Alexander Isak (CF) Newcastle

Remember, he has made “very clear he is a big fan of Isak” and is reported to be quite angry at our approach

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

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Don’t think they have a sporting director since Mitchell left. I suppose that plays a part too.

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Could be a foil to Isak or even be as Isak’s back up?

Sesko probably feels he needs to make the next step up but hasn’t been able to attract a firm bid from more established top four sides so may be willing to join and bide his time.

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I know fuck all about PIF or PSR but whats to stop this chairman from telling Isak to do a few adverts and promote some of their businesses and cutting him a cheque for £100m?

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He’s been gone less than a month. It puts them in a difficult situation this summer, but Newcastle’s difficulty in matching their external resources to their strength in the transfer market, only in in part because of PSR, goes several years beyond that. Isak is one of the few statements they have been able to make in this era (arguably only him and Tonali) and losing him, regardless of how well put together their backroom team was, would be a strong signal to the potential players and put them in a position that was not easy to respond to.

Again, the comparison to Phil falls down because we had already brought in Mo and so had a version of a strongest XI already that did not include him. Newcastle would have to go out and find a replacement of which there are very few who would match up to what he has given them and even fewer (none?) who are available to them with their current level of pull.

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The league voted in stronger rules on Associated Party Transactions after the PIF take over to limit precisely this. It has obviously been an issue since the City take over because that is largely the issue at hand over City’s 117 charges (not so much the deals, but the dodgy accounting of them), but they wanted to strengthen the rules once Saudis came in. City have filed 2 separate legal challenges to the newly approved rules and the league have already pivoted to bolster their defense against these cases. Where this will land is not clear, but if I was a player I would not be making decisions on the assumption my income expectations would be met with APT deals.

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I agree with this, but want to add the covid caveat.

I think FSG would have made a few moves to kick on and try to strengthen from a position of strength, but there were so many unknowns in the world at the time. With the pandemic there was a time, at least for a while, where dependable financial models for the sport were guesswork at best, so rather than splash the cash on a few signings FSG chose to weather the pandemic storm and see how we came out of it.

I can’t really blame them for that.

They have been good owners for us. Stadium, training, great recruitment at all levels, commercial growth. The one criticism has been that they have been a bit too cautious, but given the chance they now have to put their foot down from a position of strength, that criticism no longer rings true.

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More links to other players for other strikers, this time strand Larsen

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You know what to do Hughesy…

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Maybe reframing that gives us a better sense of what is happening - it is less that he is the only striker in the world good enough, but more that he is considered so good that he is worth pursuing when we don’t need him if we think there is a possibility he is obtainable.

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hahaha.. Accept our bid of 100 million or we buy Sesko for 60 million :wink:

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Maybe that’s what our Scouting department believes.

Already been talk about how they see our setup in articles from Paul Joyce. Evidently we are changing but we also need a squad.

So we aren’t spending 150m on a back up nethier have we spent 78m on one.

Florian Wirtz doesn’t fit the rigid 4-3-3 but we haven’t bought him for backup in case we fancy a change on 70 minutes.

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Not a bad striker. Won’t come cheap this far down in the transfer window.

I’m having an existential crisis.

But I sure as fuck want that Prada backpack.

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Manbag confessions!

:astonished_face:

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Billionaires need not exist but here we are eh.

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Given he was on loan at Wolves last season and therefore they technically only signed him this summer I don’t think he can even be sold to another club this window.

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Mixed feelings about this, because the amount of money we are spending is ridiculous, no player is worth £130 million + no matter what arguments going to come this way , it simply is a load of bollocks trying to justify it, we are basically giving a green light to the likes of city , saudi and psg to say we understand that you are sportswashing and we reject what you are doing to the sport but since you have premier league, uefa , fifa and national governments in your pockets we are effectively legitimising the hyper inflated prices that they started to bid on players just so they can join the succesful historical clubs around Europe.

Isak is not worth that money and we should not be entertaining it especially when viewing the clubs socialist background standards.

If fsg have that sort of money to invest, then invest it in the local area and maybe even setting up better footballing projects in an around deprived the country/world and develop a new fanbase not only on who we are as a club, but one that will find ways of not being pulled into the oil states tactic of legitimising them.

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Sadly none of this will change without a fundamental overhaul of the league and maybe even the collapse of one or two clubs where the benefactor pulls out.

Would be nice to win it on a whim but we have to spend to remain competitive they we’re going spend big money. At least we can point to having earned it.

Look at the list of transfers over last 7 years, we are like 10/11th in the list. This has only pushed up to about 8th.

We will effectively bring our net spend down anyhow when 3-4 players exit. It will probably come in around 100m-150m and for what is effectively an outlay over 5 windows that isn’t a lot.

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