TheFish

It's still bubbling along in the background, but his position isn't a priority right now. If, at the end of the window he's still available for c£35m and we can justify the outlay we might sign him.

Don't want to obliterate our FFP wriggle room, don't want to set a precedent for over-spending, planning financially for short/medium/long term aims. And Maddison isn't 'worth' £80m+ in this market. 2yrs left on his deal, reported that he wants out, you need to make room in your wage/squad, etc.

I'm not invested mate, I'm way too long in the tooth for that kind of thing. If we sign him, we sign him, if we don't I'm sure we'll try and get someone else.

It's certainly more objective than fans are (on both sides of the deal).

Dive into his stats a little deeper and you'll see why Man City paid so much for Grealish. Also, Grealish had 4 years left on his contract. Maddison has 2.

This is more professional though. We're trying to sign a player who reportedly wants to move. If our first bid was £60m, Leicester would ask for £80m. It makes total sense to come in under what we're willing to pay first and try to get a compromise, be that in teh overall valuation of the deal, or just how it's structured. Sounds like you want more up front than we want to pay. We don't have unlimited funds and even if we did, there's no sense in messing up our FFP wriggle room to buy Maddison. Grealish was massively over-priced, look at who's moved for less than half of that. Sterling, Jesus, Lewandowski et al. Transfermarkt has Maddison currently valued at £45m, Jack Grealish's Market Value at the time he signed for Man City was £90m. Leicester are definitely open to a deal, and from what I've heard, we're trying to do a deal around £60m all told. While expensive, I think that's reasonable. That is still 33% over his market value, yet some are suggesting paying more than twice his market value.

Just out of curiosity, how much do you think is fair market value for Maddison?

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Botman is very good. Got all the tools to be a success in the PL, but it's always a gamble. Strong Woodgate vibes from him, in terms of playing style. Wilson is a very good striker, and 3-4yrs Vardy's junior? Wilson + Vardy up front together though... there's a thought. Bruno is a phenom. Get some better players around him, instead of Voldemort, Willock and Longstaff, and his game will kick on even further. Someone like.... Maddison? There was a point under Bruce where the team only trained 4 days out of 11 and this was when we were very much in a relegation fight. He said it was on advice from the medical staff. Alright, lets say that's true, why don't you get the boys in to pore over the strategy, system, tactics for the upcoming game? Bring in an expert to work on player confidence, or whatever. Nah, thought Bruce, I'll just **** off on holiday to Portugal again instead. I've nothing against West Brom, but I want them to stay down there until they turn on him.

Pope, Botman, Bruno, ASM, Wilson. Maybe Trippier? I dunno it's not the whitewash it would have been at the beginning of last season. Hell, Joelinton is now bizarrely one of the best defensive/destructive midfielders in the league. The turnaround in players' performances since we got shot of Bruce is unreal.

Jesus, Haaland, Nunez, Kounde, Sterling, Lewandowski, all went for less than £70m.

Yeah, she does.

Don't disagree with any of that. There seems to be a great deal of confidence that we can get the deal done, but that was the case with Ekitike and he went to PSG (understandably). I think a lot of agents are using our perceived wealth to shake a better contract out of the owning club, or force the hand of tentative suitors. Look at Diego Carlos, both club and Agent were driving the price up way beyond the final fee and wages, because everybody thought NUFC were going to splash the cash. In reality though we're not going to have a Robinho transfer because it's pointless. Signing Mbappe wouldn't get us Champions League football, so why disrupt the club when a more considered improvement will be more rewarding in the medium and long term? I like Maddison and he'd definitely solve one of the weaker areas of our squad, but to get where we need to be this season, we don't 'need' him. He's not the missing piece of the jigsaw. Not like Bruno was, or Botman should be.

She has Huntingdon's disease.

We can, we absolutely can, we just don't want to. Our FFP wriggle room is huge because of the parsimonious previous owner. But where's the sense in using up all of that wriggle room now, just because we can. Makes much more sense to build a solid foundation on good players at a reasonable price, then if we're short £100m worth of talent to get us into a restricted strata otherwise thought unobtainable at that time, use that FFP buffer then.

Thing is other clubs are going to look at your situation (trying to offload squad players) and offer below market fees for them, or structuring the deals to get the best deal. They'd be mugs to offer you the going rate for those players, because they know you need to offload them and their wages. We've been in a similar situation (lower standard of player), and have ended up farming players out on loan to lose them for nowt at the end of the season. Nobody will buy Shelvey off us because of his wages. So he'll bimble about the squad, and/or go out on loan until the end of his deal. The interesting thing for me is that there haven't been "He's not for sale" quotes from higher up that I've seen for Maddison or Fofana. Nor anything about a new deal in the pipeline for either of them. £60m might be the 'going rate' for good domestic players, I'm baulking at spending £60m up front on Maddison when we could just as easily spend £60m on a structured deal for a better player from abroad. Put it this way, Darwin Nunez went for £67m and he's one of the most highly regarded young strikers in Europe! Is Maddison better than Sterling, Lewandowski, Kounde, Gabriel Jesus, etc. I don't think he is. Grealish went for £100m because he was Aston Villa's local boy done good, best player, England's great new hype, moving to Moneybags Man City. Had you bought him, you wouldn't have forked out £100m on him. Richarlison is mental money, he's good, but Spurs have a habit of paying over the odds for good players.

I don't know. If the rumours are true and you've a cashflow/squad-size issue then you're not really in a strong bargaining position. Especially when the rumours are that the player wants to go. If we needed money, one of our best players wanted out and someone was going to give us £45m+ a player. I'd be deadset against it, but then, I'm not running the club and what the right move for the fans, isn't necessarily aligned with what the owner thinks is the best move for their club. Similar to when Perez left.

Dunno, just what's being reported in the Telegraph. 1 thing on Dubravka, he's a top half 'keeper, and if Schmeichel is leaving, doesn't it make sense to have another top half 'keeper immediately replacing him?

There must be a reason why Newcastle bid £35m. We haven't picked that figure out of the clear blue sky. Honestly? Part of it is undoubtedly NUFC hammering home the message that just because our majority owners are rich, doesn't mean we're going to splash the cash like Man City and Chelsea did, even if the players are great. If rumours are true and Maddison is keen on the move, then there's no way you're getting £80m for him. A larger upfront fee and the rest as bonuses might work, but we're not going to put up £60m in one lump sum, surely?

If you're having money problems it's a way to get a good proven PL 'keeper in for no fee, smaller wages. Is Schmeichel off then?

Dunno where your mate has that from. I know we're trying not to disrupt the squad by bringing in a player or two on massive wages, but when Shelvey is on £70-80k pw, you'd have to assume Bruno and Botman are comfortably clear of it. For someone like Maddison we'd have to pay the going rate. That's why we have this bridging loan. The sponsorship deals we're trying to bring are under heavy scrutiny. They have to be 'fair market value', which is code for 'We know you're going to try and buy the league, but don't make it too obvious, eh?' We're already getting £7m a season from Noon (Saudi version of Amazon) for our sleeve sponsorship. We'll no doubt agree a deal with Aramco, or Saudia or whomever at the end of the season when we can ask for significantly more than we're on now from Fun88. If we could get something in line with West Ham for the shirts, that'd be 'reasonable' and significantly swell the coffers. Plus I know there's a lot of work being done on getting income from corporate partnerships. I'm looking forward to the day I can tell my little lad that I was there when we announced our first official Pillow or Cooking Oil partner. Consensus up here is that we should offer c£40m + Dubravka, if it's true Schmeichel's off for pastures new?

We're neither as hampered by FFP or free to spend what we like as the Media are portraying. We can definitely afford to sign Maddison and pay his wages without breaking FFP rules though. We also recently took out a loan so we've plenty of liquid capital sloshing about. (Loan is to get around rules because we're very much the bad guys now.)

It is exciting, tempered with the uncomfortable truth. The hope is that the owners will encourage an organic growth where the team remains part of the region, and not just a Galatico-type entity that sits in our home town but separate from it. The sad reality is that we'll inevitably become like Man City. Where lads from Byker can't afford tickets because they've been bought up by tourists and Event companies. But yeah, we've now got the kind of wealth that means a trophy drought might soon end. A drought that has seen lads born, go through school, get married, have kids, and now have have their eyes on retirement, without seeing the team lift a domestic trophy. If we can take some pages from the Man City Group playbook, some from Liverpool and some from teams like yourself etc. that'd be ****ing great.

I think, right now, home crowds are poor on the whole. It's rare that atmosphere is electric throughout. Newcastle right now are a side with a few decent players but some pretty limited players too. Right now we have to drag better teams down to our level, which inevitably leads to a really disrupted game and one where Newcastle don't see a lot of the ball. Not a lot to cheer about, really. Wor Flags and the celebrations/atmosphere at the end were great though.

Don't understand the celebration police, mind you. Before Howe came in Newcastle United had gone 11 games without a win, we were among the bookies favourites for the drop, Bruce had us playing terrible football. Fast forward 5 months. We've just beaten a top half side, with the last kick of the game after a full-length-of-the-pitch counter to a diving header from our Brazilian magician. That win puts to bed any lingering concerns about relegation. Of course we're going to wildly celebrate that man! Why wouldn't you? Also think the narrative that we weren't interested in the win is disingenuous. Of course we wanted to win, but Howe knows that if we tried to go toe-to-toe with Leicester City, we'd be beaten. Hence breaking the game up, allowing you to have as much safe possession as you want and hitting you on the counter. We created more, better quality chances than you did because of that game management. All that said, was a point a fair result? Perhaps. Hope the lads who travelled up for the game had a good one, regardless of the result. Please hammer Everton.