Lallana's Left Peg

No-one joins Newcastle to achieve something in the team. You join because you get a great Premier League wage and they have a history of not standing in the way of players who wish to leave. And the North-East is a great place to live too. Newcastle would be a good move for Charlie Austin on the presumption he sees it as a stepping stone to better things, not a final destination.

Do you have a copy of In That Number? It's a great book and will have all the information you need to pull something together. Failing that the Authors of said book, or at least some of them / people involved with them, are on this forum so you can get in touch that way.

I think he's a good player but not sure where he fits in now Jay Rod is staying.

From what I have seen Grealish is more creative and has more of a goal threat but JWP is better at everything else.

I reckon we've got a better chance of winning the Europa League than qualifying for the Champions League via our league position. Not that either are likely.

I wouldn't be so sure. 3 loan players have gone (two on the fringes of the team, and one very important) - they will need to be replaced for us just to stand still, and we have a keeper to bring in to replace Forster as well. Europa League doesn't have much money in it, so I would expect us to play more kids next season, which I'm fine with.

Not too much different, but Champions League clubs will likely only have to do that three times before Christmas, and if we make the group stage then we'd have had to do it around eight times. We'll get longer to prepare for an easier game on the Thursday than we will the harder game on the Sunday too.

Don't think we have any chance whatsoever of maintaining our current league position along with a Europa League campaign but would love to be pleasantly surprised.

Bayern Munich will be monitoring hundreds of players around Europe. It's what most half decent clubs do, including ourselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_Premier_League_players

According to his Twitter:

I don't know anything about him. I was convinced we'd buy English for Clyne's replacement (if he left) - Byram or Trippier. EDIT:

Which is what will lead to speculation about Clyne's future. Soares appears to be first choice for Sporting Lisbon and his international career has just started (like Clyne's) so I would speculate he is unlikely to leave to be second choice.

Bye bye Clyne?

Yep you're right and whilst the people pulling together the rankings obviously have their own methodology for what is important for a 'brand' at a football level we're nowhere near as 'branded' as lots of clubs we're ranked above.

It's complete ******** in my opinion. No doubt our 'brand' has got better, but we have a better brand than the likes of Atletico Madrid, Ajax, Inter Milan, Celtic, Roma, Valencia, Benfica etc? Give me a break

Peculiar move for both parties on the face of it.

Another way for the club to make some money but it's inevitable given the season we've just had and how FFP works.

Why are people having a go at Saint Charlie for wishing Schneiderlin well if he goes

He's going to want to be first choice. Would he be first choice?

Yep - so you could slice it and see it as a £10m transfer fee and £150k a week for four years, or a £20m transfer fee and £100k a week etc. Either way, it's £40m assigned for Milner to play in central midfield for the next four years until he is 33. Not convinced.

I'd rather have Cork in front of the back four but Milner is clearly the better footballer. Is he 200k a week good in central midfield? I don't think so personally.

I think at this point the ability to get rid of Osvaldo and free up £2.5m+ in wages a year would be welcome. I think Ramirez still has some resale value given his age - I think we could flog him to an Italian club for a few million and someone like Inter could pay all of his wages too without us needing to make a contribution.

Can Mane or Jay Rod play on the right? And that would mean Tadic missing out? Good to have squad depth in a vital part of the pitch, but just wondering who is first choice all things being equal.