afar

We have a star here, watch the vultures begin to circle.

One thing I will say is that we really don't know what goes on in the dressing room and at the training complex. Gouf may play a big role in bounding the group together, perhaps that's why Rafa wants to keep him around.

Monk to Boro - Official: http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/40220372

When I'm at work I don't want all the autoplaying adds to pop up and start playing loud music. It's part of the whole Mirror group template, so not likely to change anytime soon, they surely must know it's counter productive.

The only memory I will have of him is that Portland game,he was horrendous even McClaren saw it and shipped him out, clearly never getting a new deal.

Reading the wording on the official statement on the club website, it does sound that it's not a simple contract extension, they sound very much like they are offering him a deal that they are not very confident that he will accept, so it could be a pay as your play type or a significantly lower wage than he is currently on.

He offers very little to us, and stifles progress of two young left wingers we have at the club in Atsu and Aarons. He started way too many games last season ahead of Atsu, imo. Retaining him makes little short or long term sense.

I would have kept him around, but obviously Rafa has other plans.

This is bloody stupid if it happens, come on Rafa man.

Good luck to him wherever he goes, just never fulfilled that potential.

If the delay is in him signing the extension, what happens if he doesn't ? The deal is off ? I assume he's only got a year left, that's why they want the extension otherwise he'll go for whatever a tribunal sets next summer. I wonder how long we are prepared to wait around and if we have some limit on how much we are willing to pay for his salary, obviously if we agreed to pay 50% of his wage and his wage right now is 10k that's a lot less than paying 50% of 45k.

How reliable is this source actually? Have they got anything right before? They'ver linked us with about half the world's pro footballers so the odds are stacked in their favour to get one right.

Surprised we have not seen any strong links to a quality number 10 yet, it's all been CBs and Strikers with the odd winger thrown in.

U20's into the semi of the world cup, that's pretty impressive, Freddie seems to be having a great tournament by the sounds of it. Not so much for Arma but he started the 1/4 final too.

Worrying though why he wasn't selected, he's really not good enough for the squad ?

OMG I just found out that's awful, too damn young.

June 5th and still no one in place for the 3 relegated clubs, not sure I understand the logic, you've got the retained list to sort out pretty soon, pre-season to sort out, as we saw with McClaren leaving the administration staff to sort that out can has disastrous effects and of course shaping that playing staff. It's exactly 2 months to the start of the season for those 3 now, with a ton to do, especially for the mackems.

We've not been too keen in the past on sell on clauses and rightly so. That's probably the stumbling block.

He's been dreadful like, inconsistent in the extreme.

Wow that was a shocking decision.

Totally agree, Mbiwa, Cabella and Thauvin (I know he was signed after Pardew left) are prime examples of players who had talent that Rafa would have extracted more from had he been in charge at the time.

According to the Mackems, all their players have relegation clauses in their contracts so they are not in as bad shape as we believe, Not sure what their source is for that however and if you are signing for Sunderland are you really going to accept a clause like that, it's always likely to happen. There was a newspaper report recently that said all players except Rodwell? and one other, have that clause in place - it's 40% drop apparently. Which will be a drop in the ocean compared to the loss in PL money. So they are still in horrific shape. Since it seems to be true then can see them slashing their wage bill to easily manageable levels. Say 20 million of that money was tied up in loanees and players whose contracts are up. Take 40% off 60 million, leaves them with a pretty respectable 36 million wage bill. Problem is however they've got to replace all those players and their matchday income is so low they are solely reliant on the parachute payments to keep solvent. But it's hard to imagine that they are in any immediate danger, after they just pocketed 94 million and of course will soon add 40 million from the sale of the best young talent in the world.

I'm trying to work out where this legend is that the guy is talking about, all I see is the cubby fella and Pardew, is there someone perhaps in that taxi ?

TBF, if I had to spend every minute of the day with my wife on our wedding anniversary, I would go nuts. Could just be that he was in the area, and popped in for an hour or so, making it more dramatic than it probably is tbh.

Who are these NUFC360 guys, everyone seems to be quoting ?