And so it begins: Manchester United now linked with £75m Newcastle raid 24 hours after Dan Ashworth takes charge

Newcastle United finally sanctioned Dan Ashworth's release and the sporting director has now taken up his new position at Manchester United.

The man who was tasked with creating an entirely new culture at Newcastle United lasted just 18 months in the role before trying to defect, but he has spent the past five months kicking the heads off flowers in his garden in pure frustration while Newcastle and Man United argued over the compensation fee.

Once the PSR reporting deadline passed, Newcastle let Ashworth out of his garden and it has taken the backstabbing little imp just over 24 hours to look at his old club for potential players.

It wouldn't be so bad if he was knocking on the door for someone like Miguel Almiron, but CaughtOffside are claiming that Man United have joined Liverpool in their interest for Anthony Gordon.

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Anthony Gordon should be classed as untouchable

Anthony Gordon, for us, is up there with Bruno Guimaraes and Alexander Isak as untouchable. There is no way in hell and no amount of money that should tempt Newcastle to even contemplate selling the £45million signing from Everton.

There were talks that the club were considering letting the Merseysider return home to Liverpool when it looked like they weren't going to meet their goal of fending off a possible points deduction for breaching PSR, but once that goal was met, the idea of losing Gordon once again became unthinkable. At least, we hope it did. It should.

The report, however, claims Manchester United, Liverpool and of course that absolute parody of a club, Chelsea, are all interested in a £75million bid for the England winger.

We're not sure how much to believe here but we're mad anyway

Surely there was a clause in Ashworth's deal that forbids him from trying to poach Newcastle's players for a certain amount of time, is that not standard practice?

I mean, this is a "CaughtOffside Exclusive" so much sodium chloride is needed here, but still, this was an instant anger trigger, and it only increased when I saw that C word again. No, not that C word, although on some level, yes, that C word too.

Now we've appeased the PSR Gods, though, we should not even be entertaining the idea of selling any of our big stars for at least another year until we realise we've gone and done it again and we have to go through another bizarro weekend like the one we've just had.