TheBrownBottle

Ravanelli swapped European champions Juventus and Turin for Middlesbrough once upon a time. Money talks - always has.

Just felt a weird pang of nostalgic pain there. Christ, the Ashley era was depressing.

It’s clearly been leaked at the NUFC end. It’s NE journalists breaking the story, not Italian journalists or London ones. It just makes the club look unprofessional when it’s so clearly an internal leak

He’s an oddball. He posts like a teenager on Facebook. Trolling and then talking about downtime from posting. You’re an adult ffs, you glakey get

I’ve always been a fan of getting the toughest games out of the way first. Do well and it’s a hell of a platform to kick on.

You’re right, the subeditor does the ‘clickbait’ headlines. Doesn’t stop people having a pop at the hack, but if I was one I’d be kicking the subeditor under the bus constantly. Edwards clearly has someone who talks at the club. And whoever that person is, I wish they’d shut the fuck up. Transfers like this one are far less likely to succeed if they’re leaked to the press too early.

Law always sits above a contract

And Pickford's mam used to sit next to me in the Leazes.

Jordan’s a secret mag. Pass it on.

Agreed. There is an odd assumption from many that we’ve now broken into the big boys’ club. We’re still a fair distance from the Sky Six revenue-wise, never mind competing for the top honours. Spurs are still a bigger club in that regard - it is worth remembering that they finished 8th but could easily have finished higher and that is considered a bad season. I still think our target should be 8th or higher next season.

I wish Jesus would stop telling cranks to be cunts. It’s bad crack

Durham is ancient and beautiful and was hopelessly situated to be an industrial centre following the industrial revolution. Which is why it is still ancient and beautiful with the population to match. Sunderland, being where it was, was well placed as a coal port and of course as a place where ships could be built. It still has a town rather than a city feel (as does Newcastle in many ways). The big difference for me is that Newcastle clearly has heritage which pre-dates the industrial revolution. And also isn’t a shithole populated by bitter, orc-like bastards

Yeah, agreed. He’d be the big summer signing I’d think. I’ve got the feeling that we’ve moved on from Maddison after the bid last summer.

Spurs always looked like his likely destination for me. He feels like a Spurs player. We’ll see of course.

Szoboszlai would be my preference - can’t quite believe we’re in for a player like that. Could easily see him being one of the best attacking midfielders on the planet in a couple of years. Maddison would be a good signing - Szoboszlai an incredible for me.

Not mutually exclusive tbf

He’s an excellent footballer - if the lad continues to develop he’ll be an England squad player at a minimum by the end of next season.

Yeah, I’ve wrote on here before I reckon £100-120m is likely and £150m if the right players are available. £75m seems to be clear bullshitting.

That doesn’t mean throwing loads and loads of money at it. Man City failed at the beginning because they signed ‘name’ mercenaries- and we’re starting from a lower base. Buying a load of expensive players right now is more likely to fail than succeed. Sensible and proportionate squad building is the way forward. And that’s precisely what they’re doing, in fairness. While I think the £75m budget stuff is gamesmanship, the real budget isn’t likely to be too much more due to FFP

100% The only way around some fairly straightforward mathematics is to do what Chelsea have done and offer ridiculously long contracts to players to amortise the fees over a long period. Our owners aren’t that stupid. The CL money bonanza also isn’t quite the bonanza many are expecting, if the owners have made the sensible calculation that we might go out in the group stage. Our income is still far lower than the Sky Six. It’ll take a few years to justify the ramping up of sponsorship money. Also - and this is one quite a few don’t seem to want to accept - the PIF having vast cash reserves doesn’t necessarily mean that they fancy pouring a chunk of it into NUFC for shits and giggles. I think they see this as an investment - and investments need returns.

Europe’s best team win it - but they made hard work of that. Doubt they give a shite now though

Harold Rivers was one of their first managers, and he was from Walbottle. There ends my knowledge of any Newcastle-St Etienne connection.

Tottenham Holsten fan

I’ll stick my hand up and say the only football tops I ever had as a kid were NUFC or England. There was a lad who had a pair of Spurs socks who we took the mickey out of. Mind you, when I went to high school there was loads of lads from other slightly more affluent areas (in Newcastle west end terms anyway) who seemed to support every team and have every strip going. Lost on me tbh

Lee Clark moved from Newcastle to Sunderland. It’s meaningless mate