Newcastle face ‘worst of all worlds’ Sesko outcome as ‘catastrophic ineptitude’ is exposed

It ‘feels like a home-grown catastrophe’ at Newcastle even before missing out on Benjamin Sesko. Brentford have little sympathy for them or Yoane Wissa.

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Newcastle’s summer disaster
I enjoyed Noj’s email as I love FM and can totally appreciate what they are saying about the owners at Newcastle, as a lot of my current ire is directed at them rather than solely focusing on PSR.

Newcastle fans are very accustomed to board/owner level incompetence, but we genuinely thought we’d got past that when PIF came in. Staveley and her husband seemed to know what they wanted and could make it happen. Since she left we’re approaching comedy club status again. The CEO needs replacing because of illness, which isn’t anyone’s fault, but a serious business wouldn’t sit idle and just be in limbo like we are.

The Sporting Director was a useless sh*te who seemingly did f*** all across all his time with the club, but left just at the most important time of the year with no replacement lined up, apparently having done nothing to prepare the ground for new transfers.

The entire recruiting team needs an overhaul. So many of the players we’ve gone after never wanted to join. Players we’ve landed in the past we had little or no competition for – Botman, Isak, Bruno, Tonali all landed with minimal fuss, so what are we doing differently now than 3-4 years ago? Was Mitchell actually right in saying our recruitment set up was bad? If that were true, how has most of our business worked out so well but this summer it’s been so terrible? Lessons have to be learned.

I completely get why other fans are fed up with hearing about how PSR is holding Newcastle back when there is so much catastrophic ineptitude on display for all to see. We have money to spend, what we appear to lack is any nous in identifying the players who want to join, and the skill to negotiate the right deal.

The Sesko transfer – we’re haggling over a sell on clause according to reports. Why? We need him! We’re absolutely desperate and we’ve not even addressed the other gaping holes in the squad.

The rewards of landing him are so bleeding obvious. All of a sudden from looking utterly f**ked we’ll have two very good strikers. At my most optimistic I believe there might be a  path back for Isak if Liverpool are not just posturing about walking away from a deal.

But even if Isak gets sold if Sesko joins, which seems more likely, Newcastle will have money to spend on the other areas of the squad we’ve not even begun to address. Its win-win and could turn the summer around completely. No-one will care how many targets we missed at the start of the summer if by the end of it our squad is in better shape than at the end of May.

Failure to get Sesko and we are in the worst of all worlds. Guedes from PSG is the next cab off the rank apparently – we’re down to wanting PSG’s third choice striker and supposed to be enthusiastic about this.

This genuinely feels like a home-grown catastrophe, and there has to be accountability. We have to have a Sporting Director who works well with Eddie Howe and team. There has to be a better scouting and recruitment team who don’t waste time on deals with players who simply don’t want to be at Newcastle. And instead of this boom and bust cycle, there has to be a CEO with a strategy of mitigating the unassailable PSR gap over the 10-15 years it may take, with a decision on the new stadium or expanded St James’, new training ground and facilities, and huge investment in youth academies and recruitment.
James

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Indecent proposal
“Dan, Spurs (for my sins) Shout out to Roy. See you Son, you were great”

Regardless, unlike the movie, there’s no returning to Woody Harrelson/Newcastle. The trust is gone and the relationship is over. It is just a matter of time and to pretend otherwise is delusional. All Newcastle can do is collect the money. Unlike Woody, I assume they won’t be donating it to charity.

All the talk of loyalty and betrayal is nonsense. It’s not a relationship that’s based on unconditional love, and football clubs (and fanbases) only want players to stay when it’s of benefit to them, and will cut a player loose as soon as it behoves them to do so (age, loss of form, injury, need the money). Why should more be expected for players?

While it would have been nice to receive a fee for Trent, I couldn’t care less when he left, or how he left. The club is the thing and he’s no longer a Liverpool player. Same for Coutinho, Suarez, Torres, McManaman and Owen. I just remember the good times and move on.

Obviously it’s not for me to tell Newcastle fans how to feel, but I’d be looking to get excited about how to spend the £135m and taking one step back in order to take two steps forward. Isak isn’t going to be your life partner (e.g. Shearer), just a hot ex.
Peekay

A word on Wissa
I’ve noticed a bit of sympathy shown towards Wissa on this site so please allow me to give a Brentford fan’s perspective on this.

First of all, almost all of the information being reported in the media is conjecture. Nobody involved has gone on the record and said anything of note (apart from some fairly bland comments from Keith Andrews). So we mostly don’t know what is true and what isn’t.

This, it seems, doesn’t stop the media from reporting as if they are “facts”. But let’s be honest, most of the noise here is almost certainly coming from Wissa’s agent who’s trying to stir things up to engineer a move for his client and a massive payday for himself. Maybe, just maybe, there is some ulterior motive there that makes him an unreliable source.

Was he ‘promised’ by Brentford that he could leave this Summer? Does anyone truly believe that?!? I’ve no doubt there may have been some conversations along the lines of “if we get a sensible bid we won’t stand in your way”, but that hardly amounts to a promise. And £25m hardly amounts to a sensible bid for a player who was only outscored by Salah last season for non-penalty goals.

Of the facts we do “know”, Wissa left the Portugal training camp early and wasn’t in the squad for the friendly v QPR last weekend. He also appears to be training separately from the main squad (although even that isn’t certain). I’m struggling to see why there should be any sympathy for the player’s behaviour that has led to this situation? No player should be holding their employer to ransom like this. And I would argue that a player of Wissa’s talent has essentially hit his ceiling already anyway. He’s not being coveted by Newcastle to be their main striker. Maybe he wants the extra coin and champions league prestige, but I wouldn’t say it’s really stepping up to be a back-up centre forward for the 5th placed PL club compared to being the first choice at the 10th placed PL club. There’s only one way Wissa gets even close to matching the 19 goals he scored last season, and that’s staying with Brentford (and not being a d*ck about it).

That’s all to say, I wouldn’t begrudge him the move if it’s what he wants. But it has to be on our terms, and it’s disappointing that some (maybe most) of the reporting seems to be with a slant towards Wissa and/or Newcastle’s perspective, with very little in support of little-old Brentford’s position.
Rob, Surrey, Bees fan

Crystal Palace – one step back, two steps forward?
I, along with I’m sure the majority of football fans, wish Crystal Palace well in their appeal against demotion from the Europa League to the Conference League. However, if the worst should happen and the decision not be overturned, they shouldn’t be too down, because I think the Conference League is a Cup they could actually have a damned good chance of winning.

Sure, the Europa League is a higher standard and offers the dream of qualifying for the Champions League via the back door and Palace fans could argue with some credence that if a largely rotten Spurs team could win that then why not them, but it would be quite the long shot, whereas in the Conference League, they ought to be within the half dozen strongest contenders, particularly if they reached the latter stages with no realistic fears of relegation from the Premier League.

Sure, it’d be something of a consolation prize, but I’m sure West Ham fans treasure the memories of their win two seasons back and Palace themselves had a similar experience in winning the FA Cup – their first ever major trophy. When you weigh that up against merely competing in the Europa League and likely being knocked out along the way, it might be a genuine decision which you’d rather go for…
Nick, Bristol

Play-offs for everyone?
Izzy AFC DC, as an American, I can tell you emphatically the American way isn’t a better way to decide a champion, even if the playoffs are fun.

But how would English playoffs be structured? Potentially top 4 play one-off matches for the title decider. But doesn’t that cascade down? 4-7th play to decide Champions League teams, then 6-9th for the other European places. At the other end, 15-19 playing for relegation places. Hypothetical: VAR chalk off an Arsenal goal v West Ham in September, they come second, but play a one-off v City for the League?

Nobody genuinely thinks luck evens out. But nobody believes it’s possible to legislate for.
Brian

So let me get this straight. Ozzy, AFC’s answer to what he feels is the unfairness of a league playing as few as 38 games and not enough games, therefore, to even out that unfairness – so really needing multiple season’s worth of games to even things out – is to play a one-off decider? Seriously? As if there could be no issues with say, one team also playing a Champions League final at around this time or a major player with a serious injury for that one game, etc?

North America doesn’t do cups the way football teams in Europe do. The ‘league’ is not a league just jostling for position to get into the cup-like playoffs. In the case of baseball with 162 ‘regular season’ games, they play enough to even out most issues – hence why data-oriented (aka Moneyball) stats work.(Teams can have massive dips in performance and still make the playoffs.) Meanwhile,  ice-hockey and basketball play 82 games, while (American football) only 17.   Yet even with such a massive difference in regular season games, they all still do ‘playoffs.’ At least in ice-hockey and basketball the playoff is a grind, with 4 rounds of best-of-seven series to get to the final and win. This playoff scenario is due to the huge geography of North America limiting teams to playing an even schedule between each other thus being separated into divisions where they will play more games against divisional opponents with a few road-trips thrown in. So they aren’t balancing ‘unevenness’ in the way Ozzy is thinking with playoffs. They’re balancing the unevenness of games against each other.

The reality is that if just one player as in Rodri is the total reason a season was derailed then that is an issue that City’s management should have addressed. And the data shows that the new manager impact is in fact neutral.

And we haven’t even got to the impact of specific referees, red cards, penalties being given or not given or poor VAR decisions (ala Liverpool vs Spurs or a whole season for Brighton.)

Perhaps Ozzy would prefer we only hand out a Premier League title every 4 years – after all,  surely 152 games would be enough to even things out?
Paul McDevitt

SPOTY bother
I am sorry Adam but saying F365 was championing Chloe Kelly for this years SPOTY “for scoring a couple of penalties” is rather like saying your pick, Joe Root, deserves said gong because he hit a few runs.

Chloe’s contribution to the Lionesses triumph was a great deal more than two high-pressure, decisive penalties but do bear in mind the key word in the award title is Personality. While there are a number of the England team whose performances were immense, Chloe was arguably the stand-out character of the team.

And while I love a Test Match (even if we do lose by six runs) and Joe Root, I would imagine that the Euros captured a much wider swathe of public attention than the cricket, as well as a much larger TV audience.
Carolyn, (Leah Williamson would be a good shout too) South London Gooner.