goes no further than breaking even.

Bringing in players can have other benefits even if it only puts pressure on your best 11 to keep improving. The only players we have who are under any pressure are probably Tiote and Cabaye if Anita turns out to be a good buy.

Who said it was relevant to success? You would think that the 3rd best supported club would be able to spend a bit more when needed than clubs like West Ham, Southampton and QPR, obviously we can't.