Kid Icarus

He said there was talk of it, which there is, and that he wouldn't do it, but if we did, we should look for a Thiaw understudy. It's not for you, that's fine. The people who watch him and enjoy it can do just that and you can do you.

None of that really aligns with what's happened I don't think. Anderson only left because of FFP, Miley has played 22 times this season, 11 starts and only 4 of those have been at RB. Osula has had cup games and sub appearances this season and was nowhere near ready last season. It says everything to me that Osula's perceived value is being based on Villa and Frankfurt being interested, and not Howe signing him.

As a third choice LCM, they likely wouldn't need to. That was the premise of it.

Playing Lewis Hall and Lewis Miley suggests otherwise. He might not play them straightaway but he definitely creates pathways for youth players who can make the jump.

Those quotes were from tactical fuckwits Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp btw. If only they'd listen to Lee Ryder and Newcastle Twitter's resident mensa members.

"Plan B? You have to perfect your ideas". "I always believe when it doesn't work well, it is because you have to perfect your idea". "I don't have to change anything. I'm more convinced that what we have done in the past we can still do. It's just that we need to apply ourselves better" “This season we've lost games not because we didn’t have a ‘Plan B’ but it was about having difficulties in different games. If somebody speaks to me about ‘Plan A’ or ‘Plan B’ I don’t really understand, as it's never the case.”

IIRC it was working on the assumption that Willock is our 3rd choice LCM. Don't think there's a great deal wrong in putting a 17 year old in a role that you wouldn't expect much value from anyway so that they can learn the ropes.

Yeah, a lot of his stuff is basically The Athletic's Sensible Transfer videos but better because he knows Newcastle in much more detail and doesn't make some of the basic errors they do. You'll know this, but for everyone who doesn't watch him, he identifies what we need then goes through players that would be ideal. I'm not that clued up on upcoming talent but his recommendations don't seem far fetched and he's quite concise so it's not a scattergun approach. It's only later down the line when we're then linked with the players he's talked about, or they get signed by Dortmund, Brighton, Palace, PSG etc that the proof is a bit more in the pudding. He's been banging on about how we should get Akliouche for 2 or 3 years now.

Dunno how that's automatically unreasonable like, we have the third oldest squad in the league.

I've been watching him long enough to know he's not. He absolutely knows his stuff imo.

He's good. Didn't watch him for a long while, but he's definitely got the receipts, as they say, when it comes to identifying players.

You'd have to be incredibly ignorant to think it isn't.

Antonio Mango has shared a lot of stuff for a while about how he knows Sven Botman's agent. He hasn't said explicitly why, but in his recent video about squad overhauling he said that the contract for him still hasn't been signed and that if it was his choice he'd cash in on him.

Hope did add more IIRC, how it dragged on basically because Burnley didn't want to sell to us due to how much they disliked Mitchell, even though he'd already left. Big pinch of salt on that one I think, as unlikeable as Mitchell is.

Not sure how it works generally either. Would guess that every buy back clause is different. All I know is that it was reported (I think by Hope and The Athletic) that in this case in the end he had the choice and chose Man City.

Yeah that's a fair point about Ekitike. Can only guess that it's a general rule that some players are the exception to, but total guesswork really.

You tell me.

AFAIK based on reports in the end, despite wanting to come here, he had the choice and chose them.

Howe always talks about players being desperate to come here. When push came to shove he chose elsewhere, as understandable as that might have been.

I do think Rogers stood on the 'keeper's hand but people talk about that match like it was a 0-0 parking the bus by Man United who also had something on the line and Villa needed 2 points to qualify for the CL. Villa didn't play well, didn't deserve to win, rightly went down to 10 men and lost 2-0 to the worst Man United team in our lifetimes who hadn't won at home since February, and had nothing to play for. Villa only needed 1 point in the end, or better goal difference than us, which they were nowhere near. Ironically Howe, the manager who did get us there on GD, would never ever be afforded the luxury of having that situation be described as "unlucky" by those who think our current situation is unacceptable and attributable to him.

If he was scoring otherwise no one would mention his goals being pens but they make up 5 of his 7 goals this season so it's pretty important context when it's about an attacking player and the alternative player in his position matches him for goals without taking any pens but is regularly played out of position or dropped in favour of Gordon despite that.

I don't even know what you need to do to produce an image that bad quality.

Barnes was dropped from LW despite being in form and him scoring more goals from open play just in the league alone this season than Gordon has since January. I'm pleased Gordon has refound a bit of form but out of the two, Barnes hasn't deserved to lose his place anywhere near as much as Gordon has. He's had so many matches where you think he's been undroppable for a while, but is either dropped the next match or given one game's grace before Gordon’s back in.

You really think so? Every time I've seen them they've looked much more coherent and much less reliant on Palmer, which is just as well because his form has nose-dived.