TheBrownBottle

I’d be donating towards a gold statue of him to be built on Northumberland Street if he’d achieved that here. But it’s Man Utd, not Newcastle.

I suspect he’ll be rocking up in a nice shiny car driven by himself if I’m betting on it

Honestly, I think there is absolutely a logic in what you wrote - but of course people will react emotive given Bruno’s popularity. FFP unfortunately forces these considerations. I’ve never believed that the players we’d signed in the last two years were likely to be ‘long-term’ signings, due to FFP and the lack of genuinely saleable assets in the squad Howe inherited (though many will be worth far more now than then, thanks to his coaching). I wouldn’t want to see Bruno sold, but if the club did then it would be for good reasons. If Ashley sold him, my piss would be boiling.

There definitely doesn’t if we don’t even play him when we can barely field XI first teamers. If it is a training / attitude issue, then the lad is bad news (and that’s a massive ‘if’). Especially given his background - if my son got the chance to play for NUFC and didn’t do it because he couldn’t be arsed to get to training on time I think I’d disown him

The only NUFC podcast I now listen to is the Chronicle one when John Gibson is on, because I do find him entertaining. He was also saying a rabbit is off with this one. Plenty of us have thought this for a little while. We’ve been so stretched that we’ve had three keepers on the bench and literal kids, yet Hall doesn’t get minutes? It’s not like Howe doesn’t give youth a go. I do hope if Howe isn’t convinced that we’re not tied down to the lad.

Yep. At least five players in four months. That’s not a great track record.

He linked well with Shearer as a number 10, and Wright, Ferdinand & Cole were good centre forwards in a mediocre European league - they weren’t world class talents. How Sheringham kept Beardsley out of that England side from 95 to 96 is the great mystery, other than Venables loving Spurs players.

Hasn’t he took something like one point in 18 months from top half sides away from home? Something crazy like that?

‘Way more resources’ for a start. Sorry, when did that happen? Man Utd love FFP for a reason.

I still don’t think that the injury crisis is ‘bad luck’. There’s a problem here. This isn’t happening elsewhere - our lot drop like flies, and either get immediately re-injured or short absences become long ones

Yeah, that’s a bit different in fairness

Aye, completely understand that. He’s one of those players who comes in and he gets us. The club, city, area etc. Total buy-in. It’s great when it happens - and no-one should be cynical about it; it really does happen. Juninho was an incredible footballer, but the bloke genuinely loved Middlesbrough. I lived most of my life 40 miles from that town, and couldn’t wait to leave the odd time I went

We are far worse without Bruno (in fact, we don’t win), but I wouldn’t be upset at all by any player sold for the betterment of the club. I doubt that the current ownership or Howe would be doing anything where it wasn’t in the best interests of the team generally. Not saying he is going to be sold, just that I wouldn’t be worried about it. I support Newcastle, not individual players.

I was 14/15 so it was also the first season where I was able to drink in pubs on match days - so that may be quite a lot of rose-tinted looking back from me as well tbf (Seems incredible that now - the blind eyes that were turned. And as a teetotaller these days it seems crazy)

It’s another element of the ‘FFP’ which keeps the current mob in position. It’s why I love seeing lectures from Bayern Munich and Dortmund etc re oil clubs and all that, before getting oversized payments based upon previous, and not current, performance - the ‘coefficient’ element. Complete pisstake, total and utter racket.

Yep, I’m bored of that sort of patter entirely. You can’t sow seeds of discontent on a forum populated by a couple of hundred people, many of us don’t even go to the matches. I haven’t seen anyone say they want Howe - and they’d be crackers to do so. Doesn’t mean that he’s perfect, nor that he’s beyond criticism.

No, it’s a naive at best and idiotic at worst strategy to have your centre half get delusions of grandeur and think they’re Lothar Mattaus. The ‘winner’ mentality is a complete misnomer - winning teams aren’t naive nor stupid; there is zero chance that Milan do that if the positions are reversed. And Milan could hardly be accused of being a ‘loser’ club. That shite needs knocking out of the team if we’re going to win anything - and that goes for Howe, too. It was poor game management.

I had no issue with the sale of Ginola. We looked miles better playing a 4-3-3 that season. The issue was what Dalglish did that summer. Getting ‘dicked’ by Monaco - a Monaco side which contained Barthez, Henry, Petit, Scifo, Ikpeba, Sonny Anderson, et al - wasn’t shameful at all, and wasn’t surprising given that we had an injury crisis (yep, plenty previous there) so bad that at various points in the first leg we had Warren Barton playing centre forward. This was the last season of the real European Cup, so the UEFA Cup was by far the strongest competition (and hardest to win). 96/97 remains my favourite NUFC season for a number of reasons. The football Dalglish’s side played (when we had a full roster) was some of the most exciting I’d seen. We had two 4-3 games in a month - the same number as KK had in the previous three and a half years (yet somehow 4-3 is a KK style match). We were 6th when Dalglish came in. He lost his mind that summer.

Your daughter has seen her team play 50% more European games than any Mackem has regardless of age

Yeah, fair enough. I still think there is criticism of Tonali which is perfectly justifiable.

Of course - I’m not pretending to be ‘ITK’. And I also don’t think any football club would come out and throw mud at their player, either. There were stories in the press that the owners were unhappy and were investigating how we didn’t pick up on Tonali’s activities. Again, could all be newspaper shite and a tissue of lies. And neither of us know whether or not the lad is an addict or not. Gambling addiction is fucking horrible, and it ruined my dad’s and my aunt’s childhood - and if Tonali is, I hope he gets all the help and support he needs to control and overcome it. But that doesn’t mean that he’d be immune from criticism even if he actually is an addict.

I agree, which is why I’m not convinced that they will be as reactionary as they could be. I think this is more of a passive investment than many NUFC supporters would like it to be. The fact that they’ve handed over day-to-day running to minority shareholders points to that.

Yep, that’s the point I’m making. They had no choice other than the response that they had, unless they wanted to flush a massive investment down the toilet.

I think that if it was found that they were betting on football and landed a ten month ban the club would look to sack them - while providing support services I also think that there’s a good chance that the owners are furious re the Tonali situation

Much of the ‘Howe won’t last’ crack is coming from that tiresome bellend Simon Jordan on talkSHITE radio. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t know how PIF will react - there is a chance that they pull the trigger if what they want isn’t achieved on their own schedule (whether we think it is reasonable or not). But we have no evidence for that yet.