Let's face it lads, why would you want to be anywhere else?

SO here we are, the all consuming pastime of where non-winners with Newcastle United want to go next to enhance their career is surely banished into the dark recesses. The nation has wallowed in such repeated nonsense. Let it end. We are no longer also-rans. We have arrived.
You want out Alexander Isak? You didn’t enjoy the dripping emotion of Wembley, of scoring the winner? You want to leave a band of brothers lured by greater excitement and a potentially better future? This is a dead end?
Bruno, you put so much passion into becoming the first United skip-per since Jimmy Scoular to win a domestic trophy after 70 years. So much effort in becoming the first captain after Bob Moncur in 69 to lift any pot into the night skies. It's time to leave? You are bored? Methinks not.
Sandro Tonali, it was a mistake to come here from Italy and serve a 10-month ban in a foreign land where no-one cared a jot about what happened to you?
Joelinton, you ought to have got out when you were a failing centre-forward because you were not appreciated?
Anthony Gordon, this is no improvement on Everton and you have to move to retain your England place which the Geordies got you?
Eddie Howe, this has been a stepping stone? England is your true destination. Right? Not on your life.
I'll tell you all this. You are all wonderful and now part of our history but this is where it's happening now. You don’t have to be anywhere else. The future is ours. The past is the past.
Who would abandon a rocket as it takes off for the moon? I know it was other people trying to get you away, not you yourself, but surely they can all pipe down now.
We didn’t deserve to win a trophy this season? Oh yeah, we beat Arsenal home and away in the semi-final and Liverpool in the final. We elimi-nated Nottingham Forest and Chelsea before that and those four are currently the top four in the PL. Fluked it, didn’t we?
Now the Wembley dust is beginning to settle on the prairie - will it truly ever?
Yes, there are still crucial Champions League points to be fought for over the closing run-in to the season so all is not over. Maybe we have got into Europe as a consequence of winning the Carabao Cup so spectacularly - or at least into the UEFA Conference League play-offs but the real money and kudos lies on the bigger stage and Howe will not want to lose sight of that.
Make the Champions League and yet another reason for blue chip players to bail out is gone.
However neither will Eddie wish to forget about another opportunity to make a major statement. That means a summer not sitting in a deck chair bronzing the body but getting active.
United have done fabulously well but Howe, a major plotter and thinker, will not - amid everyone's elation - overlook the fact that certain parts of his squad are getting older by the day.
It may be harsh to mention it in the immediate aftermath of Wembley but that’s what big clubs do. They move forward, not stand still and admire their achievements. Howe will not fall into that trap. He is fiercely ambitious on our behalf.
The likes of Kieran Trippier (34), Callum Wilson (33), Fabian Schar (33), Dan Burn (32) and Martin Dubravka (36) are in the latter stages of their careers having helped place the first building bricks in the wall immediately after the takeover in 2021.
Schar, like Dubravka, Jacob Murphy and Sean Longstaff, is a survivor of the team built by Rafael Benitez almost a decade ago.
Joelinton and Joe Willock were part of Steve Bruce's team. Fourth-choice keeper Mark Gillespie has been around longer than the paint on the walls without ...