TheBrownBottle

I don’t think he ever looks all that great in midfield. I really like him on the left wing, but he’s not effective enough to consider him a top player.

We don’t have that luxury, as you’ve said. The club needs to sell saleable assets - it’s the ‘Almiron or Bruno’ question. You either sell the players who aren’t going to take you to another level for what you can get, or you sell the ones who can but bring in even more money.

Honestly, there are some who I suspect wouldn’t sell anyone other than Hendrick and Hayden. The squad needs significant refreshing - that will involve selling players. Footballers are surely aware of the nomadic career that most will have - I bet Almiron is, given that he hasn’t spent his career in Paraguay. Not sure when a ‘players happiness’ came into whether or not a club should look to sell.

Bruno’s new deal was significantly more than £120k pw. It’s more like £180k pw. Joelinton - if the rumours are true - is looking for a salary in line with that. The club would be mad to pay him anything like it. The truth is that we would probably just about get our money back if Joelinton was sold - but that’s more about the insane original fee than the lad’s recent performances. We paid a centre forward’s transfer fee. He’s not a player I would want to push out the door, but if we’re paying top whack then I’d want top whack footballers in return.

Water carriers seem to have exorbitant fees attached to them at this point. Ten-a-penny midfielders are now £30m midfielders.

I can still remember when Ferguson retired from Man Utd in 2002 having announced that far earlier than necessary

Breaking the rules of the AABBA rhyming scheme of a limerick there. But you don’t live by "The Rules" I know, and if there's one person who has influenced you in that way of thinking, someone who is a maverick, someone who does 'that' to the system then it's Ian Botham.

If it was the sports news that’s fair enough for me. If it was BBC News 24 that’s a piss take

It does feel like with the current owners apparent inaction is ‘part of the plan / process’, with absolutely no evidence to support that it is

The coverage seems reasonable to me. Even before 24-hour sports news it was national news when KK and BR left Newcastle. This bloke won everything it’s possible to win as Liverpool manager, even if he is a tosser

I stand corrected. He’s likely off on Rosetta Stone Arabic already

It’s more than we’re bringing in, even if the structure is opaque. No reason that we couldn’t shove Brum’s deal down the PL’s throat.

He's managed to live in English-speaking countries for a decade without bothering to learn the lingo. I’m sure he’d also not bother to learn Arabic

Totally understand if the bloke doesn’t want to move to KSA, who would? Less sympathetic to the ‘he’s settled on Tyneside’ patter. He’s a professional footballer, moving around is what happens. It’s one of the downsides to the considerable upsides of that life. Sitting on a contract if a club has shown it wants you out isn’t usually viewed as a positive by football supporters, either. I don’t think we owe the lad.

We literally can’t win PL games with our current midfield. They’ve played four, lost four, with Villa away next. Not seeing where the embarrassment factor comes in. Their turnover is twice ours - we’re not their competitor.

JG is likely a man approaching retirement and he’s got the response of a spoiled pubescent

It’ll eat them up for years, potentially. If they don’t get promoted it’s unlikely we’ll meet them again any time soon. We wrenched their comfort blanket away and pissed on their bed.

I know where you’re coming from tbf - and I accept that I’m a wee bit impatient with this stuff. Just find it disappointing as every passing year makes it harder to pull closer and catch up to the sky six. Spurs’ revenue just went up by £100m.

Out commercials were lower than Everton’s in the last published accounts tbf. If they don’t go up a few times over the next couple of years then Eales and Silverstone need shooting into the sun

Weren’t the giving it the old ‘nowt to lose, wouldn’t worry about getting beat, they’ve spent a zillion quid and besides they’re not really NUFC anymore’ shite before the game? They’re taking it much, much, much harder than they assured themselves that they would

Unless the owners were on the training ground trying to help the players stay up, that’s not really much of a reason not to be planning. Most businesses can multitask

It does require ongoing income growth in coming years, though it’s probably a reasonable assumption that our income will grow for a couple of years yet.

I honestly thought they’d have had a lot of it already discussed amongst themselves and organised. It took 18 months for the deal to go through - it’s not as if they didn’t have the time before the sale. And over two years is a significant chunk of time to get balls rolling - I don’t understand why the first feelers only started last year.

Beat me to it

At one point it was proposed by Hall that the newly bought Newcastle Gosforth RFC (later the Falcons) would play there as part of the ‘Newcastle United Sporting Club’ thing when the club bought them out.