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10/10. Im not sure what everyone is moaning about. We have massively strengthened the GK department. We have an England International, a Slovakian International, a Greek international a former England international and Mark Gillespie all ready and waiting. We might even be able to re-call Max Thompson if 5 of them all get injured.

I wouldn't fancy being an Everton player trying to get home tonight.

Wykiki being the voice of reason is fucking scaring me.

I've not read most of the thread from last night as I've been out on't push iron. So only seen a few snippets. The clickbait headlines by cunts like Chicken Nonce and Hope are just that and I am not paying any attention to them. I am as disappointed as any fan, we all want the excitement of a big name coming in and all clubs, not just ours needs fresh blood in to keep the team competitive. That's failed somewhat, but to pin point it onto Mitchell or Howe or Eales without any fucking insider knowledge is mad. Someone said, it's the first disappointing window we have had under the new ownership and tbh, I am not shitting me kegs. We have kept our big names, we have kept Eddie. Like I said last night we have a new team in Mitchel etc and that's going to take time for bonds to be made etc. Other teams around us last season bought big and we had one of the worse injury crisis I have seen at the club, whilst playing CL football and we still finished 7th above Man Utd. AND. If it wasn't for Man Utd winning the FA Cup we would have had Europe this season! So let's all take a deep breathe and look forward to the next few months. I still have trust in Eddie and the club.

It’s the first transfer window since the takeover that has to be considered a failure, but I think people are a bit overreacting especially with blaming individuals. It’s not football manager and there always more than two parties involved in negotiations including agents and players. I am pretty sure we were looking in several players, sometimes the clubs didn’t want to sell or demanding excessive fees, sometimes likely players weren’t interested or demanding excessive wages, sometimes a structure of a deal couldn’t get worked out or agents were asking excessive fees. It is easy to say that we should have been able to at least finalise one or two deals without really knowing why we failed. I do worry that people will act like spoiled brats though if performances don’t pick up and we get some poor results in the next couple of games. The atmosphere around the club could easily become quite toxic.

18th Crystal Palace 19th Southampton 20th Everton

Stop the season now imo.

What could possibly account for this Everton surge in form I wonder??

Aye well it was likely we would end up with a difficult window. - Ashworth leaving with his laptop of players early in the year and Ratcliffe whinging for months meant we were on the back foot for transfers - Amanda leaving and the PSR debacle in June likely affected targets, Mitchell and Bunce coming in. Most execs need a listening and learning period. I cant imagine Mitchell would be splashing the cash as soon as he got in the door like Adam Pearson in Hooters - We haven't had the luxury of selling £100m players like Brighton and West Ham to fund investment, and our turnover isnt good enough, Thanks to Mike Ashley for both of those! It is growing pretty quickly. We have a load of shite on the books on high wages and long contracts that nobody wants. Isaac Hayden ffs - We have had no youth setup to help feed the PSR beast like Chelsea etc do. After years of underinvestment we have had a bit of wiggle room to spalsh a bit of money. If there was one think about Ashley, he ran a tight ship Looking back, Amanda did a super job but have a niggling thought that she may have overstretched a little in terms of finances hence why we were where we were in June. We have had the double edged sword of a fantastic season under Eddie to get us to CL. Id rather have us build slowly over 5 years rather than do a Leicester City. I think like a manager, Eales needs a season to prove himself out on his own. They seem to be building a proper management team, still remember when Charnley was doing the job of Eales, Stavely, Bunce, Mitchell and Kathy the tea lady. Aye its been a shit window but hoping the financial foundations are in place. Its delicate though as we dont want to lose Bruno etc

Everton 🤣

Bit harsh on @RobElliott, thought it was a pretty decent summary tbf.

Spot on really. I think the slow building of the club within the rules is the aim. It’s not what fans want and may cost us some big names currently at the club, as players’ prime years are a relatively small amount of time and they’re the ones where we can bring in big money too. A point re: Staveley and her husband, a lot of people seem to think their departure is a big part of the reason our targets weren’t signed this window. I’m not sure how true that is, but even if it is, the same people seem to give them a free pass re: the PSR shortfall. Also re: Hope and his ‘sources’. There’s really no way of assessing their credibility. Is it very likely people with much sway have loose lips and are talking to journalists? These sorts of things tend to get embellished at each degree further from the real people in the know too. I’m not saying it was good window, but I think the only real error (because a lot of things are outside the club’s control) was not telling Palace to fuck off weeks ago.

An engineer goes to hell and asks the devil why it's so hot so the devil tells him the AC is knackered. So the engineer fixes it then goes on to fix the escalators, all the electrical including TVs etc and even fixes the Wi-Fi. Soon hell is a very nice place to live. God notices and goes to confront Satan and ask him what's going on. He replies that he was sent an engineer who fixed everything. God replies "Hang on, that's wrong, all engineers go to heaven specifically to prevent this from happening". Satan replies "Well what are you going to do about it?" God says "I'm going to take you to court and sue you". Satan says... "Where the fuck are you going to find a lawyer?"

I can’t quite believe we’ve shit the bed as much as we have tbh. It started badly with the Anderson and Minteh PSR debacle and got worse from there. I understand what they’re saying about only wanting players who can bring us forward but the idea that, in the whole of European football, the only defender who can do that is Marc Guehi is frankly laughable. The longer we go, the more I think that we are genuinely snookered by PSR and we need to brace for losing Isak, Gordon or Bruno before long otherwise we can’t spend. Trying to get rid of some of the shite in this squad is near impossible since they’re all nothing players on big money who won’t move or they’re permacrocks who nobody will take a chance on. If £70 million for Guehi was going to sail us close to the wind with PSR, then why the fuck aren’t we trying to box clever? I hope that Mitchell coming in late has meant that the strategy, if you can call it that, for this window was already in place and he didn’t want to deviate but he’s got a massive January window on his hands here. Once more, we’re asking Eddie Howe to perform miracles, not only on the pitch, but in also convincing our better players that the ambition is still there and we want to kick on.

Mate of mine is a maths teacher with a phobia of negative numbers. He’ll stop at nothing to avoid them.

I do wonder at something Silverstone said or hinted at a few weeks ago regarding sponsorship deals, now he may have just been covering his own back or just being as sensible as anyone in his position would be but said we have to do deals which are in the club's best interests long-term rather than just taking anything on offer now which could be regretted later, (like us being stuck with castore and fun888), which I totally get but it had me wondering if they're confident they'll have more wriggle room in the near future if the rules are tweaked? That's just my wishful thinking admittedly but it's all we have at the minute.

I see Haaland has given up on football to get the benefits of a simpler life labouring using a pneumatic drill?

Absolute horse shit. I'll start at a moderate 5/10. Then looking at the lack of preparation opening in June with some panic sales that weaken us, drops it to 4/10. Realising they done nothing on targets while this was going on i'll be kind and go to 3.5/10. Spunking all your time on a decent defender, not having a plan B and twisting even when the prices went beyond unreasonable, 2.5/10 and if that gasp of desperation is to be believed with the last day Forest offder, 1/10. Oh, and signing keepers and holding on to Dubs, -1/10 I'll give them back to 0 for concluding the Hall deal. Oh and for holding on to Bruno +1 but leaking the whole Gordon thing, back to 0.

up for this one tomorrow, 5am start on a solo journey so will probably tailgate an artic all the way up to save meself some petrol money, tight twat that I am. anyway, was up for the 2-3 defeat immediately after the takeover but have missed the last two resounding victories against these cunts. I'll either be there to witness things always happening in threes or I should've stopped away so as not to jinx it. despite the very best efforts by the two cunts (eales/mitchell) to sabotage our season and the fact I'll probably have the misfortune to be sat next to the odd lunatic who doesn't appreciate craig hope's astonishingly good investigative journalism such as @Toonpack for example, I still think I'll have a canny day out...... 3-1

Please define "surge".

the beeb seem to think fulham are having a canny game against themselves ....

Sky lad 'It's the end of Arsenal's 100% record' Oh, so Brighton weren't on a 100% record either? Oh no, they're not classed as Top 6. I get it.

it's worse than that, they've both sneaked back in...

https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/newcastle-transfer-2025-project-3254569?ito=copy-link_share_article-top

Their is only one correct way to look at this transfer winow:

9/10 I upped my bid again, like Gemmill

You lads need to stride into SJP on Monday with a flip chart and get this revelatory lecture delivered to Mitchell and Co.

Nah. I think we should have moved on from the Guehi deal early enough to move on to other targets. We should have had our own "deadline day" after which we abandoned the Guehi deal in time to get somebody else in. Instead we followed Parish around like a puppy for weeks too long and it has cost us any chance of getting anybody in let alone a player that was never for sale.

Physician, heal thyself

I was reading a bit on I about PSR, and how to "fix" it. One piece really stuck out about shifting the likes of Almiron and Wilson:

A young Orca is swimming with his dad and says ” Where did I come from Dad?” Pa Orca says ” Well son, you came out of my penis and met one of your mother’s eggs, then grew in to you her belly.” Kid O is impressed and says “ Wow, thanks Dad!” Pa says “ You’re whale cum, son, you’re whale cum”

A Yorkshireman once said. Ow much, 20p, fuck off.

I don’t consider it a fuck up tbh, a fuck up would have been buying some player out of desperation who turned out to be a billy big bollocks and he destroyed the squad harmony/mentality the fans would have been happy though. We have criteria we want in players coming in/the resultant financials, to not compromise that is a decision, not a mistake. The club officials are paid the big money to make those decisions and the results of those decisions have career defining repercussions, they won’t take them lightly and I would hope not emotionally either.

I think it is perfectly fair to hold the individuals in charge of the transfers responsible for failing to get transfers done. I think it is also possible to simultaneously accept that there were difficulties involved in getting the transfers done. I'm certain every transfer window poses challenges of its own kind. Perhaps the first one was worse when we were bottom of the league, nailed on for relegation, etc. etc. But we managed to sign some impressive players. Anyway that's just a hypothetical example. From my perspective, I accept that there were challenges to be overcome. But I think they could've been overcome like similar difficulties have been overcome in the past. Perhaps Mitchell was naive in his assessment that he had a good relationship with Parish. Perhaps he should've read the writing on the wall with every iota of the transfer story being leaked to the press at every turn that him and Eales were being setup to look like fools. Maybe. We can't say either way but it's possible. The point is that there are too many variables for us to accurately assess the differences between reasons for failure and excuses. That's why in this domain the results are typically taken to be king. With poor results there is a burden of responsibility for failure placed on the individuals most responsible. From my perspective, this is no different to a head coach getting criticised for a run of poor results. Rightly or wrongly it's the way it is. I'm repeating myself largely from an earlier post. But anyway I absolutely agree with the last part of your post. I also hope people don't start behaving like spoiled brats. We are in an amazing position as a club compared to where we were. I really do think we have the right people in charge and I don't want them sacked or anything even remotely close to having their positions put in jeopardy. I also fear that the mongs could turn on the club's hierarchy and make things toxic if we don't perform well on the pitch. That's the last thing we need. At the end of the day, I mostly agree that the situation we've been placed in by PSR is incredibly incredibly difficult. I just think that we can blame certain individuals responsible (on a message board where it is of absolutely zero consequence) and still support them at the same time to continue in the job because they're the best person for it. tl;dr: I have every confidence that we have people in key positions who are capable of learning fast and adapting. But they're personally responsible for this fuck up because it's part of their job to do everything possible to recruit players.

This window is all the more miserable for Dan Ashworth having a decent window at Man United. 5 players in who will end up in the starting XI and the likes of McTominay, Greenwood, Sancho, Wan Bissaka and Van de Beek off the books for a fee. I still don't believe we couldn't have made a modest fee on Trippier, Wilson or Almiron. Absolutely amateurish not to have walked away from the Guehi deal until the last day of the window.

Next time he’s in Aldi I hope the tins on corned beef fall on his head.

Absolutely. Can I recommend lots of fingersnapping as you pop these ideas at them. You really want to get the point across that you lads are pure free styling these ideas into existence. It's gonna be like Eight Mile up there.

FYP

It’s rarely good to leave things until the last moment. But as with the transfer dealings I am unsure how much if it is really down to a lack of competence. We had to sign players knowing that would put us in a bad position in regards to psr. We do also still suffer from years of mismanagement. We don’t have saleable assets, at least none we actually want to get rid off. We also can’t force other clubs to sign our players. There is only so much you can actually do. Obviously there are players like Almiron who could get sold, but I understand the reluctance to do it without having a suitable replacement in place who will improve us. I do also think that a clubs are still reluctant to deal with us and especially do us favours. We are rich on paper and got a pretty bad reputation because of our owners. I can imagine that does dealing with other clubs still difficult, especially in England. People like Parish probably feel happy to hamper our progress as much as possible. That’s why we still get those regulations that are foremost in place to hurt us.

I hope Susanna Reid gave Parish crabs.

Well this has been a cluster fuck of epic proportions. We were told day one he has sepsis, and there was nothing they could do. We agree that he should be put on end of life care and tried coming to terms with it. The next day a different consultant said during rounds “ah the antibiotics seem to be working, let’s get him some more and send him home”. He had not had any antibiotics, as he was on end of life care.. so we disagreed. He was moved wards to free a bed, and another new consultant sat us both down and told us he was happy to treat him again but it was unlikely to work and we should prepare ourselves that he might not make it. So he was taken off end of life care, and has been treated with antibiotics for the last 2 days. They finally got his bloods back yesterday and he is recovering.. I don’t claim to be medically trained in anyway whatsoever, but do doctors not talk to each other/read notes on patients? My mam is nearly 70, and has been told twice this week by separate consultants that her first born is going to die when all he seemingly needed was some antibiotics. Also trying to sleep in a hospital chair for days on end has fucked my back, on the plus side I’m sat outside james cook now (4.45am) and it’s the first time I’ve not seen any smack heads around here all week. Swings and roundabouts.