The Prophet

Going back to this, as I misread a comment in another thread and remembered I forgot to respond to a post in here. The compliance period is in March, but to prevent firesales, the cash generated from player sales are now spread over three years. Given the soft period started this year. Circa £43 million of the Isak sale will go towards compliance in March (though all of it will have counted in PSR terms). When the hard rules come in, we'll still have two years of £43 million rolling forwards on the books.

I didn't watch this, so not going to get into the tactics or digging players out, but you can pin point the games we'll struggle in at the moment. We've shown so much more control away from home over the last few weeks, but our home games remain end-to-end affairs where we open ourselves up to the fine margins (i.e goal keeping errors) falling again st us. Can guarantee we'll be much improved v Man United, but our answer of struggling against the mid-table teams seems to be to allow the game to become overly stretched and open, which has been just as ineffective.

Apologies for the self-indulgent post, feel the need to vent somewhere. I've decided to take a decent break from watching football, hopefully it'll bring back a bit of enthusiasm in time for the World Cup. I'm not just talking Newcastle here, I can count on one hand how many games I've enjoyed watching this season. The Premier League has become an excruciatingly dull watch, punctuated by officiating decision that have no regard for the spirit of the game or the fans in the stands. Even the initial excitement for huge cup ties v City and Barcelona has given way to indifference. In the unlikely event you navigate the ballot, you'll be charged an extortionate amount of cash to be sat in amongst tedious knackers, where we can play as well as we want, only to be undone by an unfortunate ricochet onto an arm or a forehead being ahead of the last defender. All of this before we even touch on the game being stacked by PSR and SCR. The sport is fundamentally broken and it feels more like a chore than an escape these days. I didn't watch today and I didn't feel like I remotely missed out. The volume of games of late certainly hasn't helped, so hopefully a bit of time out might get the enthusiasm back, or not.

Given the check was circa five minutes, I can only assume it was very clear and very obvious.

Thank fuck VAR was there to suck all of the drama out of that moment.

Imagine. You're 3-0 down at home. You get it back to 3-3, then the winner. You're going absolutely mental, but wait... ...it's been disallowed for a completely incidental offside. The game is absolutely gone.

Another absolute zinger in the PL tonight.

Everton are appalling to watch, but incredibly awkward to play against. Impressive away form too. One loss in nine, including wins at Villa, Man United, Fulham and Bournemouth. With their injuries, I'm not sure they're dynamic enough to hurt us in transition, but they'll happily sit in and cause problems from set pieces. 1-1

With Miley out, it feels like we have to mitigate Trippier being targeted game after game. Whether that be a back three or Joelinton moving over to the right.

Absolutely stoked for this.

I think there's an argument that we already have a lot of what is needed to service Big Nick, it just needs a bit of time to come together.

Incredible work by the English officials in the Ferencvaros game. Atwell on VAR, calls Kavanagh over to the screen to check a foul, but doesn't appear to have checked if there was offside before checking the foul. Kavanagh’s at the screen checking the foul as Atwell starts drawing the offside lines. Turns out he was off.

Said the same with Isak, but you can't underestimate the impact of not having a proper pre-season. Going on strike was monumentally thick from the pair of them.

This is s biblical bed shitting from Gala.

Apologies, it's ten goals he's scored. Point still stands though.

Not confident for this one at all.

I'd also add, he played circa 2,000 minutes up top for us, notching 12 goals and 2 assists. I get it was a frustrating experience at times, but he was no where near as ineffective as some would have you believe. Particularly for his second full season in the top flight and his first in England.

I agree that at present we look better with Gordon up top, hence the marriage of convenience. Woltamade gets to display his best attributes in midfield, while we fill the creativity void in Bruno's absence. It also allows Eddie, who has bemoaned the inability to utilise the training ground, to revert to a familar system that the players are comfortable with. Woltamade can be a success in this team if he continues to develop his game and we build the team around him. This is more or less what we did with Isak and it took over a year to evolve into that. Isak became a better penalty box striker and we built our attack around his strengths. I don't see why we can't do that again with a bit of time and patience? Even then, he's playing well in midfield at the moment and the current system has looked alright in the last few games. It just seems like a bit of a bizarre time for an inquisition. Granted in typical NO fashion, it's gone well beyond the at times with calls to sell him, generally writing him off and weird digs at his personal life.

I'm not sure that's true though, we've bought in a mixture. Sure, we've recruited athletic players, particularly in wide areas of the pitch such as Tino, Gordon and Elanga. However, we've also bought some very good footballers such as Hall, Bruno and Woltamade. I'd even chuck Trippier, Thiaw, Botman, Ramsey and Isak into that camp, most of who aren't particularly athletic. Woltamade was bought as a striker and I still believe that's where he'll end up playing for us. We can't be sure what the exact direction of travel is, but a system with a striker who drops deep, allowing players to run off him seems like a natural progression, given sufficient coaching and time on the training ground. At the moment, Nick being able to drop into midfield feels like a marriage of convenience, granted it's a great option to have going forward. I'm really puzzled as to why it's being framed as a negative, particularly given on the whole, he's played pretty well there.

I don't even think he's going through that much of a rough patch. Played well in midfield up until last night. Even then he created some big chances.

Wouldn't better footballers improve our game plan though?

NO: We need more technically gifted players who are comfortable on the ball and add a bit of creativity. Also NO: I don't see where this technically gifted player, who is comfortable on the ball and adds a bit of creativity fits.

The main test is in SCR compliance period is in March, so we should still get the benefit.

He'll be flipped for PSR purposes in no time. Minging, but the way it is