About 18 months ago….

No offence Mark but feel like I’ve read this type of article about 20 times in the 4 years since the takeover. Lots of words and not much action/appetite.

Also isn’t this exactly what Paul Mitchell wanted to do before Howe threw his toys out the pram…

Yeah it’s been relentless. There’s clearly an ulterior motive. I’m assuming stemming back to Mark Bellingham having a go at some journos

I will never not be pissed off about the lack of new training ground and Academy investment in 4 years. When the likes of Bournemouth and Leicester have state of the art facilities and good academies.

It was one of the easiest wins, doesn’t count towards PSR and infact would save PSR going forward

I like this - I think the only negative I would add is the lack of communication from the board which in conjunction with a lack of infrastructure investment and unwillingness to push back on PSR in 4 years is in my mind very poor.

70 mins, won a penalty, best player on the pitch. But we’ve been subjected to Dan Burn at LB last few games…

Been waiting for this thread to drop!

Sorry mate but I think there’s some revisionist history going on with Isak there and I don’t blame you because yes the guy turned out to be a piece of shit.

He had some flaws with injuries and drifted in games but other than that he was a truly elite striker for us and perfect for Howes style

Yeah I agree but that’s the risk the recruitment team made and it’s backfired on them massively. It also makes less sense when you sign your ‘Isak replacement’ who is completely different stylistically.

I still truly believe we should never have sold Isak and called his bluff

All valid points. But if your going to be shortsighted and buy a 29 year old 2nd striker for £55m then any kind of serious injury is going to be a bigger problem than if he was 23/24/25 years old instead with more of his career ahead and better chance to recover at younger age

It’s also hilarious because don’t forget he was the Wilson replacement aka back up striker, but suddenly our entire season rests on his knee…

We get this everytime we have a bad spell. It’s never the managers fault we just need *insert player name* back.

This is what happens when sporting directors and heads of recruitment aren’t allowed to do their job and instead the manager and his nephew make all the decisions

It’s not just away…

Same mate, been saying this for 2 years

Has Burns credit ran out now?

You missed the part where Botman stopped running for some reason

He played 30 mins the other night so he could easily have done the same again before the penalty. You can’t defend the indefensible here I’m sorry

We can go deeper on this and moan about the fact the Howe recruitment team spent 200m but we only have 3 premier league calibre full backs…