Yorkie

No, no. We're a shambles.

That was an exciting time. Not for everyone, understandably, but for the first time in a while it felt a little less like Mike Ashley FC, and more like NUFC. Felt wonderful having a talisman like Rafa to get behind, and, mercifully, the ownership appeared to be just letting him get on with it. Some feeling when we lost the first two games.

Arguably a hot take but they've an outside shot at the title this season imo. Opinion brought to you from my unrelenting cynicism regarding Chelsea FC and how they will never face a single consequence ever.

I haven't seen enough of the player - nor do I understand where the market is (inflation-wise) - to know if this is a gross overspend. However, I honestly don't think we operate like that; we don't behave extravagantly in the transfer market at all because of PSR. There's plenty of evidence for that just the summer. We're not frugal but we've defined our limits and stuck to them. I'd wager that we rate the player extremely highly and are offering this amount with confidence that we'll be getting value. As far as I can see, we were always gonna go big on a striker this summer, before we had any clue that Isak was gonna twerk at Liverpool.

Almost daren't ask but doesn't it work differently to that, with all that tasty profit helping us over a number of years? Like doesn't Longstaff give us hundreds of billions over the next five years or something? Mind you, even if it is that simple, 150 in and 100 out for Sesko and Wissa (and everything they theoretically provide) doesn't sound like the worst business...

He's probably getting about 30 minutes of sleep a day atm tbf to the poor lad.

If someone wants to call me a snarky cunt here then I'll accept that but I honestly think it's at least partially because it hasn't happened suddenly.

Well said.

I'll just keep saying that all the less-coveted players we supposedly should have signed straight away (rather than chasing better players) are all still available and all theoretically easier to purchase. It's been really frustrating up to this point but it's not a catastrophe until it ends and we've got a considerably weaker squad. The facts are that we've peddled Wilson, Longstaff, and seemingly Dubravka. We've solved the problem RW position and signed someone to push Pope. All of those things are positive. What we need to do is resolve the striker situation, replace Longstaff and succession-plan at CB. It's vital that we do each of those things and thankfully there's a month to do it.

"Absolutely desperate" is the season starting tomorrow and having one or fewer CBs fit. We're nowhere near that stage; at present, Schar and Burn will be starting the season with Botman, by all accounts, likely available. Clearly we need to get our succession planning done for the first two and this summer is absolutely the time to do that. But we're not exactly on life support here.

Of course we need a CB but we're not "absolutely desperate" when there's still several weeks of the transfer window to go; so desperate that we should needlessly over-spend. He's got a year left on his contract, would be lunacy to give them £50million. That's probably more than we offered them a year ago tbh.

Eh? It's the 4th of August. Honestly the hyperbole is ludicrous at times, like.

♥️

Just give me an out of the blue signing of a player that hasn't been previously linked!

/ Don't have the finances to stockpile our wing areas with expensive youngsters who have everything to prove

lads

Enjoyed his Indian summer last season and if I had been Newcastle manager he'd have kept his place when Pope returned to fitness. Thankfully my role in NUFC is limited to being a gobshite online and occasionally face-to-face. He was a breath of fresh air when he first arrived; an obscene upgrade to what came before, and that ManU game in which he made his debut was one of the highlights of that decade (). I was never particularly moved by his desire to go to Man Utd, probably cos I never had any major affection for him beyond appreciating his ability. Beyond that, I've respect for a goalie who's been generally happy to be an understudy and although 23/24 was brutal, he made a terrific contribution last season. Decent goalie, good guy, hopefully will be generally fondly remembered.

Jokes aside, assuming Sesko does go to Man Utd, there's only really Spurs left from the ESL chums who might theoretically gazump us on a striker, am I right? Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Man Utd and Chelsea will have all invested heavily in their front-lines recently, but Spurs have Son to replace. No idea if their finances would allow and maybe they're not after a CF anyway. The comfort you take from this saga ending is that we'll be chasing less-coveted players without direct competition from those teams operating without our constraints. I suppose if Watkins goes we'll have Villa to contend with but CL is our trump card there. I genuinely think stuff will happen quite quickly after this, and we shall have our dopamine.

Less coveted players are easier to sign so I don't think this has ever been a major cause for concern, despite it obviously being better to have players through the door as early as possible.

I mean as soon as Ornstein's incredibly specific, clearly agent-fed update came out the other night, it was curtains, aye. Assuming the transfer committee isn't literally braindead, we'll have been investigating other targets from that moment on. Prior to then, clearly we were encouraged enough to progress as far as making definitive offers (again that's assuming the decision makers are powered by functioning brain matter).

If it was obvious we probably wouldn't have been at the table.

I suppose it will have been impossible for Man City to match our offer seeing as they didn't have a Dúbravka. Bloody hell.

Just left.

Apropos of nothing, do you feel a thing when Chelsea sign a player? You must be so desensitised to the notion of transfers at this point.

Watching the Birmingham City thing on Prime. The exchanges between Brady and Rooney are painful. A bloke who knows absolutely nothing about football interacting with an abysmal manager. Desperate stuff.