Paullow

Funny how Hughton didn't get Aguero money or a cool 50 million to spend in their promotion season and Brighton are still doing well isn't it. Rafa is under performing, and I hope he still turns it around but, things just seem to be getting worse rather than better. They also didn't literally lose 13/14 first team players from the 2015/16 either though. We had about 10 players remaining after all those transfers so had to bring in at least the same number of players to cope with the extra 8 (or 11) league games in the Championship. Brighton's team had been geared for promotion for years and the likes of Dunk would have easily been worth £15m, Knockaert the same (in this market), Dale Stephens £10m or so, whereas the bulk of our signings ranged from £2.5m to £5.5m, bar 2 notable exceptions. Pretty much all our quality was sold to generate that £90m - £55m was put back in to sign 14 players - an average of £3.9m per player and you just need look at transfers in that league from this season to see that that figure really isn't that much - Assombolonga £15, Neves £16m, Rhodes £10m, Braithwaite £10m etc. Brighton were at least equal to us last season, if not better as they were 7 clear with 3 games to go once their bottom line of promotion was secured. Make no mistake, if 1 was promoted and the other 4 went in the playoffs rather than 2 automatically, then we wouldn't have won the league, so we were at least equal and for whatever reason, their transfers this season have been better - Ryan has made a big difference, Davy Propper. We had Atsu last year, Joselu and Manq have arguably made us worse, Murphy non existent, so you could argue we are actually even worse than we were last season as only Merino has come in and had a decent impact. Is location a problem, are we more restricted on wages (really can't see Joselu, Manquillo and Murphy being on more than £100k between them)? But I can guarantee if Rafa had his way, he wouldn't have went to Mike and said 'Mike, whatever you do, please please give me that Joselu lad who can't get a look in at Stoke, he'll make a hell of a difference". We've had a bunch of top championship / fringe Premier League players bundled together in one window and while we could have coped had 3 or 4 proven players been brought in at £15m-20m apiece to add a bit of quality to a committed but ultimately limited group, but we all know that didn't happen, so I'd argue that we are at a worse level than Brighton now. People need to realise we are literally operating on a bottom 3 to 4 budget now (far lower than the likes of Everton, Leicester, Palace, West Ham, Watford etc) and if you were born after 1980 or so (which a large chunk of us on here will be) then for the first time in your life this is the first time that has happened - forget the top 6, we are miles behind 75% of the league.

Exactly. You know that if they get anything from this game, it'll all be "ooh little Palace gave Arsenal a game, Newcastle didn't even try last night" Arsenal's strike force is probably worth thrice the amount. 55m gets you Lacazette only. Don't let the fact we don't even want to compete blind you from what is still a significant gap between the top 6 and the rest of the league. There is a massive gap obviously from the top 6 and the rest, but (on paper at least) there is a sizeable gap between the likes of Everton, Leicester and Crystal Palace and possibly West Ham to the rest. Obviously Burnley are currently sitting in 7th but you have to ask yourself how many of our players would get into Palace's side? 2 of their players are arguably the best that we've had in the Ashley era and then Benteke and Sakho cost more than £50m between them - our first team is primarily dotted around with £4m or £5m players (Yedlin, Manquillo, Lascelles, Elliot/Darlow, Diame, Joselu, Atsu, Clark, Hayden) - figures we were paying more for 15 years ago signing the likes of Titus Bramble and Carl Cort well before the current vast inflation. Even Warren Barton cost £4m 22 years ago for some perspective. Palace have 2 left backs that they paid more than £25m for. They are definitely operating on a different financial level to the likes of Newcastle, Swansea etc.

It's a shame that the other 3 down there appear to be just as bad, but i suppose from their perspective, we got 1 point from 9 games, averaging less than a point a game, so projected to get less than 38 over the season, yet weren't cut adrift ourselves and apart from one match, largely kept out of the relegation zone. We are quite lucky that there are 6 or 7 teams down there rather than 3 that are cut adrift.

As long as Bmouth don't win.

A West Ham win is OK, a draw would probably be better, but West Ham have got a lot more quality and could reinvest more in January and will likely end up well away from trouble, like Palace. Bmouth, Swansea, WBA, Stoke and probably still the other 2 promoted sides are the teams to more realistically finish above.

May be wrong but I don't think they've had a top 6 finish in the top flight since before Neville Chamberlain had a piece of paper in his hand. They've had 3 top 10 finishes since 1955 - those successive 7th's under Reid and Brucie's 10th.

Their main striker Gary Madine is a Newcastle fan as well from Gateshead. Plus Wheater and Taylor are ex Boro and also North East lads - more than half of their XI are from this region.

We had a good run and a little bit of optimism was restored, but after that window it was always a case (and still is) of aiming for 16th or 17th and anything else is a bonus. Those 9 points will be massive and we should be fairly hard to bet a home. Just shows the difference though of showing a bit ambition and paying £18m for a Hernandez or going the cheap option and paying £5m for a cast off.

Yet here we are signing Mackem flops, Stoke cast offs and bit part players from lat season for a whopping combined fee of £15m. Murphy looked a good signing - young, potential, affiliation to the club, but when you spend a net of £25m, a promising 21 year old, not guaranteed to start should not have been high up the list.

Another player along with Maguire and Gray who I was hoping we would sign. Obviously some of these players would be unrealistic for a few reasons - North East, club just coming up, personal reasons (Defoe) but just look at a team a combination of bottom half teams could field this season. These aren't your top 6 or Everton, these everyone of these clubs finished 11th or lower last season and 3 months or so ago when when the 70-100m was being talked about, you'd have hoped they would be the teams we could compete with -----------------------------------Begovic-------------------------------------- Zabaleta----------Zouma---------------------Maguire------------------Gibbs ------------------------Iborra--------------Chaloba----------------------------- Arnautovic------------------------------------------------------------------Jese ----------------------Iheanacho--------Hernandez------------------------------ Subs - Hart, Ake, Mooy, Defoe, Loftus-Cheek, Gray Just seen that Bournemouth actually finished 9th in the end, so you could draft in Hart if you were being pedantic but the point still stands, a lot of those clubs we would want to be competing with (before our tight budget became apparent) and I'd argue every single one of that XI would get into our team - I'd maybe have Shelvey ahead of one of those CMs but everyone else would have been a massive improvement. However we know that most will either cost £20+m or be on over £100,000 a week and ultimately out of our range.

Pretty meh, but it's obvious we aren't in a position to sign a Hernandez, Gray, Iheanacho, Bony, Benteke or even a Wood type signing like a lot of our fellow bottom half rivals. We are working on a very strict budget and for £5m this lad doesn't seem bad - as mentioned, there are a few strengths - Spanish, seems to want to do well, tall etc and a lot of the Stoke fans do seem disappointed that he wasn't given the chance so I'll obviously give him time and back him. Just a bit underwhelming for what was expected a couple of months ago when Sky Sports and the papers were mentioning £70m, regardless of whether that was ever the case, there was a bit of optimism at least then.

It's just that 4 teams who finished in the bottom half last season are spending £28m on Benteke, £25 on Iheanacho, £18 on Gray and £16-20m on Hernandez yet we are scrapping around for bargain cast offs, slight contrast there and these are not the top 6 or Everton that Ashley was referring to. 3 of those 4 were key players last season and the other has massive potential and all 4 would have been great signings. Yet here we are signing Stokes' leftovers, Sunderland flops, players who played a bit part for us last season (albeit ended strongly and looked good yesterday), it really is chalk and cheese. Our squad is so limited as it is, pretty much Shelvey is the only borderline top 10 player we have, yet we seem to be filling it with deadwood who if we do stay up and keep receiving the TV money, we will just be looking to flog in a year or two anyway. It's been a massively underwhelming window and seems to get worse by the day with these new links.

Just as well he played a few games for Spain under 21's or else they'd be struggling to fill a 2:19 video with all 290 minutes he's played for BVB in 18 months.

Is he a Davey B or Bob guy?

ive detected a lot of arrogance on here recently, i agree 100 % with this post, the table tells a story of it being easy in the end, it was far from it and if that Derby equaliser had not went in it could have been so different.....some say we will easily be mid table though on the other hand, if that late leeds utd equaliser hadnt gone in at sjp..... Yeah, we can all point out to parts where we were unlucky at certain stages but i do know what he means. Watching that Derby game just after our poor defeat to Ipswich, that was the first time I actually thought we would be pipped. We were on the back of 2 wins in 8 and had they held on they would have been 5 behind with a game in hand with them playing at home before our Monday game to potentially go 2 behind (and 1 game) having played the same amount of games. That Butterfield goal was absolutely huge at the time and did give us that buffer of being able to afford another defeat, but yeah, 3 days earlier if we hung on it would have been the same position anyway.

They beat Wolves away at the end of April. Yep, they then proceed to draw three and lose two of their last 5 fixtures, "drawing" all three playoff games, that's 8 games by my maths. Your maths are s*** then. They played 2 league games after their win over Wolves, then obviously the 3 playoff fixtures. That's 5. I was about to call you out for being your typical arsehole self but you are right actually, the beeb site where I got that information from was including the playoff games. My apologies, still pretty woeful form of two wins in ten. http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/tables 2 wins from 9 and not too dissimilar to our run of 2 wins in 8 from the Huddersfield win to the nervy Preston game with 3 games to go.

France do this as well with our old friends Troyes AC beating Lorient over 2 legs to seal an immediate return to Ligue 1 last night.

Get in Hudds

Howay Huddersfield

It's effectively the battle for 21st and 22nd in English football, in a couple of days / weeks most won't really care, whereas relegation for any of those 3 big clubs will be devastating so it is 100% the correct decision to focus on the relegation battle. Had we have been 1 point clear of Huddersfield (or behind) in the race for 2nd then of course both would have been shown, but this is largely insignificant, especially to fans outside of Newcastle and Brighton. We've been shown 19 times this season and even if we were guaranteed to finish exactly 1st or 2nd then there would still be a demand to see our game due to the size of our fanbase and Sky could easily have shown us for ratings, but they've gone for the games which they think will be most relevant to the neutrals. I'd like to see our game and hope we win the title but they have definitely gone for the much more significant games.

Spennymoor through to the playoff final where they have a home game with Stourbridge to determine who plays in the National North next season.

Spennymoor need just a point on Saturday in their final match to finish 2nd and secure home advantage in the playoffs.

Oh dear 0-1

I'm not too fussed either. I'd obviously like us to win the title but it's not that important, 2nd place would do me fine. Had Huddersfield beaten Bristol and Burton and had an extra 6 points then i'd obviously have much rather Brighton had lost. We do have 2 tough games coming up so if we do well in those then it will be all about the title, but or now, this 10 point lead could quite easily become just a 4 or 5 point lead with them having a game in hand so still much more bothered about Hudd for now.

Huddersfield ahead.