It's up to them to sack him though. Reading between the lines he's no longer flavour of the month with the owners and the taps have been well and truly turned off. It's no good keeping him hanging around due to some false sentiment of honour and the notion that a contract is a contract though. He needed to go at the end of last season and it might already be too late to save this one as a result.

God only knows. It's all Waggott type bullshit. "we're looking into it" "the plan is to" etc etc Wish these characters were paid on results. They'd be down the Sally Army.

Quite a bit further I would have thought.

Hughes before that. He had us flying on the periphery of qualification for the Champions League. Allardyce by his own admission is a Red Adaire keep teams up type merchant.

That non existent American Dan Williams as well. To be fair, in terms of finances, the sale to Venky's was a solid one and I suppose it would have been impossible to predict they would have behaved as erratically as they did in the early days. Our demise stems from them though as all they had to do to keep the gravy train rolling was give Hughes some moderate backing.

Should never be not bothered about losing a competitive game. That's a comment up there with Tony's "I don't bother looking at the table".

Have we ever won a Cup tie under Mowbray? If we have, can't be so many.

Newcastle's end of the deal should have been covered by the add ons. NUFC didn't half have our pants down on the deal and hopefully the owners will ensure that won't happen again or even better ensure that Waggott and Mowbray aren't in situ to strike any more poor agreements.

So what were the two different deals that were being mooted on social media then? Was it £15m cash + Obafemi (£21m) or £18m cash and no player?

"Only" Elliott, THB and Armstrong may not sound much numerically but when AA and RE are contributing the vast majority of your goals and no-one else is stepping up, it's a catastrophic loss.

Throw enough darts and one is bound to go in eventually. This signing turned out to be a success overall but I don't think he deserves that much credit given AA was allowed to get into the last year of his contract and the ludicrous sell on clause.

No word on Obafemi? Won't be too happy if that doesn't go through as we'll probably end up with someone on loan otherwise and long term Armstrong probably won't be directly replaced.

So, basically, despite Mowbray saying last week it "couldn't be guaranteed" that any AA proceeds would be reinvested (and giving poor old roversfan99 a coronary) it seems yet again that all he had to do was ask the owners and they obliged? Edit: Whether or not the player himself will want to come is a different matter of course. Might feel he's being railroaded into it.

Have we? That's not how it's being reported. Better for us if it's £15m plus the player and we get away with it.

Perhaps it's just a case of us hoping Newcastle can't be bothered going to Court to contest it and will be happy with 40% of £15m? (Or 40% of 13.25m) I'm not aware of any hard and fast rules regarding this, but for the sake of argument if Rovers and Southampton agree between themselves to place a nominal value on Obafemi's head, there's not a lot Newcastle can do about it in the first instance.

The deal is being reported as £15m cash plus Obafemi so IF that is the case then we would net about £9.8m. Not absolutely ideal but the best out of a bad situation I'd say. Even better if Obafemi does well.

My view would be that in isolation Obafemi would be a pretty massive gamble and not a risk I'd like to take at £5m or £6m at all. However IF we're getting £15m cash plus the player then it becomes a slightly less risky proposition and one we could take a punt on. He won't be on small wages though so it will still be a big commitment for us and he could end up being another Ayala on massive wages and barely playing.

Bit hard for him to play in the Premier League before his Club have even got there! Kaminsky hasn't played in the Premier League either. So are there "huge question marks" against him as well? Ridiculous yardstick.

On BBC news about 45 mins ago it was saying that Southampton had had a bid accepted for Armstrong "thought to be over £20m". Hopefully this means at least £15m cash and the player factored in with a notional value of about £6m. If that's what it is, well done to the owners for holding out for a reasonable selling price and salvaging something despite Mowbray and Waggott's incompetence.

Think there's a risk that we could get lumbered with a player who doesn't even want to be here in the first place on a long term deal, but on balance If we genuinely want him I'd still prefer a permanent deal now. If he's just on loan there's a risk Armstrong will never be replaced properly or he'll do particularly well and any deal will somehow end up out of our reach.

Well, we were linked with Hedges.........

For a couple of million, even less point selling him then Armstrong for a net £7m or £8m. Be better off keeping him for the season. Bet TM wouldn't have any compunction about paying a £1m loan fee for a youngster from Liverpool or Citeh.

No there aren't.

imo Nyambe should be the top priority if there's any money spare for contracts, followed by Kaminsky, then Lenihan, then Rothwell. I like Rothwell and he probably would do better under a different manager but I still wouldn't say he's absolutely top drawer. Look at that miss on Saturday - needs to add goals to his game.

Yet people seem happy for Armstrong to leave for relatively little benefit to us due to that ludicrous sell on clause. To be fair though, although I'm not at all convinced by the prospect of Obafemi, IF the prospective deal was £15m cash plus a permanent deal for the player whose valuation is £4 -£6m then that £20m valuation is the sort of figure any deal should be going ahead at not the ridiculous £12m figure some people have been mooting