Kid Icarus

Incredible lack of effort there

It's delicious. Best kit we've had this century, easily

Oh aye, I'm getting that like.

You know what? I'm excited.

Could say the limitations and negatives just aren't as exposed I guess. Sancho was basically Neymar in the Bundesliga. He comes back here and nigh on every defender can deal with him comfortably.

Exactly. The player I think most matches up with Elanga on this one is Diaby. When we were linked with him you'd have thought we were signing an upcoming superstar.

I know it's a cliche and I'm sure some eyes will roll, but if Elanga had never played in the Premier League and just put in those last two seasons in La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1, or Bundesliga I have no doubt whatsoever that he'd be seen as a much bigger potential signing. Despite the quality, or physicality being below the PL, a player tearing it up abroad still holds that hype and glamour about it that the PL doesn't.

He doesn't necessarily need to be that player. Howe will undoubtedly know that the low block is something we need to be better against. It just might not even be that he wants an unlocker player in the mould that he wanted with Maddison and Szoboslai, it could be that he wants us to do something that sidesteps it, or that he's seen a trend in the way football is going that means we can get around it without needing that player, or it might just be Joao Pedro, there are loads of possibilities.

Give it a couple of years and Ikon will be going on about how Elanga is easily a better player than this other player we're being linked with and he doesn't rate.

Don't think that's the market anymore. Beyond a certain point players like Rodrygo are basically unaffordable for 99.9% of teams because of how inflated the market is at the bottom. A couple of years ago Wirtz would have been a £70m player, but teams have cottoned on to the money that's going around in the PL and rightly want a bigger cut.

They're a pick n mix of which characteristic you happen to find most annoying. Sanctimony, dourness, psychosis, or arrogance.

If we get those players and keep everyone, we'd probably see that line up in March But they'd be ready.

Or he just doesn't have genuine alternatives? He's put out some wacky line ups at times, it's only recently he's started really sticking with close to the same XI I think.

Yes there is

When you have genuine options I don't think first XIs are really a thing anymore, more horses for courses.

I already think he'd be really good for us, but my motivation for us signing him is more out of spite for other posters at this point.

'just move on' like 6 minutes after news breaks that we've submitted a bid ffs

This is what the transfer window is all about. These are the bits that are enjoyable.

Can only gauge from that, if it's true, that we've gone in suggesting a potential bid much, much lower than what they're asking for there.

Tonali and Isak can consider themselves unlucky, but Burn absolutely deserves it. Easily the most consistent with a few worldies thrown in.

I don't mind him like. He is very LinkedIn like, that's a good way of putting it, but it's all definitely in the harmless category for me. Always stuck up for us, even when it probably annoyed the people he was sat across from, which is a lot more than most ever did.

Speaking of LinkedIn...

The tone of these journos who will all casually go 'yeah, Newcastle are interested in X' after someone else reports on it, like they knew about it all along but just didn't report on it because they didn't think it was important or because they were far too fucking busy being laid back and cool as fuck is so grating like. I'll sort of stick up for journos in the sense that everyone always jumps on them when they have nothing or are doing a 'non update' or whatever because I don't think it's that big a deal, but when they keep giving you nothing then imply they knew everything after the fact that someone else broke it just to save their ego it does my head in.

Love it when that happens.

He looks like a player that combines the East Stand's love for a 'get iiiiiin' tackle with everyone else's love for a liquid silk dribbling CB.