The Prophet

Not just dubious, unadulterated, ITK nonsense.

I'm not sure he was. At Everton he played a lot of his football on the right. The season before last he'd played RW, LW and CM for us, then played as a striker in the U21 Euros. I think he was brought in as a versatile forward and wasn't brought in to fill a specific position.

The lack of Europe probably helps to allow for that too.

I think its unlikely that Barnes was signed as a "bench player" mind. At the time he signed, we had no established left winger and two established right wingers. Gordon went on to become our established left winger, cemented by Barnes' long term injury, but we can't have forseen that at the time.

If we rewind to last summer, Gordon was still trying to nail down his position in the team. We had Joelinton and Willock who are midfielders by trade as options, or we could play our best player out of position. We had no recognised left winger. We had Almiron and Murphy over the other side, who leave a lot to be desired in terms of quality, but are none the less established right wingers. With hindsight Barnes got injured and Gordon went on to nail down the left wing spot, so we perhaps didn't need to go as big on a left winger, but hindsight is a beautiful thing

Once we sold ASM, we needed a left winger.

I'd say its reasonable to assume employing a Performance Director is probably a direct result of last season. Mitchell has been brought into replace Ashworth and it seems Stavely sold her shares for financial reasons. Given we were linked with Freedman since around February, it appears we wanted a recruitment focused Sporting Director regardless. Unfortunately it's all just come at the same time and resulted in a lot of upheaval. The article doesn't mention the last transfer window specifically, but our transfer windows as a collective. It's probably referring to stuff such as not upgrading the right wing and relying on Wilson as second choice striker. Waugh said this morning Mitchell is completing a squad audit, which ties in with that.

It says transfer windows as a collective, so perhaps it's not recruiting in certain positions over a certain number of windows.

Some snippets from Douglas' latest article: "The first priority – which has been initially addressed in the last couple of days – is surely now to make sure everyone is on the same page after the appointment of Paul Mitchell and James Bunce to key roles in the football operation." ... "And that is the bigger issue at play here. How happy were those in positions of real influence at Newcastle at how the 2023-4 season went? A 7th place finish was about par for them but there was disappointment at the way the club went out of all three knockout competitions, where they were sabotaged by injuries. Poor recruitment and miscalculations in previous transfer windows left them hamstrung." ... "Enter Mitchell, who seemed personable and clued up when he chatted to journalists in Germany. His CV is impressive and he brings very different skills than Ashworth did. He is a contacts man – “not necessarily a 10-year appointment,” according to one source i spoke to last week – and has been brought in offer fresh insight and expertise in recruitment." ... "Ultimately the club will live or die this season on their recruitment. i understands there is a decent transfer budget to bring in “quality over quantity” – the current thinking that two or three players who can immediately challenge for the first team need to come in.:

Aye, I'd imagine they'd want at least £40 million to £50 million for Mbuemo alone.

Feel a bit sorry for Waugh. Must be tedious having to write a weekly transfer column when you aren't aware what's going on and you have to keep recycling names like DCL.

Good to see Louise Taylor is still going.

Rory Jennings is an oxygen thief to be fair.

I have no idea what your point is here

I think we only ever scouted Ederson as a potential replacement for Big Joe, in case he didn't sign his contract.

The original post was "we tried to sell him", which we didn't. I imagine they enquired, we asked for something daft and they backed off.

The Athletic, Edwards, etc have all reported we didn't activity try to offload Gordon, but Liverpool made an enquiry and we held "arms length" discussions with them (I think that was the phrased used).

Hasn't that been debunked numerous times?

Nice finish on Saturday. Excited to see what he can do this season.

Nah we need a RCB.

Even fudging the booking it doesn't make too much sense from an amortisation/not alerting the Premier League perspective.

According to the Athletic...

The Milan transfer market continues and after having made official the purchase of Morata, the Rossoneri will now try to further strengthen the team. In terms of exits, however, Newcastle has returned heavily on Malick Thiaw . Newcastle had already been following the German defender at the beginning of the summer but could now come back with force on the player. At the moment, no official offers have arrived at the Rossoneri club , but the English team is very interested. The 2001-born player, in fact, is very much liked by the new sporting director Paul Mitchell . Last season Thiaw made 30 appearances for Milan across all competitions, also providing an assist .