Aye, achilles are a bastard of an injury, happens in the NFL and players are rarely quite the same after. If this was one of our players, there'd be a 40 page thread celebrating it on RTG by now.
Certainly seems like he can cover both sides in the event of injury or loss of form from Miggy or ASM and that combined with his fitness and pressing i'm sure were key to EH wanting him, even if we did over-pay a bit in the end. I see the logic.
Absolutely hate the idea of helping those scumbags out with regards to ffp since he's homegrown like. It is what it is. He'll fit in at Newcastle pretty easily I think, style-wise and we won't have as many worries with regards to depth in the front-wide positions. It's a lot but fees don't mean much these days.
Remember the Charity Shield game in 96. Great to finally get to the old Wembley and also see Shearer's "debut", everything else from that day can fuck off.