Howay

Interesting, so am I seeing it right that this Lyon fan is basically saying Lyon are bullshitting to cover up that the deal is closed? As he seems to be showing they tweeted similar about Ferland Mendy before his move to Madrid.

Obviously we don’t know the full goings on, but if what Romano is saying about the Guimeraes deal is true and we miss out on him over basically a difference in payment terms (upfront v installments) then I’ll be gutted. They can’t claim it would be overpaying at that price point. Again that’s if any of it was true.

Right so we are playing Muller off Chris Wood, Guimeraes with Shelvey in CM and a back line with Dan Burns in it. That would be EXACTLY the eclectic mix of ability levels I hoped to see in the early days of this new ownership.

I fell off for similar reason to you as well as the whole WFH thing meaning I wasn’t say in the car 2 hours a day, I’ll definitely give that one a try so cheers for that, had no clue he did one with Virzi.

Cheers Ant, look after yourself and hopefully see you back one day. Thanks to Meenzer, Andrew and Tom for stepping in and getting this clique back online.

Cheers! And thanks to you, Tom and Meenz for getting it back online - echo what others have said

I kept refreshing this place the last few days wondering what the fuck was happening, before resorting to randomly searching twitter only for Andrew to tell me this was back up Just took a scan through the N-O thread, glad to see Gemmill got a nice confidence boost in the time this place was down.

We’ve been watching Brennan Johnson and Djed Spence (I know the latter is a boro player) so might be something in it? Regardless of a slight lifted performance against Leeds I want rid of Longstaff whether we stay up or go down.

I hope he continues his same content of loitering outside the gates of the training ground up for the entire time the team is in Saudi Arabia.

Would be a shame if someone was to buy their best CB.

Rumours are kicking round the Spurs fan base that he’s on his way up to Newcastle. Again could be nowt as we seen with the Norwich fans thinking Cantwell was off.

I personally think it’s just because Willock, Shelvey, and Longstaff are all better passers than Joelinton when they are actually trying and playing well. The issue is they very fucking rarely play well or put effort in (maybe harsh on Willock?) whereas Joelinton has been putting a shift in consistently every time he plays. I personally didn’t see this shift in us looking better without him than we did with him, I was really worried when he went down as he was doing a great job of gathering every loose ball coming out of Leeds box and recycling play, fortunately Willock had a good second half and both Shelvey and Longstaff actually put shifts in.

I don’t know how they can complain about that when they dodged a stone wall pen. We were the better side tbh, thought we deserved our win, not a lot of clear chances at either end. Trippier is such a touch of class btw. We need to be getting him on the ball more.

Win our two games in hand (I know) and we are 2 points behind Brentford as things stand. It’s stunning that as fucking shite as we have been absolutely no one in the bottom half has clawed clear of us.

That’s showbiz

Good win and much fucking needed. GET IN THERE. Our CM has discovered how to run, Willock was really good in the second half. We still carved out very little but fortunately didn’t make the massive errors we’ve been making. Genuinely don’t understand VAR anymore. If that happens against us the commentator will be pointing out the clear contact and saying that’s why it’s a blatant pen, happens to us and he’s saying it’s not enough contact thank fuck yet another shocking pen decision didn’t cost us. Right get some players in for fuck sake.

Funny that Longstaff has rediscovered how to run now that Rafa got the sack and his move to Everton is likely off.

Why does he bring Longstaff on? What the fuck does he bring to the team? I know the other options are also poor but he’s absolutely abysmal. Bring Almiron on and play him closer behind Wood, try something new man we can’t just keep playing the same CM and expect something to be different.

It’s honestly the weirdest thing about the bloke, he’s an absolute fucking cunt and is happy to be that for fucking YEARS in a very public fashion , but the moment anyone is like “maybe you didn’t do that in the best way” he’s raging . If you’re going to be a cunt just be one, he can’t genuinely believe anyone that would listen to Staveley criticize his ownership and change their opinion that contrary to all public information available to the contrary he was actually quality. The fact he even thought to put in that clause shows what a little bitch boy he is. Look forward to him being out-cunted one day, maybe this son in law of his he appoints somehow fucks him over and empties all his accounts. Hope he stubs his fucking toe everytime he walks through a door, and catches his nut sack in the zipper of his pants everytime he has to piss.

I hope so. The worry would be that the money these owners have creates this constant demand for overpayment, and until we have any leverage whatsoever it’s pretty hard to fight against. If we are at the point where we are comfortably a mid table PL side and are just looking to improve I think that side of things weaken. Maybe the overpayment asked will be lower in summer but I think they’re still going to have to bite the bullet on that.

I agree with that, and while I’m being quicker to note my worries here I do understand deals may happen this next week. My worry though is that we’re not as far as is hoped, or that these clubs we are holding out will drop their price and we get them simply won’t (as was the case with Sevilla with Kounde in summer). The point about personnel is fair, the hope would be that even if the current lot is floundering due to inexperience or otherwise that by summer we have a DoF or something in place who can be a bit more savvy and possibly a little more realistic with who we chase (I understand the targets they’ve chased apparently want to come i more mean realistic in the chance the clubs will come to a fair agreement with us).

Spot on. As I’ve said before maybe behind the scenes we are working on 10 different options for CB and are running into brick walls but I can only comment on what I see, which as you say seems like we’ve been focusing on the same targets whose clubs are asking for a level of overpayment we won’t make. The second paragraph is my concern, that coupled with this supposed worry about overpaying and being difficult (again all public/reported it may not be true but it’s what we see), I just don’t see this “we will buy our way out of the championship immediately” that others do yes the summer window is easier but clubs will still hold us to ransom. I really don’t want to be a championship team again. It’s shite, the referees are fucking mental down there, and as a person that’s proud of where I’m from and proud of my club I’m sick to the back teeth of the piss taking and a relegation will create an avalanche of it. As I noted in my other post I blame Ashley for where we are, not the current owners however I don’t think they should be absolved of any criticism or worry about their methods simply because they’re rich and we assume it’ll click into gear. If we go down, we go down and I’m still 100% behind them and Howe - as like I say I don’t blame them like I blame Ashley, but at the moment they have a chance to change things as we have been fortunate to be 2 points behind but so far we’ve barely improved.

There’s not a guarantee of anything, no, but I can’t imagine that’s the case and there’s no players anywhere better than we have that we can’t get without massively overpaying for. All these positions are equally as vital, as it’s clear we aren’t winning games without improving them. Your point also lends itself to the overpaying argument, as if there’s no one we can get without overpaying then we need to overpay. We can’t expect to bounce back from the Championship next year with a bespoke squad if we refuse to overpay for anyone, we can all assume the summer window might be easier but for us it might not be and then the issue is you’re taking the earnings hit on top of overpaying for players you should expect to have little or no use for a year later (unless some are younger players with potential). I want to be clear that I blame Ashley, but I don’t think we should act like everything this lot do is some methodical plan, they can and imo clearly are (the time the manager search took) making mistakes. I understand we might go down and rebuild, but I’m just critiquing what I see from them on the basis of trying to stay up - and it does give me some nerves about this assumption we will go down and piss the league type stuff as we absolutely do need to buy to win in the championship something they’ve been struggling with. We can list the mitigating factors of why the January window is hard but at the same time they have made very slow progress - hopefully we have what we need by the end of the window, but if we don’t I think the concern over their perceived hardline desire to not be ripped off is a valid one.