macphisto

Was that not customers returning fake clothes and Flannels not checking before putting them back on sale?

Is it not more Adidas? irrespective of the specifics of Newcastle, both Nike and Adidas have a clear strategy of selling more and more of their products through their own channels. In many ways mirroring Sports Direct who also produced and sold their own products (Donna, Everlast, Dunlop, etc.).

Not picking up on your words personally but when we talk about the crowd in the past, which times are we talking about?

I can soon see a situation, certainly next season, where they both force their way into the team. Good problem to have.

It was a great price based on what we can be not on what we were under Ashley.

Would anyone buy the club for much more than what PIF paid? The true value is in our potential so the question is whether FFP allows us to fulfil our potential? I'm confident we can but it will take time.

Did he revolutionize the game or was he just following Rinus Michels' tactics?

While I agree on the general point of NE politicians being useless, in fairness to the council I can't blame them for trying to save money as their budget has been decimated over the last 15 years.

Two things give me hope about Barnes, his stats and Leicester fans' reaction to him leaving (from what I read online). This is all a distraction anyway, it was Tonali who made our transfer window a disaster and that's down to him. I also have far more reservations about him being a success on the pitch than Barnes.

I don't want to derail this thread but I don't agree about Targett being a no brainer. Maybe for the majority of fans but I don't think Howe has ever been keen on him. There was a delay and a little uncertainty between his loan ending and us buying him. For me, it felt more like a move to bolster the squad at the time as none of How's preferred targets were available/too expensive.

Even more bizarre when you add Targett to the list. Was he £15 million? That's £50 million on left backs and not one of them plays.

Interesting article in the Athletic about Barcelona making their own shirts. I wouldn't advocate going down that route but this caught my eye: " As per the terms of their current agreement, Nike pays a yearly fee for the right to produce various items of Barcelona sporting equipment and apparel, and the American company keeps all profits made from sales. However, through the BLM (Barca Licensing & Merchandising) arm — mentioned by Laporta in his radio interview — Barcelona also exclusively market and sell some clothing and apparel themselves. BLM was the fourth-biggest source of revenues in Barcelona’s most recent budget, accounting for over €100million across 2022-23." Whilst I don't think we'd make anywhere near 100 million Euros, it does show we have numerous revenue streams waiting to be exploited.

Am I the only one who thinks this debate about the city centre is laughable? Newcastle is one of the most compact major cities in the UK, we're talking about a 10 minutes walk further away and even that depends on where you're coming from. You'd think we were talking about moving from one end of Tokyo to the other.

Is that model not broken now since Real and Barcelona don't splash the cash like they used to? I can think of Berbatov, Modric, Bale, Suarez and Coutinho for Spurs and Liverpool but no one in recent times. I'd say the model is now to buy young to mid-career players, get 5-6 years at their peak and then sell to Saudi when they're 31-34. Obliviously the Saudi's have enough money to start buying younger players if they wanted to.

You've lost me there, your reply doesn't make sense. I did say that I 100% back staying in the city centre. My point was that I don't care about the thoughts of away fans when considering future stadium plans, if PIF milked away fans then again not something I'd be concerned about.