afar

Rafa's gonna be in splendid shape come the start of the season with all this racing he's doing.

It's not fair though in the PL world, where the difference in budget is around 100 million. Actually saying that, the play off are not fair, it's just a way to keep most of the teams interested and from that standpoint it works. It's always been 3 up and 3 down and hopefully it will always stay that way, if you finish in the bottom three of a 20 team league, you should be relegated, not given another chance.

They beat Wolves away at the end of April. Yep, they then proceed to draw three and lose two of their last 5 fixtures, "drawing" all three playoff games, that's 8 games by my maths. Your maths are s*** then. They played 2 league games after their win over Wolves, then obviously the 3 playoff fixtures. That's 5. I was about to call you out for being your typical arsehole self but you are right actually, the beeb site where I got that information from was including the playoff games. My apologies, still pretty woeful form of two wins in ten. http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/tables

They beat Wolves away at the end of April. Yep, they then proceed to draw three and lose two of their last 5 fixtures, "drawing" all three playoff games, that's 8 games by my maths.

LO, looking back at their end of season, Huddersfield didn't win any of their last 8 games, and won one in 11, yet still promoted.

Reading is a rugby place as well, and the media would have just walked over Stam instead. Reading are a plastic club, granted. Stam isn't a smug c*** though. I also think Huddersfield more likely to stay up next season. The Reading squad is absolutely s*** and Wagner has his lot running through brick walls for him. They'll give it a good go next year, despite the appalling quality of the side. I would hope we shouldn't be worried about either side. Huddersfield owned squad is probably a lot worse than Reading, actually a hell of a lot worse.

LOL, they didn't "win" a single game in the playoffs, yet they are promoted.

TBH over the course of the season the best three teams have gone up. They've got a lot of work to do, probably more than either Brighton and ourselves, but the promotion may mean they can keep a lot of the 5,000 loanees they have. Congrats to them, nice to see another northern club in the prem, and a new team to the PL to boot.

It was a different era, the Ronny Gill was our sole source in many respects for NUFC information back then. I'm sure Oliver wouldn't have had any say into the look and feel of the web site, as I'm pretty confident the current group of Jornos don't. Oliver was Shephard's mouth piece, if you read it on the chronicle it was probably pretty close to the truth if it were under Oliver's name. That wasn't necessarily a good thing though.

The big concern may not be the transfer fee but the wages he'll want, I'm sure we won't be able to match what Man City are paying him.

He's probably the best bet they have tbh, he's done a decent job at Aberdeen but obviously the big * there is that's the Scottish league without Rangers until this year, he was also far from successful at his last English job. They are taking a gamble but they have to right now, the other options are just not there for them, if they don't take a chance on someone with a limited CV, they need to go for the re-treads which is exactly what they don't need right now. Honestly how do you sell that job as the owner. Hi, we would like you to manage our football team, we've just finished dead last in the PL and our fans expect us to bounce straight back up. Or best player and almost single goal source just yet for free. We've got a young keeper that we want 30 million for though, I'm sure you'll agree that'll be easy to get. Outside that we've not got very many saleable assets. We've got a ton of loanees that are going back to there clubs, but don't worry they were crap anyway. We've got a bunch of players on huge wages for the league we are playing in which we know we won't be able to move. We've got a awful record with injuries to our so called better players (Lee Cattermole, as you know would be a world superstar if we could keep him fit). Some contracts are up though so that will help. We've got a debt of around 200 million and our average gate receipts are around 4 pounds 50 pence so naturally even if we sell Pickford for 100 million we won't be able to give you any money to spend. Oh and I'm trying to flog the club but as of yet haven't found someone stupid enough.

I'd much rather they'd gone for a big name busted flush like Pardew tbh. With an unknown there's always a chance he might actually turn out ok. I tend to agree, McInnes may actually have something about him, rather they went for their "legends" like Ball and the rat boy or failing that Pearson, Owen Coyle, Lambert or Neil.

So Rafa apparently was lucky to win most of his trophies, was found out at Madrid and will be off in soon because he has a history of being chased or leaving. Fucking hell Mensa needs to get in there and start recruiting !

Congratulations to the lad, I had my doubts when we signed him, but that was down to my ignorance of his ability. The perfect signing in the end for Rafa's system, just a shame he had the injury problems, otherwise we would have easily topped 100 points and he would have strolled to the top scorer in the division.

Definitely a falling out with Coleman, probably pissed off that despite Wales calling up players from Exeter City, Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Barnsley amongst other big teams, he can't get in the squad. He's probably right as well, 2 caps both in friendlies despite holding down a left back spot in the PL and the best team in the championship, should be more than good enough to get you a bunch of caps for fucking Wales. Hopefully they'll not call him a Welshman anymore, which he clearly is not.

Wonder how this will all change after Brexit eventually completes ? I would imagine anyone already in the UK would be safe but can see an even bigger premium on British players in the future.

Is he Brazilian ? If so what's the work permit situation ? Grandad from Greece or something ?

Despite being 23 he's being held back for the U21's but even if that wasn't the case, it would be hard to see him being picked ahead of the others there, that's some how worth 30 million

Amdy Faye had a great debut, I remeber everyone at the time raving about him, went severely downhill from there however.

Charlton and to a degree at least Southampton are the exceptions to Pardew's general M.O, where he hasn't had the honeymoon period at the start of his term. I wonder what the conditions were at Charlton in terms of finances and current player base, when he took over. If they were similar to the Mackems, then it would be fantastic if he got that job. Watford is actually right up his street, he's only going to be there a year going by their recent policy, that's not enough time for the rot to set in like it always does with him.

Same, you never know but looks like a huge reach if he is their man. I wonder how long it's going to take them to appoint, they should absolutely take their time an appoint the right man but the clock is ticking and there is a huge job to do there, it's not just a few little tweaks. They've firstly got to decide who they want to retain, then start to move their limited saleable assets on in the hope to find some funding for signings. I'm pretty sure clubs are already starting to talk to the PL clubs about the better loan players, they need to get in line now. Take your time Sunderland

Absolutely true, if he's left Leeds to go to Sunderland, you would question his sanity, the conditions are probably even tougher there because the base squad is worse than what he had at Leeds. Really if he held on to the bulk of his current squad, he would have only needed a couple of players to be a major force in the championship next season. At the Mackems, he would have to bring in at least half a team with no money to spend. Palace would be a good call, they like their British managers.

The question is when is he going to be ready ? Still young I know, but got a feeling he's stagnated a bit last season, expected him to kick on from his loan spell at Coventry but it was at best a mixed year at Barnsley, not sure the queue will be that long from championship clubs wanting to loan him next year and another loan to league 1 would do him little good, imo.

He used the wrong flag

Only one team in that, Ajax were hugely disappointing, Manure got it perfectly right. Not sure how Ajax even got this far. Anyone criticizing Manure for their performance needs their head seeing too, that was thoroughly professional and totally deserved.