TheBrownBottle

I’m one of them, I’m happy to state - mainly because I think that Staveley needed support, not replacing necessarily. I admire her drive and focus - she ‘got things done’. I think she knew how to deal with PIF. The club feels a little rudderless at the moment - as others have said, it’s as much down to Howe & his staff & players that we are where we are.

Yeah it’s a cracker - downloaded all of Lindisfarne / Alan Hull’s albums for my mam a little while back, and ended up getting myself a copy of them all after listening. Great stuff

True enough - but I think the motorway was what T Dan Smith did. The central bypass

*thinks of T Dan Smith* I’m comfortable with Newcastle councillors not being ‘dynamic’ tbh

Gallagher would start ahead of Joelinton if he was signed - he wouldn’t be coming in as a back up Can’t see it though

Hope not unless it’s really low level opposition at home

He had plans to qualify for the CL

PSG seemed to think he had a bad attitude edit: mostly because he was easily second fiddle to MBappe and never getting ahead of him. Perhaps our bench would be comfier.

I normally agree with pretty much everything you post, but can’t get onboard with your take on the Newcastle no.9 shirt

*needs to play LW

Wonder if ‘Sam Fender Fan in Peace’ would get the time of day?

Barnes scored a corker away to West Ham - I think opening day of the season; I was there (and can be see in The Mag match report photo should anyone have an old copy!). He wasn’t terrible from memory. Pearce was an excellent signing - he got another England cap after he left. We signed Gary Speed to replace Barnes on the LW, and an over-the-hill Barnes was still better than Speed on the left.

I think the lad is quality at present - provided the team is set up correctly around him. If there was a mild criticism of the transfer for me, it would be that the lad’s signing possibly shows that Howe isn’t looking to evolve his style of play. Again, that’s perfectly fine, but it’ll be interesting to see who else comes in and how we perform against the sides we really had problems with last season (i.e. midtable sides H&A)

I think all of that is possible under other ownership. The options are not only Ashley or PIF - I thought we were all in broad agreement that Ashley was a terrible owner, because we weren’t trying to win things. What I mean by ‘none of the benefits’ is that we haven’t been put on financial steroids. Everything the club has achieved is within the spending limitations of PSR - so they were achievable with or without being owned by one of the nastiest govts on Earth and their financial subsidiary which last I checked was a major reason for the Trump victory (amongst other things).

I don’t like PIF or KSA’s govt, no argument - I’m ok with that being considered an agenda. I wouldn’t be unhappy to see them gone. But the biggest concern I have is that we’re owned by them and getting none of the benefits - to date, they’ve done nothing that a moderately ambitious PL owner wouldn’t have done. I’m yet to see the financial muscle being put behind us - everything achieved to date could’ve been achieved by someone with Ashley’s money (without Ashley’s incompetence or miserly approach).

Just think, if they’d actually appointed a board they may have been able to point out the problem this causes directly to them

Hang on, I thought they were waiting for the outcome of the Man City case before spunking vast sums on nonsense like stadium naming rights?

No, because he also acted like an arse at PSG

I can understand it, but I think you’re overthinking it. The days of ‘Arry Redknapp gazumping us for Remy etc are over - this’ll go through, there’d be a shitstorm if it didn’t.

Agreed we absolutely need squad depth and competition for all positions - I’m just not sure we have the budget to chuck at these sorts of signings. To me, you’d want to get better than what you have in other positions, putting the onus on current players to step up yet another level. CF is a nightmare position for us to sign in at present, given who we have in there. Most top clubs don’t have two CFs of near similar quality to each other.

Reach for the lasers while seeing a player smash them in in the Serbian third division

I’m partial to a three YouTube video showing their goals over a 120BPM Eurorave soundtrack by bloke from Eastern Europe with time on his hands and a hunger for clicks

Which is fair enough, and I don’t doubt that the lad is talented. Potentially a massive weapon, mind.

The lad is signing and I’ve always found those videos cringe - everything at this point is an admin process as far as I’m concerned. Are people concerned that he isn’t signing?