Ellis H

The fact that the top 3 favourites are Man City, Us and Man Utd is very promising. One is in the worst run of form in nearly 10 years and the other even longer. If we’d have had a better transfer window we could genuinely have done the double without too much hassle. Having said that, winning the double would be all the more sweeter because we aren’t allowed to.

Dread to think of how long it’s been since one manager took us to 2 (proper) cup finals. Couldn’t be happening to a more worthy person.

“Eddie Howe confirmed this morning that Newcastle had done all the preparation to sign Abdukhodir Khusanov this month but were simply unable to move because of PSR situation” Things like this don’t help.

It’s not really fair to say that when Howe himself said we were trying to buy that new Man City defender despite not actually being able to due to PSR. Combined with Guehi and the late Elanga bid, that presumably means the club either don’t understand the rules, they are willing to sell a much better player to fund it or we do actually have money.

I doubt we’ll ever know from Howe himself but it would be interesting to know what he was told in the summer regarding this window.

I remember there being quite a bit of anger when the transfer window closed in the summer and many saying “this can’t happen again”. So far, it has happened again but now we have a smaller squad.

https://www.premierleague.com/clubs/12/manchester-united/fixtures If they don’t get much from 4 of their next 5 then they are dead and buried. They’re getting nothing after Leicester.

The hard part in the summer is not just replacing the outgoing players but actually improving on them in a serious way. We aren’t necessarily selling good players but we’re now at the stage of trying to get top 4 regularly so the upgrades will need to be bought with that in mind.

If Everton beat Liverpool next Wednesday they’ll go above Man Utd.

The Elanga bid I meant was the alleged £35million one on deadline day. I don’t understand the rules at all but I’m more confused by the mixed messages tbh. Probably best to just wait and see unfortunately.

Why did we try and sign that new Man City defender? Even if it was on loan and then buy in the summer, why can’t we do that with someone else? It makes no sense for us to be the favourites to sign him (and arguably Guehi and Elanga) then realise we can’t actually afford him. It’s either not true or extreme incompetence.

Since Mitoma signed (in the league only) Mitoma - 35 G/A in 62.6 games Murphy - 28 G/A in 40.7 games

“[James Benge] Al-Nassr already readying second and final offer worth up to £90 million for Kaoru Mitoma. Brighton are reluctant to sell.“ Insane.

In most cases, It’s no longer about how much a player is worth but about how much a team can afford. It’s unrealistic to say Longstaff is worth roughly the same as Almiron but almost all clubs are spending pennies and not pounds.

As unwatchable as Man Utd are, Onana is playing so you can’t look away.

Looking at the current table we just need Forest and Bournemouth to naturally regress and Villa to struggle due to their extra games and that leaves us top 5. It’s only Liverpool, Arsenal, Man City and Chelsea after that.

Scary thing about Cole is he only scored a couple of penalties for us. He’d have scored loads more if Beardsley wasn’t so good at them.

Only Robinson, Saka and Salah have more assists in the league. Also more than a certain Bruno Fernandes.

He’ll be in tears by the 6th minute.

Thank god for PSR.

Whatever money we make from the Almiron sale, including saved wages, need to go towards a new contract. Absolute priority number one now.

As bad as he is, selling him and not replacing him makes the squad smaller when it’s already tiny. That becomes Howe’s problem when it’s actually a recruitment problem.

It’s possible that he might not want Almiron to leave because a lengthy Murphy injury with no Almiron leaves us with no real RW for 4 months. Put simply, he’s better than nothing and that goes for a few squad players who should also be on the chopping block. I’m sure Howe would be happy for Almiron and others to leave if he was confident they’d be upgraded but there’s no guarantee there since the £50+million we had to spend in the summer has disappeared.

Feels like massive nitpicking but they went out the league cup in August while we’ve been playing in it up to last week. No real need for “excuses” though, they were just the better team on the day.

It isn’t like it was under Pardew, Bruce etc where a new signing would start at 7/10 for talent and quickly become a 5/10 at best so we had to be a lot more careful. It’s often the opposite under Howe so we should really be putting faith in him doing that with some calculated gambles. It might just be the difference between Champions League or not.