TheBrownBottle

Jenas was very much part of that group after his first season. I saw him enough times in Baja Beach Club to confirm that. He started acting the twat and word got around - which is where the ‘goldfish bowl’ comment came from.

He had a lot of poor games in his final season or so. Went completely off the boil - that’s why we pretty much got back what we paid for him.

They’ve also got a turnover which is double the size of ours, even when they’ve underperformed on the pitch. That gives a lot of headroom.

Southgate not doing what I used to on Champ Man when I was a national team manager with the option to pick dual national players - you give them a competitive cap and then see how they develop

But it isn’t in KSA - and that’s the point. KSA doesn’t have the Rule of Law - it has an uncodified legal system based upon Sharia, which is reliant entirely on the rulings of appointed judges (though precedent and case law don’t apply there - ‘justice’ is literally the whim of the judge and his interpretation of Sharia and a few regulations). We’re not talking about ‘normal’ even in the context of the Middle East. It isn’t defendable.

We've made a Faustian pact, there's no two ways about it. Sadly, given KSA's record on workers' and human rights no-one should be surprised in the least. Nothing much we as supporters can do about it - other than not defend the undefendable when it rears its ugly head.

100%. Can’t picture a red Manc swapping getting the PL trophy back off Man City for England winning a Euros.

Well-off and Southern.

I’ve never met anyone in that 33%. Someone’s fibbing. Is this like the shy Tory effect? Or are people putting on a Geordie accent and saying ‘England’? I get more excited by NUFC winning a corner than England winning a match.

‘Pics or it didn’t happen’ trophy winner on RTG 2023/24 Bunch of weird fuckers 😀 - the day after Del Piero was in the press talking about how he could’ve signed for us in his prime, we’re to believe that nee-one in Europe has heard of NUFC …

Aye, fair enough. £100m for Minteh it is

Tbf the lad could end up being class, or he might end up being ok, or he might end up doing nothing. But I wouldn’t rely on statistics from the Dutch league as a perfect benchmark for future performance in England, which some have implied. Him being in the top 1 percentile on a variety of stats is a positive, but that doesn’t mean that it follows that he’ll be a star in a tougher league.

The two seasons he played in Holland, the Eredivisie could boast the European Cup winners and the European Cup runners-up. Completely different world.

It was the Robson not the Keegan era when he was linked to us

We were knocked out by the Yugoslavians. * looks at first group game* Bugger

Words fail

I meant that Wallsend isn’t in Newcastle either, but no-one would consider someone from Wallsend not to be a Geordie.

It’s as much a part of Newcastle as Wallsend is …

The lad might turn out to be a cracking player, but I do enjoy Champ Man crack in real life Wonder what his hidden stats are?

Miley is absolutely worth more than Minteh at present. Miley has PL and CL experience, and has an English passport. Minteh’s numbers aren’t ‘elite’. They’re elite … in Holland.

Worth reminding ourselves that if Minteh was worth £100m in half a season, he’d be only the 10th player in the history of football to go for that figure. It isn’t an everyday sum of money.

Cole Palmer is English and had played for Man City a fair few times before his move.

Aye, I agree - I thought Targett was an excellent loan signing. Permanent doesn’t seem to have worked out. Not necessarily meaning that Tonali was the transfer teams fault, but if Tonali was to ask for a transfer request next season he’d comfortably be one of our worst ever signings. Not saying he will, of course. But he’s very much an ‘undecided’. Our track record since Jan 2022 is excellent, tbh.

yep, that’s a great example. There’s plenty of ones where it does happen - a big club pays a fortune for a ‘young prospect’ player who just doesn’t make it. We need to get a lot of these in and out of the club in the next few seasons. It’s one of the best routes to create FFP headroom