Pilko

They're probably seeing if he fancies being in the reboot of Banzai.

Of those you've listed, Schar is getting on and we should be signing his long term replacement about now. Burn is 32 as well. Lascelles will be out for half of this season and is into his final year. Krafth is also into his final year and will presumably play the Paul Dummett emergency cover role this year. There's only Botman and Kelly who are potential "long term" players for us in the CB position. The movement you allude to probably comes at the end of the season where you'd imagine we definitely shed Lascelles, probably Krafth and then you have Burn and Schar also out of contract. It's a good move to be bringing in some strength at CB and next year you'd imagine we add another young one, unless the academy can come up trumps for us.

Bloody hell.

My boss is a Liverpool fan and he said exactly this about Gordon. He said they only ever seem to get linked with left wingers despite having Gakpo and Diaz as well as options like Jota, Elliott and Nunez who could potentially play there and yet on the right they've basically got an ageing Salah and that's it

We could have done with this sort of profile player last season when a clearly not right Isak was doing 90+6 every week, because there was only regens on the bench that Eddie didn't even trust when games were gone just to save his legs for a bit. Reckon he'll get plenty minutes as Wilson will inevitably only be available for around half of our games and Isak's minutes will need to be managed, especially if we're well ahead in certain games. Quite clear we look for attributes and style here rather than a goal record, and that we trust Eddie to make a player out of him. Will be interesting to see how he gets on assuming we get it done.

Doesn't need a squad place with him being ages 20 as well, feels like a sensible move this.

It's exactly the right sort of age, profile and price we should be looking at for the backup striker role. Even if Wilson stays and sees his contract out, he has a year to bed in and get up to speed and will undoubtedly get plenty of minutes with us needing to keep Isak right and Wilson's availability.

Jamaica's shortlist must have consisted purely of shit ex-Newcastle managers.

Toon Review:

It'll be "results don't matter in pre-seysun marra, all about the minutes in the tank" etc but should we lose to one of these Japanese sides the narrative will mysteriously shift to how "mags are imploding, beat off some two-bit Asian amateurs".

Guler would be absolutely ridiculous.

Looks mint on first view, would be good to see the full kit in a match situation to get a proper look though.

W O R R Y I N G

Alex Bruce to be brought in as assistant to the Jamaica manager.

If he's going to be in a Candy remake surely it has to be Canadian Bacon.

Well, he's still shit so technically yes.

Eddie said that after the Tranmere cup game when Isak had been photographed having his medical. Purely managing expectations.

Especially seeing as he played the whole U21s tourney the previous summer, had about four days off and came straight back for pre-season. Wouldn't be surprised if Howe/the coaches have put their foot down a bit and said "love the enthusiasm but seriously you need a proper break".

I think 3 senior players in also from this point. Centre half, right winger, striker. Think it's possible we'll do another loan-to-buy move like Hall's for one of them as well.

I'd rather they stayed in the Championship although don't mind them doing the odd one season tour in the PL so we can give them an occasional walloping.

It'll not pick up any over the next few weeks, the Olympics will be on and as Pards said all them years ago the market will be slow because everyone's busy watching it.

https://www.sunderlandecho.com/news/dwight-yorke-sunderland-and-le-bris-situation-is-worrying-why-didnt-they-give-me-the-job-4711964 For fans of "worrying", here's Dwighty

Ipswich following the Luton blueprint and basically just signing the cream of the Championship teams.

He literally didn't.

People seem to have confused Howe saying "I'm committed here as long as I have certain things I feel I need" as meaning that he suddenly doesn't have those things anymore with Staveley leaving / Mitchell joining. I thought he sounded incredibly positive, focused and committed to the job at hand and pretty shocked at the way it's been interpreted by some.