Chris_R

Every time a prominent Twitter cunt tweets about how Liverpool are bidding or Isak is interested or any other unsettling bullshit, we should add £1m to his price tag.

Because we only play 1 up top, I don't see that changing, and there's other areas of the squad (CM, DC) that need much more attention if Isak is indeed staying. If we had a lot of squad depth in central midfield and defence, fair enough, but we're paper thin.

About the same! I still think selling Longstaff was a mistake. We've made what, £12m? And now we'll not be able to register a full squad for the CL, not now and probably not for many years. Longstaff might not be incredible, but he's a solid PL midfielder and being homegrown he's literally irreplaceable.

Seen one highlight vid where he looked great, another where he looked quite shit. One thing I'm quite certain of though is that we'll not have Sesko and Isak in the squad once the transfer window closes.

Sounds like they've properly turned his head. Bastards.

£110m? Get in the fucking bin, you chancing cunts. Probably hoping he hands in a transfer request which saves us paying him a loyalty fee, so they can come back in with £120m.

Harry Kane, at nearly 30 and with 12 months left on his deal, went for about £100m. No earthly reason we can't get more for Isak in 2 years time when you factor in inflation and that he'll be a lot younger than Kane was.

Anything that says stuff in our favour is reliable information direct from well-placed club sources, whilst anything that says something against our interests is rage-inducing clickbait nonsense just farming for engagement.

Please explain how you've spent £254m on a £150m sale. In fact, on an £85m profit.

Have you just spent 254m there? We're not getting that much for Isak. You can't play the 'amortisation' game unless you want to say who we sell to cover the next few years of that spending spree, which you haven't. Also you've not named these mythical players we can allegedly get for those prices, there's little point saying "RCB £60m" or whatever if we've no idea who that is because I don't know if that's realistic, if they're good or shit, or anything. £150m for Isak probably gets us Sesko for what, £75m plus agents fees plus signing fees so probably about £90m all in. You've got £60m left, spend that.

If top quality PL players cost £30m each, then sure selling Isak for £150m allows us to rebuild the squad. I'm too lazy to look but I'd be interested to see how Liverpool spent the Coutinho money because I bet they got a lot of players for it. But that's not an option for us, the way prices are these days, selling Isak for £150m only really allows us to replace Isak plus maybe one other player. It's hardly a squad rebuild.

If his aim was to enhance his reputation you may have a point, but my recollection was that he was wanting to move clubs for more money by which metric it hasn't worked very well for him at all because he's still stuck at palace on the same money.

Guehi also didn't get his move, so I'm not sure you can hold that up to players as a good path to follow. Worked out ok for Palace, but not so much for the player.

Kind of post you can make knowing it's pretty likely he'll be sold, so when it happens you look like you knew something you didn't before anything is released.

For the 100th time, no it isn't. If we get £130m for Isak and then spend 5 times that on other players thinking it's fine, just because we yelled "Amortisation!" like some magic spell whilst signing them, sure we'd be fine this year. But next year we'd need to find another £130m for the second year of those purchases. And another £130m the year after. And another £130m in year 4, and another £130m in year 5. Unless we plan to keep selling a player for £130m every single year for the next 5 years, then selling Isak for £130m this year absolutely does not allow us to spend multiple times that on signings. Hell, we're still "Amortising" Bruno. And Isak. And Tonali. And Gordon. And Botman. Every year we have to find PSR room to pay another fifth of their fees still. So a massive chunk of any Isak sale might just go on that. Amortisation is not some cheat code, it's just kicking the can down the road.

I'd accept £150m without Nunez, or £170m with him.

Almost certainly. It's by far the most logical and likely conclusion.

It wouldn't be impossible to say to Bruno "Can we make an exception here? We'll give you another X/week but we need to give Isak a lot more and we can only do that if you waive this clause, otherwise we have to sell him". Would be sensible for Bruno to then allow the exception, and he seems the type to do it. He'd rather play in a Newcastle team with Isak than without him.

What five players? Don't make me laugh. We've had plenty of money to spend this window and only managed to sign one.

Absolutely sickening if he goes to Liverpool this window. I'd honestly rather chuck him in the reserves for 3 years than sell him to them after the way their fans have gone on.

Right now we don't have to sell him at all though

I know the numbers are largely guesswork but it's telling that none of the top 30 reported salaries are Newcastle players. It shows the gap we have to bridge, otherwise we cannot be anything more than a stepping stone. Also maybe highlights why the players we're targetting to improve us just aren't interested, because the only players who can improve us would likely have a claim to be 30 best players in the league but would have no chance of getting paid as such. As I said previously, it all ties back to sponsorship - we need massive new deals. 2/3 years qualifying for the CL, a cup win too, surely that justifies massive new deals? Not of the level of Man City etc, but a lot more than our current deals. It's disappointing that we haven't announced a load of these, especially given we're backed by a literal government with loads of nationally owned companies under their belt.

Feels bold to be judging their prospects from a pre-season friendly after we just got bummed 4-0 off Celtic.

If we need to keep our best players, and therefore need to pay more wages, quite simply we need to increase our income. I know our income HAS increased, but one thing that's completely disappointed me over the last few years has been the lack of big new commercial deals. You see Man City announce a 1bn contract with Puma over the next decade. Other teams are getting 60, 70, even 90m/year from kit sponsorship. And that's just direct kit sponsorship, there's so many more avenues. We can't get those giant numbers today but we seem to be content to instead get nothing. We can't wait until we're massive to announce deals because we need deals to become massive. Sign loads and loads of 1-2 year deals now, invest that in players and hope we can sign bigger deals further down the line. Our lack of commercial progress has been incredibly disappointing to me. I expected so much more.

They're making moves and signing players, they're rolling the dice as best they can. No idea how these signings will work out but it's better than playing last seasons XI and meekly accepting 10 points and ignomity.