UV

It says you had to go all the way back to 1999 to find one?

Do you mean like when Roeder tried to bring him here and Shepherd was chairman? Not really. http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,2025560,00.html

http://www.newcastle-online.com/nufcforum/index.php?topic=50747.msg1238782#msg1238782

Who said we have no money for transfers? I know I'm just arguing I think it's unlikely we have anything like £100m to spend, and how the January transfer targets and (non-)activity do more to suggest we don't than support the idea that we do. Do you believe everything Keegan says in the press? Do you think we have £100m to spend in the Summer?

Not according to his dad apparently. All it would have taken was for us to have made Shearer manager. You quoted it, so I assumed you believed it: You don't think even with a £100m transfer kitty we can convince players we are a better prospect long term than Spurs? We have sunk a long way down since Ashley took over then. This £100m transfer kitty which we were supposed to dangle in front of Woody and his dad to persuade them to sign - you believe we should be presenting this sum to all our prospective transfer targets as a given then? If you want 20 £5m players, I'm sure they'll be glad to sign up. If you're talking about £20m+ players, which other clubs are trying to sign too, how else are you going to persuade them to join a club which barely escaped relegation? (if we get relegated the whole discussion is moot). Ahh. Fair enough then, I can see how that would turn a player's head.

Not according to his dad apparently. All it would have taken was for us to have made Shearer manager. You quoted it, so I assumed you believed it: You don't think even with a £100m transfer kitty we can convince players we are a better prospect long term than Spurs? We have sunk a long way down since Ashley took over then.

thanks for cutting of the bracketted part at the end of the second quote which qualified the statement, and the second part of the sentence which elaborated on what I was implying in the first quote. YOU WIN! Why do you think Woodgate chose Spurs over us, given the fact we're going to be spending £100m in the Summer? Because he thinks the managerial hierarchy is Shearer > Ramos > Keegan?

Why would you "must surely offer" a fraction of that to a manager you're going to sack? I'm afraid A doesn't follow from B here, as it pertains to debunking the 100m figure. If he knew he was going to sack Allardyce, why didn't he do it earlier then? Listen to yourself man . He was going to give some fraction of 100m (A figure I feel is grossly exaggerated as well, btw) to someone he was going to sack? The timing is irrelevant. So why was Allardyce talking about ANY signings? Was Mort lying to him? Possibly? Is it so outside the realm of possibility to think that Ashley would back his own choice much more than Shepherds? £100m more? Yes I think it is.

Paper talk mostly, so yeah.... But he did stall for a while over signing for Spurs, and he did talk to us didn't he? Can't honestly remember. Didn't have the internet then so and was privvy to much less information about stuff. Anyway I don't specifically split the time of the previous board by who was chairman. I never suggested Woodgate chose Spurs ahead of us because of wages (ie they offered more than us if that's what you meant), but if we have a £100m transfer kitty in the Summer I am pretty sure we'd be able to 1) offer him a contract he'd find hard to refuse and 2) convince him we have the ambition to overtake Spurs within a season.

Why would you "must surely offer" a fraction of that to a manager you're going to sack? I'm afraid A doesn't follow from B here, as it pertains to debunking the 100m figure. If he knew he was going to sack Allardyce, why didn't he do it earlier then? Did he suddenly decide to put £100m into the transfer kitty once Allardyce was gone, but hadn't thought about it before?

Indeed. Just as there's nothing to stop those with their heads up his arse from making up excuses for him as we risk sliding into the Championship.

I think a lot will be revealed in the Summer, not just how much money Keegan is backed with but what sort of players he's targeted, from that we'll be able to understand why he couldn't attract them in January. It's been a s*** season without doubt, I just hope now they've got there man the club can start moving in the right direction, we've just got to see this season out. £100m if he can spend it. Or so I've been told I find it really hard to believe that kind of figure. If Ashley was seriously thinking about spending that much come the Summer, then he must surely have offered even a fraction of that to Allardyce in the lead up to January. If that were the case, we would have had some decent irons in the fire, and would not have been talking about Wes Brown and Gareth Baines as our main targets, and failing to get them. If we were going to spend that much in the Summer, do you not think we'd be able to p£r$uad£ Woodgate to join us when he was stalling joining Spurs over wages? He talked to us, but chose Spurs. Why? Just so he could be in the UEFA cup next year?

As you believe that had Robson not been sacked we would have recovered from the team's decline and got back in the CL, I assume that you believe they had the ability to do that given the right manager in charge? Conversely, as we're in the business of speculating, if Ashley had bought the club in Summer 2004, do you think he would have ignored the majority of supporter's disquiet at team performances and discipline and kept a 71 year old Robson on instead of bringing in someone new? I don't. Mort's. Making the signing of new players in January extremely difficult and then failing to follow through on those which were targeted? There's no question we're in a better position with Ashley as owner to be able to get back into the CL positions. The question is whether he has the ambition to force us back there (£££), or whether he's just content to wait and hope we get lucky with good management, shrewd transfers and youth squad breakthroughs - like the majority of the rest of the league have done in the past. We have means, but do we have the motivation? Most people seem certain he'll pump money into the team this Summer, but then most people were certain he'd pump money into the team last Summer too. The ambition he's shown so far sees us teetering on the brink of relegation. He may not be to blame, but he certainly hasn't done anything to help.

Mort is completely to blame for us not strengthening the team in January. Coming in to January he had 2 choices where the transfer window could be utilised sensibly. Either appoint a new manager before the transfer window giving him time & games to asses the current squad and see who was available on the market that would make a difference. Or keep Allardyce on and allow him to bring in the players he had already targeted. Instead of this, a new manager was brought in with only 2 weeks of the transfer windows left, and to compound this the manager they chose had been out of the game, and thus would only have a passing knowledge of the current state of our squad and no knowledge of who may/may not be available on the transfer market. Any transfers we could possibly make in this situation would be for players with a known pedigree in the premiership, or players Allardyce and our scouts had already targeted (some of which had already transferred to other clubs). With his choices limited, I don't care what good intentions there were to bring players in on Keegan's part, at that point in the transfer window the only way other clubs were going to part with players they hadn't considered losing, or in the case of Woodgate, make players change their minds about where they were moving to would have been for us to pay over the odds in transfer fees and/or wages. 3 bids. 3 rejections. The money was there to make the bid, but the money wasn't there to make the transfer happen. The old board was often criticised for paying over the odds for players, and maybe sometimes they did, but more often than not the end result was we got the player ahead of Spurs, Everton, Liverpool, etc. Maybe Mort and his new recruitment team were simply not willing to pay over the odds, even when it is more significant now than it ever has been in the club's premiership history? I'm still willing to give Ashley the benefit of the doubt, but it looks more and more likely to me that Mort's priorities are to the balance sheet first, and the health of the team second. Everything he's said and done have pointed to this. If so I'd expect most people to applaud the financial prudence of the board as this is what most said they wanted, but now we face the reality of it I hope no-one complains about the consequences.

Try this then There are a fair few who have said they want to come to the premierhship, its only the Liverpool job which looks like it will be availbale and appealing to big managers, the next one from that is ours, Houllier Lippi Van Gaal Scolari Mourihno (said he wants to come back sooner or later) Hitzfeld Capello They are all managers in recent times who have said they would like to come to the premiership, not saying that they would come now but just saying the names are out there. p.s Im aware of some of the peoples circumstances, just reiterating that its an appealing league which top class managers want to come to. The fact is is that managers want to manage in this league, its become an ambtions for a lot of managers becuase of the hype and money around the premiership nowadays. If you ask me if it were possilble for a top class foriegn manager to be appointed for nufc, despite todays performance id still say yes because the oppurtunity to manage one fo the big big clubs is becoming rarer and rarer so its a case of the next best thing. Which without a shadow of a doubt is us. Are you now going to argue that we were a more attractive proposition to a top manager as a club that just finished 14th, 7th, 14th who'd had 3 managers in as many years, the last of which lasted half a season, than one which had just finished 4th, 3rd, 5th simply because of the "manner" in which we sacked the previous well respected manager? How is the "manner" in which we got rid of Allardyce any better? You are the one who keeps bringing up the manner of the sacking, I only mention it because you seem to place such an emphasis on it - "I beleive the manner of the sacking set the club back becasue it made the job extremely unnattractive". I don't have a problem with it, and in fact I think (and thought at the time) we should have replaced him in the Summer. I realised that it would have been a very brave and unpopular decision at the time though and replacing him at the end of the season (as was the plan) was a decent compromise which would have allowed us to openly look for a new manager throughout the season (as it was out in the open that Robson was going to be retired from the job).

fredbob, I couldn't be arsed responding to the rest of it because firstly it was 1 o'clock in the morning, and secondly you just contradict yourself all over the place so it's impossible to argue with you.

Thanks. Now I know who is really to blame if we get relegated.

Regardless of how good or bad he is as a player, well done to the negotiating team on this one. Not bottling it and letting the player force us into giving him a longer contract. There, don't let anyone say I can't say anything good about the new board.

The guts of your argument is the board didn't have the gall to sack him at the start of the season or the stomache to let him continue indefinately? The "manner" of Robson's sacking as a deterent to getting a new manager in is a massive red herring. When has the manner of the previous manager's sacking stopped a new manager taking the job? Houllier -> Benitez? Ranieri ->Mourinho? Jol -> Ramos?

I'm Shepherd!

You're speculating about what state the club would be in if we hadn't sacked Robson, and complaining when I use what actually happened in real life to point out the consequences of that decision? Okay, I'll just leave you to your dream world where we're top of the premiership and Robson has just led us into the quarter finals of the Champions League on our way to the defense of the cup.

I base it on the fact that he started looking for a new job as soon as he was sacked, he wanted a new challenge at 71. He's probably still looking for one now. An ambitious one? A confident one? A good one? Not the point anyway, he wasn't sacked for only coming fifth (although we were clearly looking on the slide). Robson was getting on. Like Shearer he was going to have to be replaced soon. The idea was to get in a new manager at the end of the season and save up a bit to give him a pot of cash to replace Shearer. Robson wasn't happy with this though and started acting up about it. This along with lack of player discipline and results at the start of the season forced the hand of the board into getting rid before they intended to. No, although his health may have been a factor for the board in deciding not to renew his rolling contract. The point is you keep banging on about the club being in the position it is now because Robson was sacked. The fact is, if he hadn't at most we would have got another couple of years out of him, and then we would have been in a situation where we had a manager who was in and out of hospital with Carver effectively as manager. Who knows what the state of the club would have been after that? The state of the club now is mostly because of the appoinments of Souness and Allardyce (I don't think Roeder did any harm to the club), not because of the sacking of Robson.

It only goes up to 2006, but how are these clubs still in operation with year on year losses? Villa Blackburn Everton Man City Boro keep going like that and thay wont be in operation Did you even look at 'boro? Losses for 12 out of 13 years. Total losses of about £150m. I just wish Delima was around to say how great they are. maybe, in line with his signature, he should show us some links to the gross mismanagement of the smoggies by the great Steve Gibson then i'd like to see if their accounts show they are about £150 million in debt.....and who to ? I have to say I was surprised and can't quite believe myself, but that site does look like it knows what it's talking about (it's accurate about our figures), so I don't think it's just making it up.

Most of them? Unless the manager leaves the club, what's the point of sacking one manager to appoint someone exactly the same? The board of that club would get (rightly) slaughtered by their fans. BTW, do you think Robson should still be manager? So you think that most clubs have sacked or replaced a manager whichhas directly affected the team and therefore the business? It was actually an open question, the one that comes to mind would be Charlton replacing Curbishley with Dowie, but even that had itmerits. I just think that the club of our size should not been in a situation where it makes mistakes on the most fundamental decision, i.e the appointment of a new manager. to get in wrong once in such spectacular fashoin is one thing, to get it wrong twice is undefendable, and potentially getting it wrong 3 times (not really putting any emphasis on the Allardyce appointment because he didnt obviusly have Shephard behind him although the signs suggested that Allardyce wouldnt have gone down well anyway) is shocking. To be honest yes i would of liked to stuck with Bobby, he had brought us to a place where we deserved to be and i think fans lost sight a little bit. It was a new beginning for the club and even though he had had a poor season which was compounded by no CL qualification i still think that had Shephard backed him to the extent he backed Souness then we would e in a much stronger position. People seem to suggest that SBR was on his last legs and the signs were there, well yes, we had had one poor season but if you cant trust a legendary manager to turn it around, who can you trust? In light of the treatment SBR recieved (undermining him etc) as well as the sacking, the job became completely unteneable, with outrageously fickle fans who booed the boys off for finishing 5th and a chairman who seemed intent on undermining the manager at every oppurtunity, who else would of come on board. SBR should of been left to finish the job he started, if i rememebr correctly he already had Mourihno marked downto take over but Mourihno turned down thining SBR would never leave, this to me suggests SBR did have leaving the club on his mind at one point, he should of been moved upstairs in all ideal situations, should of been able to plan his own "retirement" in order to prepare the club better. The whole SBR sacking was an amateur mistake, and has cost the club alot. Robson would never have stepped down willingly, and if people think Shearer is a spectre over the club keeping away quality managers and undermining the ones we had, what would a (relatively) successful ex-manager in a senior role have been? To clarify, you think Robson should still have been manager a year later while he was in & out of hospital for his brain tumour?

It only goes up to 2006, but how are these clubs still in operation with year on year losses? Villa Blackburn Everton Man City Boro keep going like that and thay wont be in operation Did you even look at 'boro? Losses for 12 out of 13 years. Total losses of about £150m. I just wish Delima was around to say how great they are.