TheBrownBottle

Yep, that’s my thinking. I still think this is far more of a passive investment than many would like - the fact that PIF has handed over the full running (approvals only) to non-PIF staff suggests as much. Man City & PSG never did this.

I know we’ve discussed FFP on other threads, but I’m curious - do you think the club will challenge it? I don’t think that they ever will. I also don’t get the impression that they’re overly concerned about it - it’s something the support wants them to do, because they’re assuming that PIF want to plough billions in

David F Batty, man of mystery. My favourite Batty story is that he was spotted helping his dad and his mates at work the day after his England debut - his dad was a bin man. Just a ludicrously normal bloke who was gifted at football. I also loved his stoic reaction to missing the vital penalty vs Argentina. No ludicrous self-absorbed tears - just a shrug and ‘I’ve never taken one before’ in the interview afterwards. And waving to his kids back home through the camera during the national anthem, instead of screaming it like a rugby wanker a la Tony Adams. The man don’t give a fuck.

No, I think the bias is showing (nowt wrong with that) Man Utd are much, much bigger than us, and are far more likely to win trophies than we are in the coming years. Our owners having a great big pot of cash is utterly meaningless if you can’t spend it. Even if we could spend it, the idea would be to try and become as big as a Man Utd - a massive challenge even without the FFP restrictions. I’m not seeing the state-of-art infrastructure at NUFC that you’re talking about. We still don’t really know what’s planned - lots of it is hope and supposition. That benefit of having three times our income is quite a benefit, and if a player was given a choice of NUFC or Man Utd, then nine times out of ten they’re going to go to Old Trafford

Yeah, he always seemed sound to me. Type of bloke who’d I’d happily sit down with. The paranoid bloke with the glasses was the biggest weapon - the one who thought Burton Albion had bunged the referee, as if they were peak-Calciopoli Juventus rather than a tiny club from a small brewery town.

Likewise. It’s a fucking boring story. Wish Man Utd would either buy him out or fuck off

Looks like I’ll have to restart a Netflix subscription - can’t miss my favourite comedy of the 21st Century. Peep Show is nowt compared to it. I love the idea that promotion from Division Three will represent a ‘happy ending’. Unless I’m misremembering, wasn’t the goal of our heroes at the start of series getting promotion back to the Premier League?

Here ye gan: 1902 Sheff Utd 1-1 (h) 1-2(a) 1905 Bolton away 2-0 The Wednesday (Sheff Wed) 1-0; Hyde Road Manchester 0-2 Villa; Crystal Palace 1906 2–2 Birmingham City (a), 3-0 (h) replay 2-0 Woolwich Arsenal (Arsenal) Victoria Ground Stoke 0-1 Everton 1910 3-0 Leicester Fosse (Leicester City) (h) 2-0 Swindon - WHL 1-1 Barnsley CP; 2-0 Goodson 1911 4-0 Derby County (h) 3-0 Chelsea; St Andrews 0-0 Bradford City; CP; 0-1 Old Trafford 1913 0-0 Sunderland (a) 2-2 Sunderland (h) 0-3 Sunderland (h) 1915 1-1 Chelsea (a) 0-1 (h) 1924 1-0 Liverpool (h) 2-0 Man City St Andrews 2-0 villa 1930 1-1 Hull city (h), 0-1 (a) 1961 1-3 (h) Sheff Utd

What about the 1905, 1906, 1910, 1911, 1924 FA Cup runs? edit: not that it matters, but we did win the Charity Shield in 1909 double edit: just realised you’re after QFs. You can add 1902, 1913, 1915 (the Edwardian team sticks in my head, even if 1913 & 1915 aren’t technically Edwardian). We also lost a QF in 1961, in the relegation season after Len White’s injury. I think we also made in 1930 or 1931 as well (can’t remember exactly)

He’s only human

I’m all for ‘sin-bins’ for dissent and time-wasting tbh. And for what used to be called ‘ungentlemanly conduct’ before the PC woke brigade told us being British was banned and forced us to stop wearing gollywogs or something.

You’d get more insane sights like the below: It would be like putting Bruno in nets. Can you imagine how radge Bruno would gan if he pulled off a finger-tip save?

Yep, there’s a difference between not wanting a player to leave and thinking every one of our players is a world beater

I can’t either tbf (from my own perspective I’ve never liked 4-2-3-1 as a formation, either - but that’s entirely personal preference)

*sound of Mackem hoying up horrible takeaway*

Tbf I also don’t make it to Sunderland home matches because of the back shifts at Nissan. That and I fucking hate Sunderland. Oh, I don’t work at Nissan either. Must just be the last point, then.

A ‘double-pivot’ would imply playing deeper than playing as a conventional midfielder - particularly in a 4-2-3-1 rather than an attacking 4-3-3

For me, I don’t think playing that deep gets the best out of Bruno, and Tonali has never played that deep before either. I’d rather push both further forward and get a new holding midfielder to sit behind them

They’ll have distributed the tickets based on those numbers, including any free tickets.

Are we after Toney? Tyneside bookies would have a field day with Trippier, Tonali and Toney knocking about

98/99? Nah, no chance. He wasn’t much cop for me. Just my view, as you have yours. Never looked any good at all under Gullit

Yeah, more a ‘left midfield’ than a winger (Dalglish playing him as if he were Ginola’s replacement hardly helped). My memory on some things are fuzzy - wasn’t Speed a British record transfer paid for a midfielder at that time? Allowing for Gazza’s sale to Lazio and Paul Ince’s to Inter being sales rather than fees paid. It was a big sum of cash.

He was definitely better once moved to the middle for us, but he wasn’t played out of position on the left of midfield. He’d played there every week for Leeds, and a lot of the time for Everton. £5.5m in Jan 1998 was a shitload of money for a midfielder

David F Batty would be above Speed and Cabaye for me. Batty was an excellent footballer - only started to become what we feared in late-stage Dalglish era NUFC.