afar

Agree with everything other than them having a good season. We know well that the top half of the clubs in the championship are in reasonably good shape. They are far from it. The money they've brought in will disappear into a black hole.. they'd be needing to spend about 30 million to stand a chance of being promoted. I think mid table would be a result for them, but the knock on effect of another season out of the PL could have them in serious trouble (if finances are as bad as reported) Grayson is about as good as they could have hoped for. He could well reshape them into a solid team if given enough time. I tend to agree with this, they need much more than a goalscorer, they need holes plugged everywhere. Grayson is a solid choice though, they've done very well to get him considering their position. The playoffs is their best hope, don't think they will be in with a shout of the automatic spots, but even achieving that kind of target will require major investment as their squad has been totally destroyed. Those that are left are either injury prone, not good enough, past their sell by date or all the above.

They'll not go down with Grayson. I would imagine he'll raid PNE to fill out the squad, wouldn't be surprised if the player who put in the cross and the goalscorer at our place are wearing that abomination of a strip next season.

Grayson is not a bad choice in their position tbh. If he accepts . Did a good job with PNE last year, with a limited budget and low expectations. They are not in a place where they can pick from a line up of quality managers, he has no record of promotions to the PL though which would be a concern.

Time to move on ? Got to say I'm bored as hell with this one now.

Got to hand it to spuds, they were miles behind us back in the KK days and even through the Sir Bobby era, now they are a millions years away from us, fantastic looking new stadium coming along and a great team and manager who knows what he's doing.

Wow that's impressive.

Have you seen the state of their squad ? Unless these new owners (if it happens) throw a ton of money at them, a better bet is for them to go down again. Look at how badly Villa struggled last year with a way superior squad and a real manager !

So you can seriously forget all about football during the summer months then ? You don't get excited when we are linked with players that could improve us ? You don't get disappointed when we miss out on players that you liked ? If yes to all why are you even posting on here, complaining about people getting a bit anxious, why does it even bother you, why don't you just go and enjoy the sun or something ? It's not all childish "I want it now" people, most are just genuinely concerned because of our track record with this owner and the need to keep Rafa happy so he sticks around.

Think you'll be disappointed with Villa and probably Man City, the rest seem good shouts and that's a hell of a return if you get it all right.

Still think we may have missed a couple of good opportunities in the price range we appear to be looking at Will Hughes to Watford and Bert Traroe to Lyon for 8 million each.

Good, not crazy about that move.

Boumsong went to Juventus (mind you they were in Serie B at the time). Some teams are stupid.

Yeah this 5 million for Murphy is a one of those Mackem lies that have been repeated so many times they've become truth.

Our most successful year was the one where we signed the 3 players there before July. No coincidence me thinks.

Speaking totally selfishly, I hope this does not effect the coverage in Canada. TBH, $50 a year is nothing though, especially compared to NFL sunday ticket that costs me $50 a month and the $20 a month I paid for Bein's crappy service last year.

Not able to watch this but the stats are shocking, outside the scoreline that is, 69% to Germany and 37 to 17 shots ! Pens are only going to end one way when England (or Newcastle) are involved, still sounds like Germany will have deserved it based on those stats at least.

In some ways yes, but we had big advantages they don't. Firstly we had a squad that was more than capable of competing in that division. Although we had a reluctant owner, we weren't financially crippled too. Then we got lucky and stumbled across a manager that had previously not shown he had any skills for the job in previous caretaker roles for us or anyone else. The division was also a lot weaker back then, really it was only us, WBA and Forest that at any point in the season looked likely to go up. Hopefully they have that attitude that it'll all be fine in the end, because it won't be if they continue to mill around with no interest from the owner, a limited experienced coach as their caretaker manager, no squad and an complacent fan base. Honestly right now they are more likely to go down than up, I'm surprised they are not up in arms more, it's like the Germans will make all their problems go away kind of attitude, well good luck with that.

The funny thing is that even if they get an agreement soon in principle for takeover, there's a bunch of crap they will need to go through before they are in a position to spend these billions of pounds they undoubtedly will get such as due diligence, financial background checks and the small matter of appointing a manager. It'll be July in a few days, a mere month till the start of the season. If I were a mackem (thank good I'm not) I would be in extreme panic mode right now. The best thing for them may be that the takeover doesn't go through and Short remains, that way they will be able to focus on the task at hand otherwise it'll be another month at least of limbo.

I agree, with pre-season training on the horizon, he'll obviously want the bulk of the signings through the door, so he can prepare properly. It looks like that's unlikely to happen, but if the only new recruit is Atsu when they all report back it's hard to see how Rafa can be anything other than pissed off and rightly so.

Surprised it has taken this long. May be a tactic to speed things up by Rafa but wouldn't put it past the owner to have fucked things up again.

I'm still of the opinion that I don't really care who he brings in as I thoroughly trust Rafa knows what he is looking for as long as the clear deficiencies in the squad are met. to me in order they are: number 10, DM, LW, LB, back up Striker and CB (although I still maintain the 4 we currently have can do a job for us). So far we have somewhat addressed the LW spot with Atsu and Aarons also returning from injury. We may have created another need also at RB since we lost Anita and Mbabu, we only have Yedlin and a player Rafa didn't really trust last year in Gamez and a youngster in Sterry.

Not sure that was the sole reason, as we had no threat on the left wing for the majority of the season with Gouf there.

Not getting worried just yet, ages to go, but come on lets get a move on, we've got a lot of work to do.

It's a strange time to make this change in the middle of a transfer window when your scouts are working hard to find you the players you need. Perhaps all the hard work has already been done and the targets identified.

Really like to see UEFA and the PL take the squad registration one step further and limit clubs to a certain number of professionals, whether they be out on loan or not. Say for example you can only own 30 players over the age of 21. Chelsea must have around double that number.