Keegans Export

This is bugging me too. It's one of the reasons I voted "Yes" in the poll because I was sure we would see an uptick in performances once we had week-long gaps between the fixtures. Unfortunately, we've had five of the seven, got four points and the improvement has been negligible at best.

Interesting that it has both the very thick Adidas stripes on the sleeve (wasn't there some reason that might not be allowed?) and Sela on the front

ChatGPT is wrong

I think in that scenario we effectively lose a Europa League place so 7th would be Europa and 8th would be Conference League

I wouldn't worry about it, by the time we've made a decision we'll probably be living in some sort of dystopian dictatorship. Or on Mars.

This is my feeling too. Something approaching £70-80m is closer to what 23/24 Gordon is worth - for the one we have had for the past two seasons (12 goals in 60 PL appearances) we should take the money and run.

Is it not if Villa win the EL and finish 5th specifically? Rather than just anywhere in the top 5

Not sure exactly but presumably there's about £15m of his book value left. Sell for £70m, minus Everton's reported 15% of the profit (say £4m) leaves a PSR profit of about £50m. Probably the sort of deal that can fund two or three additions

Right, so if it was entirely up to him, we'd be bringing in less than six you reckon?

He's clearly of the opinion that he doesn't want an overhaul - six new players was "too many" in his own words. What do you mean by it not being his fault?

"And lo, the clouds did part and the voice of the Lord said 'You'll do for me bonny lad' "

Wouldn't surprise me at all tbf We know the previous board wanted to build a new stadium and were presenting options to the ownership, quite possible Hopkinson and his team think the same. The question is whether PIF want to do it or not...

I wouldn't blame our drop on PSR, at least not entirely. What it does mean is that one disastrous window massively hamstrings us going forwards, whereas you can follow Hojlund/Mount/Onana with Yoro/de Ligt/Zerkzee, miss out on Europe all together and still sign Sesko, Mbeumo & Cunha.

Yes in theory, but only if there's a willing buyer. I assume we couldn't afford to make a loss on the last three for example.

We know we're losing Ramsdale, Trippier & Krafth. There hasn't been anything about Schar signing a new deal. That's three first-team level and one squad player. We can probably expect at least two of Tino, Gordon & Tonali can go so that's five first-team players and one backup/squad player just to stay still numbers-wise. That's before we look at the striker situation and the players who will be going into their final year (Pope, Murphy, Burn). I'm not even factoring in players we feel probably aren't good enough (Willock, Elanga). In an ideal world yes, you wouldn't want more than a handful coming in at a time but I don't think we've got much choice, unless some of the younger lads are going to be ready to step up next season.

I thought my last paragraph kind of covered that

You've got to believe that those concerns were raised on Wed/Thur and that the answers he gave were deemed sufficient. Then we win at the weekend, safety all but guaranteed so they're happy to confirm (albeit not directly) that he's staying. I can't imagine that his response to questions about how to put right what happened this season was "I'm going to keep picking the same players and playing the same way" It's fair enough doing that now if he feels that's his best chance of getting results this month but, like the shift in personnel and style we saw between 21/22 and 22/23, I hope and assume that we'll see some changes in how we set up next season.

I'm making the assumption that the criteria for him staying was just staying up. Hopefully there's been a detailed, positive discussion about what we are going to do to make sure next season in no way resembles this one. That's not all on Howe obviously and Hopkinson/Wilson have just as much, if not more, to prove. But I'm hopeful that he knows we need to improve in a lot of areas - recruitment, youth development, our style of play needs to change or at least be more flexible - and this has all been agreed as part of the club backing him for another run at it.

Excluding caretakers, 17 Newcastle managers ago was Ossie

Desperately needed a win and when you're in crap form you'll take any win you can get. There's a decent chance that by the next game we're mathematically safe so hopefully that sees us play with some more freedom and there's an improvement over the last three games

Burn at LB, Willock/Joelinton axis on the left. Might as well just stick Trippier in there too and replay all the 22/23 hits Hardly allays the fears that he just goes back to what he feels safe with when he's under pressure.

They can also bring a decent amount of money in from external sources rather than funding it entirely themselves. We know they want more non-PIF sponsors and that any stadium investment will likely be (at least in part) a loan rather than writing a billion pound cheque. And as we've seen today, then can always fleece corporate ST holders for an extra few grand each...

Yeah that's what I mean - apart from the Sodexo bit all he (or any other journalist tbf) can do is speculate because for all they know the PIF delegation could turn up and say pretty much anything.

Aside from that it's largely just speculation. Nobody seems to have a good PIF source so anything they need to sign off on (eg stadium plan) could go either way.

I just worry this summer is going to end up a damp squid