Jackie Broon

Or a sign that it's going to be like a nightmare house move chain.

He is exactly the player we need he will transform our team

As I said last week, we've been played. Man U were deliberately wasting our time, there is absolutely no chance of any PL club (other than possibly Man City) agreeing to loan us players. They desperately want us to be relegated.

This knicker pissing craic is uncomfortably rtg-esque.

Because there are 6 days left in the window and it seems we've pissed away the past 25 going after players who were never available.

I was hoping those were just signs of them taking their time to get things right, but it's looking increasingly like they have a lot to learn about running a football club and they are learning the hard way.

Is this the same PIF that has spunked £25m on Chris Wood?

Other than Trippier this window has been an omnishambles, I have no faith in them turning it around in the remaining 6 days.

Yes there is, the agent is acting for the player, making an approach to an agent is no different to making one directly to a player. PL Handbook Rule T.3. Any Club which by itself, by any of its Officials, by any of its Players, by its Intermediary, by any other Person on its behalf or by any other means whatsoever makes an approach either directly or indirectly to a Contract Player except as permitted by either Rule T.1.2 or Rule T.2 shall be in breach of these Rules and may be dealt with under the provisions of Section W of these Rules (Disciplinary). I understand that probably happens all the time behind closed doors but it is still tapping-up and against the rules.

Although it might be a problem if one of those clubs complains about tapping-up.

But, because the clubs we're trying to buy from don't really want to sell / won't sell without replacements, our position gets weaker every day closer to the end of the window.

The issue is that our bid of £40-50m is probably 'only' £20m-ish up front and the rest in add-ons, which might never happen.

We're going to end up painting ourselves into a corner whatever if their ambition it to break into the top 6. As Everton have shown, the gap is just too big to bridge staying within FFP limits. We're going to have to find a way around those limits eventually anyway. As it stands we can spend something like £300-500m on transfer fees before we hit FFP issues. The biggest blow to our FFP position would be relegation, we need to do whatever it takes to avoid that.

Although we're obviously not willing to pay 'that' much of a premium given that we seem to have been haggling over clauses rather than just paying whatever it takes to get them in.

We've got a week left in the window, there's every chance we won't have time to sort out a deal for someone else. It's not pissing in the wind, if we do stay up it will probably be by very fine margins, one player like Lingard could easily make the difference between staying up and going down.

But they are concerned that we will be, concerned enough to hold an emergency No Newcastles meeting and change PL rules to try to restrict our owners ability to invest in the club.

But that's nowhere near what another club competing for the top 4 places would potentially cost them.

For balance, the other 5 were all against teams in the bottom 7 and all but today at home. But some very positive signs today.

I didn't think I could love Chabuddy G more!

It's not doom mongering, in my case it was a combination of keeping expectation low for self preservation purposes and knowing that I'm usually proved wrong on what I say... it obviously worked a treat.

Get the fuck in!

There seems to be a catch 22-esque interpretation of the VAR rules going on when it comes to us.

As explained in the Howe thread, it's a result of years of Bruce's training and it's probably not something that can be fixed during the season.

Years of training under Bruce. Aerobic cardio-vascular fitness is built over months and years and increasing fitness comes at a high cost in fatigue, as opposed to maintaining fitness which can be achieved with much lower volumes of training. In season training will be mostly about managing fatigue and maintaining anaerobic fitness / sharpness / explosiveness, which is much more transient than aerobic fitness. It's probably very difficult, if not impossible, to increase aerobic fitness during a season.

Last week was the must win and we blew it. We could make up for it by winning today but I just can't see that happening.