Memphis

Completely spot on. What a horrendous situation.

This is one of the dumbest transfer sagas we've been a part of, and that's saying something considering our track record. Bizarre. Just pick Manchester United and be done with it. Why have we not pulled out already if it's so clear what his choice is? Why would we help Leipzig get more money if it doesn't benefit us? What are we sticking around for?

Which club Benjamin Sesko will pick Short of that, the thread is devolving into a lot of us being self-loathing and others making assumptions about what a cunt Sesko might be even though we have absolutely no idea about any part of his process, there's not shit else to do while we wait but by God I will bitch about it!

So much fucking amateur psychology in this thread, so little actual football information.

Fucking hell this is so stupid. This isn't 4D Ultra Space Chess. If he doesn't want to join, move on. Set the deadline and then walk away. If he wants to sign, amazing. Welcome. Either way, finish this today.

I would say that it's already a trainwreck in the sense that we still don't have a CEO or a Sporting Director/DoF at this point in the window. It's not like we had no idea Eales was going to leave, and the Mitchell exit was two months ago. We still don't have key decisionmakers on board with some absolutely vital decisions needing to be made quickly. The process is shit - hopefully we can salvage a decent outcome in spite of that.

I cannot help but think our lack of a legitimate negotiating leader has played a big part in allowing the process to be so open and public. We used to get things done before anything was even announced. We are no longer buttoned up and hyper professional, sadly. These transfer sagas are so fucking tedious. Everyone reporting seems to have an agenda coming from whomever they're getting information from.

Talks are not action. We have a LOT to do and vanishingly little time to do it.

Some proof of action would be very welcome. Right now we are hearing nothing and doing nothing - with no one running the show. I started this window with such optimism and now I'm damn near catatonic.

If your employer promised you a pay rise then took it off the table, changed backroom leadership on multiple occasions, and didn't talk to you about any of it until forced to, you would rightly question their leadership and their honesty. Footballers have short careers and limited times to move. Also, I remind you that Isak has said nothing so far. No one has. This situation sucks. I don't want him to leave. I can understand why he might want to go.

Getting angry at Isak is letting the club off the hook for their responsibility is all of this. They knew that Isak was rising to a level where his existing contract vastly underrepresented his value. That is why - supposedly - we had agreed to discuss a new deal with him last summer. We then abruptly changed course and never went any further with negotiations. Crucially, we didn't seem to discuss this with our star asset. We just sort of thought it would all work out on its own, I guess. Turns out it didn't. Isak is rightly annoyed that we didn't honor our gentleman's agreement and also has likely not failed to notice that we are struggling to get things done in the transfer market. We could have given him a better deal proactively. We could have put together a plan for his eventual departure. We could have done so much more than we actually have done. PSR doesn't account for poor planning and nonexistent leadership. PSR doesn't excuse the inability to plan for deals more effectively and to complete them quickly - or at all. PSR doesn't make it OK to leave so many crucial positions in the club hierarchy unfilled for so long, eliminating any kind of long-term plan or.flow. We are going to have Howe jumping off the project if we're not careful. They're asking him to work more miracles with a thin squad who are likely asking a lot of tough questions right about now. Back to Isak, though - the club is counting on people to see him as the villain to avoid the scrutiny about their mismanagement of all of this. Don't let them off the hook.

I'm generally inclined to be optimistic about the club's future but the last few months are testing me.

If I were a player and I saw that the "best fans in the world" with "support unlike anywhere else" completely turned on a player they loved, calling him a cunt, a traitor, and worse, before he even had a chance to speak - I'd think twice before joining. Any of us would be fuming if we were promised more money and then didn't get it.

This summer window is turning into a defining one for the club's leaders. We are seemingly a rudderless ship and we're about to crash into the iceberg. Someone had better get to the wheel quickly.

We have played this really poorly. Not only didn't give him a new contract, apparently promised we would talk to him about it but didn't until way too late. Knew he could be unsettled but didn't deal with him or the situation until late in the window. This is shit. I wanted Isak to be a true Newcastle legend/icon but I also understand he can get 150k more per week elsewhere. That's a massive amount. All of us would likely try to get that too. It's up to the club to know that and to make him happy. But we have to do everything in our power to avoid selling him to a direct rival. It would be devastating on multiple levels to do that. 120m from Barcelona or whoever is better than 150m from Liverpool. This whole thing fucking sucks.

I respect this a great deal.

To be fair, literally 49.99999 percent of the entire population of Earth is below average intelligence. And the other 49.99999 are above average. And then there's John Average. Footballers are smarter than many give them credit for. Who among us wouldn't take 50k more per week to do the same job? Especially as footballers' careers are notoriously short and subject to injury. Don't blame them a bit for getting what they can. Clubs have to be aware of that and if they're going to pay under market wages, there has to be some other large incentive to make that up.

https://archive.ph/TGOGd There's Luke Edwards' article. Nothing we haven't already discussed. We are trying for top players without being able to offer top wages etc.

We cannot keep shopping in the same class as the very top teams without being willing to pay the top wages. You can't have one without the other. We can continue to buy players on the cusp of greatness but that requires luck, scouting, and cohesion in the backroom we seem to lack at the moment.

This is a great point and really important - a lot of our fans are overlooking this. If we somehow put Isak on 350k/wk, Tonali is going to want (and deserve) 300, Bruno as well, any player we negotiate with is going to use that as a benchmark, it's going to lead to a massive inflation of our wage bill and that's not sustainable for us right now. Until the rules are overturned, PSR is a fucking killer for us. This whole thing fucking sucks but a lot of it is out of our control.

Like the rest of us, I think the FFP/PSR system is absolutely rotten to the core and was designed/tweaked as a response to anger about the Saudi takeover. It is a rigged system that benefits the six teams that have already baked in commercial advantages. But it does exist. And I would bet you that adherence to it and refusal to fight it were both part of the agreement to allow the purchase to ultimately go through. So we have to deal with the bullshit. We are going after the very top talent available with a decided disadvantage. We are showing - in my mind - admirable ambition and doing our best to manipulate the market. We could have signed several middling players but we seem to be trying for the very best talent and going against the very top clubs in the process. That is obviously going to make the process lengthy and challenging. I know we are all scarred by the Ashley years but this is something completely different. We have bought significant talents and spent significant money - and after dealing with a bunch of PSR bullshit for a year+, we are spending again. Patience sucks and the process isn't perfect but I think we have acted well so far and there's no evidence we won't continue to do so this window, even if it ends up taking longer than we hoped.

We’ve handled this well. Seems like it’s best left to Liverpool now - and we’ve neatly sidestepped more Isak interest very quickly. Hopefully we move quickly onto our next targets, we have a lot to do in a short time.

I’m surprised that I’m as nonplussed about this as I am. I just feel like it will work out one way or another. We’ve got money to spend and we seem to be going about our transfers smartly.