Yorkie

Good lord, put it in the corner.

Just chip it into the top corner, man

Fair enough.

Are we the greatest beneficiaries in the PL of Saudi Arabia's interest in football? Like does the ownership, Sela, Noon, etc outweigh their other expenses paid to Chelsea etc?

Enjoyed that vid. I'm such a massive fan of Gordon, like. Really hope we see him excel again this season with total focus on NUFC and no distractions of offers from elsewhere, England disappointment, having had a good break, etc. Feels like he's gonna have a lot of responsibility going into the season and you back him to revel in it.

It's been ages since they gave them £80m for beating Palmeiras, Fluminense and a knackered PSG tbf.

It's not very professional but I think you might afford him a bit of grace if Brentford are fucking him about.

Howe could do a thing or two with Jackson, like. At 23 he had 24 goals in 65 PL apps; there's definitely potential there. Should never have been thrown into the deep end after barely two seasons of La Liga experience. Not convinced at the price he'd inevitably cost mind.

So if we're believing Ben Jacobs (suddenly ), he wants to come here, is available for £26m, but we've offered 30. Forgive me for being on brand but it doesn't seem like we're doing much wrong if that's all true.

I believe we'd be beaten regardless of the price we were offering. Anyway, I still believe we'll have an acceptable window in terms of recruitment. It won't outweigh the loss of Isak. Really hope Wissa gets sorted ASAP.

But you know why! it's not low-balling is it? The market is being inflated by the cartel clubs who operate without our constraints. I really must stop. I will. At some point. Probably.

We sure lowballed Frankfurt with that ~£70m offer. what a pack of cheapskates we're going around like. What was it for Pedro? 60? Insulted-agent-cutscene-from-FIFA-tastic. Reminder that we actually met Burnley's asking price for Trafford and we bought Elanga at a very competitive price.

Agreed. The whole culture around transfer gossip has become so toxic and he's a real bellwether for that shift. Obviously the nature of Twitter is the root cause but that bloke is just rancid

"It's not about numbers, it's about quality." Wonder if he'll change his tune on this if we continue drawing blanks. I imagine there'll come a point where he accepts it does become more about numbers, because heading into the season with a reduced squad will harm us.

Had been anxious to hear from the manager and feel better for doing so. Not especially confident that Isak will stay based on his comments, but less bothered I guess. As long as Howe is on board, with competent executive appointments hopefully imminent, you feel like we can make the best of the situation.

I guess my softer line towards the club comes down to how certain clubs can be basketcases and more-or-less/totally get away with it. You can criticise our decision making but it all stems back to PSR and the institutional benefit those clubs have, just for being those clubs. Not that I think we're a basketcase, incidentally. We're just too slow moving.

what the fuck is that.

If you believe that dickhead. Low-balling/trying to maximise the budget we've been artificially limited to because of PSR.

We'd have opened the door to City if we acted fast, too. The door was always opening.

My reading of it is, City weren't in gazumpin' mode because we hadn't met Burnley's price. We did and they rocked up to proceedings then.

I don't understand how we supposedly had free reign to sign him for twelve months. I assume there was a point last summer where we could've done it but didn't for reasons (potentially out of the club's hands, i.e. PSR); he obviously wasn't available in January and so we tried to get the deal done this summer. We offered an acceptable amount to Burnley and then City activated their cartel trump card and got him instead. If there was no reason stopping us from getting him last summer then it's fair enough to be critical of that decision. But we're not even weighing up the risks if it isn't for PSR; meanwhile I don't know where this supposed open goal is this summer.

I'm not sure there's any evidence to suggest the other way you propose would result in a different outcome. Think it's more than fair enough to say that we're slow operators and that's a problem, presumably accountable to the Mitchell stuff and lack of people doing the work. Not sure about the 'giving competitors an age' thing. It seems like they're swooping in at the moment a deal with us appears to be on.

I'm absolutely in favour of us changing our approach - clearly we have to. We're being backed into that corner. A corner of our own making is the corporate issues; hopefully that gets resolved immediately and we remedy our approach.

My counterargument to that all along has been that A, why shouldn't we target the best on the market, I spent years being very fucked off with the club for doing anything but that - maybe it's naive but I'm prepared to give them some grace; and B, we haven't been low-balling, our offer has been undermined by the sheer control the cartel clubs have on the market. We're never gonna agree. My summary is thus: we've not helped ourselves at times but I appreciate the intention and hold our failures mostly accountable to the unfairness of the system rather than our competence. It'll take more than what's happened so far for me to deviate from that position.

Why do you think that is?