| Football365 have us 13th 15:19 - Aug 10 with 1609 views | andyblue231 |
In the premier league mood rankings.
13) Ipswich Town
The only one of the promoted teams who would’ve fully expected to be in this position at the start of last season, and thus the most disappointing of a trio who haven’t really done anything much this summer to suggest they’re going to cook.
Not every promoted team is going to have Leeds’ heft, and that’s fine, but last summer also brought us Sunderland. Nobody expected them to do as well as they did, but in hindsight the signs were there in a summer where at the very, very least they made it clear they were going to give Premier League survival a proper red-hot crack having surprised themselves as much as anyone by finding themselves in the top flight.
None of the promoted trio have that vibe this summer. Ipswich have made a few eye-catching signings, most notably Brazilian striker Emersonn, who only looks like a typo.
But they’re all speculative signings. There’s nothing reliably solid about any of it. Sure, Kieran McKenna’s departure has disrupted things, and bringing in Gary O’Neil does at least show a willingness to try and fight for their Premier League life.
We’re just a touch underwhelmed is all. It’s all a bit, dare we say it, Norwich. We had hoped Ipswich might take more of a Fulham approach to trying to shift the yo-yo tag after bouncing back up. |  | | |  |
| Football365 have us 13th on 15:23 - Aug 10 with 1530 views | AbujaBlue |
I'd be embarrassed if I had written that. |  | | |
| Football365 have us 13th on 15:26 - Aug 10 with 1488 views | Illinoisblue |
13th in the “mood table” and they’re writing about our funeral? Does not compute. |  |
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| Football365 have us 13th on 15:30 - Aug 10 with 1417 views | andyblue231 |
| Football365 have us 13th on 15:26 - Aug 10 by Illinoisblue |
13th in the “mood table” and they’re writing about our funeral? Does not compute. |
There are some fan bases a lot angrier than us I think. Newcastle were bottom
20) Newcastle
It’s interesting to read the replies on X-formerly-Twitter to Luke Edwards’ attempt to convince Newcastle fans – and quite possibly himself – that everything might be okay despite a summer that has now seen the club lose three of its best players and manager.
‘It’s been a car-crash summer but Newcastle 2.0 can still work’ is a headline that has certainly caught the attention of Newcastle Twitter.
And what makes it interesting is that they are largely unanimous in being furious about it. Just for two completely opposing reasons.
There are those unwilling at this time to accept any kind of optimism about what might be in store for Newcastle in the short, medium or long-term. This is, it has to be noted, the majority voice.
But there’s also a sizeable minority of happy-clappers whose displeasure is aimed not at the idea that everything might still turn out just about okay somehow but that it’s even been a car crash at all. To us, that’s a fascinating point of view.
We have to believe it’s copium, because it’s been a worse summer than Newcastle could possibly have feared. And they feared another troubled one on the back of a harrowing 2025 summer and horribly disappointing 25/26 season.
Mediawatch has dealt in some detail with Edwards’ piece, but a key point for us is the idea that losing a manager and, across the last 12 months, four of the biggest and most significant players in the squad and then replacing them with a manager who has no big-league experience and a host of young, inexperienced players is a plan that ever really works well for anyone, anywhere.
There is, as wry old Mediawatch put it, more than a hint in Edwards’ desperation to apply some kind of positive spin of the Arrested Development ‘but it might work for us’ meme.
Perhaps more importantly still, even in this attempt to put the most positive possible spin imaginable on recent events there’s an acceptance of failure.
The plan for Newcastle 2.0 is to become a bigger version of the admirable and canny B teams – your Brightons, your Brentfords, your Bournemouths.
Two issues here. First, even if that works, it’s a failure. Because that is simply not the vision the fans were offered when being asked to sell their soul to the Saudis. Newcastle fans didn’t entirely throw away the vast amount of goodwill that genuinely did exist towards the club to become a slightly heftier version of Brighton.
They were promised – or at least certainly expected – a pathway to Man City or Chelsea success levels that might feasibly justify the means and create enough noise to quiet down those pesky voices inside their heads.
Being Bournemouth but on a slightly larger scale was never going to be worth all of the trauma.
But there’s a second and even more fundamental issue. It won’t work. It can’t work. Newcastle cannot be just a slightly bigger version of the B teams because that isn’t a thing that exists. That is not a place in the food chain Newcastle are willing to accept.
This is a club whose supporters have started an online discourse over whether Arsenal are even meaningfully bigger than they are.
Newcastle 2.0 appears to be a club busily turning a floor into a ceiling, not so much seeking to curb expectations as crush any lingering ambition or even hope altogether.
How do they achieve escape velocity from their new reduced circumstances? There were no guarantees that trying to become a proper member of the Big Six/Seven/Eight/Whatever would work, but at least it plausibly could have. If, in the wildly unlikely event all these very talented but very, very raw new ingredients do by some alchemic miracle produce a team capable of challenging the top six, what stops them all just being picked off if Newcastle are just striving to be the Biggest Bees?
The current crop have been picked off at a time when Newcastle have, at least in theory, carried loftier ambition to try and convince those stars whose stock has risen so high during their time in black and white that they could achieve their goals here.
How to do that with a next generation where even that possibility apparentlyno longer applies?
A catastrophic worst-case scenario just looks so much likelier for Newcastle now than any best-case scenario. And not only because we’re no longer sure what a best-case scenario even looks like for a club that qualified for the Champions League only 15 months ago but has been doom-spiralling ever since.
In summary, then: things seem far more likely to go badly than to go well. And even if they do go well on the club’s newly stated terms, they’re still probably quite bad.
It could be a long old season on Tyneside. [Post edited 10 Aug 15:30]
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| Football365 have us 13th on 15:30 - Aug 10 with 1408 views | burnbudgiesburn |
| Football365 have us 13th on 15:23 - Aug 10 by AbujaBlue |
I'd be embarrassed if I had written that. |
Yeah.
Brownie points for equating Norwich with 'meh' though. | | | |
| Football365 have us 13th on 15:32 - Aug 10 with 1388 views | Yppswyche |
That would be a bit more like the Fulham who in their last promotion summer in 2022 signed both Issa Diop & Sasa Lukic.. plus a 26 year old Portuguese CDM from Sporting. Riiiiight. ‘Journalism’. Good one. |  | | |
| Football365 have us 13th on 16:22 - Aug 10 with 992 views | Guthrum |
I don't get why our signings of Prem, European top-tier and World Cup experienced players are being written down so heavily by pundits. Did they expect us to be hiring the likes of Haaland from City?
They all concentrate on Emersonn (young player, bit of a project), rather than the (IMO) much more significant ones like Diop, Fatawu, Maeda or Lukic. |  |
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| Football365 have us 13th on 16:25 - Aug 10 with 971 views | jayessess |
| Football365 have us 13th on 15:32 - Aug 10 by Yppswyche |
That would be a bit more like the Fulham who in their last promotion summer in 2022 signed both Issa Diop & Sasa Lukic.. plus a 26 year old Portuguese CDM from Sporting. Riiiiight. ‘Journalism’. Good one. |
Over the years F365 have become ever more Big 6 obsessed and less and less curious and well-informed about any other club. Quality has also declined.
I don't know what would have constituted "solid" recruitment for us more than the likes of Diop, Lukic and Florentino. Even Maeda, Scherpen and Fatawu have decent levels of experience. Emersonn is the only signing I'd classify as a speculative. |  |
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| Football365 have us 13th on 16:25 - Aug 10 with 966 views | bsw72 |
Lazy internet journalism at its finest. Pretty much guaranteed AI based tripe. |  | | |
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| Football365 have us 13th on 16:40 - Aug 10 with 820 views | andyblue231 |
| Football365 have us 13th on 16:25 - Aug 10 by jayessess |
Over the years F365 have become ever more Big 6 obsessed and less and less curious and well-informed about any other club. Quality has also declined.
I don't know what would have constituted "solid" recruitment for us more than the likes of Diop, Lukic and Florentino. Even Maeda, Scherpen and Fatawu have decent levels of experience. Emersonn is the only signing I'd classify as a speculative. |
They used to be brilliant but I agree the quality has declined. Still have some good articles and better than most. The athletic is better but not as fun to read.
It’s become a lot more click-baity like everything unfortunately. | | | |
| Football365 have us 13th on 16:41 - Aug 10 with 793 views | IndependentlyBlue |
It actually sounds as if it was ‘written’ about three or four weeks ago, before the recent signings. Still a load of old squit though. |  |
| Better to stay silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt |
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| Football365 have us 13th on 16:42 - Aug 10 with 781 views | HighgateBlue |
I don't know when this was written, but if it was written very recently, I don't think it's fair.
To criticise us for not having "anything reliably solid" about our signings - well, I would think that that is a tailor made description of Lukic. Surely he is nothing but reliably solid? Diop surely also.
Sunderland spent a /lot/ in the summer after promotion (£161.7m). We've already spent £106.6m (according to the BBC). That's already more than Leeds spent last year, and more than Fulham spent in 2018. I appreciate the latter was a while ago, but we've still got weeks left of the window.
So we've spent a decent amount already, and O'Neil indicates that there are plural signings still to come, as most of us hoped/expected. There's every chance that we get within an ace of the amount Sunderland spent (in terms of gross spend). And that will surely be the case if we do let the likes of Philogene move on for a chunky fee.
I don't like this relatively modern trend of reviewing something before it's finished. They do it with player of the year awards and the like. There are weeks left before the season starts, and more weeks after that before the window shuts.
I accept that it's clearly preferable to get bodies through the door as early as possible, but the world cup, the disappearance of McKenna, and the fact that we are newly promoted and hence need to do more deals than most, all make that very challenging. And in any event, you can't say "we had hoped Ipswich might take more of a Fulham approach...", when you can't yet conclude on what approach we /have/ taken. If we make another Emersonn-size signing, and spend a couple more Maeda-size fees, we will have spent more than any promoted club ever, besides Sunderland last year. I really don't see that as impossible.
And that would be far from doing a 'Norwich'. Although I do accept that they have rummaged around some bargain bins and found some relatively handy odds and sods recently. We're fishing in different ponds. |  | | |
| Football365 have us 13th on 16:57 - Aug 10 with 686 views | Bellevue_Blue |
You couldn't make it up...
'Nobody expected them (Sunderland) to do as well as they did, but in hindsight the signs were there in a summer where at the very, very least they made it clear they were going to give Premier League survival a proper red-hot crack'
Proceeds to tell us we've only made speculative signings.
Very little difference to Sunderland provided we get a few of these bigger names over the line. [Post edited 10 Aug 17:02]
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| Football365 have us 13th on 16:59 - Aug 10 with 669 views | SuffolkPunchFC |
It's classic rage-bait. Look how many on here have been driven to visit the website. Multiply that by all the clubs. | | | |
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