Shadow Puppets

And none of them said a single thing, or knew a single thing, until mid July when all of a sudden they needed column inches to fill.

And he’s talking absolute bollocks. Revisionary bollocks.

I struggle to believe that too. You’d think if the club knew, his teammates would have known, and they, as far as I know, absolutely didn’t know.

Neither of those things will happen.

Absolute bullshit. Strand Larsen is a very good relatively young striker who scored 14 goals in his PL season. He’s comfortably a £35m-£45m player in today’s market. Have you seen the quality of players Sunderland have been spending £20m+ on? Im not saying he’s the solution or a replacement for Isak, but as a second choice striker if the Wissa deal doesn’t happen for any reason, it wouldn’t be the worst move.

No he hasn’t. That’s Craig Hope, along with a few other journalists, revising history. Absolute bullshit. If he’d have known anything of the sort he would have continued to sing his praises from the rooftop each week on his post match videos and be adamant that he was going nowhere in basically every video he released until early July.

Sorry, no. All quiet tonight.

I also think this reporting is a bit disingenuous from Ben Jacobs. “Initial talks” is something we do all the time with clubs. Speaking to clubs, asking availability and asking prices etc is a regular occurrence for all clubs. We will have already have done the same thing with Villa over Watkins, Leipzig over Openda etc. It may or may not turn into anything further, but Jacobs knows what he’s doing reporting it like this.

Must say like, I don’t have an issue with Jackson as a player. In fact, I like him. It’s what I perceive as a lack of intelligence / attitude that annoys me about him.

Howe told Alex not to come to training in the morning, organised a family / team bonding day for everyone and their wives/kids, and then told Alex to show up for training / talks after that was over. Showing him who’s boss.

Paintballing.

It's completely salvageable. Still time.

McGinn is a very good player... would be a good squad signing at the right price. But I appreciate it's not the shiny name some people would want. I really truly think this whole Isak situation is fucking with our thinking though. I think we don't know whether we can go big on any position right now because we may need to somehow go big on another striker.

The Wissa who scored the most non-penalty goals in the PL last season you mean?

Apparently so. Speculation that his agent and our PIF guys will be present too.

?

"Talks" this afternoon.

👍🏻

Eddie or the players were certainly never told about Mitchell leaving until late May. Whether announced it to higher up before then I don’t know. Some contracts have a 3 month notice, some a 1 month, so who knows 🤷‍♂️ (he served 1 month). Again, with Isak, I can only really communicate what players and agents thought, because thats where my info tends to come from, but the players certainly had no idea that he wanted out, hence their anger towards him now. Elanga even cited him as one of the people who convinced him to join. Those conversations were happening throughout June. People in the industry / agents absolutely expected Isak to be at NUFC for another year. There had been chatter about other clubs being interested, but nothing from the player side to say he wanted to go.

Yes, he was.

Does the director of football have “full control” at any club? Managers have and always will have a significant say.

Last summer was primarily a PSR issue, although of course there was the whole Guehi saga. We never really planned to do much other than that though. This summer has clearly been a disaster so far, but the factors, from my understanding are: - being left high and dry by Mitchell with little warning, thrusting people into roles they’re perhaps not comfortable / capable of being in. - aiming for, not necessarily the “wrong” targets, but targets that we are competing with the big 6 for. It’s ambitious, but so far, it’s been a major realisation that we have a firm ceiling when it comes to targets like that. - the Isak situation has certainly fucked up the strategy further. As of the start of July, Ekitike was SUPPOSED to be replacing Wilson. After that an entire shift has had to take place, essentially paralysing the rest of our business until some form of solution is found (whether that means an agreement with Isak for another year).

Well, that’s a whole host of complete nonsense you’ve spouted. Two immediate things stick out as complete bullshit, which renders the whole post nonsense: - at no point has Eddie “demanded control” over transfers. In fact, if you go back to his interviews early July, Eddie says how much of a blow it was to lose Mitchell because “we had stability”. - he doesn’t “insist on having his nephew run the show”. He has worked very successfully with him for years, but it has not ever been intended for Andy Howe to be in charge of negotiating deals.

My prediction/knowledge… he, and the squad, will feel absolutely fine (apart from anger at Isak). Generally, the players don’t spend their lives doom scrolling Twitter / N-O and just crack on with their job.

But that’s been the opposite of our strategy. So that makes no sense.