OzyBoy

Exactly this - £200m is a ridiculous amount of money to spend, but it's not that unusual. How much have Everton or Villa spent/wasted in the last 2/3 years without any apparent progress? Newcastle have spent money but have spent it really well and deployed the new signings into a system that suits them - almost like there's joined up thinking between how the club wants to play football and which players are needed to play that way. There's no reason Villa couldn't be in Newcastle's position - it's not PIF's billions that have transformed the club, it's the club's footballing philosophy. Also, of the £200m, there's about £90m not even being used (Isak and Targett), so the first team has been rebuilt for around £110m. It's squad depth that Newcastle are lacking right now, and injuries could completely derail their season.

Yeah that third kit is awful, really not good.

Well, to be fair, there was nothing much to cheer on then.

Because this is a "Let's all laugh at Newcastle" thread and it's actually quite interesting to hear the views of supporters of different clubs?

Yeah, real person. I'm not sure how much value or success there would be deploying trolls to an Aston Villa forum to defend NUFC.

"somebody" not "anybody"

Well I'm not defending Newcastle from sportswashing, I'm trying to explain why huge swathes of supporters haven't abandoned the club. The club and its relationship with the supporters has been transformed since the takeover. And it's not even due to huge amounts of money being spent. The January spend could have been funded by Ashley, but the whole outlook of the club is different now. The stadium is being smartened up, the training ground is being revamped, supporter groups are being listened to by the board, the board interact positively on Twitter with supporters. None of this needed huge wealth, it just needed someone who actually cares about the club.

It's degrees of tolerance - how much are you willing to support a business you know if at least part-funded by Saudi (or any other regime).

Without diminishing the issues of the ownership, you have to understand the sheer relief of someone other than Ashley owning the club. The club have openly supported the LGBQT+ community and the United With Pride supporters group has been a beneficiary of the official NUFC charity. The club, I think, is trying to have an identity beyond being Saudi owned by engaging with LGBTQ+ groups and the wider Newcastle community in general. It seems like the Saudis are allowing the board to run the club without political interference. Who can say how long that will last, but so far the club has been really good at generating goodwill between it and the supporters.

That's totally understandable - I would much rather the club was owned by somebody else.

There are plenty of fans that are very uneasy about the ownership, but what do you do? Walk away? There are lots of business links between the UK and Saudi. Do we boycott them all? Is there a threshold below which it's acceptable for Saudis to invest in a company, but above which it's not? Should we boycott clubs that are accepting Saudi money from Newcastle as transfer fees? Or once the money has passed from Newcastle to the selling club is it no longer blood money and the selling club can happily spend it on new players and the fan base can just ignore where it originally came from? I'd rather have different investors, but we are where we are.

The messages from the board (mainly Amanda Staveley) are that it will take time to be competitive, so they're doing a good job managing fans' expectations. So I think at board level they are being realistic. How that translates further up the food chain, who knows? The entire infrastructure of the club was completely neglected by Ashley, not just the playing staff. One of the first things the new owners did was to have the windows at St James Park cleaned, which hadn't been done properly for years - that's an indication of the extent of the neglect. The training ground is Championship-level at best, so that's getting a revamp over the summer while they look for a suitable location for a new state-of-the-art training ground (no more ice baths in wheelie bins). If they didn't know this was a long-term project before they bought the club then they do now.. Most people were a bit underwhelmed when Howe was appointed, but he's been a revelation. You can see the players are actually being coached now, they're trying to play with the ball rather that simply sit back and invite pressure. And the way he presents himself, he just seems like a decent bloke. He got a round of applause from the local press at the last press conference of the season for how he's transformed the team and how open he's been with media, in contrast to the warfare between Bruce and the press. So I think he will be given time - I don't think the board are desperate for a big-name manager like Pochettino. Obviously we'll revisit this at Christmas when we're sitting in 16th and Botman is being run ragged by the likes of Patrick Bamford.

There's always a lunatic fringe that have completely unrealistic expectations, but for most people I know, outside the top 10 would be disappointing and 7th is the top-end of what we would hope, assuming we are lucky that new players bed in and we don't have injuries to key players. I think our first 11 will be quite strong, but the strength of the squad overall is weak and is going to take a number of windows to improve. Anyone thinking we can finish in the top six is dreaming, frankly, unless other teams implode. A good cup run would be a bonus.

Newcastle is starting to look like a well-run club. A far cry from having Joe Kinnear as Director of Football. That's what we had to endure under Ashley.

I've got no inside info on this but I suspect Botman is one of the players Newcastle would have flexed their financial muscle for, even if we had signed Carlos. Botman/Carlos/Schar/Burn would have been a pretty decent set of CBs. If the rumoured £10M for Pope is in anyway near accurate then it's really good business. Pope/Dubravka are good, solid options.

Fair enough - just the assertion that we'd moved onto Botman because Villa landed Carlos just isn't true. If we'd got Carlos I think we'd still be in for Botman because the club see him as a long term investment to take us on to the next level. FWIW I think Villa have done good business so far in this window.

That's it - breaking into the top 8 and staying there is really difficult because everyone is investing - it's not like Villa and Newcastle are strengthening and the top 8 aren't.

As you'd expect I disagree with this. It seems pretty targetted (haha) so far. The club is having to battle with the Newcastle tax and so far seem to be prepared to walk away rather than be held to ransom, which seems sensible to me.

This is just a fact of football. Milan obviously have a bigger pull than Newcastle. If Milan had been in for Carlos then would he have preferred to go there than to Villa? I think so.

I mean, that's just not true is it. Botman was always our first choice, and we haven't been in for Carlos since January. I don't know why people need to make stuff like this up - it just diminishes anything else you have to say. Why not just be happy that you have Carlos - definitely a really good buy for you (as he would have been for Newcastle), rather than celebrating that you snatched him away from us.

Yes the comments I saw were more him bigging-up his new team mates rather slagging off his old team mates, which is exactly what you'd expect when a player joins a new club.

No-one knows where he's going until he signs the contract. Yes, aspiring, signing them is a whole different level of difficult. I'd guess at least four windows away from having a good enough squad to seriously compete.

Who knows yet! But that's the level of player we're aspiring to, and compromising in other positions (like LB).

Completely agree.

That's why I think this is a decent deal for Newcastle and Villa - we've also upgraded our left back position, and you've got rid of a player you didn't want. Targett for us was unspectacular but solid. I think that will do us for next season. We have more important positions to improve.