BlueStar

He must really trust whoever's advised him to use this management structure to stick with it no matter what. I can only assume it's been sold to him as a system used by Arsenal or Real Madrid, and he's swallowed it.

Never attribute to malice what can just as easily be attributed to incompetance. I think this whole mess is down to Ashley thinking he can take over a football club and make them a success without spending a fortune only to find out he hasn't a fucking clue what he's doing.

Cheer up. Bassong seemed particularly perky today in his interview and according to CH the training went well, so I'm not sure how you know for sure there is low moral in the sqaud. As for 'knowing' some of our players wanting Wise and Ashley out, I take it this is based purely on Ngo Baheng joining a facebook group? I am sure I know the moral in the squad is low because a player in the squad told me. And it's pretty obvious the moral in the squad is low after what has happend. We've often had a problem with players not having morals

the 19th? He's confused because of all the coverage yesterday of the anniversary of the 9/18 attacks.

Who are we asking to sack Ashley?

Look, scraping together that £7m to buy out Ince's contract and putting together an attractive enough package for him to agree personal terms doesn't happen overnight, you know.

I see they're talking about the rules which allow these takeovers of clubs by the super rich being too lax at the moment and how they should be strengthened. That'll be great, new rules meaning that anyone who wasn't taken over by an oil baron by such and such a date is fucked with no chance of ever catching up.

Just seen one of those big triangular billboard trucks go past SJP with a photo of keegan in his playing days, "BRING BACK KING KEV" across it and a prominent BetFred logo. Imagine we'll be seeing that tomorrow. They probably wont be the only ones wanting in on the act, wouldn't be surprised to see bikini girls handing out King Kev masks with "Daily Star" on the forehead and the like.

As in people sitting at home because they can't be arsed to go to a match against mediocre opposition in the rain when we're not expecting to see decent football because of the current downer and acting like sitting watching Cash in the Attic and putting some shelves up is equivilant to the Million Man March? Wonder how many people would be "Boycotting" if it was a match against the mackems rather than some no-marks. here's 1. i'll not be back in the ground under the present regime. you lot keep on trying to justify your selfish actions. it cuts no meat with any of us. Any of us eh, exactly who are you speaking on behalf of? Stay at home, I don't blame you, but don't pretend it makes you some kind of revolutionary and everyone else is Judas Iscariot, your empty seat is indistinguishable from someone elses who simply couldn't be arsed to go, even if you're sitting at home in a Che Guevara t-shirt with one fist in the air. For someone with such a strong opinion, chosing a protest that's easily taken as complete apathy seems quite bizarre. That's certainly how it'll be portrayed, not "Wow, look at those passionate Geordies, sitting on their sofa instead of going to the match, Ashley must have really pissed them off" it's going to be "Hah, best fans my arse, when the chips are down they can't even be bothered turning up, probably down B&Q instead." And that's exactly how we'd view it looking from the outside at another club. 50, 000 mooning the pitch would be better.

As in people sitting at home because they can't be arsed to go to a match against mediocre opposition in the rain when we're not expecting to see decent football because of the current downer and acting like sitting watching Cash in the Attic and putting some shelves up is equivilant to the Million Man March? Wonder how many people would be "Boycotting" if it was a match against the mackems rather than some no-marks.

Dunno, he wasn't that good apart from the hattrick.

Back the sword! Crack the horde! Hack the cord! Smack the Nord! Jack the Ford! I think this is just getting stupid now. But maybe I just lack accord.

I have a funny feeling that if a black footballer had said "England have a lot of white players, so naturally they're not going to win the world cup" people would be less forgiving. So are you agreeing that people can't make the judgement of "There's naturally crime in that area because there's a lot of blacks there" or "Black people are naturally less intelligent than white people" or not? The second one. You can make judgement on the first one. It's called looking at the facts. I'm not saying it's right or wrong btw. You can say it's a fact that there's crime in an area and that there are a lot of blacks there, I fail to see how you can say it's a fact that there's crime there because there are a lot of black people there, short of magically genetically altering them to become white and seeing if the crime rate falls. I was referring to the fact that you can get percentages of crimes committed in certain areas and measure them up to each other. But that 'fact' isn't even the controversial issue, it's the 'fact' that it's natural to have crime where there are black people, something which I can't see ever being more than an opinion. Edit: Let's put it this way, I imagine that you could make a correlation between strength of local accent and likelyhood of ending up in the nick and if you looked at those two factors in isolation you'd think that speaking with a strong geordie accent caused social deviancy - but of course it's not that simple, is it, because there are lots of other factors to take into account. People with strong local accents are likely to have a background based more in the working class, in urban centres, in poorer communities where they are exposed to more crime themselves, be exposed to drugs and have less opportunities. Someone who lives in a cottage in the sticks on an inheritance is likely to have less of an accent and also is less likely to end up in jail. But finding a correlation doesn't equal finding a cause, it doesn't mean that you're more likely to commit crimes because you have a strong accent. That's the kind of logical fallacy you see lampooned in things like the "Pirates vs Global Warming" graph, from which you can gather that it was the presence of pirates that kept global temperates down.

I have a funny feeling that if a black footballer had said "England have a lot of white players, so naturally they're not going to win the world cup" people would be less forgiving. So are you agreeing that people can't make the judgement of "There's naturally crime in that area because there's a lot of blacks there" or "Black people are naturally less intelligent than white people" or not? The second one. You can make judgement on the first one. It's called looking at the facts. I'm not saying it's right or wrong btw. You can say it's a fact that there's crime in an area and that there are a lot of blacks there, I fail to see how you can say it's a fact that there's crime there because there are a lot of black people there, short of magically genetically altering them to become white and seeing if the crime rate falls.

I have a funny feeling that if a black footballer had said "England have a lot of white players, so naturally they're not going to win the world cup" people would be less forgiving. So are you agreeing that people can't make the judgement of "There's naturally crime in that area because there's a lot of blacks there" or "Black people are naturally less intelligent than white people" or not?

Well looking at the first dictionary definition of racism I can find I don't think it's too big a leap for someone to classify the belief that one race is naturally more intelligent than another as racist.

So, this Gypsy curse rumour that's been doing the rounds for decades...

Do you not think that, rather than it being that black people are in some way genetically pre-disposed to crime, that the disproportionate amount of black people in the prison system is more to do with the fact that poorer people in run down urban-centre communities are more likely to commit crimes that land them in prison and these communities have a higher percentage of black people than the general population? Reminds me of a letter I read in a paper complaining there were too many black people in EastEnders and quoting race percentages for the country as a whole to prove it was 'reverse racism' to have so many black actors in the programme. That's different to the original comment though, a better comparison would be someone saying "There's lots of white people in England, so naturally you meet a lot of alcoholics."

sure ? i remember shouting it to mick martin. can't remember hearing it being used for liam o. You've made me doubt myself now But a quick google for "zico o'brien" turns up a youtube vid that I'm probably not allowed to link to with the description "Zico O'Brien lashes a screamer become the first O'Brien to put the ball in the Mackems Net", so I presume I didn't dream it. Actually, I distinctly remember my dad, when I asked him why we sang it, saying it was because he was really good at free kicks, just like a Brazilian called Zico. I think I had some aniseed balls when I asked him that, funny what you remember

I can't help feeling that the fact I'd quite like him here is influenced by the memories of singing "ZEEEEECOOOOO, ZEEEEECOOOO, ZEEECOOOOO" at Liam O'Brien when I was a kid.

Can imagine arguments in the ground between our own supporters on Saturday Wonder if any of the people boycotting will try and picket or anything?

They probably didn't want to end up losing money. But I don't understand how this set up is saving him money - in fact quite the opposite, the disruption it's causing is sending the value of the club down the shitter. Surely it would be easier to get a manager willing to do their transfers on a shoestring than a manager willing for someone else to do their transfers on a shoestring? If he wants to save money why not start with the wage bill and just hire one manager instead of 4 part-managers?

What I don't understand is WHY Ashley and/or Llambias are so hell bent on this system that it's worth keeping seemingly at any cost. They've lost the manager they appointed, the value of the club Ashley has spent millions on buying is going through the floor, the fans are in all out revolt and the local celebrity status he's revelled in has been replaced by a lynch mob who are talking about boycotting anything he's ever been near. We're going to have massive difficulty replacing Keegan because managers don't want to work under the system. Shearer, the one 'out' the club might have had to placate the fans after losing Keegan quite rightly won't touch the club with a shitty stick with the current system in place. Amazingly, a half decent manager seemingly expresses an interest in the form of Fatih and, of course, his agent raises an eyebrow at some aspects of how the club is set up. So why the fuck is it seemly worth taking the hit on all of this for the sake of having scouts, middlemen etc and a director of football based in London? What benefit are Ashley and Llambias getting from this? Do Wise and Jimenez have polaroids of them sucking each other off? Even if it's about being stingy with the transfer budget, why not just say "Right, Manager X, you can choose the players but you've got fuck all money so either get some bargains or sell to buy."

The reason he was sacked disgracefully was because he should have been let go in the summer. While he was treated terribly by the club there were few people who disagreed that he'd lost it and needed to be replaced at the time, it's only rose tinted specs and his abysmal replacements that have changed that view.

If this was all agreed on the 16th Jan, how come KK was apparently still unaware of it just 2 weeks later? The statement from the club is trying to rewrite history, we've had Wise saying Keegan had the final say on transfers and Keegan saying that Wise reported to him - the club never stepped in to say any different and is now claiming this whole set up was in place from day one and everyone had agreed to it.