Keegans Export

I agree. I've got no time for agents whatsoever and I have no issue with the club playing hardball during the negotiation phase but not paying what has been agreed makes us look either dishonest or incompetent neither of which I want people to associate with NUFC now. It also supports the narrative that PIF are either losing interest or are going to take an age processing even basic day-to-day tasks, never mind huge projects like training grounds and stadiums.

So they've already started backtracking on it

OK then, he'll trip on some discarded tinsel on the pitch and fracture his spine in 7 places

Absolutely mental stuff 😂 I mean, Man Utd paid about £30m for him and he'd already played (and scored) in European games for them, but no what he really needed was nine months working with Tony Mowbray and asking the fans to stop signing racist songs about him 👍🏻

That is absolutely 100% the solution. I reckon you could split the match-going fans into three groups; 1. Going to sing/chant/make noise regardless, start songs/chants etc 2. Would probably get involved with songs/chants if enough people around them were doing it too 3. Aren't going to be vocal either way The issue is that group #1 are too widely dispersed, so group #2 don't get going. Perhaps I should be ashamed to admit it but I'm in that second group. I don't have a ST so I've sat all over the place and while I'll always get involved if a chant is going, I'm not going to start it off on my own. I'd guess there are quite a few in the same boat.

I have absolutely no recollection of this, what's going on there?

Absolutely right, the key thing is getting like-minded fans together, then hopefully everyone can get what they want out of the experience. The answer of course (in terms of atmosphere) is to have a large, ideally safe-standing area as @pedro111 says above. Unfortunately the only way that can happen is turfing out a load of season ticket holders and I don't think the club will do that.

I caught a brief part of the post Forest/Villa coverage, Redknapp talking about Villa's struggles post-CL games, our issues with juggling both competitions last season. May have missed it but didn't hear any references to the main issue at play - Villa unable to strengthen in the summer and us in the January window.

Loves SBR too

At his best, that's what Bruno does too, and why it would have been difficult to replace him with a classic destroyer-style DM. Unfortunately he does get into the habit of holding on to the ball for too long at times. Tonali seems to be that guy though. Dictates the tempo, gets things moving.

Same here, I was thinking "What? They closed down the shop?!"

We have done, but we can't continue to do it. Hall is looking much better and Tino is still getting there but when you consider they cost (ballpark) the same as Bruno, Botman, players who come right in and lift the whole side, we can't keep spending that money on players who might be the finished article in a couple of seasons.

At the moment we can't drop big fees on potential. It's either decent money on current ability (eg. Bruno, Botman, potentially someone like Tomori), someone that can come in and improve the starting XI straight away or you look in the sub-£15m market in the hope of either unearthing a gem or someone who can develop into that. If one of the big boys then want to give us £50m+ for one of those talents after a year or two, we accept it and look for the next one. It's frustrating, but short of a substantial increase in revenue, that's the way we're going to have to play it.

The thing I don't get about the attendance thing is why do they make a big deal out of it at all? I mean, it's Championship football, very few clubs are going to get regular attendances north of 30k and there's no shame in that at all. This obsession with the figures that clearly bare no resemblance to the actual number of fans in the ground, the mad excuses for having a half-empty stadium - it all just makes what is honestly a perfectly normal situation into something really odd.

So you're saying the Italian media have just...made something up? The Italian media? I'm stunned.