nufcjmc

Apologies not sure what point your trying to make here? Unless you are trying to demonstrate how far away quality wise we are from being a consistent top 6 club? Its a challenge to hold onto your better players and improve year on year definitely but I don't see how we can do both at the same time in this case. We need to improve the squad and the first 11 and to do that you need to increase revenue (still waiting) and also player sales. We also cannot keep extending player contracts who are 33+ and then seem surprised we have an aging squad and players are getting slower/more injury prone at they age. As I said before we dont have a load of saleable assets not ones which we are not going to be plucking from our starting 11 so it has to be accepted for progress to be made player trading will take place. Who we get offers for will be up to the market to decide you may not able to list a set of players who you say "hands off under any circumstances to" as ultimately they may be the only ones you can sell.

No smoke without fire I guess agent wants his next pay day and assume wouldn't do it without Tonali saying he was open to seeing what else was out there. Hopefully if he does go it will be outside of the prem.

Genuine question here as I know you have tried to move away from the massive wages model Casimiro, Maguire possibly Rashford & Bruno all going will bring that wage bill down. But do you think your wages are the base pay? By that I mean should you finish in Champions league places this year will those player wages go up by default?

just wait for the meltdown when the summer recruitment is talked about and Howe comes out with the "we have a limited budget to work with and not expecting a lot of new faces/wholesale changes this summer, got a lot of faith in the current group and new deals for all will be like new signings"

Fortunately/ unfortunately depending on your view the club have not had to do an overhaul yet as they have kicked the can down the road on older players offering single year extensions. Kraft, Burn, Trips all got them in recent times and based on their ages its unlikely this can continue indefinitely when they all do finally go its likely going to be filled through player recruitment not promotion from the academy lads. You also have players that havent performed who arent as old that you need to stick or twist on, Willock is still relatively young but based on the last year do you just extend and keep him? J.Murphy is now getting on and has had injury issues this season he is the last of the big Mike Ashley extensions do you sell to get younger competition or keep? Joelinton will be 30 next year? and into his final 2 years come the summer how long do we stick with him or would we listen to offers if one came in? Then you have players who have that 12 months "cushion" you still need to future plan on Pope got a year but do we want him to stay based on this season beyond 2027? BDB will all depend on how often he is used but is no spring chicken anymore. I completely forgot about Osula to be honest is he happy at 23/24 being 3rd choice? I am not so sure and even if he does go for 30m the striker market is the most expensive position to shop in I am not sure how much wiggle room him going will bring if his replacement would be as expensive or more so. I get what your saying in an ideal world we let go with who we want and keep a hold of everyone this season ends up being the exception/blip rather than the rule for how we can play and things get better next year with minor tweaks. I still think there is too much incomings needed now that we dont also have to accept a player or 2 going who would ideally be part of our plans but we need to make changes. Also reviewing the season so far I do agree with comments about how we playing seems stale and predictable that may require a tactical shift meaning we need to recruit for that vision? Minimum we need come the summer back up/competition to both full backs, back up to RCB, back up or new number 1 keeper potential willock replacement. On top of that are we happy with how we are as a side that we dont look to the forward line/midfield again. I count 4/6 players needed come the summer which sounds like a fairly big reset/rebuild to me.

While your very much entitled to your opinion but the squad is in need of an overhaul in the next 12 months regardless. Trips- out of contract come the summer Schar- out of contract come the summer Kraft- out of contract come the summer Lacelles - left/leaving or out of contract come the summer I think combined we may have paid around 22m for them but its going to cost alot more than that to replace them. ramsdale- please dont make this permanent at whatever the fee is meant to be (15/17m?) Then you have: Pope - final year come the summer BDB- final year come the summer Willock- final year come the summer J.Murphy- final year come the summer Now we may well extend some of these and the ones the ones going/gone come the summer were signed so long ago for little to no fee relatively speaking they wont hurt us too much letting them go for nothing. Issue is player fee inflation is real and even squad players can cost alot of money if we also want Howe type players and those who we cant offer big wages to etc. Question marks on if (based on rumours of who we may have/will cash in on): Gordon stays? Tonali stays? Tino doesnt extend so to protect fee sale needed? Joelinton - getting older now a time to sell to get a reasonable fee if offered? While I agree that we need to keep a hold of a core/spine of good players and build around them we also know that the holes we have in our squad may not come from our academy so will need to be bought in which means player trading. We dont have a massive bloated squad of assets to sell so it is likely we will look to sell a "purple" in order to reinvest. Where we are at in terms of final standings of the season and which European competition we are in if any will also be a big factor in who wants to stay and who we can attract. With all this at play I don't see a world where we dictate who will stay and who will go and we all accept we can no longer keep a hold of everyone because they are a canny bunch of lads. Plus factoring in this seasons underwhelming relatively speaking performances in the prem in particular it now feels like something needs to change. This will hopefully come from second season improvements to Ramsey, Elanga and Big Nick but is not guaranteed and feels the squad needs more than just those 3 doing better.

No Hope plugging his mail+ Q&A from 3pm got to fill a barren window with summer promise I guess. Being in for players with kept/reserved budgets intact dont always mean we win the race to sign them as we all well know from the summer.

The summer scares me to be honest. Even if this season had/does go better we have so many aging players and players on shorter deals that we arent going to be able to just do minor tweaks to the squad. Added to those we would ideally want to keep but will go means more player turn over. Wholesale changes to the squad all in one go can always come with alot of risk added to Howe having a certain way he wants to play it could get worse before it gets better.

Also to add the kees smit one feels like the olise one we throw our hat in but with any team to pick from and multiple lucrative offers and no ties to us in anyway sounds like a non starter.

50/50 on a new signing doesn't sound too bad considering the lack of rumours. Still badly feel we need someone in. Even the "new" formation last night required all but 1 of our currently fit senior defenders. Hall, thiaw and botman having to go again and again is a dangerous game with no short or medium term relief.

The stream I had on the only replay they showed looked like he sort of "flapped" his hand towards the ball making it look more of an on purpose sort of thing. Miley had been done by the player and was running full pelt to catch up and if it did hit their player first and that changed the trajectory of the ball it seemed a low bar to give a pen for. Also heard a few times the media suggest the threshold is lower in Europe its the same fucking game it shouldnt be. I hope our shout is shown in our extended highlights as supposedly under that threshold it should have been one also?

strange things to be encouraged by but two very small things. 1 - first half he was trying to stop interrupt the keepers passing lanes and on my stream he chose the wrong defender and the camera saw him shouting in frustration. 2- just before he came off he had a shot from outside of the box, yes it hit the defender but I have been desperate for him to shoot instead of laying it off for someone else (sometimes that other team mate isn't even there) and give it a go himself. I want more of this where appropriate you never know where it might bounce and causes defences something else to worry about.

It wasn't wave after wave of attack and chances squandered for them. Nor was it a cool calm easy performance from us. Lads had to be on it from minute 1 but we did settle and to a certain extent nullified their threat for the most part. I will forgive Howe alot of media duties straight after a game his comments will all be genuine but initial thoughts counting for the discrepancies. Dont agree with the commentary team you mention either. They deserved the lead after that blistering opening period but our heads didn't drop we plugged away and the equaliser albeit from a unlikely source in willock was deserving in the end. Second half I feared they would find another gear and would steam roll us I shouldn't have worried at worse it was fairly even but based on quality of opportunities in that second half we had the better of them.

Sorry mate wasnt written anywhere I had this on in my headphones on my morning walk comment came from TV coverage its about 58 seconds/1 min in. https://youtu.be/pwpN9D_4BnI?si=VaZWlut5sKzAYG6B

Howe himself said he felt it took us 30 mins to grow into the game. Backs to the wall is probably the wrong way of phrasing it except as you say first 15 mins there they had 85+ possession. But certainly not anti howe at all. There forward line is scary good we nullified them as best we could and tried to ask questions when we could. It was as close to the most perfect away performance this season as we have seen and the tactics worked. That wasnt to say when looking back both sides has chances to win the game thinking that chance dembele got in behind and turned and shot went just wide. Always a bit of luck involved in anything in life but I am encouraged with the performance if it can be rolled forward.

That first half in particular was backs to the wall sort of stuff. Clearing our lines only for it to seem like that ball had a magnet in it to get back to a PSG player. Happened in the second half but felt alot more side ways stuff from them and not alot of penetratration something we have ourselves of doing when we have more of the ball. Barnes and Gordon gave them more/something different to worry about in the second half as our pace looked to hurt them had Gordon or Barnes efforts gone in it would have been deserved. The Gordon chance in particular was a shame keeper parried it away just wish someone was up there closing in on the stray ball.

As a fan invested in the club and who cares deeply I think criticism is fine. I think everyone is entitled to their opinion as it is just that opinion. Where it gets a little murky is the belittling of view points that dont allign with your own. There is a fine line between debate and rebuttal and simply refusing those who differ as something that has no merit. Luckily for me and for us all that doesn't really happen on here ever. We all in the main invest far too much of our time on the board to be a flash in the pan fan with wild takes. I know none of you very well but I read every thread and every comment with interest and look forward to what takes people have. Last night was amazing in the context of who we started with and who was missing in the line up and who we were playing against. Added to our general away form for more context. Was it perfect ? No in all honesty when they broke on us they played some lovely stuff. The narrative that some of their players had off nights totally forgets we were there in part making them look that way. Just got to hope some of this can be lessons learned for future fixtures as some of this has the makings of a solid plan over 4-3-3.

At the very least performances like last night may increase the number of suitors or potential fee should he likely leave in the summer. Him sitting on the bench or stinking it up on the pitch does us no favours short term playing him or increase the liklihood of anyone taking him.

Your a wonderful poster on here and love your positive pro the club mindset, I also don't think this is what you intentionally meant when putting this comment but as someone who suffers from clinical depression I cannot help but see my world in a negative way. I can joke about it at times often retorting that my glass just isn't half full it has a hole in it, looking on the bright side is not my go to place and find it difficult to find it. My mother when we used to speak used to say "pull yourself together pretend your a pair of curtains" I found it patronising at best and a little heartless like I want my mind to feel the way I do and did it on purpose. Now I spend most of the time making maximum effort to try look for the good and bad things to balance out but it is sometimes a mental struggle to do so best way I can describe it its like physically asking a 8 stone bloke to pick up a boulder first try with no help. Anyway didnt want to derail/spoil what was a very good performance with this just felt I needed to get it off my chest.

I can understand to a certain extent managers will target your better players to limit your opportunities as a team we see man marking on Bruno or 3 men on Lewis Hall as examples of sides trying to stifle in areas they know a team can hurt them. The issue is no prem attacking output attitude/body language looking like someone who doesnt care as much as he once did. If that's him trying to be more level headed/measured when playing to stop the red cards and rush of blood then its taken away something from his game which makes him so much less affective. He talks really well and sounds like he does think long and hard about his own game and approach but all that thinking hasn't turned into an up turn in performances.

Think it was a knee injury when on one of the internationals weeks.

Agreed if he gets us back into CL or maybe europa it will have felt a worth while gamble as the money generated justifying the over spend. Be interesting to know if we are at the point that our spending/budgeting relies on some form of europe every season or not. Possibly not if you take Howe's comments from the presser a few weeks ago that our budget is ever shifting calculation (he didn't say that word for word just the general gist)

This is true but he also has previously mentioned only a small pool of players that could improve us comment. It would annoy me less had we had what we needed and no issues in the squad its a bad time to do your main business and get good value. However our backline is going again and again with question marks over who will be here come the summer kraft, trips,lacelles, targett and schar could all go. Tino press are saying hes likely to leave? so it seems short sighted to just roll with it in the hopes it works out in theory we could need 3 or 4 defenders come the summer so getting 1 or 2 now seems to make sense so they have half a season with the existing group to learn the Eddie way. Have no evidence to back this up but getting attacking goal scoring players usually cost more and in shorter supply surely cannot be the same for defenders.

Anyone do the magic again on latest Craig no hope piece training ground u-turn doesnt sound good or as a grab me read it headline it may well be

Keeping them powders dry mate " new " signings Will of Osula and biggeth Dan Burn incoming