UV

Keeping tabs on next year's opposition.

Thank god none of our fans did anything stupid such as threaten Ashley personally or try to organise boycotts of his business(es). Who did that? I thought they just said he wouldn't be made welcome. Choose your own synonym for "threaten", then, and factor in the mong in Chester-le-Street who attacked some Ashley lookalike. Which was after he'd announced he wanted to sell up.

Allardyce must be gutted.

Football club chairman/owner receives hate mail shocker... Every club in the country up for sale... More at 10...

Thank goodness Ashley didn't set up a system that did fail, otherwise we really would be in trouble.

Kinnear's only here for the short term - he only has a small number of games to prove he's worth keeping or that someone else should hire him afterwards. There's no way he's going to be worried about long term planing and helping a young player adapt to the league. It's all about the results for him, and tbh in the position we're in now it should be regardless of manager. We can't afford the luxury of giving him games just "to see what he can do".

If Keegan had left earlier, during the transfer window, you'd have been slagging him off for not giving the new system a chance to see what it could deliver. Then when we failed to pull in even the players we did, and Owen was sold to Spurs, you'd have blamed it all on Keegan leaving during such an important time. FACT.

very true. the debatable points are.1).if he agreed to that structure in the first place..2) if those above him felt the need to step in for other reasons. 3) Why was it the very last day of the window that he decided the job was "unteneable" when theres evidence to suggest he knew the way things worked earlier in the window? Do you think we'd be better off if he'd left in July or August? Do you think we'd have signed up all the world class players Keegan was blocking because he'd never heard of them? I'm sure they'd have been rushing to join a club up for sale and without a permanent manager. I think we would of been better off had he left when his principle had first been crossed. Oppurtunity to get a new manager, oppurtunity to appease the fickle fans who would no doub protested. Who knows? The 3 points still stand and still remained unanswered, the first 2 points especially. Why would we have got a new permanent manager if he'd left in July or August, but not when he left in September? If he'd left while the transfer window was open, we'd have struggled to get in even the few players we did, and there's every chance players like Owen or Martins would have followed Keegan out the door too.

very true. the debatable points are.1).if he agreed to that structure in the first place..2) if those above him felt the need to step in for other reasons. 3) Why was it the very last day of the window that he decided the job was "unteneable" when theres evidence to suggest he knew the way things worked earlier in the window? Do you think we'd be better off if he'd left in July or August? Do you think we'd have signed up all the world class players Keegan was blocking because he'd never heard of them? I'm sure they'd have been rushing to join a club up for sale and without a permanent manager.

Maybe!, but as there are millions of people who don't get what they want at work but they don't spit the dummy they get on with it and try to improve the situation, to me it goes to show what sort of character he has, to leave at the last minute, just so he can prove a point. Gutless!. These are people who need the money and know they wont easily find a job somewhere else. Most people, after banging their head against a managerial brick wall for a bit, would start looking for a new job. Also, when they leave in most instances the whole company doesn't collapse into disarray, and the owners don't usually throw up their hands and say "That's it. I tried, but I can't go on, I'm running this place on a skeleton staff until I can sell it". If an employee was that important, you'd do your damnedest to keep him. Looking at his actions with hindsight, it's clear that Keegan had known the score and been trying to improve the situation at least since the end of last season (eg trying to force Ashley's hand through the media for which he got his knuckles wrapped). When the transfer window closed, he realised his efforts had failed and he was powerless to do anything other than paper over the cracks of the squad he'd been left with. Do you think Keegan didn't give Ashley the option of "me or the system"? Of course he did. Ashley chose the system.

Fixed.

No, I'm saying if it's true that he bought Luque and not Souness, then he acted as a DoF in that instance. He certainly didn't act as a DoF all the time, we know that. If it is true, then it's certainly a black mark on Shepherd's record IMO, but I guess those in favour of having a DoF would just say he was ahead of his time. To be fair to Dennis Wise, he hasn't brought in another Luque so I see a bit of a difference, I also see a difference between Boumsong and Coloccini, even if you don't. It's nice to see you compare a player who flopped from day 1 against Yeading with another who has played well more often than not. Ashley's too stingy to allow 2 big signings in one year so it's not really a fair comparison. I stand by what I said about Coloccini. He has weaknesses in this league which will cost goals if he does not adapt. For the price we paid, it's a big risk hoping that he can adapt. That's not a sign of good scouting IMO. Having a DoF doesn't magically improve the quality or the suitability of the players you sign, it just clouds the issue of whose fault it is if they don't perform.

Precisely. A poor DoF is just as likely to buy badly as a poor manager is. All you do by putting an extra level of management in is increase the likelihood that the player will not be successful (the FTC may not rate the player, may not play him in the role bought for, the player knows the FTC is not in charge of buying/selling him so doesn't have his full respect/isn't sure the FTC wants him at all, etc, etc), increase the money spent on team management, and increase management staff turnover when it goes wrong and you need a scapegoat or when the large egos which go with the territory clash. If Souness was telling the truth then no, a DoF would have made no difference. If Souness was telling the truth then Shepherd was simply acting as a DoF. He has more relevant experience for the role than Dennis Wise after all. So is Luque's signing a for the DoF system? Souness' first major signing was an expensive experienced international central defender from a foreign league with weaknesses in his existing game which would be exposed in the Premiership if he couldn't adapt (so poor scouting / risky purchase for the money). The system's first major signing couldn't have been more similar in circumstances if you'd tried.

How? Explain. Because he wouldn't have been able to waste so much money on bad players. So you're assuming that a DoF, simply because of their job title, wont waste money on bad players?

How? Explain.

A higher rate of managerial change is an almost inevitable consequence of having more egos flying around at the top. Souness didn't turn around the whole playing staff though did he. How do you think things would have turned out differently with a DoF? Would Souness have been forced to keep and play Bellamy?

Will be a bit lonely for him at HT like, but maybe he can do a bit of groundswork as part of his community service.

I can accept the pen being given. Things like that are always going to happen, from where the ref was it looked a nailed on pen. What gets me is the idiotic automatic sending off for a last man foul rule. The reason for bringing in the rule was sound - ie to stop defenders cynically fouling the attacker outside the penalty area when the player was through on goal. If you stop a near certain goal by cynically bringing down the man but it only results in a free kick, it's not enough punishment for the fouling team and a red card is justified. However, when it's obviously a genuine attempt to win the ball, and it's inside the penalty area - so a pen is a fair punishment for the foul anyway - it's just a ludicrously overly harsh punishment even if a foul was committed.

Be patient, it takes time to get a quality server up and running. It needs a long term strategy, not short term fixes. Okay, nothing was done about it 2 months ago, or last month, or this month, but I'm sure something will be done about it next month or failing that the one after. Probably. Obviously, the best way to go about it is to get 3 people to buy a load of cheap untested equipment, and then give it to someone else to cobble something together from parts they didn't want and with bits of it missing. Don't waste money on spares either, it wont break down. It's the Microsoft model - even though it's nothing like how Microsoft work.

Then people can chose for themselves and nothing gets lost.

Whilst I wholeheartedly approve of the idea, I don't like the fact that the preview will be different to what's posted tbh. Does it work if you manually split a quoted post into bits to answer points separately? Will the 4th+ quotes be deleted? Edit: Nevermind, it's okay on that. I see it works on your theme, so it doesn't do anything for me anyway.

OK, if you say so. and the alternative is? Oh, he Soooo upset, he just HAS to sell the club... Well he has to if he can make a massive profit that is. If not he'll bravely struggle on like the hero he is, but he's so upset he just wont be able to spend any of the 3 year season ticket sales or increased TV money. Sorry about that. He can't stand with the away fans anymore! What else can he do? ITS ALL OUR FAULT! LOOK AT WHAT WE'VE DONE!!!

FFS Ashley has chosen to put the club in limbo and announce to the world that he wants rid of the club at the very first sign of unrest. He has let it be known that he wants to make around £100m profit from his disastrous year in charge. Just like the fact that Shepherd is no longer chairman has NOTHING to do with what supporters wanted in the past. Ashley HAS NOT been forced out by a few banners and a bit of a protest now. He either intended to sell the club on for a profit from the start, or he realised making money out of a club is not as easy as playing Football Owner on the playstation and wants to get out quick before he runs the club into the Championship and actually loses some of his money. Just bought the club for a bit of fun? Don't make me laugh. Okay then Mike. Stop crying for a second, put your money where your mouth is, and sell up for what you've put in, ie around £200m. Let the new owners spend the £100m profit you're asking for on players for the team, and we can all love the football together.

We've nowhere near the quality Arsenal have, replacing Owen will be 100x as hard for us as it was for Arsenal to replace Henry. The whole Henry thing was his arrogance and his holier-than-thou demeanour. Owen is absolutely nothing like that and is our one gem on top of a huge pile of average. Do you think Owen seriously wants to stay here unless he's offered stupidly high wages? If I thought he really, really wanted to be here rather than somewhere else I could probably justify offering him a bundle and hope he stayed fit. As it is I'm not fussed if he goes. For a player like Owen at this stage in his career, I think the short to medium term prospects of the club will come into it far more than wages IMO.

I was actually just looking through 2 threads on previous takeover attempts as I wanted to refresh my memory on people's opinions on the matter back then. I must say I was shocked that Ozzie didn't seem to care who the new owners were as if there were nothing to lose. At least back then SJH managed to put the club up for sale for 2 years without going into a huff, putting the club into a state of limbo and refusing to sign any more players.