Novocastrian

Getting a feeling we aren’t going to pursue Pedro now. Think there was a bit more to do and now we’ve went for Isak we’ll leave this.

That’s one approach but Pedro seems very advanced. Do we let Everton take over and fight WHU for Paqueta?

I think Pedro plus a ‘marquee’ player was always on the cards. Not sure they wanted to pull the trigger on an elite striker in this window until Wilson’s injury. We’ve obviously shifted the priority. Maybe we’ll come for Maddison next summer.

Before we were forced to bring in Isak to cover Wilson’s injury? Can’t see us bringing in Isak, Pedro and another £40m player.

Does this mean Paqueta’s not coming

Ooh-Ah Jan Aage!

Load of players? No, just two attacking players would do me before the window closes. I’d go for a CAM and a forward who can play through the middle or out wide. I’m sure the hierarchy will manage that before the window closes but it’s frustrating to be two matches in with no progress yet. Howe is so methodical when integrating new players we might be 8 or 9 games in before we have new players in starting positions. That’s my worry.

Brighton have never spent over £20m on a player. We’ve already caught up, we now should be leaving them behind. They’re a good team but even this season we should be pushing ahead.

Brighton are a tidy team, well organised, arguably punching significantly above their weight. Ashley didn’t even care about matching a Brighton who are very close to reaching their ceiling. Are we trying to match Brighton or are we aiming higher?

Bad look IMO to be sat in the dug out when your team is 4-0 down. At the very least he should be on his feet, in his technical area, excoriating his team for the remainder of the game.

It’s a decent point for sure. Brighton showed last week they are a good team. There’s still time, I just hope we can bring in a couple of attackers to mix it up.

A touch of hyperbole? I’ve not seen anyone say we should be challenging for top 4. We should, in my opinion, be challenging for the peripheral European places. We need to make improvements in the final third to make that happen and we’ve now played two games without any attacking reinforcements. We finished mid-table last season and as such could reasonably be considered to be a year ahead of schedule now. Top 7/8 is ambitious but absolutely within the scope of this team as long as we can bring in a couple of quality additions. To not try and achieve that would be a dereliction of duty for me, considering the ownership group have ambitions to be an elite club.

He’s a bit slow and ponderous on the ball, even Colback ‘sacked’ him.

8th as a minimum.

I can't see the window up to now as anything but underwhelming. Maybe the new owners will put something out of the bag but we are now nailed to line up with only Botman and possibly Pope as new players for the first PL game of the season. Before anyone pisses their knickers, yes I know the window is still open but managers want players in as early as possible, Rafa would be doing his nut in now as he always wanted time to fully integrate new players.

Mark Mcghee V Bradford Yes, was at this game. Also remember a last minute winner against Oxford scored at the Leazes by Gavin Peacock to win the game 4-3.

I can’t see why Broja would come on loan when we have Wilson as a starter. I thought he was more of an out and out forward. Can he play wide. Didn’t Howe play with two strikers at Bournemouth (Wilson/King) albeit with one in a withdrawn role? Would both play together? He seems to want guaranteed game time.

I’m a massive beer snob, can’t even comprehend people drinking Budweiser, Fosters etc. when you can be plugging into some Belgian abbey beers for instance.

I’ve often seen him do something really smart in a game and thought that was great! Then on closer inspection realised it was someone else.

He doesn’t even win that many headers in reality.

Bloke is a plank.

If we'd finished 17th last season I'd be more than happy with a mid-table finish this season. What I'm saying is that due to Howe and his team's management and the clever recruitment in January we have already achieved that mid-table position - indeed for a short while near the end of the season we were 9th. We've effectively jumped a season ahead of where, even the owners, probably thought we'd be. The owner's themselves have signalled their ambition in the press, they want the club to challenge at the very top of the table and in Europe. We are now ideally placed to take the next step and challenge for the top 8 and the fringe European places. To do that we need more quality, especially in the forward positions where we have been short of goals. It's up to the owners now to bring in the right players, they probably will but I'll be disappointed if they don't try to build that top 8 challenging team now. The Osimhen's et al are probably out of reach for now but there's plenty of value on the continent that would improve us.

I’m not, I was at St James’ with 16,000 when things were genuinely bad so I know disappointment. We have a real chance to kick on now, instead of being grateful we won’t be in another relegation battle we should be looking further up the table and looking at the players we need to challenge 6th to 8th. I would be slightly disappointed with another mid-table finish because I think we can do better. This is largely academic at the moment because we don’t know what business the club will do between now and the window closing. That’s when we’ll know the extent of the club’s shorter term ambitions i.e. are they are going for the ‘slow build’ which may be at odds with what they’ve sold the likes of Bruno and Botman.

Ah ok, was panicking for a minute or two.

Why are we surprised that clubs don’t want to sell their best players? If a team came in with a £35m bid for ASM we’d quite rightly be saying he’s not for sale or putting a £60m price tag on him. If PIF don’t bring in the quality we need in forward positions very soon we are looking at another mid table, ‘consolidation’ season. Frustrating because we have a real opportunity to drive on and challenge for Europe.