nufcjmc

So 2 years away from happening how many times will he be "like a new signing" until the point he joins and when he does will it be for the first team or not.

Assume the gamble is they have enough to just scrape over the line giving their now preferred manager more time to assess the squad ready to rebuild in the summer.

I think Burn has 12 months come the summer and at least in the eyes of the manager is rarely injured and can play more than one position so I cannot see him going anywhere. Fabi I am not sure no sign of a new contract yet, still waiting to see how he copes on his return Tino/NEW Thiaw/ NEW Botman/Burn Hall/NEW we likely including a new keeper need 4 signings for the back 5 even if Tino stays.

I think there is a lot of work to do already so can see the argument for that we also have history of kicking the can down the road and will have already saved the wages from Lacelles and Targett and Krafth (potentially). However the bandaid needs to be ripped off eventually. Pope and Burn in their final 12 months I dont see leaving (unless pope doesnt wish to now be a no2) Trips final pay day and Schar wanting more playing time may decide they want to leave anyway.

Burn has the extra year already and is younger so unfortunately if its 1 or the other I think its Schar that goes.

I know I go on about good value and letting players go at the right time I just feel like we have players who may already want to go (Tino & Tonali) so now isn't the time to rip up the full squad for reinvestment purposes. I hope he gets a new deal and he stays until he and his family wish to return to Brazil it may be our last chance to sell him for good money but like you say he's such a big part of our identity I don't want him to go.

Your definitely not wrong we need to almost be perfect in every regard to stand a chance of breaking the monopoly which again adds to the frustration of it all going into this season. We "needed" champions league at the end of the season to keep players and the rat fucks off anyway and what followed in the summer at board level and recruitment followed by a poor pre-season didnt really lay any foundations of it being a great season to come. The players have at times let their manager down the shit the bed stuff when we go in front is not coming from Howe but he is also not been able to stop it which yes in an individual game shit happens the issue is that this was and is not an isolated performance. This season has seen us do well for parts of a game or a half and play well in periods but not consistently the game at the weekend was just the final straw for some. Especially after the away game when the players said stuff like "putting it right" in the return fixture at home. Ultimately you are where you are in the league on merit, come the end of the season if its 7th or 8th in a few years it could be seen as just a blip however we could end up back in 12th or 13th which feels a "put back in our place" sort of bruising season.

I didn't realise he only had 2 years come the summer (unless we have an option for a further year) just feels like 5 mins ago he signed a new one. He isnt a speed merchant (so its not like him getting older will rob him of what he doesnt have) and is such an intelligent and passionate player has been a great captain in the end for once unless someone is going to offer big money I say he is one of the players you keep for another 4 years and let him go back to Brazil which I think was mentioned/reported. Even if someone offered 70m for him now I am just not sure we could replace his qualities even if it would be a "psr win".

At the very least we need to get used to playing more than once a week with limited training time if that has to be done in the "Lesser" of the European competitions then I am sure no one would complain if we managed to pick up another trophy to sweeten the deal further. While having next season with just the domestic stuff may help that seasons league campaign it just means the squad whoever is here at that point need to adapt a season later. The prize money may not be worth it but no doubt the extra home games and merch etc the club will do will help towards the bottom line.

I guess the only financial benefit would be based on when they eventually exit a big state of the art training ground I assume adds value to the club resale (no idea if its worth more than the investment to do it mind).

Hoping the rest for the first time ever it seems for us and the performances on the pitch whiles he's been away mean he comes back like a man possessed (no pressure Bruno)

I get that sentiment that also a sense of entitlement may well have set in but it just comes back to the optics as a whole we have been a poor watch we haven't really steam rolled any teams like we did a few years ago, we have "sacrificed" the league campaign but its not led to any tangible rewards in terms of a trophy. Think I mentioned this previously in another post but the season which promised so much (we had won a trophy/could finally spend again and were back in the champions league) has all fallen a little flat in the end. We need a near perfect 7 games to stand a chance of Europe and based on keeping a hold of our better players and attracting more its a fairly important part of the clubs ambitions, 2 seasons ago we finished on 60 points in 7th. I am just not sure we can match that this season and even if we did and someone asked me to sum up the season as a whole a mixed bag is what I would probably describe it we have either been poor going forward/ poor in defence/ poor on the road or poor at home and I haven't really been able to go into any game confident. From the Ashley years yeah I would have laughed at you if you said this is what we could expect and people would be unhappy but the ceiling has been raised unfortunately or fortunately depending on your view. The club has said previously that success will not be linear and there will be bumps in the road but this has felt like a reality check sort of season in terms of how far we have come in the fight to maintain and or improve our position season on season.

I very much agree with that if you went on fan pages there will be various degrees of unhappy fans with their owners or boardroom. Issue for us is we want to be a "big club" on the pitch in terms of league position and competitive for honours to do that we need to reverse 15 years worth of stagnation/gone backwards make up for 2 relegations and an under investment in the squad at all levels. To do that you need money a lot of it and unfortunately for us the teams your wanting to sit at the table with or kick down a peg or 2 are not just sitting there waiting on you to do it. For every class signing your making they are also buying for every new deal your trying to sign up they are renewing an existing one. The biggest frustration is the pace of the project on the pitch we all agree that we have over performed and its been great, commercially as in charging fans for new merch drops and the stack experience we have showed up in numbers. The club have or may well have ploughed every PSR limit penny into recruitment but the stuff that is going to help us continue to move the needle in our favour isn't there training ground may be something we don't experience but it is what new and existing players use a lot, sponsorship appears to have stagnated stuff like not wanting to limit ourselves and getting something now when waiting may yield more later is fine when its a 6 month wait but its now years of missed training kit sponsor, ground sponsor, training ground sponsor official whatever manu tell people are "official partners". When Eddie rolls out the line of we have to comply and PSR is an issue for us the solution or at least part of the solution is in the hands of the board and ownership. We were also spoiled and in sometimes not in a good way with Amanda keeping us informed but the silence from those who can make a decision is deafening which puts you into Eddie being the only apparent mouth piece for the club.

Its a tough one in an ideal world your first 11 player is replaced and becomes the backup and you slowly improve the squad over multiple windows and before you know it your better players have "aged out" and need replacing. The lack of money and quality spent on the squad pre-takeover and the relative success the club has had with the crop of players it has had so far has meant you sometimes feel you have done well holding the group of lads together but no squad can stand still, our youth/academy purchases haven't brought us any immediate relief meaning what we need we need to buy in. Its a nice problem to have that we didn't just get to mid table and sit there for a few years flirting with Europe before pushing on but it does mean that we have a lot of work do cycling out the current crop of players and we aren't in a position where we just need 1 or 2 key purchases. We could find ourselves despite the age of Thiaw/Hall/Tino and Botman needing a full back 5 this coming window or next. That's before you start realising by then murphy/Bruno/big joe and Barnes are all starting to get on (within the next 12/18months). All of this makes what we do with the manager that much more important.

We have a lot of work to do transfer wise and a lot of older players currently here who while served us well wont be sold to make us any money to bring in their replacements, while I am never against discounting those who get to a certain age due to it not all about being resale value I can see a bigger advantage of bringing the average age of the squad down and buying players who haven't hit their relevant "peak" years. I don't think we should have a rigid strategy and happy to take advantage of older players who could offer us something but we continue to have to player trade to operate so there needs to be "value" in every signing in case you need to move them on. I think we have gone too extreme with keeping players around due to them being model pro's we have a lot of full internationals in the side and an established albeit shifting leadership group that should be enough.

I do agree and its short sighted to think all will be rosey if you change the coach/manager every one of them has flaws or quirks and Howe isnt the exception to that. The results after the cup final I dont remember being particularly great losing the last game of the season and not ending "on a high" wasnt great followed by a pre-season where I dont remember winning any of the games meant we almost walked into what should have been a great 25/26 season due to finally being able to spend again and getting back into the champions league with almost a dark cloud over the clubs head. This seems to have really knocked the togetherness of the lads and allowed mental fragility/doubt to infect the squad which in turn has led to so many dropped points. Unfortunately for Eddie he will ultimately take the fall as he has assembled and guided the team. Had we gotten a striker in who could get us 12/15 goals and a keeper who could receive a pass and save a shot things may have been different but despite how far down the picks ultimately were on the list they still were on a list or a sub/back up list so ultimately Howe signed off on them.

Its the what iffery of it all that makes me want to give him more time he is definitely at least in part to blame for the mess we find ourselves in however I think to myself: what if he got his first choices what if even if Wissa is one of them he didnt get injured straight away what if the board could have got the rat to give us 12 months more to plan what if the sporting director went at the end of the summer not at the start what if we had a team in place that could work on more than 1 deal at a time what if so many players didnt turn us down Obviously I could add more and the retort to all this is every club faces challenges and doesn't always get what they want and suffer set backs have we managed those affectively? I guess I think about some of the games being smaller margins and what if things had of gone our way and what could Howe do with more of the top targets coming in? Will he get the time? does he deserve the time? do we risk going all in on "Howe ball" if the next manager that comes along doesn't align so much to that ethos? I guess that's where I get the pages upon pages of back and forth debate as there are no quick fixes or easy options here. Howe could get another 18 months and a couple of hundred million in players and still not work out this dance of alternatives to 4-3-3 and playing 2 or 3 games a week. Same could be said with a new face who wants his own players in and the churn doesn't always bring success meaning we are back on the manager hunt more often than we would like. Whatever we do now unfortunately feels like a gamble either way than a "sure thing" anymore.

I understand the pessimistic outlook based on the summer window just gone however I hope the club see this an an opportunity that older players get to go with our blessing and we look to refresh and the chance to push on again. The "rot" started with the kicking the can down the road on certain players and with the multiple windows we couldn't bring anyone meaningful in before the summer added the scoop of shite to top it all of off. The current season and how its gone has hopefully made it clear in the eyes on the decision makers this isn't a "lets let everyone get a year older and hope the magic returns next season". Obviously being able to see those changes through, the "hit" rate of those changes and who needs to be sacrificed in order to help the rebuild is all open for debate.

I guess Murphy has had his injury issues which Howe has confirmed he was having his minutes managed and Gordon having to go in the middle meaning we have had to play Elanga to give a rotation option as Barnes needed to stay on the left. I do agree its all very strange and without the full picture comes across as quite harsh however Howe sees him in training if he's not right either in effort or following instruction or just doesn't appear to "get it" chewing gum and having a laugh with the lads but not much else then Howe isn't the type to publicly name and shame him he just wont pick him. You cant say the team hasn't needed a striker or that we have had many working options so to not play him despite being fit for over 3 months does mean you have to think something has gone wrong. quotes from back in December seem to suggest he came back ready to go https://onefootball.com/en/news/newcastle-united-players-have-been-impressed-with-what-they-have-seen-from-yoane-wissa-in-training-42036583

To be fair even Craig "no" Hope has suggested 6-8 depending on outgoings. As Dokko alluded to above how many Howe actually would want another 12 months will likely mean we have alot of the same faces next season this time I hope they are not in the starting 11 so much and are true rotation options. Out of the front 3 forwards I would be happy to shift them all but less likely unless a club comes to rescue us following a good WC the likelihood is Osula goes as he makes us "profit" and we go again. A formation change and or Wissa going back out on the wing could allow Big Nick and Wissa to still be here next season albeit in a different position than intended (and the optics of that would look awful I know).

Exactly the injury was a bad one but he "returned" mid December one small reported setback from training so hes been available for selection for over 3 months and we are now playing a winger who fancies himself as a striker instead of him.

I think it may depend if we do get back into europe we will always need a rotation option and cover for the first choice but not playing in Europe I can see the argument to save the wages and let him go somewhere to play more often possibly in a slower league. If we do though especially as you would think wages will already be saved with targett, Lascelles (on loan out of contract in the summer) and possibly schar and Krafth that we can afford to keep his experience and leadership around for another year on much reduced minutes/certain games.

Kieran Trippier on NUFC future... "The reality is my contract is up at the end of the season, but I'm not thinking about that. I'm just thinking about tomorrow & helping the club get to where they want to be. If I do that, I've done my job. I'm not looking beyond that. "When I leave, I'll know I've helped the club. There's loads of possibilities (what could happen). Football is a strange game. Me & the manager will have a talk in the next couple of weeks"

Probably a preception thing west ham winning the conference recently and then an all prem final last year.

I think the wider issue of player trading and picking the right time to sell is an art form/skill we need to develop quickly. The summer complicates matters as will limit what we do and we need to keep a hold of performers to build something but the point remains we do need to let players go which have profit left in them to reinvest. You have to pray that the talent spotting is less like last summer.