Polarboy

Pickford and Ramsdale are decent shouts, but what Chelsea and Man U are stupid enough to pay, and in turn fuck the entire market up, is neither here nor there given it's an artificial inflation of the market. I see bbc are reporting that Wissa has indicated that he wants to leave, and isn't interested in new contract negotiations. With him turning 29 in September it may be impossible for Brentford to turn down good money for a player who wants to leave, regardless of Mbuemo having already being sold. One of the main Newcastle sports journos, maybe Douglas, can't remember, was saying that Spuds buying Kudus had cooled their interest in Wissa, so if Forest are the only other rival we have, we might have a relatively free run at him. The question is how much should a team pay for a player who's turning 29, will be away to AFCON this year, and DR Congo could go far in the tournament, but who can reliably score high double figures in the prem. Wissa seems like a transfer that could happen later in the window, given Brentford will no doubt be holding out for a fee which will ultimately be unrealistic. Man U of course will probably steam in and pay it if they get desperate in their striker search.

It may have actually just been the case that we put in a bid of 70m, Frankfurt rejected it, and we said fair enough but that's our valuation, which Downie said as well. We'll know more when and if Liverpool's final bid goes in. If it's undisclosed you'll know they got rinsed.

According to this Sky Sports Italy journo we've already made contact with Juve for Savona. Seems like he'd be more of a project as opposed to a ready made player to take over from Schar. But with Schar still performing at a good level, we should have time to bed a young player in.

Regardless of anything else I think we should be encouraged that the club was ready to break our transfer record again with the Ekitike bid. When you're trying to buy players who are good enough to come in and play in the first 11 in the top half of the prem, and the champions league, it's always going to be tough when you have teams like the scousers who can offer more money, and lets be honest, a more realistic chance of winning the top competitions.

Downie is reporting that Wissa is valued are 30 million +, so yeah, a bid of a little over 30 should be enough, but it probably all depends on the Mbuemo situation. As already said the perfect scenario is that us buying Wissa fucks up Man U's' attempts to get Mbuemo, although they seem to be doing a decent job of that themselves.

I suppose the hope is from bidding clubs that you can bid lower than the release clause and Frankfurt will accept it. Release clauses are basically the dream amount a club wants most of the time, at least in terms of when they impose one, as opposed to a player inserting one in his contract.

Seems like Ekitike is away to Liverpool, if this Sky Germany guy is to be believed. Hopefully Frankfurt absolutely rinse them. I'd laugh my tit's off if this still some elaborate bluff by the scousers, hoping that we'll buckle on Isak.

I keep seeing people like Ornstein, Edwards, Romano etc saying that Liverpool wouldn't have made an approach out of nowhere having been told he wasn't for sale, so there must have been some encouragement from Isak's side, perhaps indirectly through an agent or whomever. This of course ignores the fact that they only made an approach directly after our bid for Ekitike was made public. I would think missing out on your first choice striker, and then possibly second choice striker, would be motivation enough to test the waters again. It's obviously going to take a lot of money to buy Ekitike, so Liverpool probably thought it was worth an enquiry to see if we were lining up Isak's replacement, or that we really were going to play them together as reported.

Liverpool should go after Osimhen, and them and their twitter fans should shut the fuck up for the rest of the window.

Mark Douglas was saying that the word is that Liverpool are only lukewarm on Ekitike, and are only using him as a bargaining chip to get Isak, a pretty weird tactic if you ask me. If we say Isak isn't for sale, and we have repeatedly, then they'll be sat there with their dicks in their hands whatever happens with Ekitike. Would they spend 75, 80m on a player they're supposedly lukewarm on? And what kind of message are they sending Ekitike by using him in that way.

Tripper is finished at this level. He looked decent against Arsenal, but their attack is severely blunted at present with Injuries etc. I'd hoped that those mistakes he made last season were a blip, but his decision making when trying to mark one on one seems to have deserted him. Howe should probably take some blame as well given he put short arse Trippier on the Egyptian fella, whose name I would no doubt mispell.

Miggy waiting until possibly his last game for us to use his right foot 😂

The lad in midfield Fernandes looks tidy on the ball. We've struggled to get the ball off him when he's had it.

Hinchcliffe vaselated from OK to nonce territory in the first half. Saying Arsenal could have been two nil up when we'd put two over the bar from good positions ourselves before the Arsenal chances.

He's really lost the aul French accent since I last heard him speak about a week ago.

What's the name of the co-commentator on sky?

Apparently Shefki Kuqi has been seen in Newcastle airport. 🧐

It would be nice if Elanga is just a smokescreen, but you'd have to be bordering on psychotically optimistic to believe there's any chance of that.

Troy Deeney said it, unless this guy also chimed in.

In regards to who is to blame, it could also be that it's just tough to get the level of player that we're after given our current position in terms of not being in Europe, lacking funds for big wages etc, and as Howe said there's really only a pool of 4 or 5 players for each position you're looking at that can substantially improve the team.

Howe has denied that we put our entire focus on Guehi, and said that we tried to sign several alternatives.

Brighton for example can spend now because they've made several hundred million in player sales in recent years, having paid less than a quarter, or thereabouts, for said players. The new owners have come in and the only good thing you could say about Ashley in terms of PSR was that there wasn't much debt on the books. PIF et al have basically had to start from scratch in terms of academy player development, which of course is crucial for creating profit, the commercial sponsors end of things, and just generally getting into a decent position for trading players. Ashley left a squad partially made up of tat who were on ridiculously long term contracts, therefore almost impossible to get rid of, and who generate next to no profit. The PSR rules are far too stringent, so we'll either have to be very patient and wait for our commercial, academy and player trading to start feeding substantial money into the coffers, or pray that the rules are substainally slackened. I want to be able to throw a sausage up the PSR alley 😉 Of course some of the "top six" will likely fight tooth and nail to prevent anything that might challenge their hegemony.

I see Howe shot down, Hope's was it?, nonsense about him being fixated on Guehi and therefore not allowing Mitchell to sign an alternative once negotiations broke down with Palace. According to Howe we've tried to sign several alternatives.