GeordieT

No worries, it’s a big read so let me know if there’s anything of particular interest.

I’m a subscriber so will post a few choice excerpts later today, it’s an illuminating read as usual. On FFP, his suggestion is this season might have been closer than anyone else previously had imagined: “PIF inherited a pretty solid FFP position from Ashley, as the former owner’s tightfisted approach to spending meant that they had a fair amount of wriggle room. In fact, I estimate that they were £109m better than the £105m maximum allowed loss over the three-year monitoring period up to 2021/22 (including the single period average of the COVID-impacted 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons). However, the FFP monitoring period is a moving target, so the 2022/23 calculation dropped the £41m 2018/19 profit, replacing it with last season’s £73m loss, i.e. a negative swing of £114m. After making deductions for “healthy” expenditure (infrastructure, academy, community and women’s football) and COVID losses, I reckon that Newcastle were still just about within target, but it must have been mighty close”.

Perhaps! The “no one wants to grow up and be a Gary Neville” springs to mind. Do many budding youth prospects aspire to be fullbacks? When I was at a school I used to know and played with Patrick Nzuzi who had just moved up to join the academy. An unbelievably tricky winger that everyone else was just in awe of. But Pardew / the club shifted his development to RB and whilst obviously his career never took off, always found the positional move interesting.

A friend has oddly become quite pally with him over the last couple of months, and whilst he hasn’t been brazen enough to explicitly ask how he feels about his current situation and what he expected upon signing, they have spoken about the positional question. He has said that long term he saw himself as a winger or a number ten. Whether he has any say in it, I don’t know.

No one at home, thankfully. First instance of this that I can recall up here? Seems to be fairly commonplace in the North West / London.

https://x.com/craighope_dm/status/1745739940917383274?s=46&t=x_gwvtxKMs0B7zGA7uNbvA Does not sound promising.

Agreed, on a different day this could well be a record breaking defeat for us. That we were in the game until the 78th minute was everything to do with Liverpool’s finishing as opposed to a strong rearguard display. Weekend is critical, a victory there and hopefully we can build a bit of momentum. But he needs backing.

Make of it what you will.

And all of them at the same hotel.

Bored mackens trying to create drama in the run up to next weekend. Can’t believe our fans are giving it oxygen.

Wonder if they get together at breakfast and swap notes.

Same piece claims: “If money is spent in January for a permanent deal to go through, Newcastle will almost certainly have to sell one of their own prize assets in the summer, which raises the possibility of cashing in on the likes Bruno Guimaraes, Sven Botman or Alexander Isak in July or August”. Cheery as always from Luke.

Hitherto it undoubtedly has been. But that needs to cease now, 4 matches in the next 34 days. Even with our squad that’s leisurely.

Absolutely he’s got credit - and I think the frustration here is everyone loves and wants him to do well. But he’s equally been heavily backed. Whilst a a 5-7th finish would represent consolidation and a solid return on investment; finishing outside of a European space would be us going backwards, potentially quite detrimentally, with the calibre of players we’ve got at our disposal (do we retain an ambitious Bruno or Isak for example).

The real disappointment is that during this difficult period, I don’t think anyone could point to something Howe has tried differently (and please call me out if you disagree!). There is simply no evidence of any tactical flexibility. Hopefully he’ll reflect and act, because I don’t think simply waiting for players to recharge / getting a couple more bodies back and hoping it’ll all come together again, is tenable.

He’s always been pretty weak in possession, plays for fouls that aren’t there every match. Infuriating it hasn’t been coached out of him.

We, as a collective, were abysmal today. No response to conceding. We didn’t harry or make it difficult for their players or officials, and we offered little in the way of encouragement for our own.

Lascelles seemingly out according to the Twitter verse.

Faith that he’ll turn it around and performances need to be considered in the context in the quantum of unavailable players that gives new meaning to ‘injury crisis’. Need to be pushing the button on incomings January 1st. But we absolutely have to beat Forest or it could be 1 win in 7; with unenviable trips to Liverpool and Villa, a banana skin of a third round tie, and the only home comforts to count on a game against Man City. At which stage any manager is going to be under pressure.

Equally though, is Burn not on the record stating he’s hoped to have a ‘couple more weeks recovery’? But Livramento has won his spot in the side, would be a shame for him to fall out.

https://theathletic.com/5151315/2023/12/22/manchester-united-fotball-news-transfers/?source=user_shared_article Good piece on Manchester United’s ‘footballing operations’. Evident it would be quite the leap of faith for him to go there. Absolute shit show.

Yeah see he’s posted on IG, which would look to be a confirmation.

Must win. Mood will be abysmal otherwise.

Someone in front of me asked who ‘Gary Robson’ was as Wor Flags did their thing. Otherwise, it simmered briefly but never really got going.

‘What got us here won’t get us there’ is Almiron in a nutshell for me. If we genuinely aspire to bigger and better things, he just doesn’t offer enough. Feels like the obvious starting 11 replacement. Workrate was excellent tonight.