Gottlob

I still don't understand why we didn't trade him to Milan in order to offset some of the cost of the Tonali signing?

I never really rated him since even at his best he was tough to watch on the ball and tucked in too much in a moderately successful bid to provide defensive stability. But he was a below-par Premier League player for what was for the most part a pretty below-par Premier League side, and it's hard to begrudge someone who was born in the area, came up through the youth ranks and wound up making a serious contribution to our first team while spending effectively the whole of his career with the club. Well done!

I'll always remember Matt Ritchie as a pugnacious fellow. One of several players to be dubbed 'the Scottish Messi' after Barry Bannon, Ryan Gauld and little Jimmy Griffin, in truth he never quite reached those heights but he plied his trade with aplomb even if that was more in the sandpapering vein than fine carpentry. I can still picture him with bloodshot eyes racing towards the corner flag as if the whole world along with it best stay out of his way, only for him to be mobbed by his adoring teammates. He was signed for what wasn't a paltry fee ahead of our Championship season, and proved useful.

So I'm guessing we bring in Ramsdale for £15 million, sell Pope for about the same amount, and then use the amortisation to bring in a genuine top class first choice goalkeeper?

Some player Adam Armstrong! Only one year left on his contract too . . .

If Southampton stay down we may be able to secure a cut-price deal for Adam Armstrong, who has only one year left on his contract, has the second most goals and the fourth most assists in this season's Championship, and would be ideal as a homegrown player to provide backup for the three attacking positions.

We have a bunch of midfielders with fairly discrete skills and with Bruno the lynchpin who holds all of it together. Without his ability to play out and beat the press our midfield is a bit of an unknown quantity. Of the rest I feel as though Anderson is the only one with the footwork to keep the ball and potentially link the play higher up the pitch: Willock makes quick movements on and off the ball and can score a few goals, Joelinton makes the odd surging run and Longstaff can arrive into space in the area. Of course his productivity hasn't been great, but overall I think Anderson has looked pretty good since he returned from injury, and I'd expect him to get plenty of playing time next season.

Isak is a top class striker, but Cole was quicker, more agile and showed better movement off the ball, albeit at a time when there was more space to be found between opposition defences. I also reckon he was a more creative finisher, and while he never had the same explosiveness at Manchester United he became more technically proficient, more adroit in the buildup play and better at heading the ball. He was a key player for them during their treble-winning season, and therefore part of two of the great Premier League partnerships, first alongside Beardsley and then alongside Yorke. For me he's one of the best strikers in the history of the league, just behind a class of Shearer, Henry and Aguero.

It was the lack of fatigue you dickheads.

43 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

Always struggle to place what type of player he is, but it's just dawned on me that he reminds me a lot of Ross Barkley and that's the type of player he could be, with the level depending on him. 

Interesting comparison, and like a bolt from the gods, it's just struck me that while he lacks the running power and pace with the ball which Barkley had when he broke through as a youngster, still in build and gait Anderson is markedly similar.

If Eddie Howe needs a lesson in ruthlessness he should look no further than our own venerable leader his majesty Yessir Bin-Rumayyan, who would sell his own mother for a locker at one of the world's premier links golf courses and has done so in the past. What's more I have no doubt that if our poor form continues on to the end of the season, Howe will be the recipient of such a tongue lashing that in the philosophers' parlance he'll be a tabula rasa, meaning a blank slate, or in the everyday parlance quite literally licked clean as a whistle. There'll be no room for favourites or sympathy then, and I for one cannot wait to begin the summer's culling.

I've only been to one American stadium and the experience compared to St James' Park was night and day. Open interiors and walkable concourses rather than cramped corridors littered with betting slips and spilled beers, snaked by queuing punters who wait desperately for a slot at the steel urinals as the stench of hot piss fills the air. A plethora of food and drink options, retail opportunities and enough time and space to enjoy it all in a casual, even carnivalesque sort of atmosphere where the sport was the focus but not the be-all and end-all.

Newcastle absolutely needs a new stadium with more eating options. I'd personally opt for a taco bar as well as some of the more traditional 'Geordie' options like Craster Kippers and pease pudding, and I'd also like the stadium to include one of those shoot-to-win basketball arcades.

54 minutes ago, SUPERTOON said:

Who would everyone’s 3 ideal and realistic signings be this summer ?

I'll let other people do the fancy signings, because I do think we'll be after a right-sided forward, an accomplished or aspiring young centre-back, and though I dread to say it, I can see Bruno going and us paying a hefty wedge for his replacement while still leaving a little bit of cash spare in the piggy bank.

Instead what I'll do is focus on some of those lesser lights who might still brighten a damp winter morning, not merely filling in come another injury crisis or adding a bit of something different off the bench but providing real competition each and every week. These are signings who won't get anybody's pulses going but should prove crucial for squad balance without costing the earth.

The first name I'm liking is Fagioli from Juventus, a talented young all-around midfielder who can do the dirty work but also shows good ball control and balance. He'd be able to fill in pretty much anywhere you'd like. The second is Adam Armstrong, a home-grown, one of the top scorers in the Championship this season, a versatile frontman who unlike so many other options provides genuine striking ability, and possibly available come the end of the season if Southampton's promotion challenge continues to falter. I'm making no bones about it, for me Adam Armstrong is a must-have. And the third name is the out-of-sorts Palace left back Jeffrey Schlupp.

Our bad run of form started with a couple of whoopings against Everton and Tottenham in which Joelinton played the full ninety minutes. He also featured against Nottingham Forest and played for most of the defeat against Liverpool. Discounting the Forest game, we let in 11 goals over those 3 matches.

Going back 12 games to the Everton match, we sit 17th in the form table with 11 points from 12 matches and a league-leading 31 goals against. That isn't down to any one player or any one player's absence. It's a collective failure born of an unprecedented injury crisis, fatigue, a loss of form and the ensuing loss of confidence, and our inability so far to mitigate any of those things, change things up or find real room for improvement. Howe ultimately bears responsibility for how easy we've been to play against and for our inability to keep the football.

You have to remember that while everyone has embraced the 'hub of a wheel' analogy because it's so nice and pithy, by Ashworth's own reckoning he is also like the little plastic thing that holds all of the variously coloured cheeses in Trivial Pursuit. I think it's that aspect of his skillset which is going to prove much harder for us to replace.

I just wish I'd have been in the room when Ashworth was forced to deliver the news to His Excellency. No doubt Al-Rumayyan ate his asshole alive, with a tongue lit by the fire of a thousand Saudi oil rigs!

Definitely one for the 'most punchable faces' thread.

If you want to understand what's happening with Lewis Hall look no further than a diminutive Scot who's never wished anybody harm, and is now kicking up a storm on the south coast for Southampton. Yes I'm talking about Ryan Fraser, who once had the temerity to try on a pair of boots half a size too large and was ruthlessly punished for it. This iteration of Eddie Howe at least seems to need a leper, a pariah, an outcast who the other players can look at and say 'there but for the grace of God', and after spurning 'the Scottish Messi' it turns out Lewis Hall was next on the chopping block. He's a mild-mannered lad who gives it his all, but nothing he does is ever good enough, and he gets no minutes and no chances as a sort of perennial kick up the backside of the other players.

Jose Mourinho gets the sack and within days the club have emerged from their wintry hibernation to start hawking some of Eddie's head boys in Trippier, Wilson and Almiron. It's cynical to think but then again we live in cynical times: a club that seems to have hit the buffers of financial fair play and come to the end of its first Saudi-led cycle, needing to boost its profile in order to attract sponsorships and other corporate hangers-on, now looks towards one of the game's biggest names who still maintains a global cabal of cult-like followers. Is there a quicker, easier and dirtier way to boost our profile while bleating out the signal 'look at us, we're a bunch of winners'?

2 minutes ago, Chris_R said:

 

People need to stop with this bullshit. This isn't how it works.

 

Sure, sell Trippier this year for £20m and we get a £20m FFP boost. But IF we sign someone for £60m over 6 years, sure that's only a £10m hit to FFP this year. So we could sign 2 of them, of course.

 

But the problem is that next year we've got to fund another £10m towards this transfer. Or £20m if we've signed 2. And the year after. And so on, for 6 years. We can kick the can down the road, sure, but eventually all these cans we've kicked down the road will become a massive fucking problem. People keep acting as if we can use selling players as some kind of FFP cheat code but it really doesn't work that way.

We've moved on from that now. We're talking about selling Longstaff for £30 million over a five year contract. Taking amortaniseation into account, that gives us £150 million to spend as a lump sum to do as we wish.

48 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

 

Think I was too young for Seinfeld like. I've tried but it never hit home, whereas Frasier and Friends did.

I love Friends but never got into Frasier, although I saw one scene from an episode that was airing on television a few weeks ago which was very funny, where Frasier and Niles demonstrate the change in their singing voices as they descend into or ascend from a crouch position.

The comedy from the nineties that I feel like I ought to watch is The Larry Sanders Show. Will anybody vouch for it?

40 minutes ago, Ghandis Flip-Flop said:

The Alan Pardew of Comedians, if he were a lollipop he’d lick himself to death. His stand up is truly horrific too

39 minutes ago, Colos Short and Curlies said:

we could do the same with Longstaff.

 

Keep Trips but to have a genuine battle with Tino for the number 2 slot next season before yielding in 2025 to being backup and use the longstaff cash to beef up centre mid and right wing

If we're selling Longstaff I'd hope for something in the region of £30 million on a five-year contract. With the amortisation added, the amount we'd have to spend would beggar belief no less than it would defy expectation.

If we sell Trippier to Bayern for £20 million on a three-year contract by my own reckoning the amorterisation alone gives us £60 million to spend. That could buy four players worth £60 million on four year contracts or six players worth £60 million on six year contracts. It's an absolute no brainer, though I'm not sure Trippier's missus would be best pleased as every Oktoberfest he might find himself up to his ears in buxom Bavarian beauties!

57 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

Just been watching the highlights of PSG at home. A reminder of who we are when we have anything even resembling a fit squad. 

 

All down to this man. Even with the takeover and another manager, we don't win any games in the style that we do under him and I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

Love you Eddie. 

 

 

 

I prefer to rewatch Seinfeld myself. A microcosm of New York City in which the globular becomes molecular. A reification of the mundane whereby the sheer matter of life and those interstices between dramas and other entertainments become the raw material of art itself.

Even some thirty years later I laugh every time. And utterly impossible without the man whose name adorns the masthead.

Still love you Jerry.

A large object, in this case taking the form of an older child, blocks out the sun causing the minor party to fade and wither. This was common parlance, otherwise known as 'scientific fact', until the late nineties when Richard Williams said 'watch out for Venus's sister'. Everybody scoffed and said 'no fuckin' way!' but then Serena Williams came along and from that point another idea has taken root, which holds that the younger is always the better sibling.