Yorkie

Just ahead of Burn he's the most underrated player in the squad now, and I predict about three games before we're bemoaning missing the relentless energy that he brings us. He's played virtually 100% of matches this season and last (a frankly incredible feat) so he's going to leave a significant hole. I trust the club and accept that an upgrade in his position could make a meaningful difference, but it won't happen this month and I'll be so sad to see him go.

J. Murphy.

Buzzing. Was trying yesterday to see when it was back. Loved the first series, Elis James is hilarious.

God he didn't give a single fuck, did he.

That's fair enough but we've demonstrated with Lascelles that you can have a club captain that doesn't even feature that much. I think he's the obvious candidate for that role should Lascelles move on at some point (I'd be surprised if he left now tbh).

Why? He doesn't half pick up some unnecessary flack does wor Burny.

Depends on Barnes and Murphy coming back imo. If they're available then I can't see us replacing Wilson, should he go. Gordon will be Isak's foil.

Urgh. This season is turning out absolutely minging. Would never in a million years have seen Trippier leaving.

Those Cape Verde goals were fantastic. I'm just gonna pretend the goalkeeper wasn't a disgrace.

This is what it's all about.

Time to hang up my gloves if soopatoon has learned how to embed, like

With Hope's sensationalism, I think it's worth remembering that it's been a very slow month compared to other transfer windows. Probably increasing the need, from a tabloid's pov, for incendiary clickbait.

It's a great competition; obviously nothing like the Intertoto Cup. That a Premier League club/fan would sneer at it is just a demonstration of the disproportionate wealth gap between that league and all the others. Every English team above the bottom three would stand a chance of reaching the latter stages/winning that tournament, which is a shame really. Hopefully Villa get as hard a draw as possible and slip up because they, by some distance, look to be favourites.

I hate this transfer window. Of course there's a sensible argument in favour of letting Trippier go for a fee, but ffs can we just not? I love Tripps. It won't happen anyway even if it were true, he clearly wants to be in England.

If they scaled this crap right back, purely to consider incidents like this - making it exist for player safety rather than over-policing football - I'd absolutely take it.

Yeah. Man Utd fan too. Tbf it wasn't necessarily a dig at us; repeating the Abramovich and Mansour stories with our Saudi overlords isn't something anyone should want, including us, imo.

Tbf, while it's frustrating that there's a dam holding back our enormous reservoir of Saudi money, we're not in a good position to complain. FFP exists for everyone - it holds everyone back - but our owners give us the ability to artificially boost revenues by involving made-up shite like Sela and by having Silverstone hook us up with Adidas. They can spend unlimited amounts on infrastructure. If the rules are all about getting your revenues up then we're in a blessed position compared to the rest of the League's also-rans.

I thought The Athletic's Football Podcast with Adores Himself Ornstein, Matt Slater and Adam Crafton didn't discuss anywhere near enough the impact of FFP in terms of the drawbridge effect. It got a couple of mentions but not enough acknowledgement that it's the principal issue, separately to specific cases of possible inconsistency. Newcastle cropped up amidst the arguments in favour of FFP. "Why should we let Newcastle buy success?" Sigh. That's not the issue. It's not that we're being inhibited from buying success; it's that we're being inhibited from buying to catch up. We've hit our maximum allowed spend following a decade+ that was interspersed with damaging frugality. Despite going as far as we possibly can financially, we've accumulated only a lower-top-half squad that can't sustain multiple competitions, and a situation where sales are absolutely necessary for any hope of progress. I don't want us to be in a situation where we can buy titles as Chelsea and City did, but by the same token I had no time for Slater's "go and achieve it without the asterisks, then" suggestion. Mate, it isn't going to happen as long as these inhibitors (from our point of view) / enablers (from City et al's point of view) exist. Yes, it would be lovely, imagine that, but it's a pointless comment really that adds nothing meaningful to the discussion. Remember Klopp talking about ceilings?

did we remove 'NUFC transfer' from the thread title all of a sudden?

Billing is a good player. Would happily see him here in addition to our current squad.

beautiful after that ridiculous interview after the last game. Bet the squad's pissing themselves.

Yep, pure sensationalist guff. They're negotiating a new contract and haven't resolved it yet, those are the only facts.

The list of iconic goals which would be struck off had VAR been existence is probably pretty long. The one that always springs to mind for me - though not iconic as such, but bloody brilliant and easily one of my favourite SJP memories - is the Perez winner against Everton. Anyway, I shouldn't really infect this thread with such chatter.

It was all one list: - most Championship players - Ki - Joselu - [etc] Atsu was loaned in the Champo but purchased in the Prem.