UV

When you consider that includes cup games, european games & internationals, so he only played in around half the games he could have in each season he's played, then that IS the record of either an injury prone player or one who isn't first choice. Due to his age I assume a lot was the latter, but the point is that those playing stats are nothing to shout about, and certainly don't show he's NOT injury prone.

This stuff about costing us money is going a bit far, there was nothing like that in the last accounts. Yes there was. Edit: looks like I was thinking of the ones before that. Of course it's costing us money! Company's aren't putting the signs up and doing up the dugouts with Sports Direct seats and such, free of charge are they It's costing someone money certainly. There was nowt about it in the latest accounts though, and you'd hope there'd be some wedge from SD to us in the next lot. I'd be pretty amazed if things that have been done in the last month appeared in last year's accounts like Alright, the lot after then. Jeeez. Mabe there will be something in the next lot though fingers crossed. The ramping up of shit plastered around the place hasn't just been in the last month. Yeah, we didn't get a penny from Sports Direct in the first 3 years when we were making a loss, but I'm sure he had a change of heart last year when we made tens of millions of pounds profit. Probably what gave us a million or so to spend on transfers in the Summer. He only treats us badly because we don't love him enough, give him another chance. Just wait until the next set of accounts/transfer window, you'll see...

How easily does "HOOF IT UP TO SHOLA!" translate into Italian?

Or you could turn that round another way and conclude that Ranger, Best and/or Lovenkrands were retained because the striker negotiations were going badly and there was a real risk of no one coming in. But moving on do you really think Ashley is going to let Pardew have control of transfer and wage budgets? I doubt many other managers in the league have that control so why would Ashley, of all people, delegate the guts of the financial decision making to a man untrained in business or finance? He may be a prize c*nt (and naive) in many ways but he hasn't made his money entirely by accident. Golfmag's prophecy was without doubt founded on fact but that part of it doesn't work for me. I was talking about Llambias. Though tbh I'd not be surprised in the slightest if Pardew's wages weren't also supplemented by bonuses based on the profitability of the business. There are plenty of Sports Direct store managers who were just doing the same job they always do and were not directly responsible for the company making the size of profit it did who got bonuses this year. The hanging on to a player until we had a replacement logic wasn't used for Carroll, Routledge or Enrique, I'm not sure why it would be for the 3rd to 5th choice strikers. I've seen a few references on here and in the media to Pardew's pay being linked to performance but nothing much about Lambias. You obviously have some inside knowledge of how Llambias is paid. The published accounts tell us that he's pulling about £150k to £160k a year. It's believable that he's on an incentive scheme but tell us more please... Your point about replacements is fair enough. although you could also argue that the Carroll offer was too much too late, a Routledge replacement was regarded (like the player) as not essential and Enrique was replaced in the same window. I'm not endorsing the way the club has played any of this out (especially the failure to sign another striker) just trying to point out that it's a futile exercise trying to pigeon hole every decision. I quite obviously don't have any inside knowledge, but it's more than just believable that Llambias is on a profit based incentive scheme, it would be almost unbelievable if he wasn't. Not only is it standard business practice anyway, it's something Ashley is extra keen on. IMO it incentivises short term thinking and profits over strategies which grow the business in the long term, but it's obviously worked for Ashley in his shops.

Or you could turn that round another way and conclude that Ranger, Best and/or Lovenkrands were retained because the striker negotiations were going badly and there was a real risk of no one coming in. But moving on do you really think Ashley is going to let Pardew have control of transfer and wage budgets? I doubt many other managers in the league have that control so why would Ashley, of all people, delegate the guts of the financial decision making to a man untrained in business or finance? He may be a prize c*nt (and naive) in many ways but he hasn't made his money entirely by accident. Golfmag's prophecy was without doubt founded on fact but that part of it doesn't work for me. I was talking about Llambias. Though tbh I'd not be surprised in the slightest if Pardew's wages weren't also supplemented by bonuses based on the profitability of the business. There are plenty of Sports Direct store managers who were just doing the same job they always do and were not directly responsible for the company making the size of profit it did who got bonuses this year. The hanging on to a player until we had a replacement logic wasn't used for Carroll, Routledge or Enrique, I'm not sure why it would be for the 3rd to 5th choice strikers.

No-one believes we seriously tried to sign Ruiz do they? That goes straight on the taking-the-piss pile along with Schweinsteiger, Johnson, Richardson, & N'Zogbia. You have to then wonder if they are happy to put in joke bids/enquiries on the last day and let the press run with the story as if it was serious, how many of the other supposed targets were just for show? When we were promoted, we had Ameobi, Lovenkrands, Carroll, Best & Ranger as our strikeforce. With Ameobi & Lovenkrands you pretty much knew what you were going to get in terms of effectiveness in the Premiership. Best had been very poor for us in the Championship, Ranger looked promising but had very little game time, and Carroll had looked good but there were major doubts as to whether he'd be as effective in the Premiership. We really needed a proven striker then, but we made no attempts to buy one. Carroll was far better than anyone expected, but picked up an injury which was going to keep him out for a good part of the second half of the season so we really needed to bring a first team striker in at the very least on loan in January, but we made no attempts to get one. In the Summer Ba was picked up early on, giving us 5 strikers again. There were rumours about Ranger, Best & Lovenkrands being sold, but there were no bids and no serious interest. All the talk has been of playing 4-5-1. There's no way we were going to have 6 strikers on the books IMO (or 7 if you count Xisco). With that in mind you have to wonder how much actual effort was put into bringing in another striker by the man responsible for setting transfer and wage budgets, when his relatively low basic wage will almost certainly be significantly boosted by bonuses based on the club making a profit. I guess we might see in January if they were really serious, but my money is on nothing happening then either unless it's a 1 in 1 out deal for a bargain basement striker, or a loan if we look in serious danger of relegation.

Don't know where that's come from, I don't see it. What is there under "Related party transactions" is the following:

What's relevant surely is whether the lad sees himself as a LB or a RB. He may previously have been happy to play anywhere just to get in the team and get a game, and he may still be happy to do so, but if he's any good and has aspirations for the future, he's going to want to specialise and play regularly in his best position. From what people have said that seems to RB rather than LB, especially if that's where he's getting a game at international level. Have to say I'm very worried about this signing, especially as he has big boots to fill. If he gets off to a shaky start making a bunch of errors, he'll get the groan treatment after a few games and might never recover.

FFS, don't give him any ideas. Might give him an incentive he cares about to buy a striker though.

What have .com said like? I can't spot anything at all written about it on their site which is strange considering they're being so zealous about it.

Read the post you first replied to.

Bizarre that no-one's offered more than the £0 Sports Direct pay for way more advertising than any of the other sponsors get. Maybe if they put an advert on the club website they'd get some offers.

The TV money may be increasing (as it is for all our competitors), but all other revenue streams are either decreasing year on year, or not increasing at the same rate as other clubs. Ticket sales, merchandising, advertising are all down, and soon we will not be as big a draw on the TV either. The recession may have a hand in some of this downturn, but I very much doubt it is the significant driver, which is the way the club is being run by Ashley which is nothing like the clubs you mentioned above. People can go on about the folly of taking £25m up front for 5 years of advertising as opposed to a maximum of £2.5m/year for 4 years, but there isn't a businessman in the world who would not say the former is a far, far better deal for the club. I'd have hoped it was obvious, but it apparently needs to be spelled out, that continually cutting costs to match a constantly reducing revenue is not the sign of a business on the up. To use your shooting analogy, we found a silver bullet which we could have used but we sold it, and instead of using the money to buy a round of normal bullets we paid off some of the loan on the gun and left it empty. That's a shit analogy, but the point is we're absolutely not being run like those clubs (or how we used to be run when we were competing with or better than them). They are trying to succeed by pushing the boat out. It will not always work, and you may have to spend a few years recovering and building up momentum for another push, but now we aren't even trying. You can choose to believe we are currently restricted by paying off debts (to the owner), or are saving up for a big push, or need to stock up on pre-paid wages if you like, but absolutely nothing in the 4 years of Ashley's ownership gives any indication of a desire to advance this club on the pitch beyond an ambition to stay in the league on minimum expenditure. There's also nothing but blind hope that this is a strategy designed to help in the sale of the club. From day one the plan was to run the club as it is being done now, to bring in players with potential - not to develop them and keep them and build a team for the long term - but with the aim of selling them on for a profit. Keep the club in the Premiership and the running costs are covered, and as a bonus you have a prime global marketing tool for free. The evidence of this lack of footballing ambition MUST now be absolutely clear surely. We got lucky with a once in a generation prodigy from the academy, that should have been our impetus to make progression. We could either have kept him and built a team around that talent (and a local focal point to the team like Shearer was is great for selling shirts and bringing in advertising, etc), or used the money from his sale to significantly improve the first team or strengthen the squad. We did neither and replaced proven effective players in our team for players with "potential" who are new to the team, culture and league. A risky strategy at best. We certainly haven't strengthened the squad as we have only replaced for the most part first team players, so the only way we can possibly have improved is if we have improved the first team. There is no way anyone can say the first team we have now is better than it was at the start of September last year for at least 3 or 4 months until we've seen how the new players fit in, but IMO it's very unlikely as it can only be stronger if ALL the new players match or better the players they replaced, and that is highly unlikely to happen no matter what their brief appearances for us so far and their track records tell you. Anyone with any realistic perspective knows that not all new players fit in and live up to expectations, in fact it's unusual that more than half do even if they are already adapted to the league/country, so the chances are that we will be weaker as a 1st team let alone as a squad. Let's clear this point up too, there's a lot of people in this thread saying or implying we are still making losses. Well no-one who has seriously looked at the figures and has a basic understanding of them thinks we made an operating loss last year. Frankly if we didn't make a profit with the wage bill as it was (and still is), then it's an absolute disgrace, and I don't see how anyone could say with a straight face that Ashley was running the club well financially if that was the case. However I'm pretty confident that that isn't the case and that the revenues haven't dropped to the point that we'd make a loss on a £50-60m wage bill (although they would quite easily be far better if the club was actually being run well). With the ins and outs as they stand the wage bill won't have changed significantly from last year, so if we don't spend any money on transfers we'll make a profit this year too (unless of course revenues drop through supporter disaffection as much as they did in 08-09).

The whole thread is pretty much a make shit up as you go along free for all.

No, I'm pretty sure Chris Mort said as much once they bought the club and saw the books - Club sponsorship money had been used in one hit for Owen, hence no future sponsorship money in the pot. Cheers mate, thought it was right. When does Northern Rock expire? He'll walk into another 20m+ when the next shirt sponsor comes along, wonder how much of that will be reinvested. pretty sure the Northern Rock deal was just recently renewed, not sure how long the deal is for though. We went from £5m/year for 5 years unconditional to £2.5m/year for 4 years conditional on staying in the Prem. It's called turning round the finances.

That line is such a load of toss like, and gives an idea of the perspective the article was written with. £134m of that is the money Ashley paid for the club £45m of it is the remainder of the debt for the stadium extension £83m is additional debt from when Ashley bought the club to 2009 None of that is to do with the so called "club’s previous excesses" which account for around £22m of that figure. Far too high a price to pay for 15 years of semi-regular European football obviously.

You said "it's no more sinister than most managerial appointments". It quite clearly was.

Don't feed us bullshit about getting players in 100% or key players staying then. He should shut his f***ing mouth. He may have been assured from the higher ups that we were getting players in, so he thought what he was saying could be true? Perhaps he shouldn't have said it, I don't know. That's not going to lose us points though is it. If you believe that we'll maintain this start then fair play to you, but I can see things turning very ugly this season. Players have come out saying that they've been treated like s*** by the boardroom, fans are sick of being lied to with apathy being set in, St. James Park is supposedly being used as a billboard and made to look ridiculous with the name of the club brought down... It doesn't take much for these things to snowball out of control. I can normally roll with the ridiculous punches that this regime has thrown out, but it's starting to wear a little too thin for me now. The stuff that's happening with SJP is a complete joke, making us a laughing stock, there's no two ways about that. I'm not a fan of Llambias or Ashley at all, but I just don't think Pardew has done anything wrong really. There's only so much he's able to do with the cretins above him, but as far as I can see he's doing it well. We've got a good new full back in, and still have Ben Arfa to come back, who'll most likely become one of our best players. I think we'll probably finish 9th-11th in the league, which wouldn't be a bad season, will probably depend on what happens in January though. i'll tell you what he did wrong. his phone rang.... someone told him that nufc were gonna push out chris hughton at the next opportunity and asked if he'd like to become the next person to pick the team, that he'd have no say on incomings or outgoings and that no matter what happened he wasnt allowed to question the running of the club in public in any way. then he said yes, i'd like to do that. he did that wrong. I'm sure that's exactly how the phone call went. neither of us knows, would you care to offer a more likely account of the negotiations? given what we were told by golfmag and what's actually been going on since he arrived. Given that most football managers are lined up before their predecessor is removed (and Pardew certainly was) and that no one is ever employed without agreeing to the conditions determined by their employers, what golf mag said was a bit like me saying that it's going to rain next month. Factually correct but hardly stellar insight. Agreed. It seemed worse because Ashley is a bastard and Hughton is a nice guy, but it's no more sinister than most managerial appointments other than that IMO. I don't agree at all that "most football managers are lined up before their predecessor is removed", as we'd have a lot more West Ham/Grant/O'Neill situations, however even ignoring that point most managers are replaced when they are doing poorly. No-one thought Hughton was perfect, and some thought he wasn't doing as well as he could have done with the squad available, but it's a massive stretch to say he was doing poorly and it was a massive shock when he was sacked. The fact that the appointment of Pardew was lined up and waiting for a brief spell of poor results (his appointment was probably delayed by the results at the end of October, start of November) shows the decision to get rid of Hughton had nothing to do with his ability as a coach.

It's too broad a question though, who knows? I'm not aware of anyone who hasn't criticised a lot of what Ashley has done. You could equally put it the other way round - what would Ashley have to do to make you think he was doing some things right? Buy one of the most exciting attacking midfielders in Europe? Sign a French league winner and one of the best defensive midfielders in the league? Get a promising young Italian international fullback from Inter Milan? Bounce back from a relegation, finish the season well and start the following season with some good results? Put our finances on a sounder footing? But I wouldn't ask it like that because I know it's not black and white. I'm not trying to speak up on Ashley's behalf, I'm trying to highlight that the situation at the club isn't as dire as some people think, and everything we do isn't bad or part of some evil plan to punish Geordies. Get a striker in as well, that'd at least shows he cares and does have a plan. We've had a decent window but we're relying on Shola,Lovercrap, Ba & Best. I like Best, I think he's seriously underrated by some on here, who knows with Ba atm. Shola is just Shola & Lovercrap shouldn't be anywhere near the team. I agree we should have got another striker, and that's a failure. As you said though, we've had a decent window. Personally i would have been worried who we would have sold in order to sign a striker so perhaps we're better off as it is. Whu? we sold carroll for 35 million this jan, we were then told ALL the money would be reinvested into the squad. Not my words, pardews, ashleys and llambias words. We started last season short of a striker, we were told that carroll will get the number 9 shirt, we were all a bit worried but it turned out ok, it turned out so ok we fucking flogged him and were told they would purchase a striker in the sumer. We signed Ba on a free. End. FFS Semantics. Told we would sign a striker. We signed Ba Told the money would be reinvested in the squad. Pays for a few signings and wages Please tell me you don't actually believe the "it's paying for future wages" line. I thought only the Ian W's of this world fell for that one. Then again it was you who said you had it on good authority we had £100m for new signings if Keegan could spend it wasn't it? I suppose Mike's just doing us a favour by keeping it safe in his personal bank account, and the easiest way to do that is to make it look like he's paying off his loan, but really it's just there waiting for the "right" players to blow it on.

Eh, nothing too terrible - almost like a compromise. Really? It's an historic and iconic part of the stadium. But, yeah, plenty of room for some more fucking Sports Direct logos. It was always going to happen, hopefully what Ryder said is true and it'll be [sports direct] NEWCASTLE UNITED [sports direct] (or [sPORTS DIRECT] newcastle united [sPORTS DIRECT]) rather than [email protected], which would have been horrible. Eh? That makes it ok? Why change it at all? Are there not enough logos all over the ground already? Well, you avoided the second part of my post which explains all that and how its a compromise of sorts. Shouldn't have bothered as everyone is REALLY ANGRY RIGHT NOW - GRRR (again). People have known/been aware/thought it was possible that the 'Newcastle United' sign at some point would be removed or touched. It has been. Hopefully, its being cleaned, if not, then hopefully it comes back as Newcastle United, rather than something else, if its flanked by some advertising then so be it. Suppose this all goes back to 'if it was any other company than Sports Direct being advertised, would people feel as angry' argument. Well we might actually get paid for it which would take some of the sting out of it.

I'm not an Ashley apologist, but I think that would be yet another very good move by the club. If true well done Mike.

quotes? link? ok...promised i a strong word....but did pardew not say more than once that a striker was highest priority together with a LB or have i misunderstood everything I think you've misunderstood everything. The priority is to bring in quality players at a reasonable price who have the potential to develop into international players striker is not a 'gaping hole' The only criteria which matters is whether or not the player is considered as undervalued. Their position, style of play, personality, age, etc are all factors in the valuation, but the requirements of the team/squad is very much a secondary factor in the decision to sign a player.

or they know very well we're not signing anyone today.

Best don a tin hat mate. More like a bunker. More like a strait-jacket

Lost another of last year's best players and strengthened a relegation rival at the same time. +1 added onto the Ashley handicap