Pilko

Christ Almighty if Baldwards is saying it's happening then it must be. I don't think £60m is bad business at all, think it's a great investment in our back line for hopefully 5-6+ years. Really excited about this one.

Looking at the photos of Fullkrug signing for West Ham, you'd think all the cash he earns as a top level pro footballer he might get those railings sorted out

I saw £7m mooted in one article. Surely there's got to be a PL side taking a go on him for that price range? Seems like class value.

You're probably going back to Ayoze for someone who was signed to fit that bill, obviously he ended up contributing and being a lot better than we thought initially.

I don't see a world where we outlay £45m + clauses on a three-and-a-half year deal.

Hoping for one of those 11pm-ish Sunday night exclusives from one of the more reliable journos saying we've moved Guehi and Osula along in a positive way.

Hmm, I think no news is generally considered good news.

I remember that game because Fulham brought on a sub to play up front who could barely run and was hilariously slow; due to the tedium of the match me and my dad watched him for a while and couldn't stop laughing. How the fuck has this bloke managed to get on in a Premier League game, we asked ourselves. The player in question? Shefki Kuqi, who we then fucking signed a full three years later

Alan Smith

Trust, encouragement, reward, loyalty... satisfaction.

My memories are that he was absolutely shite, constantly, screamer away at Southampton apart. Highlights include him ducking out of the crucial Alkmaar away game at the last second through another dubious "injury" and allowing Huntington to get an absolute scuttling at left-back, and pissing his pants laughing as he arrived as a sub in an 0-3 howking at the hands of Liverpool under Allardyce.

Sibierski the first that came to mind for me. Was a signing that was derided and laughed at by people both in and out of our fanbase and he scored some important goals that year, particularly in Europe. More recent but Daryl Murphy probably another. That pivotal week where we played Brighton and Huddersfield away, he came off the bench to change the game in the first and then scored a really clever goal in the second, as well as chipping in with some goals in other games in the latter half of that season. Paddy van Aanholt also did a very good two month stint at left back for us the year we came up under Hughton.

Former Toon kid Elias Sorensen just signed for Portsmouth. Around 1 in 2 record in the Danish league so be interesting to see if he's up to Championship footy.

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.