UV

I think fraudulently claiming to represent Newcastle supporters is a concern for most of us and as you say, the name they have chosen for what is nothing more than a small Ashley out pressure group, is very misleading. Why don't you set up the RNUSC with a pro Ashley agenda? There must be some nights the Arena is free to hold your meetings in. I look forward to seeing your "We Cockneys" banner at the Man City game.

I hope you're right, but I don't think it's as big an "if" as you'd like to make out. I don't think Ashley thinks we definitely will get relegated, but I'm pretty sure, like me, he thinks it's a not too unrealistic a prospect. It's a bigger risk than he thought when he bought the club, one he's not willing to take, and he's been looking to get out since last season. I'm basing my assessment of the risk of relegation on how the core of the current squad did last season (with a relatively low injury affected season), and the fact that I don't think we've improved on that squad very much if we've improved at all, rather than basing it on one game against an injury hit Man Utd side (not trying to belittle the result, but it's not an insignificant point - we were overrun until Carrick went off), and an unconvincing home win against Bolton.

How exactly? The players are still there. 45k still turn up and cheer on the team. The world is still turning. Supporters are fickle if the team starts to do well. A quality new manager, some good results, and all is forgiven.Easy to do with the great squad we now have, and with the super setup in place, any manager would be mad not to come surely? But no, apparently a few banners make his position untenable. A couple of protests and some strongly worded emails have driven him out. The reason the stubborn, hard nosed businessman is selling the club is because he's upset. It has nothing to do with the fact he's been trying to offload the club for months, no siree, nothing at all. So why not give him the chance to do so? Why protest and set up supporters group with the sole intention of ousting him? Put it simply - had the fans been more passive and less voiciferous, do you think he still would of sold? Do you think his family deserve to hear the sort of vile diatribe that will no doubt be aimed at him irrespective of where he sits? A lookalike got attacked, purely for the reason he was mistaken as Ashley, irrespective of how good his security is do you not think that that may of been a factor when deciding to sell? Yes. Not quite so publicly perhaps, but yes. Then why sell now when its possibly least valuable to him? Why not sell at end of the season with the possiblity that the club is on the up? Why not keep Keegan at the helm with the club doing well and sell at more of a profit there? Doesnt make perfect sense. It will be less and less as attractive a prospect to buy as the season goes on if results stay the same. I guess Ashley wants to sell ASAP as he agrees more with me about the quality of the squad than with you. At the end of the season there's a distinct possibility that the club will be in the Championship. Selling now (at a price he wants) or later is all about the risk he's willing to take on that happening. It's obviously not as easy as he thought it would be to keep a club in the premiership with little to no outlay on the squad. You're assuming Ashley didn't try and would have been able to persuade Keegan to stay on. Who knows. Even with Keegan in charge, at best we'd only have achieved an out of Europe mid table finish with players like Owen out the door at the end of the season. I don't see how that makes us significantly more attractive a proposition than now tbh.

How exactly? The players are still there. 45k still turn up and cheer on the team. The world is still turning. Supporters are fickle if the team starts to do well. A quality new manager, some good results, and all is forgiven.Easy to do with the great squad we now have, and with the super setup in place, any manager would be mad not to come surely? But no, apparently a few banners make his position untenable. A couple of protests and some strongly worded emails have driven him out. The reason the stubborn, hard nosed businessman is selling the club is because he's upset. It has nothing to do with the fact he's been trying to offload the club for months, no siree, nothing at all. So why not give him the chance to do so? Why protest and set up supporters group with the sole intention of ousting him? Put it simply - had the fans been more passive and less voiciferous, do you think he still would of sold? Do you think his family deserve to hear the sort of vile diatribe that will no doubt be aimed at him irrespective of where he sits? A lookalike got attacked, purely for the reason he was mistaken as Ashley, irrespective of how good his security is do you not think that that may of been a factor when deciding to sell? Yes. Not quite so publicly perhaps, but yes.

How exactly? The players are still there. 45k still turn up and cheer on the team. The world is still turning. Supporters are fickle if the team starts to do well. A quality new manager, some good results, and all is forgiven. Easy to do with the great squad we now have, and with the super setup in place, any manager would be mad not to come surely? But no, apparently a few banners make his position untenable. A couple of protests and some strongly worded emails have driven him out. The reason the stubborn, hard nosed businessman is selling the club is because he's upset. It has nothing to do with the fact he's been trying to offload the club for months, no siree, nothing at all.

How exactly is it in his best interests to block a higher transfer fee (which he'll get a % of) and wages? If that's how the system works, I'm not impressed, as 1) Modric isn't that good he was worth buying (at that price) just for the sake of it. 2) We were/are desperate for that position 3) It's a s*** way of going about transfers regardless I can think of shitter ways. Chairman: "Mr Luque, how much would you like to be paid?" Luque: "Er...Meester Newcastle chairman I don't really want to come but ok, I would like 20..no 30...no...make that 60k a week please" Chairmen: "Ok" Yeah, these direct quotes show how the players we're getting in now are desperate to play just for the love of the club: “At the end of a player’s career, the only thing that counts is their checking account, they don’t feed themselves with cups neither with medals, and I fear he could miss the contract of his life. “The pay rise is very important for Fabricio,” he added. “Here (in Spain) you have a better life, but a player’s career is very short"

How exactly is it in his best interests to block a higher transfer fee (which he'll get a % of) and wages? If that's how the system works, I'm not impressed, as 1) Modric isn't that good he was worth buying (at that price) just for the sake of it. 2) We were/are desperate for that position 3) It's a s*** way of going about transfers regardless

Aye, hounded out by all those "Jimenez out" banners.

Not sure how everyone is getting this so wrong, Jimenez doesn't find players, he's just a negotiator/deal maker. Vetere is the person with the knowledge of players, he's the man who identified the likes of Bassong, Jimenez's job would simply be to try to make the deal happen. Wether he's done a good job or not I'm not so sure, we missed out on quite a few players and ended up short in a lot of positions. That probably wasn't all his fault as he doesn't make the final decision on who to sign (that would be Wise it seems), but I certainly wouldn't say there's much evidence that he's done a good job so I'm not sad to see him go. It's hilarious isn't it. All the pro-Ashley, pro-system boys don't even know who does what in this great system.

modric. even keegan said they had accepted the bid. I don't remember Keegan saying anything about it, but I'll take your word for it - he would only be parroting what he'd been told by Wise/Mort anyway. So if the bid was accepted, we offered better terms to the player, and the player had no say in the decision, why is he not playing for us now instead of the next best thing to Modric - Danny Guthrie? ask the player or his representatives. (and i think we dodged a bullet by not getting him aswell) His representatives are the one's you said accepted the bid. his club accepted the bid. Zdravko Mamić is both the vice-chairman of Zagreb and is/was Modric's agent. maybe the chairman made the decision. What, the chairman accepted our bid, but the vice-chairman blocked the deal acting as the player's agent so he could go to Spurs for a lower transfer fee and on lower wages? Then of course, when we got knocked back for Modric we went in for the next player on the list, Danny Guthrie.

modric. even keegan said they had accepted the bid. I don't remember Keegan saying anything about it, but I'll take your word for it - he would only be parroting what he'd been told by Wise/Mort anyway. So if the bid was accepted, we offered better terms to the player, and the player had no say in the decision, why is he not playing for us now instead of the next best thing to Modric - Danny Guthrie? ask the player or his representatives. (and i think we dodged a bullet by not getting him aswell) His representatives are the one's you said accepted the bid. his club accepted the bid. Zdravko Mamić is both the vice-chairman of Zagreb and is/was Modric's agent.

modric. even keegan said they had accepted the bid. I don't remember Keegan saying anything about it, but I'll take your word for it - he would only be parroting what he'd been told by Wise/Mort anyway. So if the bid was accepted, we offered better terms to the player, and the player had no say in the decision, why is he not playing for us now instead of the next best thing to Modric - Danny Guthrie? ask the player or his representatives. (and i think we dodged a bullet by not getting him aswell) His representatives are the one's you said accepted the bid, and the player clearly from what he said at the time had no say in the matter.

modric. even keegan said they had accepted the bid. I don't remember Keegan saying anything about it, but I'll take your word for it - he would only be parroting what he'd been told by Wise/Mort anyway. So if the bid was accepted, we offered better terms to the player, and the player had no say in the decision, why is he not playing for us now instead of the next best thing to Modric - Danny Guthrie?

It's a shame Ashley's mantra is I'd rather give a Director of Football £0 than a good manager £0 and yet it's known that he had a club record bid accepted for a player and paid a club record for a defender. aren't we getting back into the area where we don't actually know what happened. That's never stopped UV before. I know we've had a net spend of around £10m under Ashley in 3 transfer windows. If you missed it, that's what's happened. Edit: Which club record bid was accepted? I hope we're not getting back into the area where we don't actually know what happened.

Aye, as a mechanism for supplying instant success it has proved sadly deficient. As a mechanism for supplying almost instant relegation though, it's proving worryingly efficient. Any relegation type form (and it certainly was recently) is more down to a lack of leadership (manager walkout) and a woefully under strength team due to injuries and suspensions, and not as you attempt to imply due to any structure or plan. But I'm sure you really knew that anyway. Does the plan not have any contingency for injuries and suspensions then? Bit poor if so. I expect a club with our resources to be able to deal with a reasonable level of injuries and suspensions. If they are to key players over a long period, then a drop in achievement to mid table should be expected, but not unless pretty much the whole first team is out for a decent part of the season should we be facing relegation. If 2 of Owen, Martins and Viduka had been injured in the last 2 months of last season do you think we'd be in the premiership now? I don't.

It's a shame Ashley's mantra is I'd rather give a Director of Football £0 than a good manager £0

Aye, as a mechanism for supplying instant success it has proved sadly deficient. As a mechanism for supplying almost instant relegation though, it's proving worryingly efficient.

If we have the level of injuries this season that we did that season (and don't do something about it in January), there's absolutely no way we wont get relegated, regardless of who the manager is. That's how much we've "strengthened" the squad under "Newcastle's best ever chairman/owner". I'm pretty sure you and NE5 were warning of relegation after we didn't strengthen last January, and that was with Keegan in charge. Regular doom-mongers really. Yes I was, however last season was the first season since we got into the premiership that I was ever seriously worried about relegation, and I would have been thinking the same thing regardless of who the owner/chairman was.

If we have the level of injuries this season that we did that season (and don't do something about it in January), there's absolutely no way we wont get relegated, regardless of who the manager is. That's how much we've "strengthened" the squad under "Newcastle's best ever chairman/owner".

Aw! Did the nasty man say bad things about Uncle Freddie? Poor baby! Here's a new dummy. See how long you can keep this one inside the pram. Is Freddy NE5's uncle? I know theres some link between the 2 somewhere.... He's clearly talking about Keegan there like. One track minds some people

How about "Newcastle owner Ashley wins £1.3m on one spin of roulette wheel"? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-563853/Newcastle-owner-Ashley-wins-1-3m-spin-roulette-wheel.html I think "billionaire makes more money" would have been more catchy actually. Note: I'm not vouching for the veracity of this article, and I know it's a different gamble to the one you were talking about, just addressing your "well they wouldn't report it if he'd won" argument.

If he sticks to form it will be a rolling "must end soon" date (sale extended due to unprecedented demand). He tried to run the club like his other acquired companies - passing off inferior goods under a quality brand name, now he's trying to sell the club off like he sells off old England strips.

Didn't see that coming.

You mean he bought some shares in Adidas once and sold them on after a few weeks for a profit, any other examples? What company's has he bought 100% of and sold on for a profit? You're right, his typical MO is to buy a quality brand name company (Slazenger, Karrimor, Kangol), and then use that respected brand name to sell cheaper, lower quality goods. No comparison with what he was trying to do at Newcastle at all.