ohmelads

You're right but Ashley has barely acted logically since he bought the club. It would have made sense to strengthen the club in the winter and try and stave off relegation by improving the team but he sold Given and N'Zogbia and didn't reinvest all the money. Same goes for this summer, only Lovenkrands came in as Ashley decided to chance it with injuries. Last year he suggested we could finish 6th! I fully expect him to do the same again in the winter window - I expect nothing but loan signings in and one or two going out. You're right it'd be madness but sadly that's the way things have been since he arrived.

I think they'd struggle in the Premiership to be honest. There's a real lack of quality in their squads and you get found out in the Premier League as we know all too well. If they can be put in the Premier League simply because they have a big fanbase and big stadium then you'd have to put Newcastle back in and pretty much any big team that gets relegated. It's a nonsense idea of course.

The fact theyd be playing far weaker opposition. Same reason its allowed all our other players to suddenly decide to perform I think when you see players coming out and going on with the "oh we're so much more together now, so much more determined..so much team spirit" etc its largely nonsense half the time. Reality is, theyre pissing on teams as theyre easier to beat so theyre staying confident and thats it. If they were continually going behind after a bumbling mistakes every single game like last year, you'd likely see that "togetherness & team spirit" dissapear quite quickly. Results have a far bigger effect on morale and self belief than anything the coaches/manager/whoever else can give them & theyre getting better results. Thats about it. Have to agree with this. When you're winning and top of the league it's easy to trot out an interview about team spirit and hard work but the simple fact is we are playing much easier opposition. You judge a player and a manager by how they deal with adversity and challenges, not by how they perform against sub-standard opposition. As our squad gets weaker throughout the season due to injury and possible asset-stripping in January, the real test will begin for Hughton. For now it's a case of keep up the good work but talk of giving him the job permanently is mental.

doubt he'll play. either cos he's "injured" or just not good enough for the starting lineup.

The priority is promotion. Everything else comes second, including Tim Krul. Harper's doing well. What sort of message does it send out to drop fully fit in-form player for an untried youngster? If Hughton drops him and we start shipping goals he'll be heavily criticised and rightly so.

Well yes and no. He's right that you can make a lot of money from youngsters so I agree about the financial perspective, but from a footballing perspective I questioned where that would get you when you look at teams like West Ham and Southampton who have excellent academies. I also don't believe Man Utd and Arsenal operate their academies primarily with sell-on fees in mind; they operate them to bring through top class youngsters in the knowledge they can keep them. We, on the other hand, would not be able to operate like this. If we got our academy in order I believe we'd be a lot more similar to West Ham and we would have our best kids taken off us by bigger clubs. I think people look at the likes of Gerrard and John Terry and think we could be next, espescially with the Shearer example but then you look at Lampard and Rooney and you realise that even when a top top player comes along, you see very little of it on the pitch and before you know it he's gone. As a fan you're left booing him on his return and just hope the money is reinvested and done so wisely. I think a lot of fans believe we can unearth our own Terry or Gerrard in the future but unless we're among the Chelseas and Man Utd's they will leave and they will leave young. I am all for an Arsenal-style scouting network but I think we have to be a bit more honest about what is achievable. As far as Mort and Ashley were concerned, I think they pushed the idea of a strong academy for purely financial reasons and that is not how Man Utd or Arsenal operate.

Is there any point in giving him the permanent job if we're not convinced he's the man to both take us up and keep us up? I'm convinced enough of the former so far but not at all convinced of the latter. He's done a good job in difficult circumstances with the best first team in the league. His job will become more difficult as time wears on and as the weakness of our squad is tested by injury. We've only won 2 of the last 5 games, three of which were at home, which already suggests our squad can not handle more than a couple of injuries anywhere on the pitch. The worry is also that teams will begin to figure us out, because we have a very limited group of players whose strengths and weaknesses are well documented. That's not a knee-jerk reaction after dropping points, it was the concern of every Newcastle fan when the transfer deadline passed and we were left with a lopsided wafer thin squad. Hughton's made a good start but that's all he's done. If you go giving him the job prematurely as reward for "a good quarter of a season" it's even worse than hiring Roeder after "a good 15 games". People say giving Shearer the job is sentimental but surely the same could be said about Hughton. He's only taken charge of a few more games than Shearer has. Keep things as they are for now and play it by ear. If we go up and Ashley sells there will be a lot more interest in the job. I'd rather we kept our options open and could offer to keep him on to assist the new guy rather than end up sacking him because we threw him a 2-year deal on the back of a handful of games.

This article smells like an attempt by his agent to secure a new contract by dropping a few words with a local paper. Could be wrong like but it seems a bit odd that top clubs in Europe would want a player who can't get a game for us in the Championship.

Giggs and Scholes are still at Man Utd, as are Fletcher and O'Shea. Beckham gave the club years of service before leaving after a fallout with the manager and a big offer from the biggest club in the world at the time. Man Utd enjoyed the best years of these players' careers. Of course the youngsters who don't make it such as Frazier Campbell get pedalled to clubs like Sunderland for handy money. Arsenal is another one. Toure may have gone to Man City but he was offered silly money and had given Arsenal years of service. Fabregas is still there, Ashley Cole also left because a mega-rich club came in for him and he too gave Arsenal years of service. Vieira, Ljungberg etc ended up leaving at a profit but they spent their best years at Arsenal. Clichy is still there, while players like Song, Diaby, Van Persie and Denilson are still first team players. Compare that to West Ham who sold all of their stars at a relatively young age and mostly before they even peaked. West Ham didn't get the best years of these players' careers the way Arsenal or Man Utd do, and failed to reinvest the money and build a better team. If you are not big enough to hang onto these players you end up becoming a feeder club for the bigger teams. Dyer, Bramble and Darren Bent all came through at Ipswich but look where they are. Walcott, Wayne Bridge, Gareth Bale, even Alan Shearer came through at Southampton yet look at them now. Many teams have good academies but it does not provide stability on its own.

Such a shame that he was finally getting over his injuries and showing his huge potential when Souness arrived on the scene and rapidly fell out with him. It is still unbelievable that Souness would put himself above the club to such an extent that not only would he drop our best player but then undermine him in the media, drive his value down by declaring he wants rid, and even sending him on loan to the Scottish league, before selling him for a pittance. Souness made some serious mistakes during his time here, but pedalling Bellamy ranks among his biggest. It's disgraceful to think he walked off with 3M of the club's money after we had no choice but to sack him.

Liverpool may have spent small this summer but they've spent a bomb in recent years. I don't know the net spending but 25M on Torres, 18M on Mascherano and 20M on Keane all in the space of a year is a level of spending most other clubs have no hope of competing with.

If we make it into the Premier League we will be in a major stage of transition, basically looking at a squad revamp just to survive. Our last squad got relegated, most the better players have gone since and NO new blood has come in. Take out the loan signings and you see how threadbare the squad is, before we even begin to talk about quality. It's easy to point at the likes of Bolton who survived on meagre budgets and it might be doable with the right manager and the right owner in charge but you will never push on to the next level without funding. Basically nobody has ever done it, not in the modern era. This idea that we can come up, battle on like Bolton and survive, see an increase in revenue and claw our way to the top is fantasy. Teams like Newcastle and Everton have flirted with European football but they couldn't sustain it. More recently clubs like Spurs and Villa have threatened to push on but never did so despite spending vast sums. The only clubs who have pushed on and sustained it are those with the financial muscle to. You can develop without the big money but there is a ceiling to your development. I have no problem with us bringing in the right people and doing things prudently and reaching that ceiling, because I believe the club would then be attractive to investors. But a skint owner will only take us that far. Even top 6 now looks beyond that ceiling, with Man City making it a big 5 and teams like Spurs throwing big money around. To be honest at the moment all we can afford to care about is the short-term because we're a Championship club with big problems right now. Thinking too far into the future is a luxury we don't have. Just get rid of Ashley, try and get promotion and take things from there.

I dunno about great mind, seemed to me thy wanted a mid table side bring young talent on and flogg it. We would have never acheived anything under these as they would have sold every bit of talent. We'd have become a feeder club. How long would it have been before fans got pissed off if hey started flogging our young talent regualry, they made a massive assumption that NUFC fans will turn up 50k a week no matter what management do. Wrong I have to agree that with the benefit of hindsight this certainly seems to be the plan Ashley and Mort had in mind. Nurture young stars and sell them at a profit. West Ham produced Lampard, Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole, Michael Carrick etc yet sold them all early in their careers. It's a model that doesn't really get you anywhere unless you can hang onto those players. I think the sale of Milner and N'Zogbia, our only two young and promising talents, showed our intentions.

spot on. people seem to forget this guy was our chairman, so the buck stopped with him and of course Ashley. comparing any chairman to Llambias is going to show them in a positive light. but let's not forget the seeds of our downfall were sown before he arrived, during Mort's tenure. as chairman of the club Mort held a lot of responsibility for what followed - whether he jumped ship or not.

Never understood why people cut this guy so much slack when he was around when much of our trouble started. Wasn't he Ashley's lawyer when they rushed "due dilligence" to buy the club? When Ashley took control of the club he found the finances weren't what he thought they'd be. As a result he became tight-fisted and our squad got weaker and weaker as time wore on. Much of the trouble stemmed from Ashley buying into a club he had no idea about, and Mort was a key player in this. Not only that but as quayside mentioned it was Mort's strategic review which resulted in the totally failed continental management structure. He was around when all that shady business was started and yet somehow he escapes so much blame just because he wasn't around when it all started to collapse. People seem to forget Mort was our chairman when the foundations were put in place. I put it down to good PR at the time. Free pints before kick-off and what-not, he knew how to keep the fans onside and left the club just before everything went pear-shaped. But it seems pretty obvious to me that Mort played a major part in our decline, he was the chairman of the club no less when management structures were put in place that the manager didn't know about, he oversaw contracts and brought in personnel who damaged this club and he lied to the fans as a PR exercise to cover up the mess. Why do so many fans continue to get on like he had a minor role in the events that followed? I notice he has been very quiet since he left the club.

We can't really judge the guy until we know a bit more about him. But if we get promoted this season - which is vital to our long term future - we will need a good level of investment to stay in the Premier League. There is no hiding from it, we'd have a lot of restructuring to do. Any normal club getting promoted would probably look to relegate some of their mediocre first-teamers to backup status and strengthen the first team where they can. But when your mediocre starting players are the likes of Butt, Geremi and several loan signings you have a problem. The ageing players on high wages simply need to be shifted yet will bring in little in sales. Replacing them with quality first team players will cost a lot of money, and then we will need to buy backup. Right now the only thing keeping us from a subs bench full of academy kids are loan signings. Of course, the earlier someone comes in, the more time they will have to oversee these changes. Not only that but we need Ashley out as soon as possible because he will likely asset strip further in January. So I'd gladly welcome Moat in tomorrow, even though I know almost nothing about the guy. Sadly I don't see it happening, I just can't see Ashley selling us while we're top of the Championship.

I can't see Ashley selling up when it looks like we're a good shout for promotion. We're top of the league and if we go up he'll get a much better price - why sell now? If he was that desperate to cut his losses he'd have done it many months ago. The Keegan explanation has logic but perhaps that's just journalists putting two and two and getting five. Of course I hope there are some legs to this story but I just don't see it.

Speaking solely about this Nacho Fonzalez deal. It was supposedly a shady deal designed to get us in the good books of two, presumably prominent, agents in South America, with the aim of getting first refusal on up and coming players. Well the Nacho deal went ahead, so where are these other South American players? Gonzalez was signed well over a year ago, two transfer windows have passed since and there's been no activity. Does anyone expect us to start signing these other players any time soon? For the sake of losing a manager it was hardly done for "the greater good" as Wise put it. The fallout from this episode has ended up in relegation.

With the players we have available this is almost the best XI we can put out. Not only that but I like it because it has width and balance. Two wide players out wide, both with different qualities, and balance in the middle with Smith holding and Guthrie pushing on. I'd replace Lovenkrands with Nolan though. You have to play your form players and Nolan has shown an eye for goal and getting into scoring positions which none of our other players have done. People talk about resting players but you don't see the top Premier League teams doing it very often. You don't see Man Utd resting Rooney or Liverpool resting Torres for a routine game against Fulham. You play your in-form goalscorers, always. We have an international break coming up, it would be madness to rest Nolan now when he's about to get a two-week rest. If Nolan plays it should be in midfield only. We don't want to go with only one striker at home imo. I'd have him up top alongside Harewood. He's shown an eye for goal this season and is getting into good positions. We need goals and barring Ameobi our other strikers do not look very dangerous. Carroll and Ranger have done alright but they've been a bit one-dimensional. I also believe Smith and Guthrie will be our best centre-mid partnership as it provides a good balance and I'd like to see them given a run together. Seeing as Nolan can't play out wide and shouldn't be dropped, that just leaves up front, where we happen to be lacking goals from the strikers. Put him up there I say, and we should have a more balanced midfield. Now we have the pace, power and directness of Harewood, Nolan lack of gas will be less of an issue.

With the players we have available this is almost the best XI we can put out. Not only that but I like it because it has width and balance. Two wide players out wide, both with different qualities, and balance in the middle with Smith holding and Guthrie pushing on. I'd replace Lovenkrands with Nolan though. You have to play your form players and Nolan has shown an eye for goal and getting into scoring positions which none of our other players have done. People talk about resting players but you don't see the top Premier League teams doing it very often. You don't see Man Utd resting Rooney or Liverpool resting Torres for a routine game against Fulham. You play your in-form goalscorers, always. We have an international break coming up, it would be madness to rest Nolan now when he's about to get a two-week rest.

When other sides present us with a gift of a chance we don't take it. Story of our relegation really, and it seems old habits die hard. Very winnable game coming up on the weekend though. We haven't lost at home, they haven't won away. A win would keep us top with the international break after that. As with any run the most important thing is not losing so looking at the bigger picture this wasn't a terrible result. Harewood is already off the mark and that must be his first goal in absolutely ages so it should do a world of good for his confidence and maybe even take the pressure off him a bit. But it goes without saying that we need to be winning our home games and we have to make it 4 points from 6 on Saturday. If Gutierrez and Harewood are fit to start it could give the side a lot more going forward. Win on Saturday and this doesn't look a bad result. Fail to win on Saturday and it's been a very bad week. Not often you get the chance to play two home games in four days.

Really? Never come across this phrase in my life, either spoken or in print, from anyone ever! Is that the best he can do? As windups go it's a desperate effort.

Standard 4-4-2 and bring in Guthrie, Harewood and Simpson if he's fit. Drop Butt, Zurab/Colo and one of Carroll or Ranger. I'd be tempted to give Ranger the nod for this one. I expect us to play more along the ground at home and think Harewood's runs would create a bit more space up front. Also I just fancy him to break his duck this week, he's due a goal. I also think Carroll could have more impact coming off the bench than vice versa, if we're desperate for a goal and launching it long then he's better to bring on.

We'd have struggled under Robson because we were a declining force, as was he. Dyer, who had played a big part in us finishing 3rd, was getting increasingly injured and barely even a bit-part figure. Souness conspired not only to lose Bellamy, our most dangerous player at that time, but made sure the club got almost nothing for him. We were forced to loan out our best player to keep the manager happy. Add to that a summer of ZERO spending the previous year, Solano and Speed leaving and Shearer even further over the hill and we were on the way downhill, no doubt about it. Everybody could see that we weren't worth our 5th placed finish and needed investment and big changes. The fans weren't proven wrong, they were proven absolutely RIGHT and the club plummeted. This is the bit the media rewrite. On the one hand they say we all whine over a 5th placed finish and then they say the club freefalled. Put two and two together you idiots, everybody could see it coming. All we got was Souness and a calamity of mismanagement to accelerate our downfall. The club - as in the fans - were and are the victims of several years of mismanagement. What the media have with Newcastle is a one-club city with passionate fans, disproportionaly big attendances for a club that has gone 40 years without a trophy and regional stereotypes to go with it all. They can spin it how they want - in the 90s we were everyone's second team because they could paint a picture of us as plucky underdogs resisting the old guard of Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool et al and shaking things up at the top. With Keegan's charisma and attractive football on show we were easy to like and the media rolled with it. It was a similar situation under Bobby, only to a lesser extent. We weren't as successful on the field but we played attractive football, sneaked into the top 4 and had a likeable manager. When Souness came in, Bobby was sacked and Freddy Shepherd was a lot more vocal in the media, the media had to change tack. Journalists were quick to draw lazy comparisons and rather than calling us die-hard support they called us overdemanding and delusional fans. Apparently we all changed personality overnight! It was based on f*** all but mud sticks and this has been the perception of us since. We shouldn't underestimate the power of the media, I have friends of various Premier League clubs who made some pretty ridiculous comments after Bobby died, borrowing opinions from London-based journalists. People are too lazy to read up on other clubs and want a condensed, easy-to-understand version of events, so that's what the media give them. Robson was a very proud man and despite having cancer for the 5th time he wouldn't have retired unless he absolutely had to, we all know that and its a testament to his willpower and how much the game mattered to him. The mistake the club made was that we didn't make the tough call to move him on that summer. And if we had, you can bet the journos would be slating us for that too. The press will use any excuse to have a pop but I find it particularly distasteful that they are using Bobby's death to twist the knife into us. Bobby would have been as sad as anyone to see the club go down, he died shortly after it happened and the media leapt on it - they have no shame at all.

ANY manager is going to be a gamble. We are not in a position to appoint a world class manager who has just demonstrated his ability to cut it with the best of them. A Mourinho, a Wenger, an Ancelotti. Even the good up and coming managers won't come here under Mike Ashley. Not that Mike Ashley would even want them, he's made it pretty clear he wants a yes man, as shown by his contract offer to Kinnear, keeping Hughton and not appointing Shearer after saying it had been his best decision! So what does that leave us with? We can go for has-beens or never-has-beens, but these managers are also a gamble because they often lack the drive of a younger manager. Take someone like Strachan for instance, who I quite like. What could he achieve with us? It'd take years for him to have a go at anything and he's already been around the block a few times. We don't have the resources for a title push or a CL push, we're looking to get back established in the top flight and take it from there and we probably need a younger manager with a long term vision for the club and most of all ambition. The key will be getting rid of Ashley, if can succeed in that I expect to see much greater interest in the job.