Wullie

He would have left if the club made it clear to him that they wanted to accept the offer but they didn't, they wanted to keep him and did so.

Don't worry, I am. Have you been doing it since you started supporting Newcastle? Have we ever been in a position where we turn down over the top bids for players who make it clear they want to go? I still don't see us as any different to 17 maybe 18 of the other clubs in the league when it comes to selling players. I'm still very proud of holding onto Kieron Dyer when Leeds and Man Utd couldn't throw money at us fast enough to try and get him.

Don't think anyone was really arguing that, but choose to believe what you want. This is good news though. I take it you agreed he'd want to go? Pathetic. Who moved to spurs first chance, please refresh my failing memory. I'm sure that was the exact point you were making at the time.

Don't worry, I am.

Maybe the "what a bunch of wankers you all are, thinking he might still leave" brigade should refresh their obviously failing memories, just in case you end up looking silly (nothing personal TT): Don't think anyone was really arguing that, but choose to believe what you want. This is good news though. I take it you agreed he'd want to go? Pathetic.

Oh fuck off Dave, wish I'd read the thread now.

Selling Carroll. Got a load of choccy coins from Asda and went all... http://coburndomain.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/scrooge-mcduck.jpg ...in my front room.

I post less than I used to for a variety of reasons, and I'm actually well happy that Leazes is no longer around. Meanwhle, I find the rampant negativity boring, and can't be arsed to engage very often with those who delight in making the most pessimistic predictions they can come up with. As this thread was meant to point out, things aren't actually so bad. Glorious hypocrisy from somebody who signed up solely to whinge about Freddy Shepherd.

That's ridiculous, how can you possibly say that when you don't know who those players are yet? This is good news btw, but if people can't understand others still worrying about losing him in the summer then I despair.

This is the only place where a Newcastle supporter could be castigated for wanting a potential all time great Geordie number 9 spending his career at Newcastle. Whatever. I'm sure the club will revolve around whoever we bring in for the next ten years in the same way Liverpool has revolved around Steven Gerrard. 80 gets it and that's enough for me. I'm out.

the same mail that was trying to engineer a move to villa for him in jan. yeah i'm going to stick this in the ignore column The Mail have often been bang on the money during Ashley's reign, like it or not. First ones to call Tiote for a start.

Having a spine does though, and you can't create one of those with money, no matter how much you've got. You've got to either spend money and HOPE that it creates itself, or take the bull by the horns, create it yourself and more importantly, hold onto it no matter what. That's the point.

Excellent post, highlights the folly of this idea we could and should just turn over players and expect to keep finding new ones who'll play just as well as the previous squads. When you pursue a development strategy with a club like ours, you find a good player and you hold on for grim death. Players like Enrique are players you do break any supposed wage cap for because they're absolutely blue chip - players you know will earn their wages and help make sure others will earn theirs, too. They have experience which is literally unobtainable elsewhere because they earned it here. It's one thing to limit offers made to new signings - they're unproven and could end up like Smith, so you want to limit the potential damage, but when they've proven themselves to be special, you make the necessary accommodations and harness the momentum instead of squandering it. Exactly, 80, exactly!

What Sir Bobby Robson said in your signature is spot on.

Well quite, but it's a lot easier to keep a spine made up of homegrown players (I know, I know "transfer request" yawn) - the players that tend to stay for a very long time at clubs are usually local, Inter is an exception but their South American contingent adheres to the same rule of keeping a solid spine - the "boot room". My original point was about Carroll, who every single person in Newcastle had earmarked as the future of their football club, sold to the first bidder without a second's thought about the club's future, the team's future. That he's a Geordie is a huge plus and was extremely important to me but I'd have said exactly the same if it had been Ranger, or Krul, who had flourished into an international and then been sold off. Won't pretend local isn't important - I get more pleasure from a Shola goal than anyone else in the squad because he's doing what I always dreamed of doing. If you have no care for local at all, I think you've got to ask yourself why you support NUFC, surely? That's for another thread maybe, it's not the crux of the point I was making. You've got to have a fabric to the club unless you're Manchester City. When you get those quality players coming through that you think can form that spine, you should be clinging on to them for dear life. I'm sure if Paul Scholes had been told in 1995 that they'd accepted a huge bid for him from Massive Club X, he'd have gone willingly as well. The difference is that Ferguson wouldn't have entertained any sum for him, because he knows players like that are too important.

Thespence knows what i'm on about.

Exactly Ian. Honestly don't think it's coincidence that as Terry and Lampard start to age and wane, so do Chelsea because the foundations beyond them don't exist. Lampard is an interesting exception because he wasn't theirs and they paid a lot for him but i've always thought of him as a local who the success since RA has been built around. I'm not trying to lay down hard and fast rules here but it's the same principle as the Liverpool boot room which brought them massive success across 20 years and 4 different managers. Buying players will only get you so far without a soul to the squad, a few who will always be there, no matter who comes and goes in the meantime.

I think Alex Ferguson would disagree with all of you, and 'local' slightly misrepresents my point, which is as much about produced players as anything. Inter are a perfect example to back up my point too, as i said. A year later they're struggling because there was no foundations there beyond the manager. My point was about building consistent progress around certain players.

I give up. If people want to believe that we did everything possible to keep Carroll and made it absolutely clear to him that we wanted him more than we wanted the cash then that's their prerogative.

As far as that part of the transfer goes, it depends whether you believe that what you see played out like a soap opera on SSN is gospel and that there is nothing else more complicated to the situation. I don't.

Ran out of characters... Not saying we're going to create a footballing empire but the only way we'll make it back where I think we should be, at least challenging for the Champions League, is building, bit by bit, and Carroll should have been built around, like successful clubs do, no matter how much is offered. Selling off players that we have bought a year earlier is bad enough but selling off ones that the club has spent years producing and that a whole city had their pride and their hope pinned on is absolutely disgusting and unforgivable as far as I'm concerned. Some people aren't bothered about local players playing for us but having grown up with Alan Shearer up front, I'll never be one of them. The club is named after our city for a reason and this regime is more than happy to put a price on our pride.

I didn't say you need local players as a hard and fast rule, my point was about creating a club identity, a mentality, which is what you need to build something that will last in football. You miss my point entirely talking about the influence of Guti on Madrid, it's his off field influence that was as important as anything, just like at Man United. Carroll is more comparable to Raul, a brilliant talismanic striker who should have been the symbol of this club for ten years, like Shearer before him, with everything built around him. Every football empire ever built has been on great local players produced by the clubs themselves, from Ferguson to the Liverpool boot room. Wenger might not stay local but it's the same principle - building from the bottom up instead of top down. Any fucker can splash a load of money on good players and have a bit of success but to keep it going across the years is something completely different. Ashley claims it's all about the academy but selling Carroll proves otherwise.

It's not even about great players though, often it's not even local players but those have come through the ranks at a club, they are the identity of that club. Why did Guti survive longer than every galactico? Alex Ferguson is the master at it. He's not handing out contract after contract to Brown, Fletcher, O'Shea because they're the best he can get, he could find a better player than those three in a second but they are more important to him than any Ronaldo because that is how he has maintained a winning mentality at the same club for 20 years. If the players are world class like Giggs then even better, two birds with one stone. That's why Ferguson is the best ever because of the culture he has maintained, far more than any tactics or transfers. NUFC selling off not only good players but ones who we have produced makes me feel absolutely sick. It still cuts me up to see Michael Carrick playing elsewhere, Carroll will break me. Fastest track to achieving fuck all.

I said consistently successful, Inter are a perfect example of a side built on sand, nothing holding them together, just a temporary collection of good players. And yes Casillas is from Madrid.

I disagree, I think every consistently successful team in English and European football over the past 20 years has been built around a local superstar and built that way because they are the ones that should stay and should be clung to when others come and go so you can build around them and because they are the heart and soul of the club. Think Gerrard, Giggs, Carragher, Scholes, Terry, think Raul, Xavi, Puyol, Maldini, I could go on. I really think it's far too easy to underestimate the value of hanging onto players like that and I think the managers of those clubs over the years would agree with me.