BlueStar

Ah, good. Cheers.

Do we get a new season ticket this year or do we keep the old one? Actually, can't even remember if I got one, replaced the one and my wallet and shoved the old one in a drawer somewhere. Just had a moment where I pictured them ignoring my updating of my address on the online box office and sending it to my old address.

My Man U supporting mate's review of Obertan - "Yeah, he's not bad!" She does have a particularly sunny outlook on life however!

It's not as black and white as that though is it? We've already proved we can find some decent players that we are prepared to pay what it took to get. It just makes it harder than if you pay more. But there just don't seem to be enough of these lucky finds - where we don't have to pay the going rate, they'll accept a smallish wage, they want to come, for some reason other teams aren't in for them and they're not wanted where they are - to fill our squad. We've managed to just find enough to cover the players who've got pissed off and left this window but not to do the desperate strengthening we needed before they left. We've got the lowest net spend over the last 5 years of any club that's been in the prem in that time, we've sold someone who cost us nothing for a British transfer record, we're about to shift two players on 65k a week and we can't hire anyone who wants premier league level wages? Bollocks.

It's all very well taking a stand about premier league players getting paid in a week what a head teacher gets in a year or whatever, but it's not going to get them to come and play for us for 25k a week if other clubs are still offering them premier league wages, is it? Or even from taking a similar wage at everton or stoke because they'd rather not play for a club run in a manner that makes it a laughing stock. When we've paid to buy some decent players and look like we're going somewhere we can start saying "We're not paying you 40k, either take 35 or you don't get to play for Newcastle and we'll go somewhere else." Ashley has put us in the position where the players hold all the cards and we need to speculate to accumulate to get ourselves out of it. That or just accept being a championship club where we don't have to pay premier league wages.

How would people feel about a tactic of offering players a decent wage to come here while we're such an unappealing prospect, and then establishing ourselves as a decent premier league side to the point where people might actually come here because they think we're on the up and want to be part of it and wages aren't as much of a concern? Or is that crazy, irresponsible Freddie Shepherd thinking? It's all very well moaning about agents, but all clubs have to deal with them and they're always going to try and get the best offer they can, it's like a company blaming unions for everything.

OK, sensible thing to do is to only offer players less than they're on already, not be able to sign anyone and see if that gets us relegated. If that doesn't work then I'm stumped, not sure how any teams manage to stay in the premier league.

Called it:

If he stays, will it be like a new signing?

Nope. People will say he's a mercenary greedy twat who was causing trouble and was shit anyway.

We did go in for him - at the end of the January transfer window when we didn't need a midfielder and he wasn't for sale

It's fine, it is sometimes a bit like when Nelson starts saying his Dad's just gone to the store and he's coming back though

What? If they weren't so scared of being banned from the club, thus rendering their back pages pointless and cutting their readership in half, they'd probably be as critical as the rest of us. That's where the intelligence comes into play tbh. Lee Ryder might get on people's nerves but he's a bit more far-sighted than tits like Steve Wraith. May find out they're being very short sighted. When Ashley's no longer here the people who called him up on his mistakes will not be banned from the club and they'll also have their credibility. The short-sighted approach is "If I write something painfully truthful today, I might be banned from the press conference tomorrow."

Can we repost this every time people say we should follow Spurs' model of acheiving success without having to spend much? As long as it's together with the club accounts and profit/loss details, yes. You mean the extra cash the players they've spent money on earn them from league position, TV rights, european games etc?

Can we repost this every time people say we should follow Spurs' model of acheiving success without having to spend much?

On a positive note I do agree with what Carver is saying about the young players. Sometimes a "crisis" like this creates the space for a young player to step up. Step up, play well, score some goals, be sold in January, yeah.

Defoe's already said he wouldn't come here, the cunt. Finding it rather hard to begrudge any player who doesn't want to join us, if I was a player with no connection to the club then we'd be very fucking far down my list at the moment.

I'd be saying we needed strengthening before we sold two of our most influential players, so claiming the two we brought in were their 'replacements' is disingenuous. It would certainly make it easier to pull the wool over some peope's eyes though. It's like people saying "It's OK, we've replaced Carroll with Ba" forgetting we went into the January window looking for a striker before we even sold Carroll.

If we keep Tiote and Colo we might be OK.

Sure they're devestated at that like. Why don't we just get relegated a few divisions, move the club to Hillheads and hire some part-timers, then we won't need to take any risks spending large amount on players to compete in the league. We could run the club just off sponsorship and £10 ticket sales, it would be so amazing.

All the supposed good he's done for us financially will be undone anyway when he demands his loan back when he fucks off. At least then we can start rebuilding, get an actual manager and some players.

Those are all eminently do-able deals, neither are they big money transfers so I don't really see why they won't be done. There might be the argument that the likes of Long are a risk but if you want to pay low wages that's the market you are in. I can see three reasons why they won't be done, Ashley, Lambias and Pardew. We're more likely to sell Tiote than get those three.

£50m incoming transfer fees in two transfer windows and we can't get any players because of agent fees.

There's no point in him resigning or anyone asking him to resign. The man's an irrelevance.

I would have happily have kept Shepherd and given him a chance to avert financial disaster rather than have had these four years. Ashley didn't sort our finances out because he's got a clue. He started off giving stupid contracts to people like Smith. It happened because he destroyed the club, got us relegated, all our big name players fucked off and we lost a load of money. Wow, now we've got a wage cap? How shrewd.