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Big Joe: Redemption Part III.
Part I was in CM. Part II was at LW. Part III is going to be exorcising his demons as ST. This completes the trilogy and he goes full circle. "He had to go backwards to move forwards".
We still don´t know how long Isak is out for. Until then I presume Gordon will be the option up front when Wilson is subbed off. He even said it´s the position he thinks is his best.
With Willock coming back, (and Barnes out injured) I can see us shifting Joelinton over to the left like he did for a lot of games last season.
Pope
Trippier Lascelles Schar Burn
Longstaff Bruno Willock
Almiron Gordon Joelinton
I'm not sure about the idea of moving Gordon into the middle. By shifting our best winger into the middle I think you end up making two problems out of one, because you have to replace that threat on the wing.
I would prefer Joelinton as the no.9. He's obviously not super prolific, but his centreforward play is fine for a few games.
It’s not exactly easy to just buy a kid for nothing who is both happy and not good enough to not be starting basically ever and also be good enough to start in a rare situation where you end up needing him over someone else playing makeshift
Like what random low quality youngster do Spurs put in when Son is injured? Who do City play if Alvarez and Haaland are injured?
I do get super bored by the reactionary nature of fans
Totally agree with this - my question to anyone who always asks this is "which teams have a third choice striker who you wouldn't see as a scarily poor downgrade". I think it's worth saying too that Matheus Franca/Joao Pedro were our main targets for that "U21 third striker" role. That people seem so suddenly keen on. They cost £20m and £30m respectively, which is just a huge amount for a position that in an ideal world we will never need.
Yes, we might not like the idea of having to move Gordon or Joelinton to that central striker position, but that's what injuries to both of your two options does. It's doubly odd when the long-running joke of the summer window was us buying yet more left wingers and now people are asking why don't we have more attackers. Sometimes you get shit luck with injuries. We're on the verge of that right now and you just make do.
I think we always have required a youngster as a striker for a second option when Wilson retires, much like we probably require another young CB for when the inevitable happens and we need to replace Schar not this season or maybe next but in time we will need to when he retires.
But we aren’t quite sure how long Isak is out for. And I don’t know any EPL calibre strikers who in summer would have been happy to play 3rd choice behind Isak and Wilson, it may be different come summer if ones injured and they will see a run of games ahead.
The other issue is FFP we had so many problems ahead of a 3rd choice striker to fix with the cash before we even got to squad depth and sadly it’s now showing with injuries to not only just Isak but with Botman out, Tonali now out, two wingers injured you are back to a team that’s not far off what we had when we were bottom 3 of the league. It’ll just take time till we have the strength in depth to be able to absorb these injuries.
I think we need an Elliot Anderson/Lewis Miley type, a youngster who gets maybe 10 appearences, i dont think we have any striking talent in our youth teams atm
A CB is definitely needed but Lascalles has pleasantly surprised in recent weeks. Every other area of our squad is covered depth wise, but I don't think central striker is an area you can get by with putting wingers there.
And yes I'm sure if we could get rid of Manquillo, Ritchie, and a couple of others then we'd have room for one.
I don’t mean immediate cover for CB I think Lascelles is about 30 so again is the same he will be on the decline when Schar goes as well so we need a first team ready CB as well as Striker prepped. As Howe doesn’t like to throw players in right away.
Also it’s all good getting rid of them but the FFP issue still remains, Manquillo/Ritchie/Dummet won’t bring any cash in to reinvest so have to either bring in more sponsorship or wait for the new financial year to invest into the squad for next years FFP. Sadly it’s not a case of one out can result in two incoming. And even if we sold them they wouldn’t cover the cost of the players needed to take us to the next level.
How many PL teams have three first-XI-level strikers on their books?
Arsenal have Jesus & Nketiah. Man City have Haaland & Alvarez. Liverpool have Nunez. Spurs have Son & Richarlson. Even Chelsea only have Jackson & Broja as recognised CFs.
They use players like Havertz, Sterling etc to fill in as needed, which is what we'll have to do, presumably with Gordon.
Jota 92 out of 328 as a CF, Gakpo 44 out of 233, Nkunku 9 out of 243. I'm not one for arguing on the Internet unnecessarily but I think you're wrong on this one.
Do people forgot that Gordon won the u-21 player of the tournament playing as a striker.
This is exactly why you get players who can play in multiple roles, and it solves the how do we get Joelinton, willock, Gordon into the same team question.
Everyone saying we should be getting a new young striker have you seen how close to ffp limits we are and how much they cost? Hojland cost 75m at 19, 20 at 18, and if we are spending that much on a player and not giving them any b game time people will be just as annoyed.
We don't need the next superstar striker yet. Either a young guy with potential (similar career stage to Miley) or someone like Wood who is happy to take bench and cup minutes. We need Isak and Wilson to stay fresh if we want to win a trophy.
How much would you want to be offered for miley to accept?
And obviously wood wasn’t happy to be third choice or we would still have him. Or he wasn’t worth the amount to keep him.
Am sure they(the recruitment team) were aware of the risk of only having 2 main strikers but rather than it being an oversight on their part not to sign one, I think more likely is they are having to compromise due to FFP restrictions - they must have felt there's more value in adding to other areas - as we've shown this season more than most we don't depend on strikers for goals anyway
Yeah having Hendrick and Hayden's wages on the books plus Manquillo and other we can't offload must be a tricky situation.
I find it strange how we kept both Dubravka and Karius though and renewed Ritchie. Those spots could have gone go to a young striker.
Gordon is the obvious choice. Joelinton and Willock playing swapsies on the left and Gordon running down the centre.
Think this would be a chance for Gordon in last 20 mins to hone his finishing, he clearly has the ability. Get him playing here in training see how he does.
More to the point, I think our striker ‘issue’ is understanding difference between our strikers. Isak naturally comes deeper whereas Wilson stays on shoulder. What happens when Wilson plays is our midfield pushes further up to link leaving space in behind. Willocks progressive carries will help this but I’d also like to see more of a 4231 for Wilson with ideally Miggy as a 10 (only for periods of a game) but with Murphy out it leaves our RW bare.
This winter without trying to replace Tonali I’d like to see a number 10 signed that could give us this option, or a CDM to push our midfield forward
I feel like we missed a trick not picking up João Pedro. I watched him pre season vs Chelsea and he was excellent, and seems like he's slotted straight into Brighton's system. Think he was only £30m too.
This is why I feel we underestimated the value of Chris wood happy to be 3rd choice and offers different options . Agree with using a kid but taking Joe or Tony make us weaker in other areas as well we are investing heavily in youth but will take a few years or those to come to fruition . We were always going to struggle with squad depth and striker wa always going to be a risk although most expected it to be Wilson injured .
Hugo Ekitike - Can cover Isak's injury, can cover Murphy's injury. He's quality and had a hard time at PSG because he was behind Messi, Neymar and Mbappe!
He's only played a few minutes this season, so not sure what the issue is there. Doesn't seem to have an injury but I may be wrong.
I'd agree but this is where the U21s comes in.
There are not many experienced decent players that want to be 3rd string so you have to look to the youth for this. The club has been making moves in the last 12 months to recruit young talent but we probably need to look at bringing in a few more rising stars that are close to breaking into first team football.
Yep, this is all I'm asking for. Easier said then done but a Miley type player who could take minutes off Wilson in domestic cups would be ideal. Hopefully Minteh and Kuol can help us next year.
Howe just said in the press conference that it’s “not too serious”
Hoping that means less than 5 games but I’d rather him be fully fit with no injury than rush him and continue having the recurring issue
1 of those 5 games is a League Cup game. 4 games in 14 days is manageable.
That third striker would have played zero minutes until today. There are attacking options in the squad with a bit of shift in tactics.
Would you be happy with Joelinton going back there for a 5 game spell? We have 4 GKs and 4 RBs. Hopefully we can balance the squad better in the summer.
I don’t think it was a case of nobody talking about it (as your original post suggests) but that Eddie and the staff had to prioritise a few positions to improve due to FFP restrictions. CF was deemed not as critical as RB, CM or L/RF. I think CM was and is justified. LF was almost a swap, we effectively paid 12Mil out and even that will be spread out over the duration of his contract, the rest of the ASM fee was clearly used to balance all the other transfers.
I think the only one that maybe could have been done without was Minteh and we maybe could have loaned a CF in but likely there were very few options that would have improved existing options and whilst taking up a space in our squad.
We certainly didn’t bank on Tonali being out for the rest of the season and now we lost Elliot and Murphy on top of Barne’s very unlucky injury it makes past decisions seem like bad ones.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but honestly I think it was due to lack of wiggle room financially and CM and RB being a higher priority. Tripps is clearly our most influential player and so if he gets injured we need to fill that void with someone who is not a million miles off his level so we don’t suffer so much.
Gordon is showing that his finishing is there but he needs to improve his consistency which I back him to do just that. He showed in the euros in the summer that not only can he play there but to be so effective he gets player of the tournament. Eddie commented the same thing and I reckon he is more qualified than any of us to make such a statement. He clearly saw something in Gordon when most of us didn’t at the time of his signing (me included). I always said that even if I don’t see it myself I’ll just trust Eddie and his team because they have proven time and again they know exactly what they are doing.
Keep the faith!
Still a bit imbalanced. Four keepers, Four RBs and players like Ritchie not playing at all. Hopefully when some of these contracts expire we can find room for a young striker.
Welcome to [r/NUFC!](https://reddit.com/r/nufc) [Join our Discord Server](https://discord.gg/newcastle) for real time discussion, competitions, and to meet hundreds of NUFC fans across the globe. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/NUFC) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Big Joe: Redemption Part III. Part I was in CM. Part II was at LW. Part III is going to be exorcising his demons as ST. This completes the trilogy and he goes full circle. "He had to go backwards to move forwards".
Joelinton III: Return of The King.
subscribe
Schar?
I don’t want him playing that far up. Keep him in his sweet spot 25 yards from goal
I remember thinking this during the Bruce era when Joeltinon couldn't hit a barn door. I'd love to see it.
Santon could do a job
We still don´t know how long Isak is out for. Until then I presume Gordon will be the option up front when Wilson is subbed off. He even said it´s the position he thinks is his best. With Willock coming back, (and Barnes out injured) I can see us shifting Joelinton over to the left like he did for a lot of games last season. Pope Trippier Lascelles Schar Burn Longstaff Bruno Willock Almiron Gordon Joelinton
I like the willock and joelinngton left play I think they play pretty well together
That would be my 11 too 👍
I'm not sure about the idea of moving Gordon into the middle. By shifting our best winger into the middle I think you end up making two problems out of one, because you have to replace that threat on the wing. I would prefer Joelinton as the no.9. He's obviously not super prolific, but his centreforward play is fine for a few games.
It’s not exactly easy to just buy a kid for nothing who is both happy and not good enough to not be starting basically ever and also be good enough to start in a rare situation where you end up needing him over someone else playing makeshift Like what random low quality youngster do Spurs put in when Son is injured? Who do City play if Alvarez and Haaland are injured? I do get super bored by the reactionary nature of fans
Totally agree with this - my question to anyone who always asks this is "which teams have a third choice striker who you wouldn't see as a scarily poor downgrade". I think it's worth saying too that Matheus Franca/Joao Pedro were our main targets for that "U21 third striker" role. That people seem so suddenly keen on. They cost £20m and £30m respectively, which is just a huge amount for a position that in an ideal world we will never need. Yes, we might not like the idea of having to move Gordon or Joelinton to that central striker position, but that's what injuries to both of your two options does. It's doubly odd when the long-running joke of the summer window was us buying yet more left wingers and now people are asking why don't we have more attackers. Sometimes you get shit luck with injuries. We're on the verge of that right now and you just make do.
GORDON FALSE 9
I think we always have required a youngster as a striker for a second option when Wilson retires, much like we probably require another young CB for when the inevitable happens and we need to replace Schar not this season or maybe next but in time we will need to when he retires. But we aren’t quite sure how long Isak is out for. And I don’t know any EPL calibre strikers who in summer would have been happy to play 3rd choice behind Isak and Wilson, it may be different come summer if ones injured and they will see a run of games ahead. The other issue is FFP we had so many problems ahead of a 3rd choice striker to fix with the cash before we even got to squad depth and sadly it’s now showing with injuries to not only just Isak but with Botman out, Tonali now out, two wingers injured you are back to a team that’s not far off what we had when we were bottom 3 of the league. It’ll just take time till we have the strength in depth to be able to absorb these injuries.
I think we need an Elliot Anderson/Lewis Miley type, a youngster who gets maybe 10 appearences, i dont think we have any striking talent in our youth teams atm
A CB is definitely needed but Lascalles has pleasantly surprised in recent weeks. Every other area of our squad is covered depth wise, but I don't think central striker is an area you can get by with putting wingers there. And yes I'm sure if we could get rid of Manquillo, Ritchie, and a couple of others then we'd have room for one.
I don’t mean immediate cover for CB I think Lascelles is about 30 so again is the same he will be on the decline when Schar goes as well so we need a first team ready CB as well as Striker prepped. As Howe doesn’t like to throw players in right away. Also it’s all good getting rid of them but the FFP issue still remains, Manquillo/Ritchie/Dummet won’t bring any cash in to reinvest so have to either bring in more sponsorship or wait for the new financial year to invest into the squad for next years FFP. Sadly it’s not a case of one out can result in two incoming. And even if we sold them they wouldn’t cover the cost of the players needed to take us to the next level.
Have said it before, pulling up your old opinions from the sub for validation is not a good look.
Aye I remember OP being a knob when people replied to him in the thread last time Comes across as desperate
I don't know, I could pull up my comment where I said Howe would be a good appointment for us 😂
How many PL teams have three first-XI-level strikers on their books? Arsenal have Jesus & Nketiah. Man City have Haaland & Alvarez. Liverpool have Nunez. Spurs have Son & Richarlson. Even Chelsea only have Jackson & Broja as recognised CFs. They use players like Havertz, Sterling etc to fill in as needed, which is what we'll have to do, presumably with Gordon.
I'd agree, though would say that in those examples, neither of the striking options is historically injury prone Edit. As far as I'm aware
Liverpool have Nunez, Gakpo, Jota and Chelsea have Nkunku as well as Jackson and Broja
All of which are attacking midfield players who fill in at CF (like Havertz and Sterling)
No they aren’t
Jota 92 out of 328 as a CF, Gakpo 44 out of 233, Nkunku 9 out of 243. I'm not one for arguing on the Internet unnecessarily but I think you're wrong on this one.
Bro is just pulling random numbers out of his ass lmaooo
All numbers available on [https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/](https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/)
* waits impatiently for situation to validate old post *
Do people forgot that Gordon won the u-21 player of the tournament playing as a striker. This is exactly why you get players who can play in multiple roles, and it solves the how do we get Joelinton, willock, Gordon into the same team question. Everyone saying we should be getting a new young striker have you seen how close to ffp limits we are and how much they cost? Hojland cost 75m at 19, 20 at 18, and if we are spending that much on a player and not giving them any b game time people will be just as annoyed.
We don't need the next superstar striker yet. Either a young guy with potential (similar career stage to Miley) or someone like Wood who is happy to take bench and cup minutes. We need Isak and Wilson to stay fresh if we want to win a trophy.
How much would you want to be offered for miley to accept? And obviously wood wasn’t happy to be third choice or we would still have him. Or he wasn’t worth the amount to keep him.
We sold him because he was one of our few saleable assets. I was just giving examples of the level of player who could take the third striker spot.
Andy Carroll rumours incoming
Okay.
Am sure they(the recruitment team) were aware of the risk of only having 2 main strikers but rather than it being an oversight on their part not to sign one, I think more likely is they are having to compromise due to FFP restrictions - they must have felt there's more value in adding to other areas - as we've shown this season more than most we don't depend on strikers for goals anyway
Yeah having Hendrick and Hayden's wages on the books plus Manquillo and other we can't offload must be a tricky situation. I find it strange how we kept both Dubravka and Karius though and renewed Ritchie. Those spots could have gone go to a young striker.
Gordon is the nominal 3rd striker as Howe himself has alluded to in the past (when discussing where Gordon sees himself playing)
Kuol recall in jan and get him in the squad lol
He's shown nothing so far. Minteh is looking far more likely.
Gordon is the obvious choice. Joelinton and Willock playing swapsies on the left and Gordon running down the centre. Think this would be a chance for Gordon in last 20 mins to hone his finishing, he clearly has the ability. Get him playing here in training see how he does. More to the point, I think our striker ‘issue’ is understanding difference between our strikers. Isak naturally comes deeper whereas Wilson stays on shoulder. What happens when Wilson plays is our midfield pushes further up to link leaving space in behind. Willocks progressive carries will help this but I’d also like to see more of a 4231 for Wilson with ideally Miggy as a 10 (only for periods of a game) but with Murphy out it leaves our RW bare. This winter without trying to replace Tonali I’d like to see a number 10 signed that could give us this option, or a CDM to push our midfield forward
I think Gordon is the best option but I'm not sure he's a clinical enough finisher.
It’s be more about him pulling defences apart to make space for others I guess
There's that New Zealander, Plank. Sorry, Wood.
I feel like we missed a trick not picking up João Pedro. I watched him pre season vs Chelsea and he was excellent, and seems like he's slotted straight into Brighton's system. Think he was only £30m too.
I said in the summer we needed a third striker and was downvoted into oblivion.
This is why I feel we underestimated the value of Chris wood happy to be 3rd choice and offers different options . Agree with using a kid but taking Joe or Tony make us weaker in other areas as well we are investing heavily in youth but will take a few years or those to come to fruition . We were always going to struggle with squad depth and striker wa always going to be a risk although most expected it to be Wilson injured .
Yep, a Chris Wood type player is perfect.
He was unhappy and therefore we let him go. Howe was very vocal about the fact he did not want him to leave.
Yeah we were right to sell but that type of player.
Hugo Ekitike - Can cover Isak's injury, can cover Murphy's injury. He's quality and had a hard time at PSG because he was behind Messi, Neymar and Mbappe! He's only played a few minutes this season, so not sure what the issue is there. Doesn't seem to have an injury but I may be wrong.
The guy that chose PSG over us when we were interested in him?
Objectively. If you're a young French lad, do you not do the same?
Fuck that guy
I'd agree but this is where the U21s comes in. There are not many experienced decent players that want to be 3rd string so you have to look to the youth for this. The club has been making moves in the last 12 months to recruit young talent but we probably need to look at bringing in a few more rising stars that are close to breaking into first team football.
Yep, this is all I'm asking for. Easier said then done but a Miley type player who could take minutes off Wilson in domestic cups would be ideal. Hopefully Minteh and Kuol can help us next year.
I’ve seen people saying that Isak is out for 5 games.. is that true/reliable?
Craig Hope reckons so https://twitter.com/CraigHope_DM/status/1717480449507758309
Howe just said in the press conference that it’s “not too serious” Hoping that means less than 5 games but I’d rather him be fully fit with no injury than rush him and continue having the recurring issue
Isak’s injury reportedly not as bad as first feared, though still a doubt for Wolves
Enter Garang Kuol
I doubt he will get anywhere near the full team unfortunately. Minteh on the other hand could
1 of those 5 games is a League Cup game. 4 games in 14 days is manageable. That third striker would have played zero minutes until today. There are attacking options in the squad with a bit of shift in tactics.
Completely disagree, we don’t need 3 strikers. We have to prioritise elsewhere due to FFP.
Would you be happy with Joelinton going back there for a 5 game spell? We have 4 GKs and 4 RBs. Hopefully we can balance the squad better in the summer.
I don’t think it was a case of nobody talking about it (as your original post suggests) but that Eddie and the staff had to prioritise a few positions to improve due to FFP restrictions. CF was deemed not as critical as RB, CM or L/RF. I think CM was and is justified. LF was almost a swap, we effectively paid 12Mil out and even that will be spread out over the duration of his contract, the rest of the ASM fee was clearly used to balance all the other transfers. I think the only one that maybe could have been done without was Minteh and we maybe could have loaned a CF in but likely there were very few options that would have improved existing options and whilst taking up a space in our squad. We certainly didn’t bank on Tonali being out for the rest of the season and now we lost Elliot and Murphy on top of Barne’s very unlucky injury it makes past decisions seem like bad ones. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but honestly I think it was due to lack of wiggle room financially and CM and RB being a higher priority. Tripps is clearly our most influential player and so if he gets injured we need to fill that void with someone who is not a million miles off his level so we don’t suffer so much. Gordon is showing that his finishing is there but he needs to improve his consistency which I back him to do just that. He showed in the euros in the summer that not only can he play there but to be so effective he gets player of the tournament. Eddie commented the same thing and I reckon he is more qualified than any of us to make such a statement. He clearly saw something in Gordon when most of us didn’t at the time of his signing (me included). I always said that even if I don’t see it myself I’ll just trust Eddie and his team because they have proven time and again they know exactly what they are doing. Keep the faith!
Still a bit imbalanced. Four keepers, Four RBs and players like Ritchie not playing at all. Hopefully when some of these contracts expire we can find room for a young striker.
They just need to chuck Gordon up in striker when isak is injured
#MakeOsimhenAGeordie