sushimonster85

It is, aye. But on the flip side he pals around on Twitter with Sean Casey, who I believe is still at the airport waiting for Fonseca's plane to arrive.

This is very true. It's easy to get sucked into the Twitter bubble and end up believing this is a massive PR blunder from Castore, the likes of which they will never recover from... Then you remember that the average fan has no clue any of this is going on.

They'd argue that those deals were signed before these new rules came into affect. The real iffy area is determining what 'fair market value' really is.

Yep, this is the case. If it's an affiliated company the Premier League will refer it to an independent panel who will judge if its deemed to be fair market value, or inflated. I would also mention, this is legally far too vague and will likely crumble at the first hint of a legal challenge. Whether that comes from us, or some other team down the line.

Same. Think there was a reason those posts were removed.

Surely if it were anyone other than Fun88 it would've leaked by now?

Possibly. Though did think it was weird timing, surely you wait a couple days then give away a signed 22/23 shirt if you're still the sponsor?

Castore just posted a teaser they then quickly removed on Insta. Shirt pre-orders go live tomorrow at 10am. Imagine we find out sponsor craic either later today or tomorrow at 9am.

He was generally solid before this season. Either this past season was an outlier, or his body is starting to fail him.

Yep. As soon as the link appeared (with actual backing from more credible journos) last week he has been at the top of my wishlist. Think he would be a transformative signing.

Doubt it. It's not January, there aren't the same kind of time constraints we were under with Bruno. Also, I don't think Paqueta is going happen.

It's a bit of a weird one, because we only have one real example of a dip, but look at Harry Kane, and whatever was going on with him at the start of this season. Whether he was distracted by transfer speculation or just knackered who's to say. But his xG for this season and the season prior are pretty much identical (20.1 this season. 20.5 last season). Yet this season he scored 6 fewer goals. The first time he has under-performed his xG for as far back as fbref have 'expected' data. Kane is a player who, in the past several seasons, has vastly over performed his xG. If you were to look purely at the numbers this season is unexplainable. However anyone who watched Spurs in the first half of the season could tell you straight away that Harry Kane just wasn't with it. This is what I was referring to, a striker having a dip in confidence can be really hard to forecast, and they're more prone to it than pretty much any other position on the pitch.

True, but some players confidence is more fragile than others, and can vary wildly. Then you have mentality monsters like Ronaldo for whom confidence is never an issue. I do feel confidence/mentality is one of the (only) areas where xG is a little blind.

xG is very useful, however I feel the role of striker (and keeper to be fair) is the most confidence based position on the entire pitch. Things like a players confidence, or overall general mentality, can be really hard to quantify with raw data. Now xA on the other hand, there is a useful stat. Pascal Gross at Brighton was the best example of club looking past initial numbers to find a real bit of diamond in the rough. He never posted huge assist numbers at Ingolstadt, however his xA was consistently through the roof. He was constantly creating good chances, they just weren't being finished.

Actually becoming a somewhat modern football team.

Whilst I do totally agree that Sky/BT have a top 6 bias when it comes to how they cover games, I actually think that instance it was probably fair enough. Arsenal's CL hopes going up in smoke was a much bigger story than how good we looked in what was a no stakes games for us.

This is going to be the most prepared offer of all time judging by how many times Spanish outlets have reported that we're preparing an offer.

Absolutely. If we sign Henderson and he plays regularly (and assuming his arms haven't turned to jelly after being sat on the bench for a year), he & Ramsdale between them should relegate Pickford to third choice for England.

Man U have an official noodle partner.

I think a lot of peoples view of the Henderson/Dubravka issue is clouded by their feelings towards Dubravka. It's only natural to feel a certain level of bias/affection/full on man love for a goalie who has had such a huge hand in keeping us in the division for the past few season. I'm in the same boat. However, looking at it objectively, I'd say as a shot stopper there isn't much separating he and Henderson, which is Dubs main strength. Henderson is so much better with his feet, and only 25. If you look at in unemotionally it's an easy decision. Especially if he does end up costing under 20m.

It's also important to keep in mind that we don't know if the figure they have heard is accounting for amortization.

The three north east teams all being in different leagues makes this a bit of pointless exercise. Surely it should just be the most regular Newcastle 11. Made more sense when we were all in the PL.

I know people don't like Edwards on here, but he clearly has some connections. When I saw the Diaby stuff yesterday I didn't give it much thought, became way more real to me when Luke stuck his neck out about him today. Wasn't the first to mention him, but (so far as I'm aware) was the first north east journo to mark him as one to watch.

Hide your lasses!

Yeah, everyone's heart was in the right place. If the real account had posted that you know it's happening.