Twinport53

Why do you think getting rid of the loan market would encourage Ashley to spend? How much cheaper do you realistically see us getting players for? Kenedy cost close to 7mil as an 18 year old. That's surpassed 15mil now. Mike would settle for neither of those purchase options, whether it was back in 2015 or January just gone. He doesn't want the risk.

So we'd have signed nobody this January and been relegated Other teams will have benefited from loans this season, not just us. Yup like Sturridge and Krychowiak? Or Kurt Zouma and Jese? Kongolo and Lossl? It would have damaged our season far more than our competitors to exclude loan signings.

Martin Dubravka was hyperactive as a child, a tiny tornado of pent up energy and constant chatter - a small boy who made a lot of noise. Other than his height, not much has changed. You may not have heard much of Dubravka - that he has been a revelation on Tyneside, that he is yet to concede a goal at St James’ Park and has, without any real credit, been Newcastle United’s best signing of the season. Dubravka was January’s mystery man, a 6ft 3in Slovakian signed, initially on loan, without fanfare. He had impressed against both England and Scotland in the World Cup qualifying campaign, but still flew in under the radar. When he signed from Sparta Prague, few understood why Rafa Benitez had made him a priority target. He already had two senior goalkeepers, Rob Elliot and Karl Darlow jostling for places in his first XI, as well as England Under-19 World Cup winner Freddie Woodman waiting behind them. Indeed, it was Benitez’s obsession with signing another goalkeeper that caused friction with those above him in the summer. Men in suits, without a coaching badge between them, still felt they were justified in questioning his judgement filling one of the team’s most important positions. Dubravka knows nothing about that six-month power struggle, but he is the reason Benitez has won the argument. Since making his debut in a win over Manchester United, Newcastle have won four, drawn one and lost only once, away to Liverpool, to move well clear of relegation danger. A jittery defence has been becalmed by his sizeable presence, to the extent that tomorrow's meeting with Arsenal is now blissfully stress-free. “When I signed in January, I didn’t think for one second that I was joining a club that would be relegated,” said Dubravka, who, along with his partner Lucia, has already fallen in love with the city and is desperate to make his loan move permanent. “I was joining a club with a huge history and crazy fans, as soon as I got here I knew we would not go down. When you beat Manchester United in your first game, I knew we would do everything we needed to stay up. “This a club that deserves to be higher, to be in Europe again, but we have to take small steps. We need the manager to stay, he is the boss, he is the most important person. The manager and the owner, they have to work together and get Newcastle back to the level they should be at. “I’m desperate to stay here, I know that already. The fans, they have been amazing, everywhere we go, they stop and talk. This is a proper football city, I love that, you feel it as soon as you get here.” At the age of 29, Dubravka is entering his prime as a goalkeeper, but he retains many of the same traits that led to his grandmother, driven to breaking point in a small apartment in Zilina, pushed him into football after a freak accident brought a swift end to his interest in ice hockey. “I come from a family of goalkeepers,” Dubravka, who once had a poster of his opposite number this weekend, Petr Cech, on his bedroom wall, explained. “My father was a goalkeeper, my grandfather was a goalkeeper also, but I wanted to play in a different position at first. I liked to play football with my feet, but I don’t know, things happen, it was probably my destiny. “I was really small when I was young, probably the smallest in my class and my mum said: “why do you want to be a goalkeeper?” but things happen for a reason. “The first person to bring me to football was my grandmother. We were really close, but I was hyper active as a child. I don’t think I stopped talking. I drove her mad one day, bouncing around her apartment, leaping from sofa to sofa. I don’t think she could take anymore. “I was too active, I had too much energy, it had to be burned off. She said “you need to go and do something outside. It was a small city, she knew some of the coaches and even though I was too young to play with that age group, she insisted. “I didn’t always listen when I was younger. I might have gone into ice hockey, but when I was five years old, I hurt myself really badly. It was a family BBQ and I was chopping some wood with a machete. My parents were saying, stop that, stop that, you are going to hurt yourself, but…. I put it in my leg. My parents had told me 100 times. It was a bad injury and I still have a big scar. “If it was a few millimetres higher the doctors said I would have had trouble walking and there would have been no chance of me becoming a goalkeeper. I was unlucky, but lucky at the same time. You know, maybe this was meant to be. “I probably would never had played football. The thing is, I could not skate for a while, so I played football instead.” It has not just been Dubravka’s ability as a goalkeeper that has made a difference, it is, according to Benitez “the way he communicates with the defenders” that is so important. Even on his debut against Manchester United, Dubravka was confident and outspoken enough to cajole and guide those in front of him, something he learned from his idol, Cech. Dubravka speaks English fluently, language skills picked up while playing for Esbjerg in Denmark and the chatter that once drove his grandmother to distraction is now put to better use. “I don’t think you have to be crazy to be a goalkeeper, I don’t do anything that is not natural for me,” he added. “I’m not aggressive, but I have a lot of energy. I talk a lot, I always try to speak to my defenders, I think that is the way it should be. “I don’t think they get annoyed… they are glad I say things to them. If I don’t speak to them, they look at me like something is wrong. I guess that is what they expect from me. As I said, I was hyperactive as a child….” Newcastle will, if Benitez has his way, be extremely active in the transfer market again this summer, but the Spaniard will not be looking for another goalkeeper. That position has already been filled.

https://www.nufc.co.uk/nufc-tv/latest-videos/benitez-pre-arsenal-h-media-briefing-17-18

Aleksandar Mitrovic is firing Fulham towards promotion after falling out of favour at Newcastle. He tells Sky Sports about his outstanding form, what he has learnt from his "silly mistakes", and how countryman Slavisa Jokanovic is helping him channel his aggression... "So many things were going through my head," Aleksandar Mitrovic tells Sky Sports. The Serb is casting his mind back to the drama of transfer deadline day, when a proposed loan move to his former club Anderlecht collapsed at the 11th hour, threatening to leave him in non-playing limbo at Newcastle in a World Cup year. Mitrovic recalls the "stress" of flying back from Belgium with his future unresolved and the "pressure" of the clock ticking towards the deadline, but on a sunny afternoon in south-west London three months later, he is thankful. If things had worked out as intended, he would never have sent the opportunistic message to Slavisa Jokanovic which led him to Fulham. "It was worth the stress," he says with a smile. "One hundred per cent." All the stress has melted away now. The tattooed 23-year-old has a reputation as a hot-head but in a small stand overlooking one of the training pitches at Fulham's Motspur Park training ground, where he has just collected the Sky Bet Championship Player of the Month award, he seems totally at ease. Mitrovic could not get a game at Newcastle, but he has scored nine goals in his first 11 starts for Fulham. His latest, a clinical first-time finish which secured a late 1-0 win at Sheffield Wednesday at the weekend, put Fulham within touching distance of the automatic promotion places. On Tuesday night, they jumped above Cardiff with another victory over Reading. Fulham are on an extraordinary 20-game unbeaten run. The Premier League is within reach. "I hope I will continue like this and the team will continue with this form," says Mitrovic. "We only have a few games left but they are all finals. We need that mentality to continue like this and try to put the pressure on Cardiff. We have some tough games but they do too so it's going to be interesting." Mitrovic, a £13m signing from Anderlecht in 2015, had not started a league game in nine months at Newcastle. He insists his relationship with Rafael Benitez remains cordial, but the emphasis on tactics and defence did not suit him. At free-wheeling Fulham, who have scored more goals than any other Championship side since the turn of the year, he feels far more comfortable. "I really enjoy the way the team plays and the players that they have," he says. "It's a good style and a good team for me. I think it's a good team for any striker. I thought I could enjoy this style and I'm really happy to be on the pitch and scoring goals to try to do the best that I can to help the team achieve what we want from this season." Does he have any regrets about Newcastle? "I would never say I regret that I was there, but I have regret because I didn't play as much as I could and maybe I should have scored more goals. There are a lot of things I wanted to do there that I didn't do, so of course I have regret, but I still enjoyed my time there and I'm still a Newcastle player so we will see what happens." At the moment, though, his focus is Fulham. Mitrovic has relished the service provided by new team-mates Stefan Johansen, Tom Cairney and Ryan Sessegnon - "I think he is a player who is going to play for a top, top club," he says of the latter - but the most important influence is undoubtedly Jokanovic, who he has known since his days at boyhood club Partizan Belgrade. "He was a big player in Serbia and now he's one of the best managers Serbia have," says Mitrovic. "He looks tough but he's a real gentleman and a really nice guy. I spoke to him a few times and in the end we ended up together so I'm really happy. I'm really enjoying working with him and playing under him. He didn't give up on me and neither did Fulham." It comes down to "faith, trust and game-time", according to Mitrovic. "That's important if you are a striker. I could tell that he felt confidence in me. If you really feel trust from the manager, it's much easier to play. That's what I feel now. I know that he believes in me and I know what he wants from me. My job is to do that and do it well. I hope I will continue like this." Mitrovic has given Fulham the attacking focal point they previously lacked and already scored more times than any of the club's other strikers have managed all season, but he is just as popular among fans for his full-blooded style as his goals. Since his debut, there have been three bookings, a bicep-flexing celebration against Sheffield United and more fouls than any other Fulham player. Crucially, however, his aggression has not yet spilled over. Mitrovic is an explosive, instinctive striker whose short fuse and maverick character have already landed him five career red cards at the age of just 23 - including two in one season at Newcastle - but so far at Fulham he has largely succeeded in keeping his temper in check. So how has Jokanovic helped? Mitrovic smiles and makes a calming motion with his hands. "He tells me: 'Use your head and stay calm'," he says. "He tells me to stay focused and not spend energy on some things that are not important." Rather than removing the natural aggression that makes him such a handful for opposition defenders, however, it is simply a case of curbing it. "I am very competitive and I want to win every game," he says. "That's my way. That's how I have played all my life. It's how I see football and that's it. I'm a winner and I will try to do everything to win the game. "I made some silly mistakes but I have tried to learn from my mistakes. It's not always possible to channel the anger in the right way but I try to stay focused on the team and to do my job. That is to stay on the pitch and to score goals, to assist, to create space. I need my passion but I have to control it. I try to use it on the goal and on the team." Mitrovic's fine form has prompted links with Premier League sides West Ham and Everton, but he has not ruled out staying at Fulham, nor is he certain of leaving Newcastle permanently. "I am 100 per cent focused on Fulham and the upcoming games," he says. "I hope we get promoted, then I will have the World Cup, then I will need to rest a little bit, then we will see what happens. But I am 100 per cent with my head here. I want to give back to Fulham because they gave me the chance to come here, play games and be part of this beautiful club. I will do everything I can to help the team get promoted." All the stress, pressure and uncertainty of deadline day is still fresh in the memory, but it would be foolish to bet against him now.

I suppose that'll be the same rub of the green that has Wolves top of the championship?

Aye it's working for me. https://www.nufc.co.uk/nufc-tv/live/live-video

So we'd have signed nobody this January and been relegated

By "some" money do you mean "fucking loads" of money? Not as much as I thought it was, 24.6 mill euros (gross) 18 million euros (net), source: https://www.transfermarkt.com/wolverhampton-wanderers/transfers/verein/543 Our gross was a hell of a lot more, obviously we had a much healthier net, but our base of a PL squad was obviously better than their base. Really they bought one player for decent money the rest are typical bits and bob transfers for champo clubs. Neves must be one hell of a player to have transformed them so much. Neves, N'Diaye, Rafa Mir, Helder Costa and Diogo Jota aren't typical championship transfers. Even if some are loans. Neves and Costa cost close to 30 mil.

By "some" money do you mean "fucking loads" of money?

I hear Staveley is already funding us through a man on the inside. Some say he may even frequent this very forum.

Oi Oi Juve

They want to scrap it, no? Seems abit far. Just exclude Chelsea and we are sorted.

BREAKING - Christian Eriksen hands in transfer request.

Il take a guess and say yes. Otherwise it'd be a 1 in 4.64 record.

Is Drury one of the main Pro Evo commentators?

Of course we could have won. If we'd for example started... erm... anybody but Bigi on the wing. And maybe let HBA and Marv have more than 3 minutes to make a difference.

Why is everyone doing that. As if people are actively typing it out ?s=19

GeordieDean is probably a mackem

Knar not early. Just RTG levels of weird

Why?

Gerld.

Was it JackFlash who stopped lurking just to block Neesy?

Maguire thinks he's a tough guy because he's a big lanky cunt. Jamaal would murder him.