I'm quietly happy with where we are currently. Think the squad is quite well padded and a CB would be enough to to have a decent season. GK - Pope, Karius, Gillespie* RB - Trippier, Ashby CB - Schar, (new CB) CB - Botman, Burn LB - Target, Dummett* RCM - Tonali, Anderson* CM - Bruno, Longstaff* LCM - Joelinton, Willock RW - Almiron, Murphy LW - ASM, Gordon CF - Isak, Wilson 23 man squad right there, with 4 homegrown* players - so still two spaces for Lacselles, Ritchie for example in the back ground if they wanted, Interesting our entire "2nd" team would be British if we signed a young English CB like THB...
Really? ASM and Wilson could be out injured fly half the season. Schar as a CL starter is hideous Targett/Burn as LB in CL is hideous
I agree let's not pretend Newcastle are not ahead of schedule.... so they finished 4th and that's great, but they will more than likely go backwards to go forwards at times on this journey.
Hopefully that’s not the sales pitch to potential signings. I doubt it would be otherwise Tonali will be gone
I don’t get the Tonali signing. Looking forward to being proved wrong but I’m not overly excited by it. Certainly not to the point if spunking the entire budget on him if that’s what’s happened
On articles it keeps saying we got 15m for wood which I knew, didn’t we get anything for Shelvey? I’m sure I heard we got a fee for him but they conveniently miss that out.
It's very much dependent on the signings from now, right now the CL will stretch this squad, and we know from 12/13 the impact of not investing in the squad and having to deal with Europe as well. Main difference is now we have owners who want us to get better now worse, so I can see at least a few more big players coming in.
I imagine it's a mix of a bluff and reality, you wouldn't spend the money on Tonali that we did if you knew that was all you had to spend with the gaps in the squad we have however there are very real limitations we have to work around. We also seem to a lot of our business till late in the window anyway.
The thing is though Almiron, following on from last season, is worth quite a bit and we’re actively looking for him to be replaced so I can’t imagine him being an expensive back up
Also, with amortisation the sales of Almiron and ASM (for a total of £50m) would give us a good £180m in transfer fees this window. (All approximately)
There were early rumours of a big bid being readied from a PIF owned club for Almiron. Something around £80m. Now it's all about Saint Maximin going to one of them for a rumoured £50m.
