robbo_11

Check his tweet 2 minutes before it - scattergun.

If the deal is confirmed this will be an excellent buy. He stood out during his Athletico days in Brazil - would need to make sure the club was setup to support players arriving into Newcastle so will assume the player liaison guy will have a lot on!

Potential around future opportunities for Sports Direct within MENA that Ashley thought would also be happening as part of the sale?

Interesting other club fans kicking off with this give it must be the 16 or 17th game to be postponed (and our first). Even Norwich fans saying we are bending the rules haha!

Couldn't imagine anything in this, will file alongside that Tyne Mouth lad.

It sounds like Denayer could be a goer, although they are referencing Belgium sources in this article and he picked up an injury in early December so interesting to see the outcome with this.

I think we will definitely need another forward this window. I'd expect him to be out for a while, describing it as feeling kicked and then the pain in the back of his calf with an inability to challenge for the ball might indicate it was his achilles tendon. He did manage to walk, but it doesn't sounds very promising at all.

Fernandez, Lewis, Hayden suspended) and Dummett were all mentioned by Howe on Thursday/Friday. It would seem Darlow, Willock, Clark and Ritchie are missing - with two goalkeepers on the bench must be injury or COVID related?

It seems like Botman to AC Milan is ramping up, although has been questions if they could pay the £30m needed. That Delongo journalist is also on the Botman to Milan links so if he is right about Trippier might need to manage expectations on incomings! Denayer from Lyon linked with us as contract is expiring. This sounds more plausible and has Premier League experience including a spell with Sunderland (a relegation season).

Yeah if they gave 20 organisations £10k each should be able to provide a spread of activity across the area and it might help some of them through the January/February with charitable donations reducing usually at this time of year. It could even be open to the membership to put forward suggestions and just poll them with a series of regular updates - if you have a mailing list of 13,000 people the follow up % is potentially quite good too for these organisations to see what they're doing to support the community.

https://www.getfootballnewsfrance.com/2021/sardar-azmoun-has-agreement-with-lyon-but-deal-is-far-off/ Could see us being used like this quite often, same with the Kamara interest.

When was the last time we competed with AC Milan for a player? I wonder how close the end of contract list is to players we are looking at, might see Dan-Axel Zagadou come in since he is a left footed CB.

If he was to come in it would be a good appointment - it will at least signal a modicum of looking for key decisions to be made.

I never realised Gayle was on upwards of £50k per week with us...the last ownership were absolutely rotten - essentially £1.8m over three years to tie up a player and save investing in bringing someone else in. Hopefully can arrange a deal with WBA to get him out this January. I could also see Longstaff, Dummett and Schar gone this season based on their contract situation. If they're trying to get some trading down we might even look at the likes of Fernandez, Ritchie, Shelvey, Krafth and Clark who will have a year left on their deal to free up some spaces (fingers crossed).

Is it realistic to get a number of deals done in January? This mention of January being huge, but we're going to have to trade both ways. You've got new owners, players who in previous windows failed to attract any interest and a precarious position in the table leading to uncertainty. I don't think we can have a long term plan with processes and then sign 6 or more players - I can't see that happening.

When you watch the full match there isn't really anything positive, we've not played well and Man City hardly got out of first gear. When they picked up the pace we were done for and resulted in that final goal. You don't expect to win these games, but the performance is hardly inspiring as we've got too many passengers. Realistically we're hardly missing any players through injury that you would class as a game changer - I'm not blaming Howe as it is still early days, but this month has been painful.

The pressure for a good January is increasing ten fold.

Assuming VAR only looked at the penalty?

What did he say? His explanation during the match was awful

Newcastle boss Eddie Howe talking to BT Sport: "In my opinion the game should have been stopped before their equaliser with two players down. Two players down in the box and it had a huge bearing on our game plan. "As soon as they score the crowd are in the game and it feels unjust. The referee said he thought he was holding his back but Isaac Hayden held his head, he was dazed for four or five minutes. It could be dangerous and we have to think of the players safety, you also don't want to see games decided when you have players out of the game."

It looked like he took his foot and the ball, but then their ref expert said that contact it was Fraser kicking TAA. Makes a mockery of Maddison last week where it wasn't even checked.

Always expected a defeat, need to cut out individual errors. Technically the first goal for them does the ref need to stop play?

It looks like might be an enforced break until the 15th January at this rate.

I saw a few posts in other threads over the last week or so and thought best to stick relatively on topic with this one, but the CEO and Sporting Director searches are longer term going to be more defining for the new ownership than January. It is a relatively new area with some emerging research coming through at the elite level of mistakes and misinformation about the roles that have led to issues at clubs so while it is taking some time I'm glad they'll vet candidates thoroughly. Short term the aim is to stay up, but longer term the process has to be to catch up on at least 10 years lost! I'm fairly sure Steve Harper completed a Masters around being a Sports Director, but for those interested look into Dr Dan Parnell and the Association of Sporting Directors. They have recently covered the self imposed complications about player recruitment at an elite level where essentially it is built on trust, word of mouth and reputation - "a closed network". You may also see some familiar names referenced in that network who have been mentioned in relation to the roles at Newcastle such as Mike Rigg, Kevin Thelwell and Michael Edwards.

What a throwback - remember being at a match against Chelsea and I'm sure Dmitri Kharine was playing for them. We won which was a positive!