David Icke - Son of God

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. The 5th placed finish was a little fortunate and the wage budget (which is a far better guide than one league placing) should see us in midtable. when we went down we held our hands up and said you finish where you deserve, the league table dosen't lie at the end of may, why the change when we do well ? Who's we? I didn't say that, did you? Someone at the club? Of course it's possible to play above yourself and get a bit lucky and finish higher than you'd normally expect to, and of course it's possible to have a rubbish run and finish lower than you'd expect. Teams have surprisingly good seasons and surprisingly bad seasons all the time. What I'm saying is it is a stone cold fact that leagues normally finish roughly in order of wage bill, and that where you come in the wage bill league is generally a very good guide as to where you should expect to end up. Check the stats for any league going and you will tend to find that that principle applies. Afford more good players = probably do better. We deserved to go down because we'd spent a few years putting together an absolute joke of a club and had managed to compile a team of overpaid duds. That doesn't change the fact that, on the whole, expensive squads do better than cheaper ones because, on the whole, the other factors tend to balance out. I'm talking about averages, rough guides, and as far as working out likely league positions goes, total wages are the most accurate predictor going. LOL the team that went down had one of our highest wage bills. And I could probably pick out a few more exceptional examples to add to that one if you like? It doesn't change the fact that, by and large, league tables finish pretty much in order of wage bill. You know how statistics work, yeah? We're talking about averages, trends etc... Do a graph of final positions vs wage bills in every Premier League season ever and every Serie A season ever and every Liga season ever and every Bundesliga season ever all rolled into one and you'd get a smooth diagonal line showing a direct relationship between wage bill and league position. I don't give a flying f*** if an overpaid team went down once or Muggins Utd won the league. There's some homework for you. No need. Stefan Szymanski and Simon Kuper already did it in "Why England Lose" Did they also mention the clubs that pay the biggest wages usually do so because they've got a larger turnover and can afford to do so?

These days? We've been obsessed with them for years. One of the sticks we used to beat Shepherd with was the state of the fucking finances and how unsustainable it all was. The issue here isn't the finances. It's never the finances. If we're not playing well then our supporters will look for a reason and for some reason it always seems to come down to the money. Nowadays we're not spending enough of it and can't attract quality. A few years ago we were spending too much and had a team full of mercenaries as a result. We win and no one gives a fuck about the cash.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. The 5th placed finish was a little fortunate and the wage budget (which is a far better guide than one league placing) should see us in midtable. when we went down we held our hands up and said you finish where you deserve, the league table dosen't lie at the end of may, why the change when we do well ? Who's we? I didn't say that, did you? Someone at the club? Of course it's possible to play above yourself and get a bit lucky and finish higher than you'd normally expect to, and of course it's possible to have a rubbish run and finish lower than you'd expect. Teams have surprisingly good seasons and surprisingly bad seasons all the time. What I'm saying is it is a stone cold fact that leagues normally finish roughly in order of wage bill, and that where you come in the wage bill league is generally a very good guide as to where you should expect to end up. Check the stats for any league going and you will tend to find that that principle applies. Afford more good players = probably do better. We deserved to go down because we'd spent a few years putting together an absolute joke of a club and had managed to compile a team of overpaid duds. That doesn't change the fact that, on the whole, expensive squads do better than cheaper ones because, on the whole, the other factors tend to balance out. I'm talking about averages, rough guides, and as far as working out likely league positions goes, total wages are the most accurate predictor going. LOL the team that went down had one of our highest wage bills. And I could probably pick out a few more exceptional examples to add to that one if you like? It doesn't change the fact that, by and large, league tables finish pretty much in order of wage bill. You know how statistics work, yeah? We're talking about averages, trends etc... Do a graph of final positions vs wage bills in every Premier League season ever and every Serie A season ever and every Liga season ever and every Bundesliga season ever all rolled into one and you'd get a smooth diagonal line showing a direct relationship between wage bill and league position. I don't give a flying f*** if an overpaid team went down once or Muggins Utd won the league. There's some homework for you.

Because any player who does well is going to be tempted away by clubs with more ambitious salary scales, and it's only the bargains that turn out not to be bargains that will stay? Until that starts to happen regularly then that's conjecture. Ba is the only person who has shown any real desire to leave and he was apparently offered terms that would've almost gave him parity with our highest earner. I don't quite understand why the board are coping flack for adopting a sensible wage structure. We've been down the road of paying grossly over inflated salaries to players whose performances and/or ability haven't justified them. It got us into trouble and was clearly unsustainable. Why do it again? Our position in that wages table is being obsessed over but whether 1st, 13th or 20th, it's completely moot. The figure that does count for something is wages to turnover. 70% is hypothesised to be the tipping point between a club that can cope and one that is in danger and we're not a million miles off that. The only way we can really begin to pay more is to increase turnover. I think there are some very justified criticisms of the board, for example the extremely ponderous way we approach transfer windows which seems to be borne out of a belief we can come out on top in the sagas that pass for negotiations nowadays when all evidence points to the fact that clubs are getting wise and preferring to play hard ball with us, but our wage structure? Christ, it's one of the things the current owners have got very, very right. It's flexible enough to allow us to reward players who perform well (as we did with Tiote in his first season and Krul last year) but won't see us get taken for mugs.

I still think to this day that had Porto not beaten Man Utd in the quarter-final on their way to winning the Champions League, Mourinho would have worked under SBR for a year and then took over. He was offered the job as Bobby's assistant here much earlier in his career and turned it down despite the fact Robson offered to step aside for him after a year or two. Can't imagine he'd have had a change of heart after winning the UEFA Cup.

Can I just point something out really, really quickly that might help shorten this debate quite substantially... We finished 5th last season. How can you come to the conclusion that our transfer policy is going to see us mired near the foot of the table when less than 12 months ago it had us competing at the very top?

I'd just arrived in town for the Stoke match. Must've been about 5pm. Some pisshead was stumbling around outside Clayton St. Chippy shouting "Keegan!" I turned to wor kid and uttered something along the lines of "look at the state of that dopey cunt. What's he going on about Keegan for?" I basically hadn't entertained the idea of him coming back. We ended up in Sam Jacks (I know, I know) and took a quick glance at the tele. Noticed they had it on SSN and that yellow breaking news bar was going mental. I stopped and read it - KEVIN KEEGAN APPOINTED NEWCASTLE UNITED MANAGER. I lost my shit. I was ringing everyone I could think of. It was a mental few hours. I also remember I put a tenner on us to win 4-0, Owen first goalscorer that night. The odds were fucking obscene and I was devastated when Liam Lawrence scored a worldy with the last fucking kick of the game

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The ghost of Hermann Goering will have driven out Tim Krul by the end of the transfer window knowing our luck.

It's lied about our fans booing him, cited a Downfall parody as proof we hate him and then essentially ended with the comment "he might go, he might not, we just don't know". No mate, it's solid.

He was booed by Hitler?

Yes they are. Portsmouth had a new stadium in the pipeline. Portsmouth actively were looking for extra sponsors and thought buying success now would buy them guaranteed future which was completely wrong. They still went he same way as Leeds. Which QPR will do when they get relegated. Fernandez is way smarter than anyone who was ever connected to Pompey. History is littered with the still smouldering corpses of clever, rich men who went into football club ownership and still got burned. Fernandes has more brains than the whole of our management put together. More so he is an inspirational character like a Branson. He really isn't.

These tables of wages don't matter one jot. We were near the very top the year we got relegated.

People who whinge about losing out on Remy don't understand that if we did match QPR's offer we'd have a dressing room full of players all on the phone to their agents telling them to get us to give them a better deal.

This is another symptom of the mental illness fans have where they assume that players' statements in the media are all unsolicited and apropos of nothing, as though the media mill is powered by players arbitrarily ringing up journalists to offer their opinions on subjects of their choice rather than being asked a series of questions and having their answers pruned and edited. He was asked a question about PSG, being a known PSG supporter, and said that obviously it'd be great to play for them one day but his mission now is to help Newcastle. Short of refusing to answer the question he couldn't have been much more diplomatic. People do this about managers they dislike all the time - Big Sam used to cop a lot of vitriol when an opinion of his would appear in the press. "Why won't he shut up instead of getting on with his job?" or whatever. Because part of his job is to answer questions put to him by journalists you bunch of abject spackers. That is top, top abuse. Cap doffed sir

Gomis seems very unlikely and PEA has already said he's not leaving in this window. I'm not sure where we'll go after this since I don't think we've got a plan outside of France. Danny Graham is the most likely option but can you see us spending £7 million on a 27 year old with his record? I hope I'm proven wrong, but two weeks doesn't seem long enough for us to formulate a plan B

PEA and Bafetimbi Gomis are the two names.

If we sign another striker I'll not be too upset. If we don't my toys are leaving the pram.

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What other approach is there available to us? Get Ashley to start funding transfers out of his own pocket and become beholden to some sugar daddy? I'd rather we pay what we can afford. If he goes to QPR it's simply confirmation they were offering him crazy money. We've signed our fair share of internationals recently operating under the current policy. It's shouldn't be a problem if we're not competing with a wide-eyed Harry Redknapp waving a blank cheque in a players face.

Fernandes is an interesting chap because when he first arrived in F1 he seemed to be the only owner of the new teams who wasn't madly out of his depth. And then he bought QPR and became a bit of a clown (a clown we're about to be shafted by but a clown none the less). I don't know what to think of him.

Did that really happen? Aye. It was around the time the club was being ran from London and Keegan was becoming marginalised. Few him over on a private jet, showed him around the ground, headed off to London to sort the finer details of the deal out only for his agent to meet up with Levy when Wise had his back turned and fuck off to Spurs.

We haven't announced anything, not that it wasn't all already out there. We're always really coy on transfers nowadays. Other clubs seem to leak stuff. Except Freiberg. They're a great bunch of lads. They can come round my house any time.

Why is he getting his news from David fucking Copperfield?