Keegans Export

There's no way the PL (or the Government) will let anything happen to Chelsea, whether they end up breaching rules or not.

I know absolutely nothing about the kid but we've got to sign him for the song alone

Stick him in a three with Bruno and a DM destroyer type and we'd be laughing.

Is Mitro the new Dwight Gayle? Far too good for the Championship, not good enough for the Premier League? Possibly a bit harsh seeing as he scored 9 in his first season with us and 11 in 18/19 with Fulham

I'm of the same opinion. Obviously they were in a better position when he was binned than they are now but they were clearly on a downward trajectory - they'd lost 9 of 13. They got 4 wins in August & September then only won one more until he was binned in January. Would he have turned it round? Maybe, maybe not. But I can at least understand why he got the boot.

I'd disagree there for two reasons - firstly, any new training facility is going to take years, who knows which tier they will be in by then? Secondly, both women's football and infrastructure spending is exempt from FFP calculations, we've got the money so why not aim for the best across the board? Why save a few quid buying some slightly inferior equipment (which, by your own admission you're going to want to replace down the line anyway) when we could make a statement about how seriously we are taking every element of Newcastle United?

I think having their own specific training space (and academy) could actually be beneficial, as long as the standard of the facility is comparable to the blokes.

Well you've only got then staying up by a point so it's not exactly beyond the realms of possibility? I think Leeds bring the most to the PL but they also have more players I'd take in the summer so it's a tricky one...

It'll be interesting to see what Arsenal do in the summer, whether Lacazette stays and whether they spend a big chunk of cash on another forward or whether they persevere with Nketiah. If they bring in (for example) Nunez for £70m or whatever, I'd definitely get someone to have a sly word with Nketiah's people.

Enjoyed the game today - well, the first half! I had taken my three-year-old and hadn't planned for her to make it to half time so I had nothing to keep her entertained during the break The standard surprised me a bit. Obviously Alnwick weren't great but our two CBs were composed and comfortable on the ball, the lass playing out on the left showed some really nice touches and our striker had far too much pace & skill for their defenders. Hopefully this inspires both the current crop of players and the owners to really maximise the potential of a Newcastle United women's team. No FFP in women's football either I don't think...

Any reason TV money would go down so much? Between 2020 and 2021 I mean.

Unless I'm reading it wrong, the matchday income (plus conference/banqueting) dropped £6.6m between 2020 and 2021 but the losses went up by £12.1m. Same comparing 2019 to 2020, matchday income dropped by £4.9m but the drop in profit was £9.5m. This is not just a case of COVID affecting matchday income and that explaining the figures.

Starts half way down page 152 if anyone was wondering

That's interesting. I've wondered whether one way to manage the demand for STs when they go on general sale would be to have a ballot like they did for the Olympics. So rather than 15,000 people all trying to buy 2,000 tickets at the same time (which the website clearly couldn't handle), there would be a window of however many weeks where you just register how many tickets you want, what areas you'd be willing to sit in etc then it's just luck of the draw rather than fastest finger first. If they've made all the tickets in large blocks all the same price then maybe that's what they're going to do?

I think that's it. In line with inflation, a £600 ST in 2012 (they were fixed for 10 years I think?) is £800 today. Big jump if someone wasn't expecting it.

Tarkowski seemed like a January "safe" pick to try and keep us in the division - similar to Wood. I don't think we'll be back in for him, even if he's on a "free" transfer. I'm fairly sure any signing on fee (plus wages) will be part of the FFP calculation.

Well we can't absolutely take the piss but there is still a big gap between what we earn commercially (fuck all) and what would be considered fair market value (eg looking at other upper-mid-table teams)

Thanks, that's a really useful explanation. Obviously the exact figures will depend on our commercial deals and, assuming ours will be announced before the transfer window opens, it'll give us a pretty good idea how much we really plan to spend.

Really? Have you got a link to that tweet/article - I'm sure I've seen something from him but it was nowhere near £800m and not without additional sponsorship deals.

I'm pretty sure we can't, unless we repeatedly manage to sell players for more than their market value when they need to be replaced. If we spend £300m this coming season (between summer and January windows), even if they're all spread over 5 year contracts, that's still £60m this season, then £60m amortisation in each of the following four seasons, which reduces our available spend by the same amount (eg if we made £100m profit, we'd actually only have £40m to spend due to that amortisation still appearing on the accounts). Obviously that's an oversimplification but that is my understanding of how FFP works.

That's absolutely how I feel and hopefully it's how Staveley etc feel too. The point is whether signing players better than lower-half PL level (Krafth, arguably Richie isn't even that good) but not quite CL-level is worth it, if our ambition is to become a top four side within four or five years. Players like Targett would fall into that category and although £15m isn't a lot in todays market, that still eats into our FFP-limited available spend and we'd probably have to replace him within a couple of seasons. It's a pretty bold strategy and it could easily fail if we don't buy well - then you end up with players who were promised a certain level of success (eg Bruno) who want to leave because we are still languishing in midtable and players who ultimately weren't good enough to get us to the top level that we'd have to try and shift (maybe someone like Nunez comes in for £70m on £170k/week and is a total bust). Edit - I still have to pinch myself that we're even able to speculate about things like this, imagine having this conversation back in September...

The thing with FFP is that we can't spend £300m on players to get us into the top 8, then another £300m to get us into the top six then another £300m to get us into the top four - at least not if the aim is to do that in less than 8-10 seasons. So to an extent we have to be ambitious and try to sell the dream (like we did with Bruno) and buy players that are already top 4-6 quality already because if we spend a huge chunk of our available funds (limited by FFP) on players that are just a bit better than what we have, it's then going to be difficult to find the funds to upgrade all those players in 2/3 seasons. Obviously there has to be flexibility as we saw in January (the Wood signing is a great example) and if we are really struggling to bring in a priority target (eg Gosens, Lodi) then we just move for a stop-gap (eg Targett) but I think that we might see us really push for players like Bruno who will hopefully be part of the hypothetical top-4 Newcastle squad of 2024/25 (or whenever)

Reading that article about Dybala (via Google Translate) - it says "Dybala immediately recorded some polls from Newcastle, Tottenham and Atletico Madrid, memorized them and asked not to proceed" which doesn't sound particularly promising. A bit of a reach that one.

I think the nutters on that RTG probably aren't representative of SAFC fans on the whole to be fair. Same with the gobshites on Twitter.

This is my feeling too. We can ditch nine players without actually losing anyone who has played for the past three months (I guess Gayle has had a few token sub appearances). The challenge is going to be finding somewhere for them to go. I'd say any of the above nine would do a job for a top 6 Championship team but with the wages some of them are on, will anyone bite?