The Fish

Echo what someone else has said, I don't think Benitez would trade Newcastle for Leicester. We've had a terrible time of late, but we remain a club with huge potential and the existing infrastructure to meet that potential. There's a small group of clubs that meet Benitez' criteria and, frankly, Leicester aren't one of them. To be honest, Leicester should have been scouring the globe for a manager that can grow with the club. A Pochettino type; young hungry, talented etc. They should be looking to establish themselves as a top half side and working damn hard to capitalise on the sudden and unexpected leap forward.

Relieved we farmed out the big striker who wasn't scoring and was a bit of a liability and got Slimani in instead.

As long as he scores in the first half I'm totally ok with that.

I mean, the ideal situation is obviously Mitrovic scoring, whipping his shirt off to celebrate to get the yellow, then a straight red for a celebratory headbutt on, oh, I dunno, lets say their physio.

Just finished Wild Wild Country, and it was brilliant. Bonkers, but brilliant.

Probably spent more signing him and paying his wages than we did on Gibson. Which is the point. I can't believe this is even a point of contention, you ornery fucks.

Put a fiver on him to score and be carded at 13/2 and £2 on him to score and get a red at 100/1.

I think Bellamy and Cameron do their bit too, to be fair

Sometimes I don't think you're even trying.

Not guaranteed, but even if we "only" get £1m, that would go some way to paying for the facilities and coaching of young talent from the North East. Talent that we should now be doing our utmost to monopolise. As Southampton did when Portsmouth tumbled down the leagues. I appear to be losing a few of you with my posts, perhaps I should make them more comprehensive?

I couldn't find anyone good looking called ewerk

Dunno what I'd be more ashamed of, being a dogging UKIPer from Lincoln, or being called Terry/Colin...

Put money on him to score and be carded.

Some UKIP-er from Lincoln called Terry. Him and Colin, the bloke he met dogging.

It was widely reported that we could end up receiving £6m for Lewis Gibson. https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/everton-agree-deal-highly-rated-13372346 https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/lewis-gibson-been-absent-newcastle-13372644 https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/4111038/everton-transfer-news-lewis-gibson-newcastle-united/ You didn't miss it, because I didn't say it. You just Thompered, because that's what you do.

Now's the time to hoover up any young talent in the area. Spend a couple of million upgrading our youth coaching set up and the facilities now, and get a decent production line of kids coming through. Lewis Gibson's fee could pay for it. It's surely the most sustainable transfer policy. If Newcastle consistently produced a Lewis Gibson every year or so, that’s a much wiser approach then spending Millions on fees, Hundreds of Thousands on agents and on wages, only for Achraf Lazaar to be a flop. Even if we only sold 2 or 3 kids for £100k each, then the Youth facilities pay for themselves.

Did I say £30m? I thought I was far more conservative than that.

As our resident expert, would you be surprised if a Championship club made a bid for Honeyman and/or Gooch in the summer?

"Outlandish" I'm happy to admit I expected Short to fund recruitment in January in order to stave off relegation and was surprised when he preferred to gamble on the existing players being enough to turn their season around. I don't think that's a particularly outlandish opinion; “billionaire owner will spend some money to avoid a double relegation”. Can you list some more of these outlandish predictions I've made? I'm just not going to fall into the same trap they did when they predicted Benitez wouldn't join, wouldn't stay, would fail in the 2nd flight, only bought shit, only got promoted because he spent the most, would leave in the summer because he couldn’t spend, only stayed because he spent a fortune, and so on and so forth. They are financially fucked, they are in the 3rd tier of English football again, they are a laughing stock. I don’t need to exaggerate how fucked they are by stating they’ll definitely not come back up, or that none of their young players are good enough for the Championship. They’re shit but so is League 1, and even though I don’t think they’ll necessarily bounce straight back into the Championship, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. Saying that there’ll be some interest in their younger players from a Championship club isn’t outlandish either. Lynden Gooch has 1 goal and 3 assists from 12 starts, George Honeyman has 6 goals and 2 assists. Would you really be staggered if Ipswich or Shef Wed took a punt on them? Think this is another case of reacting to the poster and not the post.

Quite like the idea of the England team travelling the country if I'm honest.

My initial position was that there'd be some interest from Championship clubs. I still think there will be. I don't operate from a certainty of a positive outcome, I just don't operate from a position of certainty in the negative outcome. After it looked certain that they'd go down I've read that they're not coming back up (as if we're all suddenly expert on League 1), that they'll sell all their players despite them all being too shit for anyone to be interested in them. From the admittedly little I've seen and heard about them, there's one or two of the younger sunderland players who have looked a little better than their league position suggests. Honeyman and Gooch e.g. If you've seen enough of them to be convinced they'll never amount to anything, then fair enough. I'm not writing them off as footballers just because they've been involved in Sunderland's current plight though.

We'll see. I expect the mackems to sell anyone who attracts a decent bid, and those young players may well be footballers that Ipswich (or their ilk) fancy taking a punt on them. It's too simplistic to say that because Sunderland have been dross, all of their young players are incapable of playing Championship football (or higher). There are too many other factors; the manager, the tactics, the senior players, the pressure, the diet.

By your rationale none of Perez, Shelvey, Lascelles, or Dummett have proven not good enough for the Premier League. We'll see if no Championship club (or better) come in for their young players.