Nine

Looking more and more likely.

Maybe he was rushed back. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone out for the second half. Maybe a torn tendon is hard to spot at half time. Ironically it was probably Joe himself that said he wanted to go out and see how it felt, and try telling Joelinton not to come out for the second when 1-0 up against your local rivals.

Although I can’t see us altering our transfer plans for short term gain, if Joelintons injury really is season ending then I’d lean towards expecting us to bring in a CM on a loan to buy deal. The workload is high enough for our CMs even with Joe available, and the risk of further injuries increases again with him out.. it might trigger a proactive response from us if a decent deal is there to be done. We won’t stray to far from our mid/long term financial plan though, we are already tight enough FFP wise if reports are to be believed. It would be silly to throw our structure out of the window to chase a short term goal of finishing a couple of places higher in the table, and European football is not essential at this stage. We can still finish the season strongly and there is a lot to gain, just having 3/4 of those out injured back and fit before the end of season would be huge alone.

Willian has some impressive longevity, you’d assume he was done when he went back to Brazil but he’s still got legs and is dangerous.

They brought on De Bruyne at 60 mins and we brought on Hall at 70, says enough really. Great effort tonight.

Imagine we didn’t sign him? And signed Diaby or whoever, they would have been thrown to wolves.

ESR is never happening

I feel it’s ones of those that if the keeper would have clearly got there the body check would have been deemed a foul, but as it happened the keepers never getting to that ball with Adebayo in the way or not.

https://theathletic.com/5151540/2024/01/11/anthony-gordon-inside-the-mind-newcastle/

Solanke fits the profile perfectly tbh, he’s a pressing monster and stays fit very consistently. Ability wise it would make a lot of sense. He wouldn’t come cheap though, unless there’s a clause in place.

We as fans just have to accept that under our current circumstances it’s highly likely at some point we do trade our most valuable assets, it’s how it has to be.

Murphy’s shoulder popped again his first appearance back off the bench iirc

You think we’d have cut our limit that close? I’m not convinced, however I’d doubt there’s a substantial amount there. We’ll have kept something back for absolute emergencies at the minimum

The right deal doesn’t necessarily have to be as much as £40m though

I don’t expect will we divert far from the course we had outlined even for a injury crisis, navigating FFP for the mid/long term will be a bigger priority than short term adjustments for short term gain. Having said that, if the right deal is there for the right player we will go for it like the Gordon transfer last winter.

Can anyone give a bit of a run down on the Werner transfer? I havnt seen much of him this season, a brief look at his data suggests he’s underperformed recently after being consistently fit and putting up decent numbers last season.

Just to make the point, Bowen didn’t leave Hull til he was 23/24. It’s not that uncommon to see players move up a level at that sort of age and then increase their potential. Not saying this Clarke is or isn’t that good, I’ve seen him play once.

That’ll be Barca and/or Madrid, the two clubs that no player says no to.

He has far too much upside to sell imo, for the type of fee we’d get anyway.

Chelsea will grow into the second half of the season if they can keep their core fit, top 6 would be a great finish for us (and still would have been at the start of the season). We just need to focus on our own run of form and keep everyone as fit as possible.

We’ll avoid the sharpest version of De Bruyne thankfully, he’ll come off the bench for sure.

Alexander Iceak

Sunderland fans have probably the worst misplaced ego besides maybe Everton? Getting truly humbled by their clubs owners and local rivals, pretty funny really.

His physical ability is utilised very effectively in our system against any side, obviously against championship opposition it will come across better than we’ve been used to seeing against other sides lately. Physically he just delivers massively in our system vs whoever we play against, his lack of clinical quality brings out a lot of frustration in fans especially when things are going against us but he’s a perfect wide player to have as an option and I’m pretty sure we’ll keep hold of him for a while yet.