timeEd32

Ultimately true, but I’m also a sucker for a nice kit.

I really hope this is true because 1) I'd feel a lot better about our ability to get real sponsorship deals done and 2) this logo could look great

Is the belief that Eddie Howe purposely wants elite athletes who are not elite footballers? Is that more likely than those players being too expensive / unavailable to NUFC?

I don't think we're going to broadcast the fact that we'd be open to peddling Wolt or Wissa.

I want a signing done AG style - wrapped up within a business day.

I do think we can probably get most to agree that this summer and season is a crossroads moment. There's a very wide range of outcomes for all aspects of the club and the next 6-12 months are "put up or shut up" time for basically everyone involved.

While we're twisting numbers around he's actually got a net spend of about £400m over 4.5 seasons. So for about £100m per year we've got two top 5 finishes and Champions League qualifications, CL knockouts, an FA Cup QF, three LC semifinals, two LC finals, and a long awaited trophy. Seems alright.

That's great news and I'd imagine fairly critical in allowing us to allocate our budget most effectively.

I’d only sell him for something that would be considered an overpay. Otherwise I think it’d be incredibly risky. But a new LW needs to either be instant first choice or have a ceiling significantly above him.

We haven't. Everyone needs to zoom out a little. A year ago there were multiple people making comments that we had now surpassed Tottenham and Man United, which was frankly ridiculous given their financial advantages. Spurs, hilariously, got even worse but Man United's summer pull over us and good season showed 1) how far there is still to go; 2) how quickly things change. You can't judge the progress of football clubs on single season tables.

Something like a multi-year shirt sponsorship isn't based on this. Those deals take months (if not years), so at the time of discussions we were a club playing in the Champions League having been in it 2 out of 3 years and recently won a trophy at Wembley. A bad season shouldn't derail everything when there are plenty of positives to talk about. The better argument would be that a new CEO came in, got rid of our commercial leader, and it's going to take a bit of time to get this going (and the Knox deal is good). The counter to that would be that, in theory, the single biggest benefit of this new CEO is his big time connections. Round and round we go. Anyway, hopefully we get one more year of Sela so we can get something big done.

I’d love for it to be a real company. If we can’t get any company in the world to give us £20m+ that’s pretty sad.

This also sounds like major cope but their European leading number of goals from outside the penalty area was the difference for them. It’s impossible to accept that as sustainable.

I am now perpetually worried about this.

Elanga's acceleration and (lack of) ability to change direction really disappointed me. Being fast in football is a lot less useful with those negative traits.

Without Alvarez you could imagine Gordon spending time at both LW and striker. If they get Alvarez it feels like he’ll be in more of a direct competition with Raphinha.

Also true, but those ones also heavily involved Eddie so it's problematic for the narratives.

I think that helps Bayern get big money from them. All the players get company cars, their preseason tour is sponsored by them, etc.

Eh? Audi and Bayern have had a partnership for more than 20 years.

Agree for the on the pitch, Emery vs. Howe stuff. If they start to noticeably pull ahead of us commercially though then I'd say it's the most obvious example of how PIF and the club are failing (not saying that's happening).

Getting closer to American pricing. Welcome to hell.

Not sure about the price, but a deal with Audi does seem to be likely. They've even tied it into a preseason friendly against Bayern Munich.

It's not out of the realm of possibility that Gordon has trouble breaking into their first XI for the biggest games. I'm not sure how he'd handle that.

That would be a tremendous failure.