Newcastle and Berge

[Houston_Blade]

...but it is a set of assumptions.

It's simple maths, workout how much we'll have coming in and how much we'll have going out. Take the second number off the first one and the answer is likely to be a negative number. That's not a good thing.

Then some genius member of the forum can come along and tell us that we're not skint because it's not actually our money in the first place and we're playing with the PL's money so everything is ok in cloud cuckoo land.

Happy days.

 

[Keen Blade]

I was there and to compare the game then with now is plain romantic

Yep , it's even more athletic now.
You could get away with being unathletic in the 70s but today's game rewards the dedicated athletes like CR7 & Traore etc.
Berge is utterly unathletic.
He drifts through games without making any impact upon them.
He is the epitome of the truism that "Hard work beats talent if talent doesn't work hard".
When have you seen Berge work really hard for 90 mins ?
Watch Man City to see a team of talented players work their arses off to stay at the top of English football.
I'm not asking Berge to be TC or Hockey , but as talented as he might be , he lacks the desire & drive to succeed.
A £23m international midfielder should have made a much bigger impact in our team at any stage at any level.
No guts , no glory , that's him in a nutshell.
Give me Michael Brown any day of the week - can you ever see Berge getting 20 goals in a season from midfield ?
Or making the tackles that Brownie made ?
6'5" and never scored a headed goal ?

 

[Keen Blade]

to be fair at least they were honest.

Brutally

 

[Alan Birchenall's hair]

Yep , it's even more athletic now.
You could get away with being unathletic in the 70s but today's game rewards the dedicated athletes like CR7 & Traore etc.
Berge is utterly unathletic.
He drifts through games without making any impact upon them.
He is the epitome of the truism that "Hard work beats talent if talent doesn't work hard".
When have you seen Berge work really hard for 90 mins ?
Watch Man City to see a team of talented players work their arses off to stay at the top of English football.
I'm not asking Berge to be TC or Hockey , but as talented as he might be , he lacks the desire & drive to succeed.
A £23m international midfielder should have made a much bigger impact in our team at any stage at any level.
No guts , no glory , that's him in a nutshell.
Give me Michael Brown any day of the week - can you ever see Berge getting 20 goals in a season from midfield ?
Or making the tackles that Brownie made ?
6'5" and never scored a headed goal ?

Spot on. Michael Brown would have imposed himself on the opposition without mercy. Even Tongey would work ten times harder than this lummox. Duffy would be all over the pitch making himself available and wanting the ball all the time. Berge? Not so much.
Never mind scoring a goal, how about actually getting to any header? The way he rolled over meekly when assigned to mark crappy Kyle Bartley from long throws at West Brom showed a scared shitless rabbit in the headlights when confronted with something out of his comfort zone......

 

[Snowflake]

It's simple maths, workout how much we'll have coming in and how much we'll have going out. Take the second number off the first one and the answer is likely to be a negative number. That's not a good thing.

Then some genius member of the forum can come along and tell us that we're not skint because it's not actually our money in the first place and we're playing with the PL's money so everything is ok in cloud cuckoo land.

Happy days.

If only we knew how much is coming in !!

 

[Keen Blade]

Those are all your interpretations of what was said and what didn’t happen.
You may be correct, but I still see no evidence that we have no money.
I don’t see this window as being one in which we would sensibly spend money when the immediate future is unclear. However if we have not brought in quality players, at whatever cost, by early July then I may well make the same assumptions that you have at present.

Are you related to Jean-Paul Sartre by any chance ?

 

[Houston_Blade]

If only we knew how much is coming in !!

It will be less than what is going out!

Alternatively you could look at the constant need to remortgage and assume we aren’t exactly rolling in working capital!

 

[Snowflake]

Are you related to Jean-Paul Sartre by any chance ?

I think he is my grandson, but my youth is a little hazy, so I’m not sure.

 

[SwitchBLADE Smiles]

"Berge is very clearly, a very talented footballer" - sorry, but it really isn't that clear

And I don't know where you go with a statement that the amount you paid should not be reelected in the performance - It's nothing short of bizarre. You'd conclude that Manchester United should not be be expected to outperform Shrewsbury If you follow that through,

Point 1 - fair. Personally I believe he’s the best midfielder at the club. I also believe under Heckingbottom, he’ll get the best opportunity to show what he’s about. That being said, it’s an opinion & not entirely based in fact.

Point 2 - something I mentioned in the OP, Newcastle paid £40,000,000 for Joelinton. He must be brilliant, right? Considering they’ve paid so much money for him, surely he’s going to be an elite level footballer out performing everyone else in their side? Much better than that St Maximin fella who they only spent £16 million on? Bench warmer that kid.

Or

The amount of money they paid for the respective players, isn’t actually a reflection of their abilities & subsequent performances? It’s more that the selling clubs said ‘we want X for player Y’ & Newcastle paid it. Joelintons club asked for more money & they got it.

 

[Bell4]

Yep , it's even more athletic now.
You could get away with being unathletic in the 70s but today's game rewards the dedicated athletes like CR7 & Traore etc.
Berge is utterly unathletic.
He drifts through games without making any impact upon them.
He is the epitome of the truism that "Hard work beats talent if talent doesn't work hard".
When have you seen Berge work really hard for 90 mins ?
Watch Man City to see a team of talented players work their arses off to stay at the top of English football.
I'm not asking Berge to be TC or Hockey , but as talented as he might be , he lacks the desire & drive to succeed.
A £23m international midfielder should have made a much bigger impact in our team at any stage at any level.
No guts , no glory , that's him in a nutshell.
Give me Michael Brown any day of the week - can you ever see Berge getting 20 goals in a season from midfield ?
Or making the tackles that Brownie made ?
6'5" and never scored a headed goal ?

Fair enough but what don’t you like about him ?

 

[Sparky The Blade]

Bemused at the criticism, bordering on ridicule and abuse. Berge had an average game in his first start in months. Playing in a holding role in front of a new defence against a team that likes to counter attack , I'm sure he was instructed to not be too advanced. He didn't misplace many passes, didn't dominate, but more than held his own against some top class opponents. In the ratings section on this site he's got the team's highest scores, but his usual critics spotted all of the imperfections, and seem to take great joy in pointing out how poor he was and how little he's really worth. I'd put less emphasis on his running style, his transfer fee or the transfer rumours, because it seems to affect people's judgement.

Berge is not a world beater. He won't ever be great in the air, nor strong in the tackle. He won't tear up the Championship, or any other league. He's a decent footballer who can carry the ball and put more attacking players in good positions to create something. He is unusally fast for a big guy, but he's not tenacious. I look forward to seeing him in the same side as MGW and Ndiaye, and hopefully we'll see more of his good qualities pretty soon.

Bang on the money.

 

[Bearlie]

Whenever I've seen berge play theres always very brief glimpses of the class we all know he possesses but for me he's been in an around the team and the club long enough to have settled in, so those glimpses should have got longer with each week, but they haven't, and for the money we paid for him that's not good enough, people say that we dont play in his style, well, for a player with his supposed talent he would have still shone. Whenever he plays he very rarely puts in a tackle, the most he does is track the player in possession and slows him up, he very rarely puts in telling probing pass, all he does is play the easy ball, he occasionally goes on a dribbling run, which I have to say he's quite good at, but he doesn't do it often. For a £20m+ player he's been pretty poor, and that's being kind, I personally dont think he'll ever be the player everybody thought he may become, regardless of the team he plays for, in my opinion get him out for whatever we might get for him which will certainly be a great deal less than we overpaid for him.

This is just about spot on pal

 

[JasonEllis]

Point 1 - fair. Personally I believe he’s the best midfielder at the club. I also believe under Heckingbottom, he’ll get the best opportunity to show what he’s about. That being said, it’s an opinion & not entirely based in fact.

Point 2 - something I mentioned in the OP, Newcastle paid £40,000,000 for Joelinton. He must be brilliant, right? Considering they’ve paid so much money for him, surely he’s going to be an elite level footballer out performing everyone else in their side? Much better than that St Maximin fella who they only spent £16 million on? Bench warmer that kid.

Or

The amount of money they paid for the respective players, isn’t actually a reflection of their abilities & subsequent performances? It’s more that the selling clubs said ‘we want X for player Y’ & Newcastle paid it. Joelintons club asked for more money & they got it.

Jumping in (if I may) on point 2, I don't think anyone is necessarily arguing that a higher value "must" mean that they will be brilliant. As you have highlighted (and others have conceded) exceptions exist. It is worth bearing in mind that value is relative, so £40m today gets you a potentially good PL player - back in 2000-odd it got you Zidane...

From my perspective, however, one can't reasonably suggest that a higher transfer fee does not give an indication that more is expected of a player - in other words, when their valuation is higher it implies (rightly or wrongly) that they are/will be a better player. For Berge, Brewster, Mcburnie or Joelinton, it is unfortunate that expectations work that way but there we are - if it didn't, one wouldn't have Sky/BT/newspapers talking about expensive flops as all transfers would be for a value more unrelated to players' ability.

 

[alcoblade]

Point 1 - fair. Personally I believe he’s the best midfielder at the club. I also believe under Heckingbottom, he’ll get the best opportunity to show what he’s about. That being said, it’s an opinion & not entirely based in fact.

Point 2 - something I mentioned in the OP, Newcastle paid £40,000,000 for Joelinton. He must be brilliant, right? Considering they’ve paid so much money for him, surely he’s going to be an elite level footballer out performing everyone else in their side? Much better than that St Maximin fella who they only spent £16 million on? Bench warmer that kid.

Or

The amount of money they paid for the respective players, isn’t actually a reflection of their abilities & subsequent performances? It’s more that the selling clubs said ‘we want X for player Y’ & Newcastle paid it. Joelintons club asked for more money & they got it.

Point two - more simply, it looks like Newcastle had their pants removed in the same way we did. It in no way alters the fact that both look like awful deals.

Of course there are great value transfers, and terrible value transfers. Pointing out other terrible value transfers in no way validates our deal with Berge, it just proves it’s possible to get these deals spectacularly wrong. We’ve done it with Brewster and McBurnie - but I still don’t understand the point being made.

 

[Westran]

Commenting on Berge's ability on his performances for us is a but futile imo. When he had a run of games he was played out of position and in a side that was struggling. Then he got injured and hasn't had a decent run of games in a long time. Whether or not he is injury prone is a potential issue, but ability is something that I think we can only fairly judge if he has a good run of games in a decent team.

His last couple of appearances he's looked out best player. Give him half a dozen more games and I think he'll be proving a few of his doubters wrong

 

[DronnieBlade]

Berge is class. It’s the subtle things I pick up.

Passes in to stride rather than behind.

Close control impeccable.

Decision making almost always correct.

Ability to glide past opponents as if not there that, in the era of pass pass pass, is highly desirable.

He’s still at a young age and will no doubt improve on any areas of the game he needs to improve on.

But, the raw ingredients ARE there and, in a better side with better players around him, I’ve no doubt he will go far .

UTB

 

[alcoblade]

Commenting on Berge's ability on his performances for us is a but futile imo. When he had a run of games he was played out of position and in a side that was struggling. Then he got injured and hasn't had a decent run of games in a long time. Whether or not he is injury prone is a potential issue, but ability is something that I think we can only fairly judge if he has a good run of games in a decent team.

His last couple of appearances he's looked out best player. Give him half a dozen more games and I think he'll be proving a few of his doubters wrong

Hasn’t had a run of games - tick (he’s had a run of games, and not impressed when he did)

Been injured - tick (he’s been free from injury for long periods, and still not impressed)

Out of position - tick (he’s played in several and not had one complete performance in two years)

No new ones there, but the same excuses that don’t hold water, that get repeated time and again.

If you honestly think he was our best player against Wolves, there’s really nowhere to take this.

 

[alcoblade]

Berge is class. It’s the subtle things I pick up.

Passes in to stride rather than behind.

Close control impeccable.

Decision making almost always correct.

Ability to glide past opponents as if not there that, in the era of pass pass pass, is highly desirable.

He’s still at a young age and will no doubt improve on any areas of the game he needs to improve on.

But, the raw ingredients ARE there and, in a better side with better players around him, I’ve no doubt he will go far .

UTB

What happened when he came into a side that was challenging for Europe?

 

[Westran]

What happened when he came into a side that was challenging for Europe?

You're omitting a few minor details in your implication there, like a pandemic, no fans and the entire system got found out by the opposition just as he was introduced.

 

[SwitchBLADE Smiles]

Point two - more simply, it looks like Newcastle had their pants removed in the same way we did. It in no way alters the fact that both look like awful deals.

Of course there are great value transfers, and terrible value transfers. Pointing out other terrible value transfers in no way validates our deal with Berge, it just proves it’s possible to get these deals spectacularly wrong. We’ve done it with Brewster and McBurnie - but I still don’t understand the point being made.

The point being made is how much you pay for a player shouldn’t be a determining factor in how a players performances are assessed. That simple.

 

[alcoblade]

The point being made is how much you pay for a player shouldn’t be a determining factor in how a players performances are assessed. That simple.

It’s a simple point being made, agreed. But it’s one that just doesn’t hold water.

Nobody in the football world wouldn’t accept that there should clearly be a correlation between the value of a player and their ability. How else should players be valued?

Sorry fella, but to argue otherwise is simply bizarre.

 

[alcoblade]

You're omitting a few minor details in your implication there, like a pandemic, no fans and the entire system got found out by the opposition just as he was introduced.

Pandemic - a new tick, and I thought we’d heard them all!

His introduction coinciding exactly with us being found out - Another new tick!!!

When will this end?

 

[Houston_Blade]

Scrapping is the very LAST thing that Berge could do - desire and aggression is what's missing

I was on about McBurnie

 

[Westran]

Pandemic - a new tick, and I thought we’d heard them all!

His introduction coinciding exactly with us being found out - Another new tick!!!

When will this end?

So what you're trying to say is we're only allowed to consider that he's shit and all our failures are because of him. Seems a little shortsighted to not consider all influences that have led to him not fulfilling his potential so far.

I can agree he's not fulfilled his potential, but a one track argument that he's just shit doesn't quite wash with me, life is more complex than that

 

[DronnieBlade]

What happened when he came into a side that was challenging for Europe?

Im firmly in the Berge is class camp.

You clearly are not.

One of us is wrong. Time will tell who.

Will it not ?

UTB

 

[Houston_Blade]

Pandemic - a new tick, and I thought we’d heard them all!

His introduction coinciding exactly with us being found out - Another new tick!!!

When will this end?

See if I’ve missed any excuses from Berge bingo:

1) He’s too good for us so we’re not worthy
2) Sheffield United fans are too thick to see a good player when we’ve got one
3) Moving to a strange city
4) His teammates aren’t on his wavelength
5) COVID’s fault
6) No fans in grounds
7) Never played in his proper position
8) Had a bad injury so we can’t expect him to tackle
9) Best player at the club by a mile, if you can’t see it you’re thick
10) Homesick
11) Really nice lad so leave him alone
12) Shouldn’t be measured against his price tag
13) Will go on to become a top European star
14) Our style doesn’t suit him
15) Sheffield doesn’t suit him
16) He’s champions league quality, don’t question it

 

[alcoblade]

So what you're trying to say is we're only allowed to consider that he's shit and all our failures are because of him. Seems a little shortsighted to not consider all influences that have led to him not fulfilling his potential so far.

I can agree he's not fulfilled his potential, but a one track argument that he's just shit doesn't quite wash with me, life is more complex than that

McBurnie, Brewster and Berge have, so far, been terrible signings.

But where are the endless excuses for Brewster and McBurnie? (They don’t deserve them either)

How on earth does Berge get away with it?

 

[Houston_Blade]

McBurnie, Brewster and Berge have, so far been terrible signings.

But where are the endless excuses for Brewster and McBurnie? (They don’t deserve them either)

How on earth does Berge get away with it?

See 11) above

 

[alcoblade]

See if I’ve missed any excuses from Berge bingo:

1) He’s too good for us so we’re not worthy
2) Sheffield United fans are too thick to see a good player when we’ve got one
3) Moving to a strange city
4) His teammates aren’t on his wavelength
5) COVID’s fault
6) No fans in grounds
7) Never played in his proper position
8) Had a bad injury so we can’t expect him to tackle
9) Best player at the club by a mile, if you can’t see it you’re thick
10) Homesick
11) Really nice lad so leave him alone
12) Shouldn’t be measured against his price tag
13) Will go on to become a top European star
14) Our style doesn’t suit him
15) Sheffield doesn’t suit him
16) He’s champions league quality, don’t question it

17) whichever position we play him in, it’s the wrong one
18) whoever the manager is, they can’t get the best out of him
19) whichever style we play, it’s the wrong one.

 

[alcoblade]

Im firmly in the Berge is class camp.

You clearly are not.

One of us is wrong. Time will tell who.

Will it not ?

UTB

But we both hope he will become class. That really isn’t my point. He’s been poor for us so far, and it’s up to him to get a grip of his game and improve. Same for McBurnire, same for Brewster.

The endless excuses for lack of performance, so far, should stop. Berge has to own it.