Gottlob

Last season Isak started six of our last seven matches and scored three goals. We were pushing for the Champions League and made it by the skin of our teeth. We clearly expected to sell him in the summer. He wanted a move, we couldn't afford to give him a new contract and all the evidence suggests that we needed the money: we were just about to sell the stadium and adjacent land to ourselves in a one-time workaround as we faced record losses and the prospect of falling foul of PSR. We made a hash of the process of selling him and securing a replacement. This season Gordon doesn't play in any of our last six games and we have a poor end to a poor season. But the club seems to have tacitly conceded defeat and when Gordon gets his big move he is hailed for acting appropriately. That doesn't jibe with me but while I've never been fond of Gordon he seems nice enough away from the pitch and I think there's a good chance he succeeds at Barcelona. He has shown that when focused and committed he can press from the front, stretch the opposition and get on the end of chances in the penalty area. That should prove complementary at Barcelona, who are hardly lacking for dribblers or flair players, while in the tougher games he offers an outlet on the counter. His attributes made him the ideal winger for Howe and his 4-3-3. We are worse off without him but his early sale at least suggests some lesson learned and that we might be proactive in the market this summer. We might only need one new winger especially if we commit to a changed setup.

Roefs is the kind of player who can lift a team onto his shoulders, right up to where the air is fresh and sweet.

I think everything is too black and white when it comes to transfers. Thiaw had a good season and has some outstanding attributes but I don't think you could call him an unmitigated success at the moment, while Ramsey showed enough to suggest he can be a good squad player and I think even Elanga could come good though provisionally you're probably looking for him to start using his pace in a more limited role. Who knows what the situation will look like a few years down the line. What you can say is that the transfers we made last summer did not set us up for a good season. And you can argue that has actually been a constant for us since the first summer of Saudi ownership where we signed Isak, Botman and Pope. The next crop of Tonali, Barnes, Livramento and Hall for various reasons made a slender contribution to the 2023-24 season. Then the following summer we signed few players of note. Last summer three senior footballing figures - Eddie Howe our highly experienced and hands-on manager, Andy Howe who has been working with him for the last fifteen years and was so highly thought of that he was promoted to oversee all incomings, and Steve Nickson our head or recruitment for almost a decade - led the process as we spent £250 million on players who largely appear to have been near the top of our list of targets. Having missed out on several strikers we then took a gamble on Woltemade, whose signing was still seen as something of a coup. Those transfers by and large did not work out over the course of the season. We signed the wrong players or for one reason or another couldn't get enough out of them on the pitch. Some will remain works in progress but to have a successful season next time around it feels like we are going to need a few signings who are ready to hit the ground running. At the very least a new goalkeeper and something to radically improve the quality of our attack.

By the same criteria, what were our good performances this year in the Champions League? Evidently none of the victories, which all came against meaningless opposition, nor the draw against Leverkusen who are one place above Freiburg in the Bundesliga. I guess the 1-1 draw in a virtually meaningless tie against PSG? Or are we still waiting for our commemorative shirts and DVDs for being totally annihilated by Barcelona but almost matching them for the first three-quarters?

I'd be surprised to be honest if Woltemade is happy to switch to that role behind the striker on more of a fixed basis and also somewhat surprised if Howe is willing to commit to a move away from the 4-3-3. I do think that the 4-2-3-1 makes better use of the squad we have at the moment. It offers a solution to the some of the longstanding issues with our midfield - the lack of guile and ball retention in the final third, especially in central positions, plus the gaps we have been leaving in front of the defence - and would seem to benefit several players including Ramsey, Tonali and Woltemade himself. You'd be hard-pressed looking at the 4-3-3 to find any real points of connection between the players and with Gordon's expected departure we don't really have anyone who can stretch teams from out wide or lead a press from the front. If we were to switch to the 4-2-3-1 and Woltemade stays then I think Ramsey and Miley are adequate backups for that position. You could sell Gordon, hopefully Wissa and even Willock and Murphy and look to replace them with one quality wide player and a solid option up front. Then you'd potentially have something like: --------------------------Signing/Osula-------------------------- Barnes/Ramsey---Woltemade/(Ramsey)/(Miley)---Signing/Elanga -------Tonali/Joelinton/(Ramsey)----Bruno/Miley/(Ramsey)------- with a decent amount of flexibility, Woltemade to play up top if necessary and Barnes and Elanga probably able to swap sides.

I like him. He's fast and physical, two-footed and willing to try things on the ball plus to me he looks like a promising finisher. He has shown a degree of finesse with both feet and I thought his two goals on Sunday were excellent finishes. Striking without hesitation while keeping the ball low and on target is most of the battle won. I think given the makeup of our squad the clearest course would be to stick with a 4-2-3-1 and then you'd hope to sell Wissa and sign someone to compete with Osula. That obviously depends on Howe and on Woltemade's preferences and perhaps the financial side leaves us stuck with Wissa. You wouldn't want to go into next season with the same three or two of the three as our only options up top but you also don't want to crowd the picture.

So we can't meaningfully alter the footprint of the East Stand but we can make it pitch black for everyone who lives in Leazes Terrace?

For things to change someone's going to have to do the noble thing and start beating the tar out of some of these officials.

He won't be getting away with it!

If James Maddison waltzed onto the pitch, with that hair, with my side in the relegation zone, after a twelve-month absence, there'd be hell on.

I think it's nice to stay and nice if that takes place within a positive atmosphere. I have always stayed even when the atmosphere has been listless. But I don't think you can really bemoan anyone who leaves regardless of the circumstances and I find all the comments about fans being grateful or spoiled or entitled or whatever kind of ludicrous and divorced from the current state of the game. It is a sport played by millionaires, owned by billionaires and largely captive to their whims. And it is still ultimately funded by the people who watch and engage so you can take your choice in my opinion. I also don't think there's a great deal of distinction between this and other disappointing seasons when it comes to some players not doing the basics or seemingly wanting away so for me it's more about courtesy and a kind of groping sense of camaraderie rather than a gesture of thanks for the effort.

Can't wait for a summer full of mitigating circumstances.

Wouldn't we just keep that portion of the stadium and turn the seats around so that they're facing the other way?

I personally think we planned on selling Isak and replacing him with one of our first-choice targets like Joao Pedro or Ekitike plus Wissa and continuing broadly as we were. Even in that scenario I think there was a case for signing a more technical winger. And his mentality appears to be an issue. He seems mild mannered and nice but fragile and without the kind of wherewithal to work out his problems on the pitch. I think you can question the profile of several of our signings in that regard. But I don't think Elanga is a write-off and I think he could still develop into a decent squad player in a winning team.

They seem to be cutting back on some of their signature sporting or cultural investments - recently pulling support for LIV Golf, the Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters and a deal with the Metropolitan Opera as well as selling their stake in Al Hilal and downscaling plans for Neom and some desert ski resort - while refocusing on inward investment, tourism and the technology sector. Several of their recent investments seem to have entrenched their connections to the Trump administration like their proposed takeover of Electronic Arts or their backing for the Paramount takeover of Warner Bros. There are rumoured cashflow problems and the Iran war and the UAE's decision to leave OPEC will not help. It's difficult to know where we stand amid all of that.

At this point you could well argue that we need a new starter for every single position bar left-back. And in that position we need a good backup. But based on our proclivities and recent actions in the transfer market it is very hard to see us buying ten or twelve players. If some of the expected departures occur one of the knock-on effects might be that we have to keep certain players who we might otherwise be better off selling. If Tonali goes we probably need a new midfielder and it's probably more likely that Willock stays. I think it would be a good time to sell Barnes who surely retains some value but just doesn't contribute enough over ninety minutes. Yet if Gordon goes we are already scrambling for a new left winger. A goalkeeper is an absolute must and you're really looking at additions all across the back line and that's before the torturous situation up front and on the right wing.

Surely no coincidence that James Tavernier just announced he will be leaving Rangers at the end of the season. That's our new right flank all sewn up.

He managed to harness the momentum of the takeover better, in my opinion, than anyone else could have done and has given us two of our best seasons in anyone's living memory. In that respect he surely still has some credit in the bank. And my sense has been that he not only deserves the chance but is as likely as anyone to turn things around given the shorter schedule next season. At the same time it's hard to take any positives from this year whether it's his role in our shoddy summer transfer business or what to me have been his limited, almost tokenistic and anyway largely unsuccessful attempts to adapt our style of play and get the best out of the current squad. I think our transfer failings have been largely self-inflicted and that we have been a poor side since the start of the season, mitigated somewhat by a couple of decent cup showings and the poor quality of teams in general at the moment. Right now we are showing all the signs of a club drifting towards a change of manager. And however galling it might be I'm not sure you can even argue the players are playing for him. One of the canards on here used to be that we were very diligent as well as circumspect in the transfer market. But the squad right now looks full of wantaways or players short on character. So it's a tough situation because Howe has effectively been the club over the past few seasons but it feels like we need a major shakeup.

Like many I'm a lifelong fan who feels someway bound to the club and all the same harbour lots of disdain for modern football. In my case that means I've never been as enamoured with Howe as some and at the same time he's a tether to the club and the sport, because he has done so well, leads us with such grace and is now pretty much synonymous with Newcastle. The bottom line is that I think he deserves another season and I would back him to succeed especially sans Europe, while even if I thought we had a functioning structure above him I don't see many other compelling managerial candidates. There are mitigating factors all round. We rode a wave of sentiment in 2022-23 the likes of which we'll probably never see again, and he was the perfect person to harness that. We also had in Isak one of the world's top strikers for a couple of seasons, but even more importantly Bruno single-handedly gave us a midfield and you might question where we would be today without him. We have spent considerably and when you look at our resources and expenditures we are in that little bracket with Villa, outside of the top six but also at some remove from the clubs beneath us. To me that means that if we're run well we should be challenging for the top six and European places each season. Howe has considerably overachieved and while 2023-24 was challenging this is the first time we've really performed beneath expectations. The concern is that some of our issues seem longstanding. I'd love to know what he wants or thinks he gets from the flat midfield. I'd like more shape and think we have left too many gaps while lacking a bit of creativity or ball retention in the final third for several seasons. On the other hand the flatter midfield gives us more coverage out wide and some would probably argue that physical, versatile players are the answer to the modern press. My guess is that left to his own devices Howe would diligently prepare the team based on the opponent's strengths and weaknesses, working on patterns of play in order to build our attacks. Perhaps in that sense we are overcoached because with a tougher schedule we seem to lack direction and there's no baseline of comfort on the ball or between players. Still for me Howe's own strengths as a coach aren't in adding new strings to players' bows but more in building great morale and giving players a sense of stability within that collective. I think Howe and the team around him don't have much credit left in the bank when it comes to transfers. Thiaw and Ramsey look like good squad players but they still have to prove they can really contribute to a side with top-six aspirations, which is surely the circumstances or requirements under which we bought them. Elanga is limited and the two strikers have left us in a hole. I can't see how we go into next season without a new striker. We also need to start looking at other profiles both in terms of cost and locale and in terms of skillset. We look pretty shot right now and that is partly a consequence of a long and tiring season without goal threat, but the flaws have been there from the outset and I think overall we've been a poor side in a poor league this season.

I think Wissa was probably considered the like-for-like Isak replacement, especially when we missed out on our top targets Joao Pedro and Ekitike, with Strand Larsen and Woltemade perhaps the bigger and costlier signings but also representing more of a change of pace. That's just guessing but I'm not sure we would have gone for both Woltemade and Strand Larsen for instance.

Is it possible, given his age and relative experience, that he's upset about not being part of the leadership team?

I suspect that Isak expected to be sold then thought that we were putting his move in jeopardy. Howe seems like the type of manager who wants unswerving commitment from his players and I'm not sure we were willing to pay the type of salary that Isak could command as one of the league's top strikers over the past couple of seasons. Wissa and Woltemade were understandable purchases given the circumstances. Wissa seemed like one of the closest things possible to an Isak replacement, someone who could stretch teams from the front and had scored plenty of goals the previous season from open play. Then after missing out on other targets and being confronted with rising fees, we turned to Woltemade as someone with a relatively high profile and plenty of upside. Neither had shown a wealth of quality at the highest level but theoretically they could have provided us with the right blend of skills. It hasn't worked though and ultimately the transfer team and the manager to some extent are going to be judged on the results rather than their initial concept. It's fair enough in my opinion to question Wissa's age, motivation and career trajectory or to wonder how we expected to get the best out of Woltemade. There always seems to have been a mishmash there between his qualities and our reliance on a more pacy and direct style of play. I also don't think that we've been particularly proactive or imaginative in the transfer market over the past couple of seasons, which leaves us needing plenty of work in the summer to come.

Cole is fifth in the list of all-time Premier League goalscorers and second when you take away penalties. He was never the main man at Manchester United, a side which changed substantially a couple of times while he was there, but despite a slow start he developed his all-round game and was pretty crucial to their major successes of the late nineties. He then continued to score at a decent rate well into his thirties playing for middling clubs. I think if anything his game and the changes he made to it are underrated. His partnerships with Beardsley and then Yorke remain highly regarded and are certainly some of the best I've seen. And I think we have had few players more talented. It's always difficult to compare between generations, but next to Isak his burst of pace and all-around movement made him more of a persistent threat.

The striker situation has surely been pivotal to our season and it was always going to be a hard market to navigate. At the start of last summer when we were still insisting that Isak was not for sale, I had not only resigned myself to but contented myself with the idea of bringing in Calvert-Lewin on the basis that he was at least experienced and would offer something a bit different and most importantly was out of contract, giving us the funds to improve the rest of the squad. I think though that the club knowing Isak's position probably went into the summer expecting to sell him at some point. And that we would have liked perhaps one from Joao Pedro or Ekitike and one from Delap or Wissa. In that case could we have acted quicker or offered some of those players more assurances in order to secure them ahead of other clubs? I think most people presume that especially in the absence of a director of football, Howe was quite central to our transfer process therefore any lapses or any perceived lack of competence reflects back on him. In the end he shares some of the responsibility for putting together a squad that hasn't quite thrived this season. I don't think any of those summer signings have been resounding successes at this point and while some should continue to grow into good squad players, the striker situation surely needs addressing again in the summer and we might have to take a loss in order to change things up and move players on.

Opponents have been finding that gap between the midfield and defence with regularity for three years now. We rarely seem to cause the same problem for other teams. I think the question is not whether it occurs but what benefits Howe thinks we accrue from sticking with our basic shape and the relatively flat midfield.