Howay

I am warming to the idea he’s just trolling people now.

“Toucher” He’s a crease, even the mackems give him a wide berth.

He responded to a tweet with this, the tweet or account have been deleted but it’s just sad to see people basically having a pop at the owners to a level where one of them wants to respond. We’ve had 7 fucking days of this window, we are after a higher calibre of player, and in that time there’s been internationals/people on holiday. We’ve already signed a £13m player, and have had accepted bids on at least two players that we know of, while signing two promising youth players. I think the issue is people refreshing twitter and getting this constant feed of “it’s so close” “oh they’re actually not interested” “now it’s close again” from various media sources. We’ve already done more than we probably did in the first week of a summer transfer window under Ashley.

Aye out of interest I took a quick look at the exempt items in the UEFA FFP rules and they didn’t mention anything on fees, it focused on just infrastructure and staffing as you mentioned, as well as outreach programs to assist local youth clubs. It did say that while these infrastructure and development costs are exempt the proceeds from sale of youth players is included, another reason for the focus on it.

This has to be the most absurd out of their new topics to attack us for. “Haha they might get beat to players by PSG and Milan” so will almost every other club on the planet you nonce supporters, if we do sign both will they be posting about how gutted they are that we beat Milan and Paris? Or will that interest never have existed?

I mean they know themselves what they’re saying simply is not true.

I think this guy isn’t the most reliable source but I’ve seen tweets from other spots on this so maybe something in it. It definitely seems like they’re working hard to improve our youth playing staff, the two defenders they’ve brought in so far, linked to this lad and a Brazilian youth player as well. The fee is high but I’m not sure how youth players factor into FFP? I remember seeing youth and women teams mentioned as exemptions in some way but I can’t remember if that was just for infrastructure rather than player fees.

What I said aligns with what Luke’s saying, so write it off lads.

It’s his agent fucking about I reckon. The lad is hugely ambitious but he’s the type that wants to play and show what he can do - which is pretty unlikely given PSG’s attackers, by all accounts up until this RMC report he was more than happy to sign and the only thing holding up the deal was agent fees. His agent is probably trying to tempt other offers, or saying he’s heard of interest to get our lot to up the agent fee in a panic to get Ekitike in. I think the Botman situation is similar, a lot of this is new to us as we’ve basically been signing rubble for 15 years and now we are aiming for high profile players who are starting to attract (or have) interest from CL teams so we’re in that weird middle ground where the players will come due to the ‘project’ but the agents see a massive pot of money and want to extract as much as they can so they play these games.

Think this is an indicator of Manchester United being worried about us, they were demanding £40m from us and no offer of a loan - it’s possible it’s that “Newcastle tax” shite but they’ve also allegedly been one of the leaders in trying to oppose and blockade our owners.

Aye there’s no fucking way we should loan him to them.

He’s a man with miniature balls. I’m just glad I support a team with players like Trippier and Bruno who push theirs around in wheelbarrows, I used to see England as my only hope to see a team I support win something thank fuck that’s not the case anymore.

We’ve apparently received bids for a load of our players which totals £30m, Lascelles and Ritchie are in the group. Hopefully true as it’ll give us a boost with regard to what we can spend. Cornet is a decent player, I’d rather him over McNeil who managed 1 assist and no goals in 35 starts - I think what we already have is better than him.

I think club football is the main focus for managers nowadays. When you look at the standard of most the managers at the top national sides it’s not particularly high. So I think Howe would choose to stay. I hope you’re right btw Scoobos and I’m fully behind the team for the tournament - I wouldn’t be booing him if I was there. I’m pretty sure without looking back at my posts I’ve been fairly consistent with my opinion on Southgate, I acknowledge his positives but just think maybe it’s time to move on. It’s too late at this point though I agree with you both on that - and the Saka foul that was absolutely fucking ridiculous. I disagree that Croatia and Italy were better teams btw Gloomy. Very solid and have some brilliant players but also had some glaring areas to attack. Both CM’s were strong with fairly weak (in comparison) flanks, we changed tact after controlling the games early doors, and both sides were fairly old in key areas (Modric is immune to age but I more meant Mandzukic etc) Italy had lost probably their player of the tournament in Spinizzolla and the centre of Italys defence needed to be tested for pace far more than it was. Not saying we absolutely should have won both games but we should have looked more impressive than we did imo.

I know Foden was out but I’m speaking about this generally, he tends not to favor Foden and prefers Rice, Phillips, and Mount. You’re taking those two sentences out of context. My point was he should have tried all this over the time between the Euros and now, and now should be dialing in - we are regressing not improving. People can write off the games as meaningless but he doesn’t have many opportunities so he should have tried to improve the attack while he had the chance and be in a more settled tactical set up. The clear issue is our strength is the attacking players, yet we focus on defence and create next to nothing - the teams that win tournaments by defending and counter attacking have the players that suit that style and typically have world class defenders whereas we don’t. Despite that attacking strength we barely create and barely score from open play. We historically had a squad that all fucking hated each other, that’s not the case and I think that’s one of the areas Southgate deserves praise but I don’t think his prior tournaments makes him immune from criticism. He also isn’t the sole reason we made it this far in tournaments we have a brilliant crop of players, and depth, we don’t know if we could have made it just as far playing another way with them - again no way of knowing that so I’m not layering that on as a criticism just an observation. I agree we will make it to the QF, where we will likely meet France the first good opposition we play and be knocked out playing within ourselves. It’ll then be written off as an impossibility to beat France and he will carry on, totally agree that France would be favorites but we will have reached that point playing the same negative way against weak opponents. Again, if you’re enjoying it that’s great but I don’t and in my personal opinion we won’t win a tournament playing this way, it’s not to our strengths which is the way to win tournaments.

All fair points, as long as you’re enjoying it and see it that way. No piss taking here. I’ve shared my opinion on what I see as his failings so won’t rehash, but do you not think the reaching late stages of competitions is a bit overstated? We’ve really not faced much strong opposition in either tournament and when he did we were knocked out, there was the win over Germany which was great but I think we can all agree it was a German team in a bit of a rebuild rather than the one from previous tournaments. I don’t mean to take away from him, and I’ll always remember him favorably for those tournaments but I don’t think we should ignore the issues in them which have only gotten worse. He also gets a ton of the praise when things go well, while the players then take the flak when things or bad (until this recent round of things). I disagree that him taking the shackles off means we lose heavily, it’s not been given a fair shot and even when he apparently did it he had Bellingham in a deep role. He should have been trying to progress and improve the attack since the Euros imo as we don’t create enough chances. There’s a chasm between attack and defence, meaning Kane drops as far back as midfield to get the ball and when he does stay high Mount tries to occupy the same space as him.

Grealish is interesting, apparently he had the highest xA per 90 mins in the PL last season, I know xG is contentious on here never mind xA but I think it shows he is clearly a creative player and better than his goal involvements last season. Despite this Southgate rarely uses him and just throws his hands up when he can’t get anything out of him, it’s a similar story with Foden who is probably England’s most talented player. I’m at the point where I hope Man City do buy Phillips and he basically never plays a PL game so that Southgate is pretty much forced to stop playing this dreadful Rice - Phillips midfield which just kills our attack. I think my biggest annoyance with Southgate (and his absurdly over the top supporters) is he plays his system, and despite all the clear issues with it doesn’t change a thing - then once in a while he makes a change sort of like what people are asking for (but usually within the same framework of his system meaning players in roles they’re not used to, or not enough of the changes needed to actually be impactful), then when it’s not immediately a resounding success it’s basically held as proof he’s right and the players are incapable. He’s also had years to try things and figure out ways to improve since the Euros but hasn’t bothered, he’s just kept the same formation and players then tried a bunch of random last minute things immediately before the WC when he should really be simply fine tuning.

I can’t see the point in going for JWP, surely Southampton would demand a similar amount to the 58m Lyon are asking for Paqueta?

What a fucking wank opinion. He talks as if Southgate is a club manager with a 25 man squad, he doesn’t have to select that error prone keeper, and saying there’s no fit left back is ridiculous - he has other options besides Shaw and Chilwell there’s a load of PL or championship left backs that are English. Again flawed CBs is always a stretch to me if Stones is good enough for regular selection by the side that has won 4 of the last 5 PL titles, he’s good enough for England, the others are also better than what the vast majority of international sides can select. The creative midfielder bit is bullshit too, he doesn’t select any of them and whenever he does he chops and changes which one it is or throws them on late in the game, when they do come on they’re locked into his woeful formation that has zero fluidity or quick tempo about it. But aye, keep writing off the team of CL and title winners as “not good enough” in favor of the failed Boro manager which no decent club team will touch with a barge pole.

Love the move, don’t have a fucking clue who this player is but it pisses West Ham off and shows Lille we have alternative targets. It’ll irritate West Ham more given he’s halfway through his medical

The picture selection.

Agreed, honestly as with all the players we have bid on I’m not really bothered if we get them or walk away, I’m comfortable that they have a list of players all of which will improve us. As you say I think our defence, while it needs improved to compete for European spots, is good enough for next season.

I think he probably prefers Milan, but I don’t think it’s what is holding the deal up and the Italian medias constant assertion that he’s got zero interest in joining us is total bollocks. There’s no way someone like Ashworth is going to keep persisting with a deal if the player has zero interest in joining.