Memphis

I'd love to be selling a house to some of our fans. They'd pay 2x or more than what it was worth - all it would take is a little gamesmanship. Keep a cool head. It will work out.

I called one of their matches against Memphis, was really bizarre to look through the lineup and see those names. Didn't look out of place at all in the USL Championship.

Again, as I've said before regarding ITKs - whenever you see one on Twitter, think to yourself, "Why would this person have any information?" I can understand why a journalist might have information - they are disseminators of information, and agents and clubs might use that to their advantage in giving them relevant information. NUFCWill or whoever has no such status. Why would anyone in a position to know any of this information that is HIGHLY HIGHLY proprietary and potentially damaging to any deal give that info to NUFCWill or anyone else? Why would they jeopardize their job to give some random fucker a few more likes on social media? How are they or the club given any advantage by that? The truth is these guys take slivers of info from any and everywhere and blast it out. Occasionally they'll be right purely by luck. But if they were truly connected, they'd rarely be wrong. Please be a smart consumer of information. Save us from this shit.

Would be fascinating to try him as a DM at times. Stones/Pep type thing. I think his qualities may well lend themselves to that role and it would allow Bruno to move further forward, where his passing could be even more incisive.

Stephen Glass was canny and now he's the manager of my local USL team Memphis 901 FC, kind of cool. Chatted with him a bit and he's a lovely guy too.

Does N'Zogbia count? Dunno if he was forgotten and I know he was a bit of a twat but he had his moments.

This is what happens when you have a well-run club. You get a sniff of the deal, then jack shit else until it's done. The waiting game turns everyone into lunatics with 1000 word posts on the potential of Marc Guehi's progressive passing growth. (I hope we sign him, he seems v good at football)

I think the FFP/PSR concerns are always legitimate when it comes to any deal of this size, but I also think the club is accounting for significant growth on the revenue side to help us have some headroom for these deals. The assumption has to be that we will be European qualifiers and that as we have already seen significant revenue growth due to our new partnerships, there's more to come. In this case, you pay a premium to remove some uncertainty. He is a known quantity and should be at this level or slightly higher for 4-5 seasons. That type of surety is rare and costly but could well be worth it.

May be good, may be shit, who knows? But...a signing!

(it's a turn of phrase, it's not literally the worst) (BUT the fact that I've had to find out about Antonio Mango makes it close)

look at that graphic, you know he means business seriously what the fuck is happening this is the worst transfer window

Is Guler playing tomorrow in the friendly? Did we get him to Japan in time?

My Greek source Harry Paratestes says it's all but done

Fuck me I check this thread and people are talking about us signing Arda Guler?? I'll bare my cheeks in every shop window if we sign Arda Guler.

It'll be Drool Runnings when he gets a whiff of that jerk chicken

I watched it expecting to see something bad. Instead, I see a player for a team down 4-1, probably could have gotten a bit tighter, made more of a challenge, but the clip itself shows absolutely nothing of value in "scouting" the player. You can make almost any player look good or bad based on a selective edit of their performances. It's hard to YouTube scout without watching full games, especially for defenders, when so much of their activity goes unseen or undiscussed on the TV broadcast.

It's going to happen like a bolt out of the blue. Some player we haven't really considered will have agreed a deal. The downside of us doing our business so quietly is the lack of rumours...

That's reassuring. It was very clear from Howe's comments that something wasn't quite right and needed to be sorted out. And on the back of that, they have all met and seem to have figured it all out. That's good communication, even if perhaps it took a little more time than it should have to get everything settled. Particularly notable to me was the comment about being happy to sign foreign players, that reads as Howe responding directly to a big criticism of him by some. Hopefully this draws a line under the whole thing and we start making the signings we desperately need.

But not quite, though. The devil's in the details here. Howe's a very shrewd guy. He has chosen to do this. He chose to leave open the possibility he wouldn't be managing the first game. That was by design. He's sending a message to Eales and trying to make sure what he feels is his territory is honored. I certainly underestimated how the amount of turnover and the PSR stuff must have unsettled Howe. Ultimately I think he remains but with Eales saying Eddie is "at his best on the grass" and Eddie then responding like this, clearly they need to work on their communication, and fast.

I will say the Athletic piece here has made me a bit more concerned about the situation. In it, Waugh includes the full transcript of several questions and answers I haven't seen elsewhere. That's rather more alarming than I initially thought. Didn't rule out being gone before the start of the season. Again, he's couching it as "having to work for Newcastle" but it certainly sounds more like it has to work for him. And again he points out that being allowed to have a huge amount of control is the way he wants to work, and he's just not sure that's going to be allowed to continue. I do think after reading the quotes there is a bit more to the story than I thought at first.

From Howe's perspective, he's got an entirely new management structure in place than when he started - and virtually all new just in the last few weeks. Amanda and Mehrdad are out, and while he's probably got a good relationship with Eales, he hasn't been reporting to him until very recently. And then add the new Sporting Director into the mix and you can see why he's a little bit unsettled at the moment. But let's remember that Howe is typically very thoughtful with his words. I don't think he was threatening anything or expressing any actual anger or disappointment; rather, I think he was making the important point that, while he's very happy now, were things to change in regards to what he is allowed to do, that could change. And since he doesn't quite know how the new structure will shake out, he's just going to wait and see. Makes perfect sense to me. Nothing more in it than that. If there was, the club website wouldn't run the interview where he said all of those things. We're all accustomed to worst case scenarios, but I just don't see much in this to fret over.

I'm fucking pumped up after watching that. Passionate, ambitious, driven, absolutely fantastic. I love him setting such a high bar. No settling for second best.

The ITK stuff is pitiful attention-seeking nonsense. Why would NUFCWill1892 or MagpieMediaX or DipshitMag69 have any access to anything? Why would someone who valued their livelihood at the club pass along potentially revealing information to some weirdo that could jeopardize a deal or their job? Truly bizarre.