brummie

First person I met at Newcastle Poly on my course, day one, was a lad from Yeovil who'd got onto the course purely because he was a Newcastle fan (think his parents were from there) and wanted an excuse to move up and go to matches. Didn't bother going to any lectures or owt, got kicked off the course (which you had to pretty much TRY to do on a social sciences course at a 1980s polytechnic, believe me).

“I’m gan yem, bab”

After four years in Newcastle as a student my family and friends reckoned I had added clear Geordie inflections to my mild* Brummie accent. * private school wanker.

I wouldn't imagine we'd be paying anything like that for him.

Like you've said, over a calendar year, we're second in the league. That's a long period of time to be consistent over. To paraphrase some golf player (Gary Player, maybe), "it's funny, the more we practice, the luckier we get"

I am not entirely sure. I suspect we have some wiggle room, our net spend last 3 or 4 windows has been pretty low (I mean the last 4 windows since Grealish left so not including that 100m) and the academy sales will have added more room. I think it's more a case of how hard it is to buy anyone in the January window, regardless of your FFP position. I also read the other day that PL clubs are only allowed 2 loans at any one time now, which means with Lenglet and Zaniolo, we would need to send one back to get someone else in. Lenglet is needed because of the Mings situation, and Zaniolo has taken a while to get up to speed but Emery clearly really rates him and his application is top notch, so can't see much happening there.

I meant re Grealish, even if you ignored that sale / if it hadn't happened, we've still done decent work moving other homegrown players on. re 14 years of awful owner, true, but we had a totally disengaged owner followed by, basically, a con man, and three years not in the PL (see last post) along the way. re flat revenue - us too, it's pretty damning on both clubs, that fact, given that we had many years of membership of a league which is basically a licence to print money if you do it properly, and still didn't improve numbers (not talking transfers here).

The other factor I think worth considering, we had to go to absolute rock bottom and reset before we could start to improve things. Three years in the Championship, including at one point under that chancer Tony Xia getting literally days away from administration. It was a reset of a lot of things, but it's a measure of how bad things had got structurally and in terms of deadwood - the same deadwood that led us to a comedy sub 20 points relegation.

Pull yourself together, man. It's an opportunity for a pivot on the season. Also, a january with not many league games in, it's good timing.

I don't know re those numbers, but if you look at the likes of City and Chelsea, we all moan about them fiddling the system, the 115 charges etc etc, but those two clubs both understand the importance of selling homegrown players. Gallagher is largely Chelsea's get out of jail card this season (although hopefully, they're going to run out of these options soon). Look what a massive impact that Mount money will have for them.

Of course you fucking will. I'd back Tindall on his own to overcome Michael Beale.

Not really sure how Grealish makes that much difference - even ignoring Grealish, there's £60m of other homegrown sales there. How is that skewed? If we wanted (and I definitely don't want to) we could sell Jacob Ramsey for a lot of money, too. One thing we've got right in recent years is transfers and balancing with homegrown players - Tielemans, McGinn, Luiz, Ramsey, Kamara - total cost about £17m. Also, not sure how your splurge being a one off really changes anything, though? I know I keep saying this, but the homegrown thing is gamechanging in terms of the wriggle room it gives you - it's 100% profit and you can book it all in one year if you want to, which makes a huge difference that you don't see if you just look at net transfer spend. That's the bit you guys need to get right.

Grealish - 100m Chukwuemeka - 20m Cameron Archer - 19m Philogene - 5m (a suspiciously low figure) Aarom Ramsey - 14m There is plenty of home grown FFP wriggle room there beyond Grealish. Our net spend the last 3 or 4 years (although that's only part of the story re the above homegrown factor) is actually small, much lower than yours.

I hope we win it, and genuinely couldn't give a fuck if we see off a load of dross on the way there. I just want to win something, and if it's another European trophy, then that's even better. Finishing in the top four is very important, yes, of course, as is qualifying for Europe in any way, but I read some of our fans this year saying we needed to pretty much sit out the Conference by playing the kids, as it'd distract from us, err, qualifying for Europe this season. FWIW this competition clearly wasn't intended to be won by English clubs or larger European clubs every year, but that's what is going to happen, I suspect.

Take your point re the opposition, but they're still tough matches which involve a lot of travelling and too many games in not enough time. Anyway, that's not the point i was going to make. Point was - we did rotate quite a lot in Europe, and also in the Carabou Cup - and trust me, even with more squad depth, it's not as easy as just swapping a load of lads out and sticking others in. We lost at Legia Warsaw, pushed it a bit closer than I'd like in other European ties, and also got knocked out of the Carabou Cup by Everton (before they'd hit any form Everton, not the improved version). It's really fucking difficult to rotate and maintain shape and form, even if you do have the bodies to do it, so if you're undergoing an injury crisis, it'll be much worse.

Liverpool have been getting the rub of the green for about 45 years now. I fucking hate them.

That commentary tonight was horrific, just horrific. Even by Drury's normal standards, it was terrible - I'd be fucking livid if i supported Newcastle watching that tonight.

Depressingly, I fear you are right on that.

Arsenal’s last two dreadful results coming so unexpectedly has made me genuinely start to think the stars are aligning for something special to happen. note to self:

Suspect they are going to revert to the mean now after that little spurt of decent results.

Clear penalty, it was a vicious hack at Duran. Last time I saw such a terrible clear assault of a fowl was when Matty Cash tripped Bentancur over and sent him to live in heaven with the angles.

Dont think it is that with Emery, it just seems some sort of weird quirk about him.

We've done that a lot this season, too, including today, one of them being someone who only signed professional forms last week. I don't get it.

Obviously not that many as we’ve been playing it over a year now and have won more points in 23 than anyone except Man City and Liverpool.

No fear, it'll be back soon. That incarnation, I mean.