steve_69

Having said that, i'd probably take him over Pardew

Really? When has he ever done anything in reaction to a protest from the fans? Or a story in the media? There may be some perception that his actions are a direct response but i've never seen anything to substantiate that. Apart from when he put the club up for sale saying 'I know you want me out'? Still here isn't he? If he's so thick skinned then he should have no problem allowing a few banners into the ground advising him to get out of our club. He's not an idiot he is. He's not going to court bad publicity or allow it to happen under his nose. Was the banning of the local papers an emotional decision or a business decision? Same with putting the club up for sale if he ever actually did. Perhaps he put it up for sale because he felt it would be more work than he originally thought to bring it to the point of self-sufficiency. Again, not an emotional decision, a business decision. As i said before, he may have bought the club with slightly different intentions but the original plan was always the same - use the club to promote his brand through the Premier League. So we've established that banners and protests do have an effect on him, even if they don't affect his business. Then that makes them very worthwhile IMO. Even if he won't spend any more money on the squad than intended, he might think it's worth spending a bit more on a proper manager just to avoid that bad publicity you talked about. Anything is worth a shot at this point. I'm losing the will to live. Unfortunately it might come back to bite us when we bring Gerry Francis in to replace Pardew.

Straight from the mouths of his PR team no doubt. Wasn't long after, that they were proven to be liars in a court of law.

Really? When has he ever done anything in reaction to a protest from the fans? Or a story in the media? There may be some perception that his actions are a direct response but i've never seen anything to substantiate that. Apart from when he put the club up for sale saying 'I know you want me out'? Still here isn't he? If he's so thick skinned then he should have no problem allowing a few banners into the ground advising him to get out of our club. He's not an idiot is he. He's not going to court bad publicity or allow it to happen under his nose. Was the banning of the local papers an emotional decision or a business decision? Same with putting the club up for sale if he ever actually did. Perhaps he put it up for sale because he felt it would be more work than he originally thought to bring it to the point of self-sufficiency. Again, not an emotional decision, a business decision. As i said before, he may have bought the club with slightly different intentions but the original plan was always the same - use the club to promote his brand through the Premier League.

Really? When has he ever done anything in reaction to a protest from the fans? Or a story in the media? There may be some perception that his actions are a direct response but i've never seen anything to substantiate that. Apart from when he put the club up for sale saying 'I know you want me out'? Still here isn't he?

Really? When has he ever done anything in reaction to a protest from the fans? Or a story in the media? There may be some perception that his actions are a direct response but i've never seen anything to substantiate that. Abramovich is a totally different kettle of fish. He is a football fan who bought a club for enjoyment, not business reasons. His actions are therefore based on emotion unlike Ashley

That's not a bad idea - start a guerilla advertising campaign for Ashley's rivals. Get some banners made up that will cover the Sports Direct ones on the stadium roof, get some idiots to climb up and cover them up, take some photos and spread them around social media - that'll go viral in minutes and probably make it into the national press as well. If we can't hurt Ashley's business we could take a different route. All take posters into the ground advertising JD Sports or JJB.

Actually, the protest is completely the right thing and the correct thing to do to move Ashley on. Negative brand association is why no-one wanted to take the place of the SD hoardings in the first place as the club is so toxic. Negatively influence the brand, by painting SD associations (NUFC) in a bad light is the way forward. Video footage and national newspaper sports headlines with 1000s of people walking out of a stadium with SD plastered all over it is not good for SD. SD is what Mike Ashley cares about. How many people do you really think give a s*** about the plight of Newcastle United? Just us mate, just us. The way rival football fans are, they'll probably buy more stuff from Sports Direct just to spite us. OK so he might lose sales in Newcastle but his sales will not suffer elsewhere at all. The uplift in sales from the stores in Sunderland will probably offset any loss from this region. Will our protest have any negative impact on his business whatsoever? Nope! So, do nothing? Sounding a bit apologist there mate I'm not saying do nothing at all. Do something, anything you want to get heard, get publicity. All I am saying is that protesting to try and appeal to Ashley's emotions, see how much we are suffering and get him to change it probably won't work because he has no emotional attachment to what is going on. If the business side of his actions is working he'll take whatever flack we throw at him. I'm no apologist, I fucking despise this situation as much as anyone but i'm resigned to it now because i believe i know the reason behind it.

Actually, the protest is completely the right thing and the correct thing to do to move Ashley on. Negative brand association is why no-one wanted to take the place of the SD hoardings in the first place as the club is so toxic. Negatively influence the brand, by painting SD associations (NUFC) in a bad light is the way forward. Video footage and national newspaper sports headlines with 1000s of people walking out of a stadium with SD plastered all over it is not good for SD. SD is what Mike Ashley cares about. How many people do you really think give a shit about the plight of Newcastle United? Just us mate, just us. The way rival football fans are, they'll probably buy more stuff from Sports Direct just to spite us. OK so he might lose sales in Newcastle but his sales will not suffer elsewhere at all. The uplift in sales from the stores in Sunderland will probably offset any loss from this region. Will our protest have any negative impact on his business whatsoever? Nope!

The world's best businessmen don't do that sort of thing mate. It strikes me as something he would definitely do... especially with him sitting with the fans etc when he first arrived. Anyway, as I said, haven't a clue. The PR machine in action. If Ashley came in and said 'right folks, i don't give a shit about the cups, Europe or finishing higher than 10th but you probably won't get relegated while i'm here' there would have been uproar. Sit with the fans, wear the shirt, down a pint etc. everyone's happy! He may have bought us with slightly different intentions but the plan was always to use us to boost the profile of his brand, no doubt. He also wouldn't have banked on Man City getting bought by someone with bottomless pockets. Perhaps he thought there was a realistic shot of qualifying for the top 4 through shrewd scouting. That's out of our reach now though.

The world's best businessmen don't do that sort of thing mate.

Name one. There are easier ways to advertise but they cost money. Ashley essentially gets this for free rather than spunking £10m on sponsoring us or Spurs or some other club. He owns a sports retail chain, where better is there to advertise than The Premier League? Why did he invest in Rangers? Exactly the same reason. He's banking on the fact that they will eventually be in the Champions League again and it will cost him fuck all to advertise his brand in The Champions League. For us to get there he would have to spend hundreds of millions of his own money - never gonna happen

Which he will recoup when he sells it. We are in a better financial position than when he bought us, with better training facilities and one of the league's best scouting systems? Ashley is a billionaire. Putting £240 million into a project knowing full-well he'll get it back in a few years won't trouble him at all. Why would it?

I have a theory about Ashley's ownership of the club. Coming from a business/marketing background it actually makes perfect sense but doesn't bode well for us at all: Ashley's reason for buying and continuing to own Newcastle United comes down to one thing - Advertising. How much would he have to pay for the level of advertising he enjoys at Newcastle United? £millions, tens of £millions? He gets to splash his brand all over one of the most recognisable stadiums in the most televised football league in the world and it will cost him £0. Why? Because the club is now self-sufficient, the only money he has put in he has either recouped already or is in the form of an interest free LOAN and the club's value will not drop unless we are relegated. When (if he ever) sells us he will recoup everything he has ever put into the club, maybe even make a slight profit and he will have enjoyed 5-10 years of free advertising for Sports Direct, for the sum total of £0. Apparently the stadium advertising currently taken up by Sports Direct branding is for sale. Really? Why didn't Wonga take up the option then? Why has no other company taken up the option? Because the truth is it isn't for up for grabs at all or if it is, it will be at such a ludicrously high price that no company in their right mind will sign up. Why do we have no ambition to finish higher than mid-table or focus on the cups? Finishing higher up the league will put us in danger of entering the Europa League again which brings too many fixtures and may put us in danger of relegation again. Same with the lack of ambition in the domestic cups. Ashley is one of the country's shrewdest and toughest businessmen. Emotion doesn't come in to any decision he makes. Look at how readily he will take a brand that has been built up by someone over the years and rinse it of any value or equity it has. His ownership of Newcastle United is a business decision pure and simple so whatever emotion we, the fans, show about the plight of the team will be like water off a duck's back, not because he has total contempt for us because of the Cockney Mafia protests but because emotion has no place in business. As long as we stay in this league Pardew will be the manager. Why risk changing him for someone else who might shake things up and relegate us? We might have lost 6 games in a row but we're still a Premier League club so Ashley gets another year of free advertising. It's the league that he's interested in, not the club. We just happen to be the unlucky unit he picked to be the vehicle for the promotion of his company. Even if attendances drop by 10,000 it will not matter as long as the club is breaking even. The protest at the weekend won't even register. It might make us feel better but it will change nothing. The worst thing about this situation is there is no incentive for him to leave, unless he sells Sports Direct. £100m in a loan he is guaranteed to have repaid isn't a big risk for Ashley. He can sit on it for years. Any talk of asset-stripping or pocketing money from the sale of players is nonsense. That's not what he is here for. Sorry to say folks but he's here for the long-term and we might as well just get used to being a bog-standard, mid-table team. Some people will argue that if Ashley prioritised the domestic cups or European competition he could potentially get more exposure for his brand. He would also risk raising the profile of the club, thereby attracting advertisers who might be serious about replacing the Sports Direct branding - it might even make it into the public domain so how do you spin that one? It's also too much of a risk - what if he puts money in and it doesn't work out? Better to maintain the current situation and reap the rewards.

Chill the f*** out. Pardew is writing a letter as we speak. Sadly it'll be Joe Kinnear writing the letter, he'll call the lad Cabellend or Capuccino and they'll bin it immediately

3 holding players in midfield and we got torn a new arsehole in 30 mins. I wouldn't mind him not knowing how to set us up defensively if he was good at the attacking side of the game but who ever heard of a top flight manager who's shit at both?!

Yes but Pardew doesn't know what the fuck he's doing.

Tonight saw a contrast of new versus old, very good versus average, new school versus old school. Pardew should have spent the game rubbing himself up and down Martinez in the vague hope that some of his managerial ability transferred over. In terms of the two squads i'd say they were pretty even (id maybe even put us slightly ahead) and yet at times Everton played the kind of football we can only dream of. I just pray we get a new Martinez-type manager who can show us what this group of players is really capable of before Pardew bores them all into leaving

Goodbye Alan, it's been.......well, shit quite frankly!

Tim Howard's beard is terrible

61 points with Baines, Distin, Hatem and Remy left to play. Woo hoo!

They haven't had to put up with his patter for 2 years so i'd probably agree with him

The clamour for new signings wouldn't be anywhere near as frenzied as it has been if Pardew had actually created a team that was as strong as the sum of its parts. Pardew doesn't ''create'' the team or choose the players in the squad. He just coaches it. bingo and the only category in choosing the players is the question "is it a good deal" and not any actual football vision and philosophy so we're stuck with a squad thats completely unbalanced and hasn't really shown any capacity that they're the right fit for each other. If that's true and he does only coach the team it shows him in an even worse light. He has a team full of internationals and not internationals from s*** countries either - France, Argentina, Senegal, Italy, Ivory Coast, Holland, England. Last season the tactics were s****, the set play routines were awful, players were consistently played out of position, the substitutions were baffling etc. Make all the excuses you want for Pardew but if he was any good then last season would have been the anomaly in his managerial record but it wasn't, the previous season was. How many more internationals do you think we need to sign before we actually start to see the fruits of Pardew's genius? doesn't matter if you have internationals (even if they aren't exactly top quality internationals) if there is little balance. for all our squad got smaller, IMO it is now better as it is more balanced. Remy was a massive one for us and for that reason pardew has no excuses this season. How are we unbalanced? We have a squad that can adapt to 4-4-2, 4-5-1, 4-3-3 etc. What more do you want? Our attacking players can operate as wingers or second strikers. We have good options in the centre as well - Jonas, Sissoko, Cabaye, Tiote etc. The weak point is the lack of a decent target man but here's an idea, play without one. Use pace, movement, skill and flair as your weapons like most of the other decent teams in the league. Oh no, wait a minute......that's far to risky for the mini-Mourinho. f*** it, let's stick some more square pegs in round holes and hope they can scrape a last minute 1-0 win. how are we unbalanced ? we spent most of last season and thye start of this with one player who is a natural at getting onto the box , ONE! that makes it very easy for the opposition and you can knock it around like barcelona till 30yds out without players looking to get into the box and get on the end of things you'll end up not scoring. i agree all about pace and movement but if they don't do it (or can't do it) in and around the box you are going to suffer. That was down to the manager and the shit tactics he employed. We still had Cisse, Cabaye, Ben Arfa, Marveux and to a lesser extent Obertan. We could have been a lot more potent than we were but taking risks and playing attacking football is not Pardew's bag.

No, I don't really blame Ashley for not spending. He's a cunt, we know he's a cunt so why act surprised and pissed off when he acts like a cunt? The fact is we have a good squad of players (yes, it could have been better) and it's up to our manager now to mold the players he has into a potent, cohesive unit. Personally I don't think he has the skills to do it but we'll see

The clamour for new signings wouldn't be anywhere near as frenzied as it has been if Pardew had actually created a team that was as strong as the sum of its parts. Pardew doesn't ''create'' the team or choose the players in the squad. He just coaches it. bingo and the only category in choosing the players is the question "is it a good deal" and not any actual football vision and philosophy so we're stuck with a squad thats completely unbalanced and hasn't really shown any capacity that they're the right fit for each other. If that's true and he does only coach the team it shows him in an even worse light. He has a team full of internationals and not internationals from s*** countries either - France, Argentina, Senegal, Italy, Ivory Coast, Holland, England. Last season the tactics were s****, the set play routines were awful, players were consistently played out of position, the substitutions were baffling etc. Make all the excuses you want for Pardew but if he was any good then last season would have been the anomaly in his managerial record but it wasn't, the previous season was. How many more internationals do you think we need to sign before we actually start to see the fruits of Pardew's genius? doesn't matter if you have internationals (even if they aren't exactly top quality internationals) if there is little balance. for all our squad got smaller, IMO it is now better as it is more balanced. Remy was a massive one for us and for that reason pardew has no excuses this season. How are we unbalanced? We have a squad that can adapt to 4-4-2, 4-5-1, 4-3-3 etc. What more do you want? Our attacking players can operate as wingers or second strikers. We have good options in the centre as well - Jonas, Sissoko, Cabaye, Tiote etc. The weak point is the lack of a decent target man but here's an idea, play without one. Use pace, movement, skill and flair as your weapons like most of the other decent teams in the league. Oh no, wait a minute......that's far to risky for the mini-Mourinho. Fuck it, let's stick some more square pegs in round holes and hope they can scrape a last minute 1-0 win.