Wallsendmag

All I'll say is that someone gave me a 50 and said there you go have a bet, even money on either an expansion or a new stadium in 5 years time, or we're still at a 52k capacity SJP, my 50 quid would definitely be on the 52k capacity SJP.

Off to Percy Main v Ponteland today (6.15pm KO) then straight back home to watch the Forest game which I'll probably miss the first 15 mins of.

Winning either domestic trophy gets you into Europe, and of course you're winning a trophy as well!

They've never stated that though. We've taken the cups very seriously the last few years and we qualified for the CL the same season we reached the LC final so it wasn't much of a hindrance to our league form that year. Our best chance of breaking our trophy drought is through the League Cup (which would also qualify us for Europe) and I can't see us smashing our transfer record on a player who can't even play in it. I think by Palace playing him tonight they are saying he's not for sale. Look elsewhere. We should have been doing that a fortnight ago mind!

Not sure. Can't see us paying £70m for a player who we can't even use in the competition that realistically we've got the best chance of winning. Whole saga has been a complete shit show.

That was the game that gave us "The Entertainers" nickname which we had for a few years.

Aye that'll no doubt be a factor. I was actually stood with a North Shields ST holder who didn't fancy the trip down to Redcar on Saturday. If they can pick up a few more wins, and play like they did on Saturday I'm sure the crowds will start to creep back up again.

Aye it's heavily penned in with the cricket ground at one side, allotments behind the other goal and then the road behind the area where you can watch along the side. Just looked like trees over the far side. Don't think anyone will be able to get promoted from the Alliance this season because their grounds won't be at the required standard.

A bit further down the pyramid I ended up at Percy Main v Haltwhistle on Saturday. Percy Main had a great season last year but lost their manager and most of their players to West Allotment over the summer and had lost their first 5 games of the season whilst Haltwhistle sat in 4th place. Ended up watching what was a very entertaining game of football which Percy Main won 3-2 and had a bizarre moment where an overhanging tree behind the goal stopped the ball going out for a goal kick and the referee just waving play on much to the Haltwhistle defenders annoyance as Percy Main won the ball back inside their penalty area £3 to get in and they had a nice little club house serving alcohol, soft drinks and hot food. My mates wife was drinking white wine at £4 for a very large glass and after the match the barman came over and just let her have the rest of the bottle as there was only about a small glass left in it. Nice friendly little club and I'll definitely be back when time allows (possibility Wednesday night). Attendance given as 79, although I thought there looked slightly more there. Apparently they were regularly getting 3 figure crowds last season but their poor start seemed to have put a few off!

Oldham just equalised there.

I do get the impression he's stringing us along here and will pull the plug at the last minute. He's got a massive dislike of our ownership group and would love to shaft us. We need to move onto other targets and then maybe revisit this next year when his value will have plummeted due to him going into the last year of his contract, albeit there'll be more competition for him you'd imagine.

Isak just came out of the blue. Remember dropping the bairn off at football camp in the summer holidays the day he signed. There'd literally been no talk of it then when I picked him up at 3.30 we'd signed him. Edited to say the first mention of Isak on this forum (the day the Isak thread was started) was 24th August 2022 and we signed him on the 25th.

Reporters know nowt. First we heard of arguably our 2 best signings, Bruno and Isak was when they'd been completed. No speculation or anything. They were just announced.

Only getting 11.5m for him once Spurs take their cut. We got 35m for Elliot Anderson

He's been on Talksport this afternoon.

Probably our best ever atmosphere for a home game v Southampton I'd imagine.

I've honestly got no recollection of that whatsoever! Only thing I really remember from it was Basil Boli and Chris Waddle playing.

I was at that one as well. Still got the programme in the loft. Think it was billed as NUFC v Ando's All Stars. Thankfully we'd just escaped relegation to Division 3 the previous week!

It's not even that now. Council safety certificate only allows 7,000 in there these days. That's all they were allowed last pre season when they played us in a friendly. Grounsharing (with anyone) is definitely not an option.

Heaton Stan finding it tough in this league. 2 loses now and apparently they were well beaten last night. On saying that they've played 2 of last seasons top 6 amd once they find their legs in this league I'm sure they'll be fine.

Spurs have around 80,000 on their ST waiting list. Arsenal similar numbers. If you join Liverpools waiting list now your estimated wait time to get to the front of the queue is in 25 years time. We could sell 70k every week easily. At present a member only has a 25% chance of being successful in the ballot and general sale is just a complete no go these days.

Tbh mate I think you're wasting your time with this shite. You could simply reel off a load of random surnames and pass them off as your players and many on here, me included, would be none the wiser. It's basic just a bunch of nomarks pulling on your strip these days.

Ah my mistake I've misheard him.

They've owned the club for almost 3 years now, and whilst in that timeframe I wasn't expecting any new bricks and mortar I must admit I thought we might have had some indication of what they were planning to do regarding SJP, whether that's an extension and a tart up of the place or if a new site had been identified. It all seems to be moving at snails pace. Frustrating for the 1000s locked out every match! It's a couple of weeks since Eales said in his interview that stadium news would be "iminent" so hopefully we should be hearing something very soon.

It certainly has as well. Here now (just having a pint at the Waiting Room at Durham station before our train back) and the number of NUFC shirts on show today is into double figures. Also saw a Rangers top, Fenerbache (my son told me which team that one was) and a Belgium National top and not a single Sunderland shirt all day. If there's any RTG dwellers around here the fewm will be off the scale.