Isegrim

I still love Bellamy though, and for that price if he stayed fit he'd be a bargain, but there's no chance of that happening. I don't think he's as good as he was when with us as well btw. He's still quick but he's definitely lost a yard. He looked the same and as quick as ever to me when playing for Wales against our lot recently.

Virtually identical until you really look at them. Martins has had 27 shots and score 5 goals, however owen has had only 15 shots yet scored 6 goals effectively making him twice the finisher Oba is and in a side struggling to create chances that's critical. Maybe that's why we accomodate him when we can? I'm also curious why you think it's "patently unfair" to criticise Martins for a lack of footballing intelligence when, IMO, that's the one aspect of his game that's indefensable. Also the passing accuracy is quite different and probably the reason why Martins gets taken off...

Nonsense. The vast majority of football fans hates them for being a plastic club.

Because spaKinnear thinks because he's taller he can automatically hold the ball up better. The change from the first half (pass and move) to the second (hoof the ball up-field at every opportunity) was a disgrace. Tbf, a Christmas tree could hold the ball up better than Martins. This. I wouldn't have taken off Martins in recent games, but I can see the logic behind it. Martins gets far too much adoration for a just ordinary player. He is often wasteful in keeping possession, not something I'd like to rely on in the latter stages of a game. There have been loads of occasions in the past where his poor passing and ball control have resulted in goals conceded. Of course, he has the ability to do something very spectacular, which isn't as often as his fans want one to believe though, but that's not really something you would bank on when you are leading. Keeping the opposition on their back feet is all fine and well, Martins isn't the ideal player for this.

It's ridiculous how many people are now bigging up Shola's performances. He's hasn't done badly, but overall he has foremost simply just done better than expected. It also isn't as if he had built a formidable understanding with Martins to form a pairing a la Shearer/Bellamy. It also isn't as if we had suddenly produced outstanding team performances. We beat West Brom (wahey, incredible) and Villa, nothing more, nothing less. On the other hand I find it ridiculous how some people undervalue Owen, a player who is still our leading goal scorer this season and has overall a goal record for Newcastle of a goal every other game. Maybe someone has the time and calculate a points ratio with and without Owen playing. But I am pretty sure our record is much better with him than without him. When fit he has proved most of the time that he is in the end still the best and therefore most important player in the squad. Of course should he walk back in the squad when fit. Probably not ahead of Martins, but of course ahead of Shola, who in the end is still a donkey.

Racist.

They are much smaller city of about 20-30k. They have heavily invested in their side, buying basically the best worlds best youth and almost like a Chelsea just establishing themselves as great, thats why they have shot up the leagues. However the thing they are doing is building the model of Arsenal with their academy, to make the club nigh self sufficient in terms of playing staff within the next few years. Still good to watch. Exactly. They are backed by a very rich businessman (Dietmar Hopp, who owns software giant SAP) and have a long term plan. They outspend most top division teams last season when they were still in the 2nd Bundesliga. They aren't a small city, though. They are a village of 3300 people... They did a great job attracting players like Chinedu Obasi and Carlos Eduardo to second division football. And their signings this season have been impressive. The results are no fluke. They are a young hungry and talented team that could be together for a while. Do you think QPR could do the same? (Please God No) Every team can do it. But you need a good manager, money and a fair share of luck. At the moment a lot of Hoffenheim players are overperforming. For example the player topping the scorer charts at the moment has never been playing that well before and mostly been a reserve team player at other teams.

Yes but Hoffenheim are a totally different prospect. They are much smaller city of about 20-30k. They have heavily invested in their side, buying basically the best worlds best youth and almost like a Chelsea just establishing themselves as great, thats why they have shot up the leagues. However the thing they are doing is building the model of Arsenal with their academy, to make the club nigh self sufficient in terms of playing staff within the next few years. Still good to watch. Exactly. They are backed by a very rich businessman (Dietmar Hopp, who owns software giant SAP) and have a long term plan. They outspend most top division teams last season when they were still in the 2nd Bundesliga. They aren't a small city, though. They are a village of 3300 people...

It's just from comments made to NUFCTV by Kinnear. So even though it might be bollocks, they've probably not even seen it. Not even Anal Oliver picked it up and declared it to be an exclusive interview...

These kind of deals are still rather down to the stupidity of the bidders than the prudence of the seller imho. That has nothing to do with hindsight. You don't need a genius to do it. Not selling Milner for a lower fee was very much down to the fact that it was a risk to reduce the size of an already depleted squad. Brokering an unlikely deal for complicated terms would have to be deemed as good work of a negotiator but not a deal that is just down to the amount of money thrown at the seller. What I meant was I'm surprised the bar was set so high for Milner with us being a "selling" club. Personally I'd have snapped their hands off at £10m. Either he was for sale or he wasn't, and the fact he went for £12m shows he was, depleted squad or not. Anyway this brings other factors into the equation which might have affected the thinking at the time. There was talk that we had Malouda for £12m lined up as a replacement if Milner was sold but obviously City hijacking the Robinho signing from Chelsea at the last minute would have scuppered that if true. Skjelbred was also lined up but that fell through again reportedly because Keegan pulled the plug. There are too many things that don't add up in last transfer window. Maybe Keegan pulled the plug on Skjelbred (though all we have is a story from Alan "Brett Emerton will be a Newcastle player at the end of the week" Oliver that isn't backed up by any quotes in it). Though it is a bit strange with the directors apparently having no problems to overrule Keegan in other transfers (and remember it's a FACT that they were allowed to). All I know is that we went into the season with a squad that wasn't strengthened in the way it needed to be. I really think everybody has to face his fair share of blame. But one person took the personal consequences. So I am really sceptical about those who pretended everything was going well, because it certainly wasn't. In the end Jiminenez was responsible for finalising deals both ways. Maybe getting 12m for Milner was some decent work. But even if he had personally been responsible to push the price to 35m then it wouldn't cover the mistakes in not helping the manager to assamble a squad that is capable of doing a good job in the premierleague. And that isn't depending on one or two failed deals at transfer deadline. And if they failed then it stills falls down into the responsibility of those being in charge of finalising transfers. So I really am puzzled about people saying Jiminez has done a good job.

These kind of deals are still rather down to the stupidity of the bidders than the prudence of the seller imho. That has nothing to do with hindsight. You don't need a genius to do it. Not selling Milner for a lower fee was very much down to the fact that it was a risk to reduce the size of an already depleted squad. Brokering an unlikely deal for complicated terms would have to be deemed as good work of a negotiator but not a deal that is just down to the amount of money thrown at the seller.

Apart from his credentials in the private sector - property/property development - his football CV is rather thin. Being an executive director of a London-based football player agency doesn't warrant the sort of Galacticos 'recruiter' status some have bestowed upon him. Just back from holiday hence the long delay in responding; anyway hands up it’s a fair cop, I must admit to rather gullibly believing what someone said regarding TJ’s previous employments and on now doing some research it would appear that he was anything but qualified in respect of his position at NUFC. With this in mind its more than likely a good thing he has gone. What he done before he came here is irrelevant anyway, in his short time here he's negotiated some quality deals for the club including getting what looks like a top class Argenitian International to sign for us on a free and to pull off a £12 million deal for an average player like Milner. I am always wondering what skills were needed to "negotiate" the Milner deal. All they had to do was to wait until Villa offered obscene money so that they felt the deal was too good to refuse. We will see what comes of with the signing of Jonas, at the moment certainly not a bad deal. On the other hand we weren't able to agree terms for quite a lot of signings I'd say - not only for good players, but also losing out for the likes of Vokes who rather opted for inferior players. I would say the likes of Vokes were down to Wise as he was the one responsible for bringing the young lads like Spears here, I don't blame him if he preferred to go to Wolves over us though as there's a chance he'd just get swallowed up at this club, similar to why Darren Bent preferred to go to Charlton instead of coming here a few years back. Not sure who we missed out on altogether so I can't pass judgement on that, it seems that some people (not you btw) blame the likes of Jimenez for not filling every single position that we needed to fill yet also blame Ashley for not being prepared to pump money into the club for transfers, surely it's either one or the other? If Ashley wasn't prepared to put money into the club then Jimenez should be applauded for the work he done on a limited budget. I blame them all - including Keegan - not knowing what actually went on. We probably made some decent signings although the jury on most of them is still out. We will see what they are worth later. What I do know is that we have gone into a season with a squad that is nowhere near of good enough in depths and strengths to push for a decent league position but rather will leave us struggling. That is down to the whole recruitment team. One cheap Argentinian player doesn't make the effort acceptable. Even with a restricted budget they should have done better.

Apart from his credentials in the private sector - property/property development - his football CV is rather thin. Being an executive director of a London-based football player agency doesn't warrant the sort of Galacticos 'recruiter' status some have bestowed upon him. Just back from holiday hence the long delay in responding; anyway hands up it’s a fair cop, I must admit to rather gullibly believing what someone said regarding TJ’s previous employments and on now doing some research it would appear that he was anything but qualified in respect of his position at NUFC. With this in mind its more than likely a good thing he has gone. What he done before he came here is irrelevant anyway, in his short time here he's negotiated some quality deals for the club including getting what looks like a top class Argenitian International to sign for us on a free and to pull off a £12 million deal for an average player like Milner. I am always wondering what skills were needed to "negotiate" the Milner deal. All they had to do was to wait until Villa offered obscene money so that they felt the deal was too good to refuse. We will see what comes of with the signing of Jonas, at the moment certainly not a bad deal. On the other hand we weren't able to agree terms for quite a lot of signings I'd say - not only for good players, but also losing out for the likes of Vokes who rather opted for inferior players.

What was "rash" about this tackle? Robinho was through into the box and only had Given to beat. Beye would never have caught him. The only chance to prevent Robinho from scoring was to try to sneak the ball away from Robinho with this kind of tackle - which he did with great perfection. Only that Styles got his decision wrong as usual.

I actually don't think it is as terrible as people make out tbh. It looks horrible but allows you to read whole discussions between two people at once rather than having to click through countless of pages. The rest can easily be done by just scroll to the posts you also want to read.

He isn't.

Why? because they will have loads of money probably. Mike Ashley's got plenty of money. Ambani's got a hell of a lot more. So? Well having plenty of cash has had a fair bit to do with Abramovich turning Chelsea into a force, and I would imagine it had something to do with City buying Robinho. I assume we don't want another owner like Ashley who will be unwilling to spend big. I'm not all that arsed about Abramovich/City-style spending tbh. I want someone who's in between Ashley and those lot IMO, someone who believes in organic growth and building on a solid base but at the same time not unwilling to spend to back the manager if required. Wishful thinking perhaps, but I hope for someone like Randy Lerner. He's worth less than Ashley from a quick peek at Wikipedia btw. Hate to bring this up but even Lerner took a season before spending big in the transfer market, his initial two transfer windows were pretty tame. Not unlike Ashley's. Keith Harris also praised Lerner for not saddling the club with debt (sound familiar?) and investing his own money. The key difference seems to be that Lerner was prepared to back O'Neill's judgement, whereas Ashley preferred Wise/Jiminez's choices. I wouldn't call 10m after six months for Ashley Young tame tbh.

As close as the earth is to the moon iyam.

I've not too much of an idea of the English compensation system. But I guess any compensation is primarly based on the idea of lost earnings and therefore would be void if Keegan got reinstalled. I don't think he can cash in twice.

Played reasonably well when he came on at half time. Was involved in the second goal as well and hit the post (iirc) with a header early in extra time.

I guess the club does like it, too...

? Looks a fair wage for a manager in relation to what players earn nowadays. It's more than fair considering he hasn't even completed one year before walking out. Que? He wants paying for 3 and a half years despite being here for only 8 months? What has this to do with my point that paying a manager 50,000 pound a week looks like a fair wage in comparison to player's wages? Whether you are a player or a manager you are usually expected to turn up for work if you want to get paid. Still what relevance does this have to O-Nut's reservation of giving a manager a contract of 50k a week and my opinion that this looks like a fair wage these days. Wether Keegan is entitled to a full compensation after resigning/forced to resign has nothing to do with the question about the original terms being sensible. I'm quite ok with the original terms though and never said otherwise. For me that isn't the issue as I've explained already. Err, ok. So your post had nothing to do with my point and you were just quoting totally out of context. You were just desperate to post another snidey remark against Keegan. Fine. Tooj is right. How is it totally out of context? Because it had nothing to do with what I said, i.e. the post you quoted. Anyway, others are free to decide who looks like a dullard here. Bye.

? Looks a fair wage for a manager in relation to what players earn nowadays. It's more than fair considering he hasn't even completed one year before walking out. Que? He wants paying for 3 and a half years despite being here for only 8 months? What has this to do with my point that paying a manager 50,000 pound a week looks like a fair wage in comparison to player's wages? Whether you are a player or a manager you are usually expected to turn up for work if you want to get paid. Still what relevance does this have to O-Nut's reservation of giving a manager a contract of 50k a week and my opinion that this looks like a fair wage these days. Wether Keegan is entitled to a full compensation after resigning/forced to resign has nothing to do with the question about the original terms being sensible. I'm quite ok with the original terms though and never said otherwise. For me that isn't the issue as I've explained already. Err, ok. So your post had nothing to do with my point and you were just quoting totally out of context. You were just desperate to post another snidey remark against Keegan. Fine. Tooj is right.

? Looks a fair wage for a manager in relation to what players earn nowadays. It's more than fair considering he hasn't even completed one year before walking out. Que? He wants paying for 3 and a half years despite being here for only 8 months? What has this to do with my point that paying a manager 50,000 pound a week looks like a fair wage in comparison to player's wages? Whether you are a player or a manager you are usually expected to turn up for work if you want to get paid. Still what relevance does this have to O-Nut's reservation of giving a manager a contract of 50k a week and my opinion that this looks like a fair wage these days. Wether Keegan is entitled to a full compensation after resigning/forced to resign has nothing to do with the question about the original terms being sensible.

? Looks a fair wage for a manager in relation to what players earn nowadays. It's more than fair considering he hasn't even completed one year before walking out. Que? He wants paying for 3 and a half years despite being here for only 8 months? What has this to do with my point that paying a manager 50,000 pound a week looks like a fair wage in comparison to player's wages?