Howay

Lingard would be a class loan/transfer, I think he’s a big improvement on Fraser. The only issue with it remains that our CM can’t get the forwards the fucking ball so we really need to improve that. Loan would be hilarious btw if nothing else but to wind up that bloke who said a loan for Lingard would be impossible.

Aye they are. I’m getting a bit fed up of hearing the pundits yell about how youth players should make up the difference, ignoring the fact that just further favors the top sides who have the best academy’s. I think in cases like Arsenals where they’re sending people out on loan the youth players should have to be temporarily registered to bring the squad up to 25, but asking Burnley to field whatever fucking crap is in their academy is harsh.

So that’s Danny Batth and Jermaine Defoe they’ve got / are trying to get? They are away it’s 2022 and not 2012 right?

I gave this a like despite your unnecessary attack on CPA’s 😒.

My point wasn’t throw 80m at a player though, my point was just that if the club want a player, he will play in our team for a bit and do decent, then the money we paid for him isn’t going to be an issue if it’s 40m and he’s “worth” 25m. FFP isn’t going to break us when we are talking about the deal for Carlos tbh. I’d agree if we were planning to go mental and throw 80m at him to hit his release clause, but we’re not. I can’t really speak to Evertons issues but I know they are ran like a fucking joke, they’ve spent nearly half a billion quid on shit players - I am just saying if we overpay for a few that do a job for us currently it’s not going to be any issue. We have a good amount in the reserve, and a huge sponsorship deficit to make up just to get our sponsorships level with other PL clubs. When I said the Carlos fee doesn’t matter I’m meaning the perceived overpayment of 15m or whatever it might be, not throw 150m and 200k a week at the bloke. From what I understand wages is where we are keeping a clear structure (hence losing out on Digne as he demanded 150k a week). I think FFP can at times be a bit of an overblown specter too. Man city slapped it aside in court, and Everton ended up spending £22m on a left back and registering him fine weeks before they sold Digne. The issues Barca are having are La Liga FFP rules and Barca are ran like a total shit show too.

It is yes, but there’s a lot of pre-judging the player tbh. Maybe he will come in and be shit but I seriously doubt he will be worse than Lascelles, Clark and the current version of Schar - put any of those three in the Sevilla defence and I doubt it would look as solid. I’ve read differing things on him, Diego thinks he’s shit, then I’ve heard other things where people rate him among the form defenders in la liga, I’m willing to give him a chance. I have no idea what Boumsong was like in France tbh, but he had went to Rangers on a free iirc before we bought him in a deal that was dodgy as fuck so I’m not sure he was that immense.

Money doesn’t really matter to our club now, it’s like all the ‘mis steps’ man city made early buying players that looking back weren’t great, they overpaid for, but helped them along the way. It’s like the 25m for wood, it’s an overpayment sure but it won’t matter in the grand scheme of things, it would matter if we were under Ashley and he was our massive outlay for the foreseeable future but this lot are seemingly trying to spend over 100m on players in this window alone (they’d have spent 80m on Botman and Carlos alone). If he comes in, does a decent job and helps us stay up, eventually becomes a squad player or moves away for 12m or so I can’t imagine any of us would feel it wasn’t worth it.

Aye, I understand the concern but he surely can’t be that bad? They’ve conceded 13 goals in 19 games and he’s started all of them. Maybe he looks like the weak one in their defence? I can’t see him being anything like the liability Lascelles is

This is becoming very close to the “just can’t get him over the line” banter. It’s almost exactly the same as the way the Botman deal was reported. Can we just get some more realistic targets in? Surely someone is willing to sell like Gladbach who Isegrim pointed out. Why the fuck are our lot being so focused on certain players rather than trying to improve the team?

Players are available that improve us considerably but publicly it seems we are getting tunnel vision about Carlos like we did with Botman. The hope is that the public perception doesn’t equal what’s happening in reality, but it seems like it has been another day with no progress.

Honest question, did Willock really look that good at the end of last season? Or did his absurd amount of goals distort people’s view of him? I genuinely can’t remember and if I try I’m definitely factoring in his goals heavily. The goals were always going to dry up at the rate he was scoring but I can’t remember what his overall performances were like tbh. I agree with HMHM, we can’t rely on any of these CMs over 20 games this season none of them have done anything to help create things on offense, I think hoping for Willock to suddenly perform is kind of like hoping for Shelvey to suddenly give a fuck and turn in performances like he does on extremely rare occasions. He’s had injuries etc this season so I’m not writing the lad off completely in the longer term but I don’t want to depend on him this season.

We need a CM we aren’t going to win games with this central midfield. They generate absolutely fucking nothing. I understand the defence has been the focus, and rightly so due to how poor it is, but imo at this point CM is equally important due to our dire need to win games. We can’t rely on ASM to make and score a goal from fucking nothing like he did against Watford, we need to be generating chances.

Good analogy. Agreed on both, given the choice I’d rather make that jump but I wouldn’t be devastated if they went the other way as I’d see the approach as you point out.

It’s a fair point comparing the ability of the teams but that kind of leads me into that if we went down we’d have more that level of team than the one Rafa had (after windows obviously) but Rafas style wouldn’t change. Even in games we are clear and away favorites it’s a slow, methodical approach, while that’s fine, and it clearly worked, you often left games feeling we could have beaten teams by more or in a more entertaining way. If he was the only way I saw us getting back up and we had to go with that style, then I would take him, but personally speaking I have no interest in it since I think we would (hopefully) pretty much buy our way out and would have other options available (personally I’d keep Howe). Again to me it’s personal preference, I understand many found entertainment in Benitez’s style but I just didn’t. I enjoyed the games as I could appreciate his plan, how solid the defence was and how we methodically turned the screw in games but I didn’t find it massively entertaining. For that reason, since we are an entirely different proposition I wouldn’t want him back ever. If we go down the aim should be to be rebuilding back to being a side we want to be, one I hope is more on the front foot and attacking rather than the defensive, methodical approach, so appointing a bloke like Benitez is counter to that imo, if he had been the short term stop gap to save us from relegation I would have understood the move, but like I say we need to be building a side in the manner we hope to grow into if we do go down. Maybe that long term approach is the defensive style, I don’t know, I just personally hope it’s not.

If we go down I would personally fucking hate Benitez coming back. The season under him in the championship was a brutal fucking grind, while it was great in the end and got us to where we needed to be it wasn’t thrilling football which would honestly be the only bright spot about being in that league imo. I’d want to come up like we did under Hughton going into games confident of pissing all over teams. Of course the overall goal of promotion is what matters most but we’d have the means to make it about as odds on as you could ever hope provided you get a manager that could do a good job (which Howe would in that league for sure). I like Benitez, I’m not quite as enamored with him as the twitter lot seem to be but I do like the bloke. I think he belongs in NUFC past now, there’s plenty of managers around we don’t have to go back to him - also I don’t think Howe faces the axe anyway (I know that part of your post was purely hypothetical btw).

I also hope we are targeting some players who can at least get them the fucking ball. Maybe this means we have no interest in Eketike anymore, or that we plan to agree to loaning him back? Or the utterly insane, but also hilarious third option if we get Zapata, and Etekite which would mean we basically bought Wood to weaken Burnley.

Agreed on his purpose, I just don’t get others deluding themselves it’s true. It’s like all these idiots who act like if we went down the Saudis will just find another project, they’re not getting that with the ambitions they have and the money they (long term) are willing to spend the current state of the club is pretty much an irrelevance to them. I suppose it’s the last hope now after the money we have already spent, and clearly are trying to spend, a lot of the prior delusion that the Saudis won’t really spend much (another bafflingly weird delusion that was kicking around at one point). I understand there was always going to be this, but honestly it’s fucking tedious isn’t it? I suppose it will just always change forms, I watched this True Geordie kick off show the other day and there’s some absurdly annoying Manchester United fan and a Manchester City fan on there, and after bickering throughout the Manchester United fan just started bringing up human rights out of nowhere, so even once we are clear of this current mess and start to enjoy success (relative or otherwise) we will always get these tedious types of left field remarks.

I know Storey is of course a total fucking idiot, but this is the type of crap I keep seeing from people and it makes no fucking sense. There’s only two (?) clubs owned in a similar fashion to ours in the top 5 leagues in Europe, we’re not just owned by some rich bloke who might give up or lose interest, or continue to make a mess of things, this lot will make a success of things. It may not happen as quickly as some hope, or the early days might have some missteps but posts like Storeys are just fucking nonsense and frankly I don’t see why they delude themselves in this manner (I know he’s doing it as he enjoys the attention of the mackems, which makes sense seeing as they’re a bunch of fucking tramps as well).

I also enjoy that he acts like Hope was this horrible abuser when all he really did was run stories that literally were happening, or note statistics and decisions of Bruce’s tenure, and in return he harrasses Hope and calls him a rat. What a monumental little prick Alex Bruce is, not a surprise that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree mind as Steve Bruce is also a colossal fucking cunt too, something which I definitely can support simply from the conditions people who rent homes from him have to live in.

Good family

Why wouldn’t you listen to a man that some people have said was a small cog in the takeover?

Can we try the approach of agreeing a fee with a club? Isn’t he also injured for a while? I think he’s a quality player mind.