Polarboy

Clearly the fair thing would be for the co-efficient to only apply to which seed you are for the draw as opposed to the money you receive for progress, but the world we live in is corrupt to the core. The one silver lining is that I'd be confident that we could manage top five most seasons when the extra champions league place comes in season after next. To get to Man City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Man U, and to a lesser extent Spurs and Arsenal given they've missed CL on a fair few occasions over the last ten years, level of revenue is going to be a long slog. We're going to have to be very careful as a club so as to not become a Leicester or Everton when it comes to FFP, and be patient as fans when we're told that we can't spend what we like just because we have the richest owners. We could of course hope that the Saudi owners will employ some dark arts and learn from Man City so as to not get caught. And not necessarily to hide how much we're spending, but rather to put pressure on UEFA so as to make the co-efficient system more fair. Then again given the threat of a break away Super League that might prove impossible.

I actually think Pavard is a very interesting shout which I seen us linked to recently. I've no idea if there's anything in it, but he'd be amazing cover at right back for Trippier, and he'd probably start ahead of Schar in that right centre back position given he can play both positions. Buying players who can play two or more positions either almost or equally well means you can concentrate more on quality rather than sheer numbers for your squad.

Again the graphic isn't an endorsement of every pick. It's just an illustration of what five quality players could do to lift the quality of the squad. And in fairness to the guy who picked them both Torres and Szoboszlai can play a number of positions apart from out wide equally or in some cases better than said position.

As I explained already the graphic was just an example to illustrate the squad depth we could have, not an endorsement of all his picks. With regards to Szoboszlai though he plays on the right wing a fair bit for Leipzig. He's very versatile and moves position frequently, and people who ostensibly play on the wing don't have to play stuck to the touchline as Maddison has proven at Leicester, or indeed Gerrard proved at Liverpool. He could still get into positions from which he could dictate the play. We've of course also seen Almiron drift inside to play balls, play one two's and score absolute crackers which also gave Trippier the space to swing in crosses. Oh and yes of course Milinkovic-Savic would start ahead of Longstaff. Milinkovic-Savic has been one of the most highly regarded and sought after midfielders in Europe for about five or six years now. Longstaff has a good football brain, is a decent passer, and runs his guts out for us, but Milinkovic-Savic is on another plane of existence when it comes to technical skill.

Oh no, the ASM stan is upset 😂

I'm not putting this up because I think we'll sign these players. The guy who made it was just giving his opinion on who we should sign from players who've been linked, but I think it's instructive and good for a bit of banter to see how much squad depth five quality signings would give us. Personally I initially thought I'd rather we bought a six like Khephren Thuram for example instead of Torres. Of course both Milinkovic-Savic and Bruno can play in front of the defence, so with both in the squad the need for specialist six perhaps diminishes, and we could instead concentrate on a position further forward. Still I'd much rather Diaby who can also play down both wings than Torres, even if he has PL experience. Torres of course is very good in the air and can play that sort of false nine role which is useful, but he does appear to be a bit inconsistent.

I was referring to the original tweet and article with my comment. Your comments have been reasonable, although I can't say I know much about the HMRC stuff etc. Sorry for the confusion.

Whinging that people like Reuben are doing PR for themselves by letting it be known that they do charity work is cutting your nose off to spite your face. Reuben gets PR, the foodbank gets PR, the foodbank gets an injection of money. It's a win, win, win surely. People walking round in sackcloth and ashes and not visibly doing charity work is little more than self satisfying moralising, which I think is worse than the self satisfaction that everyone gets when doing things for others.

The thing about the owners essentially sponsoring the club through another business they own, is that as soon as the fair market value for front of shirt advertising goes up they can just renegotiate the contract straight away. It's not as if we'll be in a situation whereby some other business has a contract to advertise with us, for lets say four years, and they refuse to renegotiate how much they're paying until the contract is up. A few more years of success and we can start paying ourselves a figure much closer to what Man City, Man U etc get for their shirt sponsors which is iirc at least double the 25m we're supposedly getting.

Did someone post about this artwork in another thread? Can't remember which thread it was now. In any case expensive as they are they're well done. Edit: didn't realise it was for two, so it's not that bad I suppose. https://www.etsy.com/ie/listing/1474306456/newcastle-volume-2-no-score-draws-mug?click_key=a9dad785a0d206810c948cc13648064966ccc775%3A1474306456&click_sum=fa101ae4&ref=shop_home_active_1&crt=1

Pope is having an operation on his hand which is why he wasn't picked. Dubravka will be in nets against Chelsea.

Gave team talks naked, cut his players toenails, and stood in the corner when they were showering with a newspaper with eye holes cut out.

And so it begins 😂 Bit of a non story this on the face of it. I'd imagine basically every club able to afford him and in the champions league will be watching him. Especially seeing as his release clause knocks roughly 30m off what his asking price would have been overwise. It would be a bit of a kick in the bollocks for Schar if we bought Min-Jae or some other elite right sided centre half as opposed to a younger understudy.

The thing about Pope is that his kicking is still really poor under pressure, and not great even when he isn't. The ideal of course is to have someone with his indisputably elite level shot stopping along with elite distribution, but those kind of keepers are few and far between and cost upwards of 30m. I'd rather we spent that 30m+ elsewhere this window, but I don't think Pope will be our number one keeper in the long term. I think Howe will eventually want a keeper who's as comfortable or at least almost as comfortable on the ball as one of our centre halfs.