Qwiss Funnily enough they are the same people trying to downplay what Howes done now.
Bit of balance doesn't hurt. The narrative is that because the Saudis own them they will automatically be City Mark II. But they play a different brand of football that isn't anywhere near that level, there's no straight line from what they're doing to glory, and finally there can't be two Cities.
The gap City has had to the league and to us this season has relied on three big factors: their cheating, Guardiola and Haaland. Newcastle won't be repeating any of those.
No disrespect to Howe's achievement, he's exceeded expectations this season. But when all the pundits talk as if they've already overtaken Arsenal, my instinct is to play them down a bit.
Clrnc Yeah but it also kinda shows you don't really need 4-5 years of restructuring, complete overhaul of the entire squad for many consecutive window to get into top 4.
Sure, but their performances this season aren't so much better than ours last season—they've just brought it home strongly. As we saw when we beat them at St James' Park, they're playing a high intensity, high risk game which looks like it can't take them to the top of the sport in its current form. They also have one of the older squads in the league.
It's a safe prediction they'll undergo a lot more surgery in coming years.
When I look at the timings on our overhaul, it is really about the moment Tim Lewis showed up on the board signalling KSE wasn't happy with its project. Since then there's been impressive purpose and progress.
