Backroom & executive staff

[Mike]

On 03/12/2025 at 07:21, Pilko said:

Just saw this on TransferRoom's page on LinkedIn, apparently Forest scout Thomas Federspiel has left his role & joined Ross Wilson at NUFC as First Team & Global Talent Scout for Brazil, Ecuador and Colombia.

 

Christ what a life.

[r0cafella]

22 minutes ago, Jackie Broon said:

 

It feels like a bit of a shift from Eales, who always seemed to be more cautious when speaking about our ambitions.

It's much more aligned with what the chairman says but at the same time they are raised supporters expectations again. 

 

It's a strange one and a topic which should probably be skirted for now as it just lumps pressure on the Gaffa. I don't see how we will be equipped to compete with real Madrid in 5 years

[Jewel]

7 hours ago, Dokko said:

Patronising comments with this best by 2030 talk. Must think it's our 1st rodeo. Still yet to see any actions from pif that they are serious about making that happen. If so the infra projects would be well under way.

 

Just be honest. Well keep growing as much as we can and see where it takes us and the infra stuff might happen in the next 20 years as everything goes at a snails pace.  

It would also help if PIF stopped funding the clubs we want to compete with by giving them extortionate fees for their unwanted riff-raff.

 

There is no reason for them to give Liverpool £100m for Salah when they could just as easily get him for £50m. Or better yet, just don't buy from Premier League clubs to begin with. 

[TheBrownBottle]

1 hour ago, r0cafella said:

It's much more aligned with what the chairman says but at the same time they are raised supporters expectations again. 

 

It's a strange one and a topic which should probably be skirted for now as it just lumps pressure on the Gaffa. I don't see how we will be equipped to compete with real Madrid in 5 years

They’re talking about doing nothing re the stadium - new or refurb - by 2030.  We’re solidly mid-table in terms of matchday revenues at the moment and by then there is a good chance others may have overtaken us who are below us at present.  I’m not joining the dots tbh.

 

I did like that he seems to think there’s effectively been left on the table and more that they could be doing commercially - so let’s see what happens there.  But I think there’s room for improvement and it gives me a bit of confidence that he’s pointing it out.

 

Ultimately ambition isn’t saying ‘we want to be no.1’.  Fucking Ashley gave it the ‘we’re looking to win something, and I count CL qualification as winning something’ and then proceeded to do nowt to get us there.  

[r0cafella]

4 minutes ago, TheBrownBottle said:

They’re talking about doing nothing re the stadium - new or refurb - by 2030.  We’re solidly mid-table in terms of matchday revenues at the moment and by then there is a good chance others may have overtaken us who are below us at present.  I’m not joining the dots tbh.

 

I did like that he seems to think there’s effectively been left on the table and more that they could be doing commercially - so let’s see what happens there.  But I think there’s room for improvement and it gives me a bit of confidence that he’s pointing it out.

 

Ultimately ambition isn’t saying ‘we want to be no.1’.  Fucking Ashley gave it the ‘we’re looking to win something, and I count CL qualification as winning something’ and then proceeded to do nowt to get us there.  

We have definitely left plenty on the table despite what the idiot Silverstone said. Hopefully Dave is sorting that out. It's also encouraging to hear him say he wants us to branch out and get more of our own sponsors instead of relying on PIF. 

 

We can't get much more money from match days with our current constraints, plus let's be honest the club are already rinsing cans especially when it comes to the amount of Merch being flogged. 

 

It's obviously great we are on target to break 400m in revenue however if we don't qualify again for the CL this year you'd imagine we'd see our first drop under the current ownership. 

 

Despite me wanting to believe I always have this nagging "your handshake isn't matching you smile" vibe from our ownership. Investing in players when you have a coach like Eddie is no brainer our square value is much higher than weve paid after all. The hare is worryingly languishing in the long grass though, with more delays hinted at. 

[TheBrownBottle]

14 minutes ago, r0cafella said:

We have definitely left plenty on the table despite what the idiot Silverstone said. Hopefully Dave is sorting that out. It's also encouraging to hear him say he wants us to branch out and get more of our own sponsors instead of relying on PIF. 

 

We can't get much more money from match days with our current constraints, plus let's be honest the club are already rinsing cans especially when it comes to the amount of Merch being flogged. 

 

It's obviously great we are on target to break 400m in revenue however if we don't qualify again for the CL this year you'd imagine we'd see our first drop under the current ownership. 

 

Despite me wanting to believe I always have this nagging "your handshake isn't matching you smile" vibe from our ownership. Investing in players when you have a coach like Eddie is no brainer our square value is much higher than weve paid after all. The hare is worryingly languishing in the long grass though, with more delays hinted at. 

Yep - we’re almost half a decade in now.  It doesn’t take that long to actually make a decision on things like what to do with a stadium.  

[r0cafella]

Just now, TheBrownBottle said:

Yep - we’re almost half a decade in now.  It doesn’t take that long to actually make a decision on things like what to do with a stadium.  

They still haven't decided on a patch of grass to build a training ground on in one of the least densely populated regions of the country. I do try and give the benefit of the doubt but it tells me they aren't serious/ it isn't a priority. 

 

But it makes sense because ultimately, the people who make decisions on these things are bean counters and explaining intangibles to such people is always extremely difficult. 

[r0cafella]

To add on. When it comes to the stadium I do actually have some sympathy. It's difficult, let's say the site we currently have is too small and we have to move. Understandably moving out of the city isn't an option for a lot of folks which makes it even more difficult. A lot of folk would rather do nothing than consider moving out of the city centre so if that becomes the choice because of various challenges a lot of folks would be up in arms. 

[TheBrownBottle]

Just now, r0cafella said:

To add on. When it comes to the stadium I do actually have some sympathy. It's difficult, let's say the site we currently have is too small and we have to move. Understandably moving out of the city isn't an option for a lot of folks which makes it even more difficult. A lot of folk would rather do nothing than consider moving out of the city centre so if that becomes the choice because of various challenges a lot of folks would be up in arms. 

Perhaps - but I don’t think local mumbling and grumbling would stop them it they were serious.  
 

If they wanted a 90k super stadium with state of the art commercial elements and the only place they could build it was in a big field near Killingworth they’d just do it even if the support whined for a bit.  I can pretty guarantee folks would whine, the Ronny Gill would do pieces on it incessantly, and when it opened everyone would trundle up to the new Sven Adult Books Killingworth Astroarena.  Newcastle and the NE generally doesn’t act on its moaning at any point - Ashley proved that.  

[timeEd32]

2 hours ago, r0cafella said:

Yes absolutely, it's a regression across the board. 

I think your expectations are far too high then and that’s probably true for a lot of people on here that are perpetually unhappy.

[r0cafella]

4 minutes ago, timeEd32 said:

I think your expectations are far too high then and that’s probably true for a lot of people on here that are perpetually unhappy.

Ed my friend, don't confuse my personal expectations with factual statements. For my personal expectations I expect is to finish wherever our spend puts us in terms of squad cost. A lot has been invested so cheering regression isn't something id expect from anyone. 

[timeEd32]

34 minutes ago, r0cafella said:

Ed my friend, don't confuse my personal expectations with factual statements. For my personal expectations I expect is to finish wherever our spend puts us in terms of squad cost. A lot has been invested so cheering regression isn't something id expect from anyone. 

I just don’t see how a CL quarterfinal (and the money that comes with it) could be classed as a disappointing season. It would mean we either finish top 8 in the league phase, which will require at least two more CL wins, or we win a two legged playoff. 
 

And 8th in the PL, which is within the margin of error for squad cost anyway, while juggling four comps and being screwed by Isak… 

[r0cafella]

7 minutes ago, timeEd32 said:

I just don’t see how a CL quarterfinal (and the money that comes with it) could be classed as a disappointing season. It would mean we either finish top 8 in the league phase, which will require at least two more CL wins, or we win a two legged playoff. 
 

And 8th in the PL, which is within the margin of error for squad cost anyway, while juggling four comps and being screwed by Isak… 

League is the bread and butter and we absolutely must qualify for Europe. We need to cement that. A one off jaunt in the greatly diminished "champions league" ( that name kills me these days) isn't sufficient. We need to grow our revenues by being consistent peaks and troughs won't help. We have to build on the players we have as replacing the likes of Tino and Sandro will be extremely difficult. 

 

I was probably the first on here to absolutely slam the rat, to the point @Nobody was pretty unhappy with me. However let's be clear here, we can't blame this season on someone who doesn't play for us that's incorrect. Let's also not pretend like the club didn't know long before it became public he wanted to go. 

[macphisto]

2 hours ago, r0cafella said:

We have definitely left plenty on the table despite what the idiot Silverstone said. Hopefully Dave is sorting that out. It's also encouraging to hear him say he wants us to branch out and get more of our own sponsors instead of relying on PIF. 

Silverstone was just towing the party line. Any sponsors we get in the next few years will either directly be related to PIF, like our existing sponsors, or indirectly related to PIF. For example, I'd be surprised if our Adidas deal was not related, behind closed doors, to Adidas sponsoring a lot of the Saudi League teams. 

 

Not big money, in the grand scheme of things, but we're hiring a lot of these executives and what do they actually do? Our current commercial deals with Noon and Sela would have been sorted in 10 minutes and we've got the infrastructure guy who worked at Manchester Airport. What exactly is he working on? It's money for nothing or  maybe I've misunderstood their roles and they're relatively minor. 

[Scoot]

7 hours ago, r0cafella said:

Yes absolutely, it's a regression across the board. 

 

But our revenue is currently 7th so finishing 7th or 8th is par for the course. 

[Lush Vlad]

6 hours ago, Mike said:

 

Christ what a life.

I’d last about 6 months, tops. If the yayo didn’t kill me. The Latinas would  

[Keegans Export]

4 hours ago, timeEd32 said:

I think your expectations are far too high then and that’s probably true for a lot of people on here that are perpetually unhappy.

This is kind of the problem with the recent comments coming out of the club though. 

 

In your scenario, we're going into the 26/27 season with no more trophies and no European football. A challenging summer of either convincing our current players to stay or new ones to sign lies ahead. And they're telling me we're going to be arguably the top club on the planet 3½ years later? It doesn't add up. 

[TRon]

9 hours ago, Vedder said:

I might be negative but I just read this as absolute spin. We’ve just been told that there’ll be no serious move forward with stadium plans for the foreseeable future. Put this within a message of huge ambition and everyone overlooks the absolute lack of ambition to move us forward. 
 

As a few have said, look at actions rather than words. We’re not making the moves to that line up with being amongst the best in the world as things stand. I appreciate it’s not easy to make such things happen but we should at least have commitment from the owners to do something. 

 

 

The actions are they hired Hopkinson in the first place. If they just wanted to milk the club there would never have been talk of a new stadium at all. Neither would there be any talk of PIF funding half of it, they would just take out a bigger loan like most other owners do. 

[Vedder]

20 minutes ago, TRon said:

 

 

The actions are they hired Hopkinson in the first place. If they just wanted to milk the club there would never have been talk of a new stadium at all. Neither would there be any talk of PIF funding half of it, they would just take out a bigger loan like most other owners do. 

I’m not saying they’re out to milk the club, there’s much easier ways of making money that buying a football club. 
 

But for whatever reason, the facts are that they are not moving forward with any significant plans for the stadium. At the same time Hopkinson is talking of world domination. The two things don’t align. We don’t need a new stadium to improve our  financial position but we certainly do if we’re going to compete with the world’s best. 

[Toonpack]

6 minutes ago, Vedder said:

I’m not saying they’re out to milk the club, there’s much easier ways of making money that buying a football club. 
 

But for whatever reason, the facts are that they are not moving forward with any significant plans for the stadium. At the same time Hopkinson is talking of world domination. The two things don’t align. We don’t need a new stadium to improve our  financial position but we certainly do if we’re going to compete with the world’s best. 

 

That's simply not true, "working on it every day" was his quote, he was totally correct in his emphasis on things that can generate additional revenue in the immediate future not something that, even if announced tomorrow, wouldn't generate us a penny for 5+ years.

[Vedder]

17 minutes ago, Toonpack said:

 

That's simply not true, "working on it every day" was his quote, he was totally correct in his emphasis on things that can generate additional revenue in the immediate future not something that, even if announced tomorrow, wouldn't generate us a penny for 5+ years.

You can work on anything every day, it means nothing. I agree, its going to take 5+ years from the day they make the decision, but we haven't even got a time frame on a decision to be made. Block out all the noise and the truth is that there's no momentum behind plans regarding the stadium. 

 

I also agree that in the meantime we should be looking to maximise all revenue generating channels. But one is not at the expense of the other.  

[Toonpack]

5 minutes ago, Vedder said:

You can work on anything every day, it means nothing. I agree, its going to take 5+ years from the day they make the decision, but we haven't even got a time frame on a decision to be made. Block out all the noise and the truth is that there's no momentum behind plans regarding the stadium. 

 

I also agree that in the meantime we should be looking to maximise all revenue generating channels. But one is not at the expense of the other.  

 

Maybe, because the stadium isn't a priority for where we are now? It certainly isn't for me tbh, it'll happen when it happens, generating additional "immediate" revenue is much more important IMO.

[TRon]

8 minutes ago, Toonpack said:

 

Maybe, because the stadium isn't a priority for where we are now? It certainly isn't for me tbh, it'll happen when it happens, generating additional "immediate" revenue is much more important IMO.

 

 

100% this. 

[Dr Venkman]

9 hours ago, TheBrownBottle said:

They’re talking about doing nothing re the stadium - new or refurb - by 2030. 

Are they?

[Yorkie]

Just catching up on Hopkinson's soundbites to the journos. Don't feel like putting too much weight into them but I appreciate the reminder that we're being led by ambitious people who want the club to grow and succeed. I don't read it as bullshit; that guy, with his track record, wouldn't be here to peddle bullshit.

 

Just feel content that we're generally in safe hands and the trajectory remains upwards, relative to the context (i.e. financial rules).