Hughesy

I assume Watford will play Deeney and then one from Vydra and Ighalo?

Who the hell is this muppet?

I don't know how anyone can really like or rate him. I mean - he's ok. That's it. We should be aiming higher than him and that's what worries me. He'll end up becoming the first name on the teamsheet despite his obvious mediocrity.

Premiership Winners: Chelsea Runners Up: Arsenal 3rd-6th: Man City, Man Utd, Spurs, Liverpool Relegation: Bournemouth, Leicester, Watford Overachievers: Villa Underperformers: West Ham Top Goal Scorer: Costa Break Out Year: Copied someone else with Ibe. Season to Forget: Firmino or Harry Kane PFA Player of the Year: Walcott PFA Young Player of the Year: Zouma Manager of the Year: Wenger First manager to quite/be sacked/'mutual consent': Quique Flores Newcastle United Where will we finish?: 11th Top Goalscorer?: Mitrovic How will we do in the cup competitions?: QF of both How will we do in the derby games?: Win at home, draw away. Domestic Championship Promotion: Derby, Middlesbrough, Brentford Championship Relegation: Rotherham, Preston, Bolton League One Promotion: Peterborough, Swindon, Sheff Utd League One Relegation: Shrewsbury, Blackpool, Crewe, Coventry League Two Promotion: Southend, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Wycombe League Two Relegation: Mansfield, Carlisle FA Cup: Arsenal League Cup: Man City Johnstone's Paint Trophy: Peterborough Europe La Liga winner: Barcelona Serie A winner: Juventus Bundesliga winner: Bayern Champions League winner: Bayern Europa League winner: Dortmund World Player of the Year: Messi Other: How will Bournemouth fair in their first outing in the Premier League: they'll do a Burnley. When will Crystal Palace fans start to resent Alan Pardew: Never - it'll be NUFC fans fault. How many goals will Balotelli score this season: 4 How will De Jong get injured this season: 4 injuries

Going back the Champions League discussions - I'll be interested to see what happens to football worldwide in the next 10 years or so. From an English perspective, I'm not sure when the money will begin to dry up, but I'm convinced it will as more and more people realise that at the start of every season there are realistically only 4 teams (at the most) who can win the league and then about 13 teams whose only aim is to finish above 17th. The longer that goes on, people will begin to lose interest and realise that paying £50 to go and watch Norwich vs Stoke isn't worth it or paying £1000 a year to watch every PL game isn't worth it. More and more people I know (who are massive football fans) aren't bothering with Sky anymore and I can't believe there won't be a downward trend if Sky continue to put their prices up and football continues to be spread among different content providers. It might be a product of getting older, being married and having a job, but I don't watch much CL football at all now. I'm not interested in seeing the same teams play each other each year. Not sure what the viewing figures have been like over the years for CL football, but I'd be interested to know how many people watch it on BT Sport this year.

He's only had about 2 months of football full stop.

Huge amount of potential and hasn't really been given a decent run in the side. Pretty much our only midfielder who is capable of passing the ball quickly rather holding up play. Hope we either put a huge sell-on percentage clause in the sale or a price to buy him back.

Interesting article by secret footballer on Sunderland and wickham (and Pardew).

Was looking on twitter and saw this - http://whatculture.com/sport/10-strikers-who-newcastle-should-sign-instead-of-charlie-austin.php/11 Not sure how realistic half of these are, but quite like the sound of most of them in preference to Austin.

Looks brilliant.

http://www.benefoot.net/eredivisie-exports-podcast-depay-clasie-and-wijnaldums-premier-league-adventures-and-the-big-summer-moves/ About 12 minutes in, some interesting analysis on Wijnaldum.

Isn't most people's concern that, assuming we have limited funds, they'd rather not spend 13 million on a striker when there are other areas that need to be improved?

I hope it's easy to sell extra tickets back.. for a group of four of us we only wanted to get 4 tickets to one matches, but ended up with 8 tickets to one match and 4 to another.

Secret Footballer absolutely tears Delph apart in this - http://www.thesecretfootballer.com/articles/the-secret-footballer/26857/fabian-delph-finds-his-level-and-falls-back-into-aston-villa-comfort-zone/

I know it's not actually your point, but I've always been surprised about how relatively skinny Drogba is. Obviously immensely strong, but never looked it.

If hba was so bad defensively, I'd love to see actual evidence of the goals that we conceded that were his fault. I genuinely can't think of many, yet certain people like to make out as if he was some defensive liability.

Saw Andy Carroll in a restaurant in Amsterdam. Had a very brief chat - he seemed to think Wijnaldum is a striker which was awkward.

I think I'd rather gamble on mitrovic than Austin personally. Not a massive fan of Austin - strikes me as a fairly limited striker.

Daniel Ainsworth ‏@Ainsworth1980 2m2 minutes ago Wijnaldum is very close. Mitrovic is further away from agreeing terms but talks progressing well. Matip is now unlikely due to wage demands.

Interesting analysis here - http://www.benefoot.net/gini-out-the-bottle-wijnaldum-ready-for-the-next-step/

Don't know enough about Wijnaldum but a Dutch journalist (Michael Jongsma) seems to think that having a midfield that contains de Jong and Wijnaldum won't work as they both mainly offer a goalscoring threat but low on creativity.

That Julien Laurens journalist has said Thauvin doesn't want to come to us.

Linked to Chris Martin of Derby by Graeme Bailey. Links get worse and worse.

I thought in this situation the contract offered to Ameobi by us had to better his previous contract. That is pure FM knowledge though.

He delays on the ball because of the lack of movement - it was exactly the same with HBA. No options so they hold onto it and then get abuse from the crowd for being greedy.