McCormick

Cool.

Wilson is essentially a Darren Bent regen; it's a shame his best days are apparently behind him pace-wise, but it's still nice to have an all-rounder of a striker that can make intelligent runs into the box and hit the ball with some conviction.

Prefer him to Wilson tbh

Same. Btw I'm not knocking Rondon, I was one of the ones defending his signing while a lot of people were being negative, I just think Wilson is a slightly better, more mobile version of the Rondon we signed.

Rondon-140 appearances, 35 goals, 14 assists. Wilson- 126 appearances, 41 goals, 12 assists.

Better player.

He might have lost a yard of pace after his last injury, but he would still be the best striker we've had in a Newcastle shirt since Ba/Cisse. Better than Rondon for sure, and I was a big fan.

It's great business for an outlay of 35 million tbh.

In a world full of shit sports journalism, Turkey is near the top of the list for made-up bullshit transfer stories. I remember I was in Istanbul a few years ago and there was a full front page article on one of their major sports newspapers with some Besiktas player's agent saying his client had "officially" signed a 5 year contract at Newcastle, he talked about the transfer fee, how much he would be making and what plans the manager had for him etc.. Never fucking happened

Your typical "puts a 100% in" jack of all trades, master of none kind of player. Decent option for a lower mid-table team, especially on a free.

All I know is that a lot of larger scale PIF projects that I have close ties to have lost funding. In a global downturn cash and liquid assets are key to steadying the economy. I just don't see it being feasible, but hope to be proven wrong.

Such guesswork I'm an economist living in Saudi Arabia. It's still guesswork, like but there's basis to it.

Such guesswork I'm an economist living in Saudi Arabia.

This is critical to their vision 2030. Not a chance that if this is revived PIF aren't the majority shareholders. You think the purchase of NUFC is 'critical' to transforming the economy of Saudi Arabia and reducing its dependency on oil revenue? So many of you have a completely distorted understanding of the importance of this deal. The Saudis are in the process of imposing unprecedented austerity measures on their population. There is no appetite for this any more. Have to agree with Penn on this. What would the ROI's be in this deal? I'm sure there are more fruitful investment opportunities to be had with that 300m that aren't fraught with political issues and intense foreign scrutiny.

We may get answers but the PIF won't be back in; there are way too many economic challenges happening in the country right now to engage in a vanity project like this.

Paisley, paisley, makes the girls go crazly

It's the biggest newspaper in KSA (along with the Saudi Gazette) and he's right, this is the first time this deal has made the news here. In saying that I highly doubt this is a tactic from the PIF.

Of course there'd be an impasse if the PL are looking to cross-examine and seek answers from the de facto King of Saudi Arabia and the soon-to-be custodian of the Two Holy Mosques (effectively making him one of the most powerful rulers in the world). Imagine the poor Saudi grunt tasked with trying to get those answers from him

Things may be slightly frosty but I doubt they'd risk losing a major strategic partner and military alliance (the Saudi National Guard are trained by the UK military and have been for a while) for the sake of buying a football club .

They won't lose face if they walk away; they control the media here they could dress this up as not bowing down to foreign influences to protect their national security/ interests. They're losing more face now if anything. Put it this way, anytime the Saudi government makes wholesale changes to it's national policy to appease a jumped up sporting institution is them looking weak and losing face. Making concessions to the PL is, at the moment, the same as making concessions to Qatar.

Anyone thinking that Saudi won't walk away from this deal for fear of being embarrassed will be very disappointed. Changing an entire governments' policy just to yield to a fucking foreign sporting body would be infinitely more degrading in their eyes; the 17m is pennies in the grand scheme of things and they will not be happy with being made to jump through all these hoops for something that is relatively insignificant to them.

We're certainly not catching Man Utd in popularity here , and despite the stc deal and the few times they've had friendlies in Riyadh they are well behind the likes of Liverpool (because of Salah) and Chelsea (no idea why they're so popular here). No one has even heard of this deal going through in KSA, so I'd take that Saudi "journalist's" tip off with an even bigger pinch of salt.

Ugh. Krafth. Ugh. No Lazaro.

Just seen ASM talking up Steve Bruce on bbc.

This please...