TheBrownBottle

I don’t think Howe is wrong in not playing him tbf - if the manager thought he had something to offer there’s no chance he’d be sat on the bench.

Agreed - we all knew we’d massively overpaid. So I’m assuming Howe knew that too - but he’s still here, not performing. Scouting a player isn’t just about looking at stats - it’s about character as much as anything; something Howe himself has said before.

Agreed - at this point, all that remains is a bit more sponsorship and a new stadium, and they appear to have zero interest in the latter. There’s definitely growth left on the table re the stadium. Other than that, we’re at our ‘natural’ ceiling under the rules - we’re not as big a club as Man Utd, Arsenal and Liverpool, and the boat has been missed re Chelsea and Man City.

If he’s not accountable for shit signings, he should get no credit for good ones

Re PIF? The cupboard is bare for me on that front - I’m not sure it’s even debatable that the govt of KSA (and its funding arm) are a bit … iffy

TBF his signing goes beyond dogshit scouting - the entire country saw what he was when he went on a one-man strike. When Isak did it he managed to push his valuation down - our lot are so daft that we doubled our original bid. It has proved to be such a profound waste of money that all involved should have their jobs questioned, frankly. We overpaid to get immediate results - the guy was meant to be Wilson’s replacement, yet Wilson has scored four more PL goals this season than him. He looks nailed-on to be the worst signing in our history - his conduct just seems intended to be a complete pisstake. We absolutely should look to cut losses in the summer - maybe another club will take a £15-20m gamble on him, which would mean a c.£20-25m book loss on him (and his wages would be freed back up). Hopefully we sack him off in the summer and pretend this was all a bad dream.

It never would - it was YAR’s vanity project. The same will happen with other sports soon enough - there isn’t the market nor the interest, and ‘sportswashing’ isn’t particularly effective. It’s why all their construction ‘super projects’ end up in laughable failure - big promises made to stroke the ego of a dictator and his sycophants; when it becomes obvious that they are impossible or simply massive money drains, they are silently killed off to minimise embarrassment.

We were told by Staveley what the intended investment levels were at the time - and they weren’t putting us on rocket skates. We’re half a decade in now - it should be pretty clear where we sit in terms of their interest & investment level. One of the incredible things is that there still is not a permanent PIF-rep on the club’s board. There doesn’t appear to be anyone with a direct line to Riyadh. I could be completely misreading this, but I can picture Hopkinson being a complete suck-up to them. Half a decade in and we’re still staring at zero movement on a training ground and stadium, zero investment in the North East (PIF - and more particularly MBS - was using this as leverage to get the UK govt to support the takeover), and massive structural weaknesses in the football side of things. Howe’s made some serious errors of late, but I don’t doubt at all that he’s received very little help from above (not in terms of money) and he’s been fucked over by a vacuum at the top. Hopkinson has been making some better moves in that space, which offers some hope going forwards that errors have been acknowledged.

Yeah, I agree - for one I have doubts that Emery would’ve matched Howe’s first 18 months. I’m not sure he could have extracted the uplifts from the likes of Almiron, Joelinton and Murphy.

Up until this season, I agree - but this season, it’s hard to picture this sort of drop-off. Emery obviously knows how to handle European campaigns - Howe appears to have learned the sum total of nothing since the last one, which has been compounded by wasting hundreds of millions last summer.

They don’t have a higher wage bill - we do. The higher wage bill is from previous seasons’ accounts. We’ve outspent them in the transfer market by an order of magnitude and have a higher wage bill. Emery had to manage CL and PL last season - and they finished level on points with us last year despite this. I’m not sure we’ll be matching their tally this season. And I wouldn’t be ruling out Emery winning a trophy this season.

That isn’t the case - we were turned down because they preferred moving to more attractive clubs, which a modicum of proper scouting would likely have made clear. We actually bid significantly more for Sesko, but he preferred to join Man Utd. PSR meant that we couldn’t blow those clubs out of the water - which of course is the purpose of it - but that also assumes that PIF and RB even want to do that in the first place. Resorting to options 2, 3 or 4 doesn’t mean overpaying for any old shite. Besides, Elanga and Wissa were linked pretty early on.

The daft cunt will likely take credit and tell Starmer that he wants a winners medal, otherwise he’s going to do a drone strike on Sadiq Khan

Perhaps, but Gordon’s goal record in the CL isn’t exactly shabby, and reflective of the poor quality of most of the teams in the competition

Maybe I’m misremembering but weren’t Robson’s first choices in 2001 Francis Jeffers and Boudewijn Zenden? We ended up with Bellamy and Robert. He didn’t get his first choices because that isn’t how football works.

Diaz’s output in three of his four seasons at Liverpool is comparable to Gordon. Gordon would absolutely tear up the Bundesliga - most of it is poor.

I can hear the sound of his ego deflating from the other side of the planet, it’s a fucking glorious sound

Your taste is impeccable 👍

Funny thing is he’s spot on re point 2 - it is absolutely a better design than the chatty European Cup knockoff. I can remember us winning it in 1993 and as a kid being a bit confused as to why we were being given the league championship trophy against Leicester, and my dad having to explain how the PL breakaway that season worked (I’d been used to seeing Liverpool and Arsenal winning it). That’s when football started getting fun …

Already ‘dropped the kids off at the park’ Yorkie Funny thing is I’d actually commented in the wrong thread - thought it was the other thread. Was genuinely not trying to cause tumult in this one!

It’s log in time now

The point isn’t that we’ll struggle to compete with Man City - we’re struggling to compete with Palace, Bournemouth and Sunderland. PSR has fucked us in terms of really pushing for the big trophies - but there are no excuses for where we are nor for looking as poorly coached as we do at present. ‘More of the same’ isn’t working, and if it isn’t the plan then the players aren’t listening to the manager.

‘Like I claim’? Fucking hell Is evidence required? Ardiles’ ‘Ossie Babes’ were the consequence of funding being squeezed out of the club during some of the worst boardroom politicking we’re likely to see (and a batch of talented young uns coming through). No-one is advocating a return to that. I don’t remember Souness being anyone’s choice - but Dalglish definitely was an appointment that caused excitement. I’m not convinced that an entirely different board cocking up succession decades ago means we shouldn’t change the manager now. I never said it was ‘happy clapping’, either. But it’s not just the current board whose decision-making has been less than astute for some time.

It convinces me that the man should have a statue at the ground and even a stand named after him. It doesn’t mean that I think he’s allowed to remain in situ while failing because of sentiment.

I didn’t say I expected it - though I would ask who exactly last season we should’ve been finishing below? - and the ‘entitlement’ talk is just tiresome. You think he deserves another crack, and I don’t think that’s an unreasonable view - but I’m getting tired of folks playing at being a superfan because they think a very well paid manager who has spent three quarters of a billion quid should not be questioned. I support Newcastle United because I’m from Newcastle - I don’t support Eddie Howe beyond wanting him to do a good job while he’s here. I’ve supported this club since the late ‘80s - I doubt half the folks who bang on about ‘entitlement’ would’ve been stood on crumbling terrace at SJP watching us almost tumble into the third tier next to me. I’ve seen utter dross, and I’ve seen some great sides. Expectations - like performance - are based upon money spent, not upon where we finished five years ago. I’ve been keeping out of the Howe thread because I’ve little else to add - after the Mackem game I thought his time was up. This is a different thread asking a different question. If you still think Howe is the man for the job - great, and I completely understand why. But calling folks names because they disagree over whether the club has the right manager? Ho’way man.