Keegans Export

This extends beyond January and it's why I think suggestions that the ownership (or at least the UK-based board) won't be at least considering what happens in the summer are fanciful. It's what crossed my mind when we had our poor start last season. On the assumption that one or more of our key players would move on for decent money, plus the shackles of PSR being loosened in the lead up to last summer, the question was do the club trust Howe to use that to develop post-takeover NUFC V2.0? Obviously we had a brilliant run, won the cup and finished 5th so of course he got that opportunity. The issue now is that scenario did play out (big player leaves, lots of money spent) and we look worse than we did 12 months ago, so naturally those questions are going to resurface. In the summer it seems inevitable that one or more key players are going to leave. We will have money to spend and we'll have to try and turn an upper-mid-table squad into challengers for Champions League qualification. You could say "Well, we'll just take recruitment out of Howe's hands" but is he going to accept that? We could be setting ourselves up for another summer of disruption and turmoil, this time completely self-inflicted.

The problem is that we've signed players to fit a strategy we no longer play.

It's like the 23/24 season has left some permanent mental scarring to the extent that, even with a vastly superior squad, he's afraid to either play with any sort of intensity or actually use the squad until it's too late. Make no mistake, the players hardly covered themselves in glory but the way we set up was utterly pathetic.

I admire some of the positivity I saw in here pre-match but the evidence is there - we just aren't a particularly good side now. Can't break down an organised defence, don't press regularly enough or sometimes at all, defend set pieces poorly, shown a severe mental fragility especially away from home.

Remember when intensity was our identity? That was nice wasn't it?

Nobody has won easy at their place all season tbf. And we've been embarrassed by worse teams (on current form) than we'll face tomorrow. We should win because, man for man, we are vastly superior. But we've shown a lack of mental fortitude on too many occasions this season for it not to be a potential factor.

As someone with the exact type of colour deficiency that struggles with the black vs red it can be an absolute nightmare. Depends on the makeup of the kits obviously - this season for example would be difficult because the stripes are similar width & position. I appreciate it can be frustrating and in an ideal world it would be stripes vs stripes but with the speed the game is played at now it's pretty much impossible to follow the game at times.

It's because it's not a one off though isn't it? In isolation, yes it's a good point (I would have taken it before KO) but looking at the season as a whole it's a continuation of a worrying trend - regularly unable to see games out, subs too late, mood killed. Every so often you can say oh we could have gone 3-1 up, a draw is a good result etc but we've had five of these in less than six weeks.

Bunch of absolute bottlers. Crap first half, deservedly 1-0 down. Much better 2nd half, deservedly back to 2-1, then revert back to the crap first half. Every time man, pathetic.

That was garbage tbf Offering next to nothing going forwards, easily opened up at the back, no pressing. Beat the mackems? Play like this and we'll do well to score a goal.

The only one-touch pass we make is the 5 yards backwards to the centre back type. Must be so easy to defend against.

Thank Christ for that, I was worried we'd only have one keeper on the bench. Heaven forbid...

100% agree If he just wanted the money he could have gone to Saudi, or just angled for a move somewhere else. To specifically target the team that had just won the PL and was investing heavily says he wanted to be a key part of a team that wins multiple trophies.

This is kind of the problem with the recent comments coming out of the club though. In your scenario, we're going into the 26/27 season with no more trophies and no European football. A challenging summer of either convincing our current players to stay or new ones to sign lies ahead. And they're telling me we're going to be arguably the top club on the planet 3½ years later? It doesn't add up.

This is where I'm at too. Occasional games/spells aside it's mint being a Newcastle fan at the moment and has been for nearly four years now. The problem is that the talk from the top hasn't fully been matched by action. If they came out and said "Look, these rules are in place to try and stop us but we're going to do everything we can. That might just be consistently competing for Champions League places and domestic cups but we'll always spend what PSR allows to aim higher" I'd be absolutely fine with that. Saying you think we'll be arguably the top club in the world in four years suggests you either don't fully understand how football (and particularly football finance/rules) work or you're just trying to talk about big game to impress someone.

No, he's right. A victory for the fans who had to be asked to stop singing racist songs about their own player would truly be a triumph of good over evil.

I admire the ambition but that is an absolutely mental claim tbf

If demand keeps outstripping supply, you can jack the prices up. Don't get me wrong, if it was up to me we'd build a massive stadium, but I think our owners (most owners tbf) will think they don't want to spend however much extra it would cost to build/maintain a 70k+ stadium that could have empty seats when they could build one for about 65k and attempt to keep the demand high. They won't want to feel they're ever in a position to bring the prices down to fill the ground. I'd love to be wrong, I just think that Eales's comments, whether the club have now distanced themselves from it publicly or not, won't be too far off the mark.

You don't see why we wouldn't need a 70k stadium when a 15min difference in KO time means we couldn't fill 52k? As I said in the earlier post, it may be that tens of thousands (minus bots etc...) were/are after tickets, but how many of those would still enter the ballot if they'd been successful for the game before? Or the two games before?

Newcastle just isn't a tourist city though. If you were a "Premier League fan" from Singapore, Melbourne or Atlanta, you'd just fly to London or Manchester and watch Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal etc. There'd be a boost for sure but it'd be minimal imo and dependant on consistently outperforming even what we're doing now. I just can't see a situation where someone with a business/financial mind is going to say we need a 70k stadium. It'll be closer to Eales's "No empty seats" idea, maybe with some room to expand easily enough in the future.

I'm not sure we would fill 70k every time, even under those circumstances tbf Let's say we do secure top 4/5 pretty much every season and we have a 70k stadium. For a start, more tickets available = more ballot success. We use the number of people entering the ballot as an indicator as to how many people would go to the game if they had the opportunity but there's more to it than that. We've got five home games between the start of December and the start of January, plenty of people will enter the ballot for all of them and maybe succeed once. If in the larger stadium you got two of the first three, are you still going to apply for the other two? At £60+ each, plus transport/food/drinks there'll be plenty of people who will think "that'll do for now" and not, so now that assumption that 5x ballot entries = 5x ticket sales if we had more seats has become 2x ticket sales. There's also the issue that the interest may wane generally. The excitement between 22/23 and early this season is because we've been on a journey - years of absolute crap, then suddenly we're in a battle for Champions League football for the first time in 20 years. Once that either becomes the norm, or we tail off and end up occasionally top 5, usually somewhere around 6th, 7th, 8th - is that demand still there? Even all the top clubs end up topping up their attendance with tourists. Sure, a big Champions League knock-out against Real Madrid we could sell 80k+ but what if the other home games that month are Burnley, Palace and an 8.15pm KO on a Tuesday night? We couldn't even sell out our current stadium for the latter.

Unfortunately our poor start and crap away form means we can't be throwing away points like that. We can say "7 from 9" or whatever, but we're 14th so if we're serious about European qualification (let alone Champions League...) we need to show some proper consistency and demonstrate that we can see games out. Too many times already we've shown a piss weak mentality.

That's definitely part of the problem. Loads of fanbases (ours included) can get a bit entitled during a period of success but Spurs have the whole media basically bundling them in with the most decorated teams in the country.

I think the wider board has made a decision but crucially PIF (for whatever reason) haven't yet rubber-stamped it.

Rotation spot on, Ramsdale over Pope, Burn at CB, getting runners supporting and going beyond Woltemade. We desperately need cover at FB in January. It's so fundamental to how he wants us to play, especially away from home and we can't keep flogging Tino and Hall. Willock's upturn in form means CM can go down the priority list.