Gemmill

"Don't come the raw prawn with me." Pep quoting Lou Carpenter on the training ground.

The local reporters are talking about the day to day management of the club, which isn't PIF's job.

Everything you've written there, with the exception of appointment of execs, is the job of Eales and his team. The mistake PIF made was appointing him.

One of the late night shows revisited one of these on-the-lawn press interviews from where he was being questioned about the briefing he'd received from Bondi on the Epstein files. This was weeks before it had been confirmed by the WSJ that he was named in the files. He gets asked if he'd received a briefing and first off he plays dumb asking "a briefing about what?" Then he gets asked whether Bondi told him he was in the files and he lies and says no and that's the moment where he starts making up that "Comey, Biden and Obama wrote those files, it's all made up" cos the fat cunt knows that he's in them. I just love how much of a nightmare this has all become for him.

Aye I don't think this is right at all. PIF have got all sorts going on, they can't micro manage the day to day at NUFC. Where they've fucked up horribly is in their executive appointments. Although I believe the BELOVED Amanda and Mehrdad also played a role in the appointment of Atlanta Darren. They need to get this next one, and the new DoF right.

I've been wondering whether the bonus on commercial revenues isn't set up so that it disincentivises fast growth. If you get top whack for achieving 25%, you don't do much more than that. Especially if it impacts your ability to get your bonus the following year... 🧐

Good, I'm pleased for him.

Aye, we could have had the lad in in June, he'd have been to Austria and be in Singapore now. And even if TP is right and it would just have flushed Man City out sooner (although I don't think so), at least that would have given us certainty one way or the other. Instead we find ourselves missing out a few weeks before the season starts. For the sake of £2m ffs. It's fucking disgraceful.

Toonpack man, I was as prepared as you were to give the ownership and the execs the benefit of the doubt, but eventually you have to admit that they are not doing a very good job, and transfer dealings are where they're at their absolute worst. We've come into this window with supposedly no PSR issues to speak of and we've missed out on a lad who wanted to come here by totally mismanaging the negotiations. It's embarrassing.

Luckily Edmund Hercules Howe is the ultimate article finisher.

I think the old bloke in his trunks in the background of Hope's video thinks he's perving with his selfie stick.

The straight dope from Craig Hope.

I appreciate the advice from a level-headed zen master like you who as recently as yesterday wished death on the player.

We should get aggressive and say we acknowledge the player's position and await a formal bid from his stated preferred destination. If this is not received by next Friday, the player can leave next summer as it doesn't leave us enough time to find a replacement.

All of which is basically "crickets". Actually it's not quite crickets cos the major piece of news the day after the player announces he wants to leave is the confirmation that we've just missed out on the keeper we've been targeting for the last 18 months. I don't know what the club should be doing, but the day after its most valuable asset has announced his desire to leave, I'm not sure "just keep shtum lads" is the appropriate response. Eales probably thinks it's Howe's job.

I wonder what's actually going on now in terms of him leaving. Are we now just in a situation where the player has said he wants to leave followed by the sound of crickets?

Ok well scratch the injury prone bit (although there's definitely something up with his groin and I'm sure he's had recurrent thigh problems too). I still think having two capable forwards would be better than our setup for the last couple of seasons. Although I'm definitely trying to look on the bright side cos he's either gonna leave this summer or he's gonna stay in a huff cos no one met our valuation.

If Sesko doesn't work up front, Howe would just him into the next Joelinton. Maybe even the next Ederson.

I'm pretty confident that if we sell him in good time, we'll replace him. I think we'd be looking for a new manager if we sold him and didn't replace him.

Aye I'd agree with a lot of this. I particular that simply having two capable forwards in place of one that's class but injury prone, and one that is totally buckled, is already an improvement. Plus money left over from the dealwhen we already had cash to spend. It could genuinely be transformative, but it needs to happen quick or it's another window blown.

You don't know he hasn't done that though - recognise the mentorship. He might have been absolutely class with Howe, and just said look I'm nearly 26, I cannot stay here until this club makes the strides that we all want it to make. Of course there's some blame on PSR, and I think in general it's good that we've been sensible, but the more that goes on the less I rate the job that they're doing. In particular the state of this fucking transfer window. This is another transfer window that has been completely fucked up. When Mitchell went, why the fuck did we not appoint someone on a consultancy basis to run the window for us. There must be capable people with contacts in the induatry that can do a better job of this than the manager and a couple of scouts. Instead we've just shrugged our shoulders and turned again to Howe, a bloke just coming off a brush with pneumonia. Eales has presided over this. And I know he's not well, but if he's not well enough to do the job then he should have been moved on quicker. It doesn't take this long to even IDENTIFY your replacement ffs. I'm not talking about getting them in post, I'm talking about knowing who your preferred candidate is and making them an offer. We're 10 months into that process ffs.

Yup. They're class lads that we've got in this squad, but we shouldn't kid ourselves that some of the better ones don't have ambitions that extend beyond NUFC in its current form. It's the responsibility of the club to deliver on the story we spun them.

I don't really have a problem with it other than the timing. And if he's being difficult behind the scenes and refusing to go to Singapore etc but that's not the line that's being taken at least. It's naive to think that a lad from Sweden with no links to the club should owe the club anything really. It's a shame he's on a different trajectory to us, but I put the blame for that on our execs and Chairman.

All of this just to stop Renton's kids btw.