Chris_R

Just for fun I've just checked ours, and there's nobody who has lived under Newcastle being outside the PL more than in it. Even if you were born in 1892, you'd still not be able to say that. It's not even close for any birth year. Closest I can find is people born in the mid-30s or late 70s, but even then for those people it's not even close to parity.

Not *quite* true. Anyone born from 1994 to 2010 could say they've lived through Sunderland being in the top flight more than outside it. Outside of that range though, you're right and you have to go back to people born in or before 1950. (Yes I'm bored, but Excel meant it really only took about 5 minutes) From 1891 to 1958 they were ever-present in the top flight. They have history - Just not in the memories of anyone who also can't remember Hitler's bombing raids.

Unless I've missed something or am confusing him with someone else, Smith Rowe is basically broken isn't he? Missed years of football and he's still young. He'll doubtless still show flashes of talent for a year or 2 when he's fit but then he'll start to rapidly decline. Anyone who takes him on a big fee and wages is an idiot.

This. We can do nothing about a player with a release clause, we just have to hope it's A) not triggered or if it is, B) he turns down the approaching club because he's happy here. Beyond that, bugger all we can do. Not worth wasting much energy on.

That makes no sense. Just because Fabinho was overpriced doesn't mean ASM was underpriced. Fact remains, I doubt we sold him to Saudi for less than we could get elsewhere.

If ASM was "massively underpriced", why did nobody else in any other league in the world come in and offer more?

Think I just remembered the €4.5m coefficient but and completely blanked the rest.

I will always appreciate what Rafa did for us, every match we went into I always thought we had a chance in, even against the really big sides. You just knew he'd have a plan and that whilst we might not win, he'd at least get most things right in our approach. I don't care what he has or hasn't done since leaving us, that cannot and will not ever have any effect on how I feel about his tenure here. It's utterly irrelevant. Here he was great, and that's all I care about.

Didn't I read somewhere that we got like £4.5m for the CL this season? Granted we didn't win, and much was down to coefficients, but it seems mad that we'd very likely get way more for a lower-value competition.

The "Top 6" concept is a joke. We're 6th now. And we were 4th last year. And we're all pretty confident that next year we can do better than this year, if and when we've got an actual squad available again. At least one of those clubs is deluded if they think they're in any kind of Top 6 conversation.

I mean fair enough if you're saying that now, but you literally labelled them 'PL' and 'Europe'

Just on that note, it seems an odd and contradictory idea to say we want Europe to help keep our best players, then rest all those players in Europe.

TBH I can't really remember what I do when they win.

With most players, when they get space to take a clear shot at goal you get excited to see what happens next. With Isak, you know what happens next, it's just a question of which part of the goal he chooses to put it into.

Ok so we'll sell for 1.5m and buy it back for 1.4m. both could be 'fair', then just repeat that 500 times a day. Employ a team of people just to repeatedly process this for as long as we can, day and night.