UV

Should just settle it on number of shots on target, or a points decision like in boxing, decided on by the ref (or 4th official) & linesmen. Would encourage positive play during the game.

They have a bigger turnover mostly because they are regularly in the CL. What happens when (not if btw) that stops? Edit: They currently have a £300m debt which costs over £20m/year to service. Their wage bill is around £15m more than ours (probably more now). On a good year for them, and a poor year for us, they make around £30m more than us. How come they're fine but we were in financial meltdown.

5 years, 02-07: 3 years in the PL top 7. 4 years in Europe. CL 2n'd group stage UEFA cup last 8, quarter-final, semi-final FAC quarter-final & semi-final Intertoto cup winners Not good enough. Good luck Mike.

Take Liverpool out of the CL in that year - the year they didn't actually qualify for it - and their turnover would have been reduced by around £20m. Their turnover was also boosted that year by loads of new "supporters" buying CL winner's merchandise. I make that a potential wages ratio of at least 70%. Disgraceful. I wonder if the scousers know how close they were to going bust, you should tell them how lucky they were they got those yanks in to steady the ship. That was also a year without European football for us too, the first for 3 years. UEFA competition would have given us maybe an extra £10m, making our wage ratio 55%. We were running at a level easily sustainable with European football on average every other season which is what we had under the old board. If we were on the brink before Ashley with a debt of £70m, after 1 year out of Europe, but with a massive TV money boost coming up, perhaps someone could explain to me how the club survived from 98-02 when we had a £40m debt, but due to only fleeting appearances in european competition and far lower TV revenues, only about half the revenue we did in 05-06. Not only did we survive, how did we manage during that period to spend nearly £10m each on the likes of Robert, Viana, and Woodgate, plus Bellamy, Jenas, Bramble, etc?

FFS install a spell checker please. Your posts are worse than txt spk. Usually it's just annoying but that was almost illegible. alltelltale indeed. Emre - Turkey, Boumsong - Scotland Martins - 22 Barton - great standing in the game! I know there are differences between the players the journo chose to pick out of the players we signed in the past and those he chose to pick out of the one's we've been linked with this transfer window. Why didn't he include Bellamy, Robert, Viana or N'Zogbia in the first group? Why didn't he include Arshavin in the second, or even Beye, Cacapa, Faye, Smith who were all bought under Mort/Ashley? The difference has nothing to do with them being "stellar names", and is merely down to their age, the relative averageness of the first group and the "potential" of the second. The difference is based on hindsight in one case and hope in the other. I have no doubt that if Modric, Turan or Gomis had theoretically been signed by the old board a couple of years ago and had flopped they would all have been included in the journo's list of failed "stellar names" as an example of the bad old days.

We were looking at Martins & Kuyt for about the same length of time IIRC. Martins was second choice after Liverpool eventually put in a for Kuyt and he went there, but I don't see how he was a panic buy. Does that make any midfielder we buy now a panic buy because our first choice Modric went to Spurs? Is any signing we make in the last week of the transfer window going to be a "panic buy" (even if they were planned backups in case we failed to get players we'd rather have had). Exactly. I think most of the players we have been linked with are in their early 20s. Arshavin is the oldest at 27. Strange how the reporter missed non-"stellar name" Arshavin, 27, out of his article isn't it. Also, I don't want to go over old ground, but I'll just note that the non-stadium debt has now been reduced to being a more realistic £30m rather than the £40-70m figures that have been flying around.

Wont delve into this too far, but will say that 15 of those players we part of one era, our last successful one. This article, like most article ridiculing the Shepherd regime refer to after this period of time. And to be fair the ones that werent part of that era could be defined as Marque signings (Butt for example). Decent article - still craving some fresh news though. Same chairman, different managers. Same money, different approach to transfers. Who's to blame? I struggle to see how Boumsong, Luque, Duff, Parker, Smith, Martins, Barton and Emre are "stellar names" , but Modric (£18m?), Turan (£15m?) and Gomis (£12m?) aren't.

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/7607/snn1707a280509381anj1.jpg

It's better to have opened talks than to have not opened talks, is it not? It would have been better to open talks last month IYAM, but it's not like we didn't already know they'd be starting this week. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/newcastle/article4053129.ece The fact that the best player at the club has come out and said he wants to stay at the club for longer than his existing contract, when people were starting to get worried he could leave on a free next summer? Like I said, what's changed?

I don't get it. Why is everyone so chuffed? What's changed?

What makes you say that? Arsenal's wage bill is as high as Man U's. In 06-07 their wage bill was nearly £90m. Do they have 36 players all on £49k/week?

Remind me how Spurs signed Modric again.

Cost cutting.

Ah, so this is what the cost cutting and 3 years of season ticket money is for.

I know what's going to happen, it's the same every year. You plan your big holiday timing it so you sneakily get to miss out on a nasty piece of work coming up, thinking that when you get back someone else will have had to do it instead. When you get back though you find everyone else has been "busy on something else that came up" and it's still waiting for you to do, but now there's nowhere near enough time for you to do it in. Don't expect anything to happen as soon as he's back either, it's going to take him at least a week to get through his inbox.

I hope we're safe by March, don't fancy that 2 month run to the start of May at all.

It always goes to a player playing in Italy or Spain doesn't it. So, Ronaldo it is then.

If anyone's got a Newcastle blog, I've got a hot piece of ITKtastic transfer news (my girlfriend's dad's boyfriend's stepson knows Ameobi's mum's sister).

I'm sure they are. If you look at most of the top performing sides over the last few years, they've had a policy of mixing youth with experience. Oh I've got no doubt they'll be looking for experienced players as well. I just question how much they're prepared to spend on those kind of players. This is pretty much how I feel too. I'm sure we will sign a few older players, especially in defence or defensive mid positions where youth is less important and reduced speed/fitness in later years is compensated for with experience, however if I'm reading the signs right I think they'll mostly be frees/bargain buys rather than quality players at their peak.

If we're being serious, then (if true) this kind of trivial cost saving will put out a feeling of the club being "cheap" to current and potential players. The players will just laugh it off and pay it of course, but they'll still be a bit pissed off about it no matter how insignificant the cost is to them. I have first hand experience of this kind of thing working for a company which is cutting and cutting staff perks; the gain to the company and the loss to the staff is trivial, but workforce morale is shot to shit. Any financial cost saving the company makes is far outweighed by the time wasted by everyone whinging about it, and reduced motivation to do a good job. It probably doesn't matter much in companies like Sports Direct where staff motivation is probably so low it can't get any worse and trivial savings mount up across a large number of stores, but at a football club keeping the playing staff happy and motivated is a very important thing. If it was a reasonably significant cost saving then it may be worth it, but this just seems stupidly petty.

What a hero.

I'd rather we keep Milner, bring in another RW, and not touch Pennant with a bargepole.