Yorkie

Really? At the very least there would have been a risk of it happening (like I said). And not sure on being bullied. Bullied would've been a sale straight off the bat before we've got our own ducks in a row, imo. We might have another signing lined up which has initiated this acceptance otherwise I dunno why it didn't break the second Woltemade was done.

I'm not sure how soft we are for selling someone for £130m, but I think if reintegration was impossible then we only had one choice and that was to sell him for as much as we possibly could. I dunno, I feel like I'm just kinda over it. There's been flickers of 'hope' (if you can call it that), but it always seemed inevitable that he'd go.

Anyone who seriously thought 'let him rot' was a viable option was living in cloud cuckoo land tbh. As if we'd risk a £130m+ asset just depreciating and depreciating.

Will take a view at 19:01 after I've seen what we do. It's a shame the fee isn't higher but gut instinct says the manager and squad didn't want that toxic presence hanging around, so getting rid at a lower fee was reluctantly the most suitable option. Not convinced it sets any sort of precedence.

My guess is a lil loany obligatey buyey for someone.

Can't believe you get Saliba's point, like. Four minutes ffs.

Crimony. Bad vibes at Villa. I don't like them but I do feel for them.

I find it difficult not to be at least a bit enthused by a really good striker being desperate to come and play for Newcastle, especially when we're desperate for one if we're going to sustain our efforts to disrupt the cartel.

[Internal monologue]: Don't fucking do it, don't you fucking go there again. [Me]: Did you miss the part where all of our most sensible investments were lost to the cartel clubs earlier in the window? And the part where our artificial limits prevent us from paying Isak the wage he is due? And the part where our specific PSR position requires us to buy with as much certainty as possible; i.e. Premier League-ready players? It's the whole reason we're in the position of chasing over-priced players in the first place, if Woltemade is even over-priced, (who knows at this point).

I don't disagree with that.

£65m is just a "fuck off." Fair enough, guess they're confident he can knuckle down.

I don't understand why every time we play the 3-5-2, some people go on like it's the first time we've played it. The first time I can recall was in that 4-0 against Spurs in the RNID game. We used it in both legs against Arsenal to good effect, Chelsea where Jackson got sent off, Everton (where we were shite). It's clearly something we work on, but the results so far are admittedly quite mixed. The manager wants to use the squad in what's going to be a grueling season, it's not 'experimenting'.

I felt calm after the game and this morning I feel pretty good. I don't think we're many universes away from being in a crisis given the context and the difficulty of the fixtures, but in the end we've navigated this start pretty well on the whole.

Pinged one absolute worldie of a long ball square onto Lewis Hall's head in the second half.

Summaries in here are typically over the top but he was probably my biggest disappointment of the day. Hopefully he isn't only effective with space to run into because Leeds won't be the last team to sit deep against us. Trying to cut him some slack; there was one really good pass he fizzed across to the D which we should've made more of, and he made a very timely defensive contribution at one point.

Aye he wasn't great, like, but his baseline is generally okay. Some daft errors but he contributed to us becoming in total control, as did Sandro.

Aye, Pope our motm by a distance. Could've been Ramsey had he played the full game.

Was always gonna have a big performance against us and I assume he had a lot to do with their very sound tactical display. We've got lots of little patterns that we implement and Leeds cut us out a lot; don't think I can remember more than one or two 'sacrificial' runs and those passes from wide to the inside channel (which Longy himself would often be a receiver of) were always meet with white shirts. Good luck to the lad. Needs to keep his place and get a run if he's gonna have any impact.

Certainly an unimpressive and quite naive performance from the point of view of being an attacking outlet. He came short well on a couple of occasions but otherwise very ineffective. Anyone's guess how he turns out but games like this, and the forensic reviewing with the staff, will do him the world of good. Pity we can't get him a loan; clearly we need him.

I don't think it's a terrible result tbh. I don't see Leeds being fodder this season; looked really solid, just lacking quality in attack.

Take the clean sheet and move on. Stodgy, imperfect performance but I don't think there's much to worry about. We need a striker. Hope Elanga's delivery improves mind, Christ.

Where the fuck was the foul there?

Burn away from LB please

Ugly game. Both teams quite comfortable on account of the lack of quality. We need to improve; no stand out performers really.

Fucking ropey this, like. Sixes and sevens of the ball.