The Fish

Scotty, Scotty, Scotty, this is a gift. The money I've saved on shampoo and haircuts has kept me in blazers and pocket squares ten times over.

I once sat behind Pavel Srnicek on a flight back from London to Newcastle. There must be something funny about goalkeepers flying from London to Newcastle, but I'm fucked if I can find it. A little more colour on that story is that I got his autograph on the only bit of paper I could find - a sick bag. I said thank you and went to shake his hand but he'd already started holding hands with his wife again, so in a fit of awkward teenage panic I ruffled his hair. Sat for the next 15-20 minutes absolutely mortified and refused to leave my seat until I was sure he'd got off.

This shit is typical of you. All measured and reasonable. It's pathetic.

Newcastle Signing of the season: Woltemade Top goalscorer: Wissa Most assists: Gordon Biggest surprise: Big signing in January. Best Young player: Woltemade Player of the season: Tonali PL finish: 6th Trophies? League Cup BITCHES League Champions: Liverpoop Rest of the top 4: Ars, Che, MCI Bottom 3: Brentford, Leeds, Burnley Top scorer: Haaland First Manager Sacked: Nuno

No. I won't. You're just not sexy enough for me. See Gemmil for tips.

With a decent DoF in place we negotiate a new deal with Isak in the summer of 24 or we begin lining up his successor at the time. With a decent DoF we don't go into the final day of the window scrabbling around to over pay for a Wilson replacement. With a decent DoF we've done the lions share of our business in time to get the new lads training with the team before the season starts. And you have no idea if this has been a good window for us or not. Instead of rose-tinted specs, lets look at the business with shit-tinted glasses: We've swapped arguably the best all round striker in the Premier League for a total gamble, we've signed someone's grandad who's had one 15+ goal season in his long LONG ass career, we've signed an injury plagued young midfielder, a centreback who needs mistakes coached out of his game, a goalkeeper who's been relegated 3 out of the last 6 seasons and Anthony Elanga. £20m isn't poxy, even in the current market £20m is a huge amount of money. Now, gobble on my plums, suck my balls, slather on my scrotal sack and Lick. Deez. Nutz

That is exactly the same as "we've stored up an armageddon of MASSIVE PSR issues" . In fact they could be twins! You dopey get.

You are me reading/following reports? And I'm never too bussy for you sweetcheeks. Right, cool, you agree that we overpaid. My "massive deranged problem" is that this all could have been avoided had we a CEO and/or DoF worth their wage in place. So, impolitely, suck ma balls.

I haven't said that have I? Be a lamb and find that post for me? It would make rubbing it in your face a fucking delight.

You know what they say, £5m here, £5m there, someday soon it'll add up to real money. £5m a year is a £25m player on a 5yr deal. How much was Trafford going to cost us before Man City waded in? £30m?

The only reference I can find to Wissa's expected fee being £25m is from "OneFootball", nothing credible what-so-fucking-ever. And unless this is in writing, it doesn't fucking matter what he thinks his fee should be. I can however find plenty of reports showing that Brentford valued him at closer to £55m, and seeing as that's what he eventually went for, I'd suggest that's probably their valuation.

What was our first Wissa offer? What price did Brentford suggest they'd accept? What was our final accepted offer? Answer those questions and then come back and tell me our first offer wasn't fucking lowball. If you've got the stones.

We weren't fucking agile man. Delap I'll ignore because Chelsea got him literally days into the window, but every other striker target didn't move until weeks into the window. Hardly ninja like agility there. Our Wissa deal was the same as Liverpool's for Isak. It was a lowball offer designed purely to unsettle the player and strengthen our hand. However, Brentford held firm on their valuation, where we buckled.

At the end of the window, probably nobody, like you say. But if we'd actually got into gear early (as Eddie asked for) who knows what we could have shaken loose. Pedro didn't move until 3 weeks into the window, Could we have got Watkins early on? Maybe. Sesko was 8 weeks, Gyokeres was 6 weeks.

I think we're on different topics. What I think you're saying is that Wissa for £55m is fine because we didn't have many/any other options. What I'm saying is that the approach to the window was ponderous, and that had we been more agile we wouldn't have found ourselves in a situation where we're having to spend £55m on Wissa because we can't end the window with only 1 striker at the club.

JSL got 14 goals, 4 assists Wissa got 19 goals 4 assists Strand Larsen was in a much weaker side than Wissa. He's also 4yrs younger. And, again, to be clear I'm not saying we should have signed him at the end of the window, because I know that wasn't feasible. I'm saying that there were better options in the market that we could have found had we not had our thumb so firmly shoved up our butt.

We didn't plan on selling Isak.

The point Wolves made was that JSL wasn't going anywhere at that stage of the window. My issue is that we knew, we fucking knew, that Isak was going to be sold. So why did we piss about all summer window? Lurching from one failed bid to another? Sesko was available for signing, right, we know that because he was signed. But he was signed 8 weeks into the window. I get that Bayern were hovering around Woltemade, but given how quickly we managed to get that deal done by actually engaging the decision makers into the process, why couldn't we have employed the same strategy to sign our priority targets instead? If we'd locked in a priority striker at the beginning of the window we can negotiate with Liverpool for an early sale of Isak. So he's not sowing discord and we're not having to fight PR fires.

Sorry, I meant double or treble his fee. So £140m-£210m

It's £14m a year. That's 25% of the PSR hole we were in when we were forced to sell Anderson and Minteh. And it's not like we will ever see that kind of money for Wissa again. At least with JSL he's got 4yrs on Wissa and so there's the possibility that he'd come good, or at the very least repay that commitment over the length of a 4yr deal. I can only see Wissa having 1 or 2 good seasons then, declining fairly rapidly.

The thing is, you can factor into the release clause things like length of contract, length of career ahead of them and stuff. The Spaniards have release clauses as a part of their contracts, I'm sure. So a promising young striker on a 6yr deal wouldn't have a release clause only £10m more than his fee, it could be double, treble that.

That's why I said Woltemade, or whomever. The only way for us to beat Man Utd to a player is get the deal done before they know what's happening. The upper management knew Isak was already half out the door, so why not have Sesko primed and ready to awkwardly watch a video of someone's nan leak at the thought of Ginola, the very minute this window opened? I do think we're stronger, I do think that Thiaw, Ramsdale, Ramsey, Woltemade and Wissa are raising the floor of our squad at the very least. All I'm saying is when we're so fucked by protectionist financial rules, why are we massively overpaying for Yoane twatting Wissa?