madras

We'll piss this game if we can get an early goal. thats more like it...Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!

they've been poor on their travels of late (and at home by all accounts though picking up results)...let them worry about us. routledge guthrie nolan gutierrez carroll loven if poss. dont whats happening to enrique or simpson yet but those two with colo and willimason ought to be enough. to put it into perspective they have lost thir last 7 aways off the bounce in all comps (6 in the league) and have won 2 out their last14 away games.

are you going to tell him?? Yes. He would never hit an openly gay man. already has

If we improve every season eventually wed end up being the best team in the world. When do you see us getting back into the Champions League, how many season of never ending improvement will that take? I think we'll be years away from the CL, just like we were when Ashley bought the club. killer punch.

are you going to tell him?? i would. more time off work and compen.

good band Swords of a thousand men? that was tenpole tudor you pillock.

theres a possible element of truth in the latter.

No it's not a rudderless ship approach, that was last season. This season we're heading in the right direction and can't do better than we are currently doing. But what’s the long term objective and do we get there? there'll be no talk of an all geordie first team and racing team thats for sure. Here we go, back to the Hall/Shepherd fixation. guilty as charged....lost myself for a moment.

dalglish needlessly ripped apaert a good squad.

If you don't mind me asking, madras, what sort of stakes you putting on your doubles/trebles? just under 10% of my current pot (which got a bit of a hiding at christmas).....£20 each edit ...thats the £20 which is 10% of my pot...not the £60 edit 2...so thats 3 x £20 bets.

No it's not a rudderless ship approach, that was last season. This season we're heading in the right direction and can't do better than we are currently doing. But what’s the long term objective and do we get there? there'll be no talk of an all geordie first team and racing team thats for sure.

maybe it's not for anything. he just thinks matching bandages are trendier ?

for tomorrow. shrewsbury/man utd lyon/twente/spurs. shouldn't really as i tend to do better with bets i dont post.

Bandages on both hands, so it wasn't even one lucky punch. Incredible what a fight this must have been. I can't think about beating someone so hard in his face that both my hands would have to be bandaged. one punch for taylor one for the bird ?

to be fair melandro when we came up last time many werent happy that we only strengthened by buying beardsley and mathie (allen only came in because of beardsley being assaulted by ruddick). also, and no doubt i'll be correctred to death about this as i haven't properly checked but am going off memory, wasn't keegans rant the other year about needing wheelbarrows full of cash to compete saying that the game had changed massivly since we came up last time and was after building on those circumstances that we were able to challenge ? as i've asked bob to no reply and i've asked others......should we keep on borrowing till success or bankruptcy, whichever comes first ? i realise it sounds like it has nothing to do with the thread but youre asking if we can ever challenge for the title again have to realise that not onkly our circumstances but those under which everyone works have changed massivly since then (a bit like a burnley fan wanting hardwork and local talent/youth system to get far today cos it worked in 1960)

partly,not entirely. Why not blame McKeag? The club were in a right mess when he sold up. true enough, then hall, fred and co done some good work on maximising the clubs financial potential to get us into a very good position. then they let it slip. They didn't "need" to go down a division before moving in the right direction either. bloody right. weren't accusing me o such silliness were you ?

partly,not entirely. Why not blame McKeag? The club were in a right mess when he sold up. true enough, then hall, fred and co done some good work on maximising the clubs financial potential to get us into a very good position. then they let it slip.

partly,not entirely.

You mean the Gaydamak way to administration (and near winding up) is better than the Ridsdale way? Personally as a supporter with no control of how the owner runs the club I would feel more secure with an owner who was stuck within the financial restraints of what the banks would lend them than one who could rack up the club's wage bill to well over what it could support in future years without their input and then run into financial problems themselves or just f*** off when they get bored or daddy pulls the plug. Owners putting in external money is also what's f***ed the game up so much financially as clubs without that artificial aid risk more just to try to keep up. Everyone is just waiting for Abramovich to get bored and leave Chelsea in the s***. If Lerner ran into external financial trouble now Villa would be in the s*** as they are running at a big loss year on year. Neither of these clubs could sustain where they are now without their owners. Liverpool and Man U have a different problem in that they can sustain where they are now without their owners (who are taking out rather than putting in) they just can't sustain it if they drop down the league. There are risks either way, one is dependant on football results, the other is dependant on external forces. Personally I'd rather the club's fortunes were dictated by the football than live with the chance that no matter how well you might be doing on the pitch the rug could suddenly be pulled from beneath your feet. That's not to say I'd turn my nose up at a rich benefactor, just that I'd feel it was a more solid foundation if it were self-sustaining as long as the footballing side of things didn't go tits up. Obviously having an owner with their own money has the advantage that they can put money into the club that a bank just would not risk. This is however promoting a far higher risk strategy to running the club than the one the old board were able to take, so I'm not sure why some who are post-fact dismayed with the risk level set by the last owners are happy with being completely dependant on the whims and finances of one man, especially when that man has shown nothing so far but an abject inability to run the club successfully or hire competent people to do so and a desire to offload any responsibility and sell at any opportunity when the club is in the s***. Having a rich incompetent owner of the club is of course better than having a poor incompetent owner of the club, however some seem to have extended that to meaning having a rich incompetent owner of the club is better than having a poor competent owner. It's not. People exaggerate how bad things had got footballing wise here prior to Ashley, we'd had a bad season due to having more injuries than I can ever remember having before, but we still pretty comfortably avoided relegation in the end and certainly had a massively better squad when Ashley took over to the "relegation enhanced" one we have now. If people judged the squad then with the expectations we have for the squad next year they'd be over the moon with it. Without all the injuries we'd have been competing for Europe again, if we were to have the same injury problems next year I think there'd be absolutely no question of us going back down again. People also exaggerate how bad things had got financially with regard to the debt. To put this in context for us prior to Ashley, the majority of the debt was the stadium expansion loan (around £45m) which couldn't just be called in on a whim. The last set of accounts before the stadium debt was shifted to be a current liability (due to the sale of the club) in 2006 had current liabilities from debts of £5.5m overdraft + £10.9m loans. This was with £9.3m cash in the bank as security against capital and interest repayments on the stadium loan. There would have been around an extra £5m overdraft and £5m in loans in 2007, ie a total of around £25m. I'd suggest this is a lower current debt liability than most premiership clubs other than those recently promoted or owned by a sugar daddy, and certainly within the means of a club with our turnover as was. Contrast this with the £40m overdraft facility Ashley was running the club with on top of his £150m loan. Is Ashley steering the club in the right direction or is he overcompensating after causing a skid? http://www.newcastle-online.org/nufcforum/index.php/topic,62694.msg1855931.html#msg1855931

happy face:....... Thats a profit on transfer fees. Like a shop making a profit on beans but losses on most other things.

in reply to bob on how they'd get back......... Initially they'd try to buy their way back. Then if it didn't work they' realise that continuing to spend like that was leadng them into a heap of trouble and they' either cut their cloth accordingly or run the risk of having the trouble leeds and pompey had and us to a lesser extent. Tell me bob......should we have kept on borrowing till success or bankruptcy whichever came first ? Sorry bout not quoting....girl 1 has nicked the pc so i'm using my phone.

congratulations on setting your sights as high as Wigan I don't know quite where you have got the idea that big signing equate to success though? so Chelsea and ManUtd have been doing it wrong ? give man utd a couple of season outside the champs league and see if they still spend that way. hopefully we'll be abler to watch liverpool do it over the next season or two.

surely fantakka telecom would have been more user friendly up here ?

kk didn't have to make many tough decisions. kelly wasn't good enough and peacock left on compassion. Not one Newcastle fan thought Kelly wasn't good enough to at least be given a chance in the PL, the lad had just banged in 28 goals or something, including a hattrick in his last appearance. That was a brave and tough decision by KK. The line we got from the club was that Peacock was sold because of some birth defect with his new born, not sure that was the real reason, doesn't seem too much logic in it, why the need to move to London ? Both he and his wife were grown adults and had no need to be around their family for support, it's not as if his wife would have had to work to make ends meet. He was sold for football reasons, and again a brave decision as Peacock had been one of our best players but the signing of Cole had signalled his departure. KK also got rid of the likes of Sheedy, Killer and Micky Quinn, all whom had seen their better days but he was ruthless in jetisoning them. There are many clubs that are happy to reward the bulk of their playing staff who got them up with the chance to prove they can perform at the top level, KK did not take any passengers with him as he brought the club up. We have to do the same again. Great post - I mentioned this about Kelly a few days ago when saying that I wouldn't have Lovenkrands in the side if we got promoted to the Prem. As you say afar, most fans were shocked when KK let Kelly go - even SJH, although backing KKs decision, personally assured Kelly he would always be welcome at SJP, and thanked him for his great contribution over 2 seasons(his goal against Pompey kept us up in '92). I made the point that Kelly was a better player than Lovenkrands, both in his goals scored and all round team contribution - AND he was 3 years younger... KK had seen how ruthless Shankly could be at Liverpool, when he got rid of the likes of St.John and Yeats when he thought they were past it - even though they had helped him bring Liverpool from being a run-of-the-mill Div 2 side to one of the best in England ; Keegan was right to do what he did and that is exactly what we will need to do if promoted because there are several players who are just not good enough for the top league. Whether this happens or not depends on either Ashley being prepared to fork out the funds to replace them, or his replacement as owner(in the unlikely event of him selling)doing the same. There is also the question of the manager's backbone too....! kelly and loven are different style players in vastly differing teams so it's diffiuilt to say who was better. (i'd like to know how many loven would have got in that team) kk didn't get rid of killer till 2004 when he was well past it as was sheedy when he left. we did keep players who seemingly werent up to it and only got rid when we could (killer,scott,o'brien)

but who ? i've gone cambuur/de graaschap.