Wullie

Discussing favourite derby goals on Total Sport, the arsehole mackem presenter and Gabbiadini waxing lyrical about this and that mackem goal, John Anderson pipes up: "Liam O'Brien's free kick, quality. Never heard a stadium go so quiet, cos there were no away fans that day" Having him and Macdonald as NUFC's local radio representatives is embarrassing, no wonder the callers always talk bollocks if they're listening to these mugs every night.

Aye, you want him so much that you've waited until after the season started to bid for him.

Every single year it's the same, people dismiss the August games like they don't matter. We went down by a point recently ffs, you'd think they'd learn that every single point matters.

I think a scrap at the bottom is definitely on the cards as it stands. The strikers are Championship standard other than maybe Ba who has everything to prove and an iffy knee. The defence is only better because of Coloccini, should anything happen to him, I dread to think of the consequences. It's not healthy to be so dependent on one player when the cover is either woeful or in our case non-existent.

Matter of opinion. This is the weakest NUFC squad I've ever seen going into a new season personally.

So you agree with me then Nut. Best's quality isn't the issue. He is the dictionary definition of a cheap no mark. So is Williamson, and Simpson, and Ryan Taylor. Tron's point seems to be that squads under Shepherd had some shit players. How's that different to now?

How do Shola, Best and Lovenkrands manage so many games under Pardew?

Spot on colin. This idea that posters like Nut and Ian, and others who defend the way the club is being run, are 'optimists' I find thoroughly bizarre. Their attitude that we're never going to be better than we are so we should just accept it is completely at the other end of the scale from optimism. It's defeatism.

My quite clearly tongue-in-cheek point was in response to Tron's ridiculous assertion that the current set up and the current team is superior to a typical team under Shepherd. Canny obvious unless you're one of those desperate to defend the club's disgraceful recruitment policy and attitude to investment.

Kinnear was absolutely despised on here and that was due in large part to the constant steam of lies he used to tell. How Pardew gets away without the same level of hatred I do not know, he is an absolutely pathological liar. Someone suggested listing his lies, you'd be better off listing his statements that have been the truth unless you're prepared to take a month off work.

Instead we've got more or less a full team of cheap and cheerful no-marks.

As long as someone comes in before the end of the window, I'm not bothered if it's before the derby either. It would be better if it was, but it's not the main thing. They've had 8 months to prepare and complete these deals Ian, the bullshit has to stop and they need somebody in before Saturday. The manager is a dead man walking if we lose that match, and rightly so imo, he has overseen a shambles of a summer.

That's the way the rules have always worked though. An offence deemed 'violent conduct' is a three match ban, regardless of circumstance. Same way a hard late cynical tackle is usually given the same punishment as someone taking their shirt off in celebration. Looking to football for fair and equal punishment across offences is a waste of time.

Don't worry, I'm confident Graham Carr will not find it difficult to replace him. We both doubted him but he's replaced Carroll and Enrique easily enough hasn't he?

John Anderson. A bloke who still thinks Kevin Nolan played off one striker all season, definitely one to trust on tactical matters.

That was great.

Did they surround the referee though? The melee was going on for about ten seconds before the referee even noticed it was happening. I assume that'll be Newcastle's defence. The fine is usually £10,000 though, it's nothing to get worried about. Sounds like something to get worried about to me, he'll probably use that to justify flogging Coloccini.

Did they surround the referee on Saturday though? The melee was going on for about ten seconds before the referee even noticed it was happening.

Completely bored of the 'striker search', it's clear whoever we buy is going to be another case of getting someone, anyone because the price is right and hope for the best rather than identifying them as the best player for our team. Just fucking make sure it's done, that they're ready for Saturday and be prepared to live or die by the decision. No excuses.

Yep.

Sounds like the sort of argumentative tosh my Dad would come out with just cos he knows it'll wind me up. Just reading about Germany's fan-ownership rules on Wikipedia, I would love that to be the case in England, unfortunately we're obviously a long way past that ever being a workable option. Fans having no power or say over what happens at their club is a fundamental problem and essentially goes against everything that football should be about.

Exactly. The only real 'profit' in a football club is ultimately the success on the football pitch, which is why they can't be compared to other businesses. Yep. I hate it when I hear people say "well football's still a business...", it's not a fucking business, it's a sport, nobody ever says golf or tennis or other team sports like cricket or rugby are a business. If football is a business, that should not be a cue to the people in charge, whether it be FIFA/UEFA/FA/Premier League to start treating it as a business and telling clubs how to manage that business, it should be a cue to them ripping the whole thing up and starting again because something's gone badly wrong somewhere.

This is the crux isn't it? There has become a desperation, certainly within the Premier League and the people who run it, for as many teams to do well in the Champions League as possible - your average Newcastle/Stoke/Villa fan of course couldn't give a fuck but the majority have to live with it for the benefit of the minority. I'm interested in how the money is divvied up across each major European League, particularly the German one. Presumably their Champions League qualifiers get the same wedge ours do? Are they just not using it as well as ours? The game has badly lost its way in some countries, especially England, to the point where it actually being a sport has been forgotten about. The German teams are restricted to spend no more than they earn, so the wages are dictated entirely by how much revenue they make and there are financial restrictions in place stop them from building up debt. Also every single team in Germany is obliged to be fan owned by atleast 51%. If they don't follow these guidlines they can have their membership stripped and kicked out of the league. It's not perfect like, both Dortmund and Schalke (IIRC) have had financial problems recently. But for the most part it's far more sustainable than the English 'model', which like you said is built out of a desperation to succeed at all costs. I honestly think that football in this country (and many others, with regards to the financial side) is intrinsically broken from the ground up. Our youth setup is neglected and corrupted, we aren't producing coaches or managers at the level we should be, the league is built on a mound of debt, ticket prices are going up season on season (another place where Germany wins is with cheap tickets), foreign ownership is completely ripping any sense of identity out of the clubs. For all the hype and marketing power that the league holds everything else is deteriating IMO. I would tend to agree with that. It would be much better for the game if UEFA were to standardize the positive aspects of leagues like Germany right across the board, but that is highly unlikely to ever happen, they don't realistically have the power for a start, even the FFP rules are a joke. The foreign ownership issue is the biggest threat to the English game at the moment, in fact issues of private ownership in general when clubs are being run for the benefit of cunts like the one who owns us.