UV

So what happens when the first manager you approach knocks you back and tells his mates in the press about it? The current manager is left in an untenable position, knowing he could be replaced at any time. The club would (rightly) be a laughing stock and a source of constant speculation.

So you think its a good idea to start tapping up other under contract managers with your current one still in place, 3 games into a season?

FYP Distinctly average manager with limited tactical nouse. With Jol as manager, the best they can hope for is occasionally breaking into the top 4 no matter how much they spend.

They're available for £5m each if you'd like to shore up your defense a bit.

Berbatov

https://www.paypal.com/uk/prq/amount=250.00GBP&[email protected]

They must look at us, though, and think "you pay £6m for the likes of Smith, and soem of you think you are going to get Deco". Everyone else is always stupid in football. True. I agree that all football supporters have to be deluded to some extent. Having said that, there's actually a chance of that happening: this is Newcastle. Their biggest ever signing was Tore Andre Flo, ffs. Agreed, but they do seem to be more twisted and bitter than most. My dad worked in sunderland for nearly 10 years - never took an interest in football in his life before he went there, but now theirs is the only result he looks for, just to make sure they've lost! Way to make a point about mackems being twisted and bitter. Don't kid yourselves that we wouldn't be exactly the same in their position.

About that; just how is Freddy Adu doing? Is he ready to make the same impact on the world scene as Reyna, Beasley, Onyewu, etc?

It's good to see that at least at some level English football is sticking to it's principals and not bowing to the popular vote (ie giving in to teams with a large fanbase/lots of money). Leeds will survive this and be a stronger club because of it. They'll bounce back and their real supporters will have a great time while they do.

Yup, £2m for Tevez is just too much of a good deal to turn down.

No they didn't.

4 players were injured before pre-season. 3 weeks later we have 10 on the sick list. When exactly are we going to address it? I don't care what shape the players were in before, training should be adjusted to accommodate the existing level of fitness of each individual player and not push them so hard they break. If excessive training caused their injuries, Allardyce is to blame. I'd rather go into the season with slightly unfit first teamers than fully fit reserves. Blaming previous the previous manager for injuries now is absolutely ridiculous.

I see your point. However, I think Sam is generally disgusted by the fact so many of the players are struggling with his fitness regime rather than looking to have a dig at roeder. The players have probably been whinging about it and saying they are having to do to much fitness work. You only have to look at the strength and stamina of his Bolton teams to appreciate the effects of this kind of training and I'm all for it. You can already see the benefits in the players who have come through his fitness training without problems. Carr, Martins, Milner and Zoggy have all looked much sharper and fitter. Sorry, but players come back from a Summer without an international tournament rested, but less fit than they were during the previous season. Their fitness levels will obviously have to be raised regardless of how fit or unfit they were the previous season. If Allardyce is pushing them so hard that they break down and get injuries, then thats a condemnation of his training methods not his predecessor's.

Indeed, 2 finer examples of inbreeding you couldn't hope to find.

So he dismissed the Martins rumour, but didn't mention the N'Zogbia one (I doubt no one asked). Interesting...

It's also doubled in less than 1 page too. That's impressive. Fact is, all anyone is going on here is a newspaper article which doesn't give the source of the numbers it's using and the service it claims is being provided (ie simply storage). If there's any real source of information, then please share it, otherwise I'll consider it clearly nothing but another silly rumour.

There's one person who stands to receive some as well if it doesn't happen... N'Zogbia when the local chavs read this have this read to them? Do you reckon Sanchez has dyslexia and thinks it's Charles O'Zogbia?

I've seen this allegation before, but never saw the original evidence of it. Where was it sourced from? It just seems to me to be very strange that the other shareholders would allow something like this if they or the club were not benefiting from it. It's no "allegation". It's a matter of public record. Why did the rest of the board allow it? Because they were all friends and relatives. Nothing illegal about ripping fans off this way, either. Here: (Article includes many other lowlights from Shepherd's career.) http://football.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,4284,1456030,00.html That's a newspaper article. Where is the "public record" of this? Even according to that article it wasn't a club owned warehouse which he sold to his brother on the cheap, it belonged to Shepherd Offshore. Who's to say £150,000 isn't the going rate for the storage, and I'd assume distribution of stock? Would you also be outraged if we were to ditch the Adidas kit sponsorship and replace it with a deal with, for example, Lonsdale? Perhaps I should more correctly have said "in the public domain" rather than "matter of public record". It doesn't matter either way. The point is that the facts are out there, and undisputed. As for the "going rate" for storage, let's think this one through, eh? Newcastle United plc has warehousing needs, and Shepherd Offshore pic has a warehouse it doesn't need, market value £175,000. Hmm. Tricky one. Hey, I've got an idea! How about Shepherd Offshore pic sells the warehouse to Newcastle United plc, thus sorting the club's warehousing needs for the forseeable future – and avoiding a solution that diverts £2.5 million of the club's revenues into the chairman's brother's bank account. Shepherd, the chairman of a public company, was not, in short, acting in the best interests of that company. I can't believe anyone is trying to defend this s***, tbh. I can't believe anyone is so indignant about a transaction for a service when they have absolutely no idea what is involved. You make it sound like the club just had to buy a shed and fill it up with stuff. So Shepherd was not acting in the best interests of the company, but the other (main) shareholders weren't bothered because they were all mates? Okay. How would it be ripping off the fans anyway? Surely the evil old board would have just given it away to themselves in their massive dividends? Do you expect Ashley to put money the club doesn't directly make back into it? I don't. If the club's turnover is less than it could be potentially (eg kit & sponsorship deals) due to giving preferential (or cost free) deals to his other companies, the club's transfer and wage kitty will be lower. In this scenario, if we're lucky, he could legitimately say he was "putting his own money in" and be the heroic benefactor chairman even though it was money the club would have legitimately earned itself.

I've seen this allegation before, but never saw the original evidence of it. Where was it sourced from? It just seems to me to be very strange that the other shareholders would allow something like this if they or the club were not benefiting from it. It's no "allegation". It's a matter of public record. Why did the rest of the board allow it? Because they were all friends and relatives. Nothing illegal about ripping fans off this way, either. Here: (Article includes many other lowlights from Shepherd's career.) http://football.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,4284,1456030,00.html That's a newspaper article. Where is the "public record" of this? Even according to that article it wasn't a club owned warehouse which he sold to his brother on the cheap, it belonged to Shepherd Offshore. Who's to say £150,000 isn't the going rate for the storage, and I'd assume distribution of stock? Would you also be outraged if we were to ditch the Adidas kit sponsorship and replace it with a deal with, for example, Lonsdale?

I've seen this allegation before, but never saw the original evidence of it. Where was it sourced from? It just seems to me to be very strange that the other shareholders would allow something like this if they or the club were not benefiting from it.

Quality pre-match write up: http://www.juventus.com/uk/news/detail.aspx?lml_language_id=0&trs_id=1607000&ID=11831

Watching him play last season. Not fully; not every game; but enough. He looked sluggish and just a bit lost nearly every time I saw him. James had an outstanding season and was the only reason Portsmouth had any kind of decent defensive record last year.

Redknapp is the biggest fucking hypocrite in football today (and there's some major competition). But he's not stupid. Campbell is shit now. Blatantly trying to talk him up before selling him off to some mug for a profit.

I'm not the one with the fixation. I can't think of one player the club has bought who was a "trophy player". A trophy player to me is say Ravanelli for the 'boro. Owen is exactly the sort of player we will have to buy if we want to get in the CL. It's a myth that the defense are as poor or indeed as important as are made out. Spurs nearly got into the CL with a defense much worse than ours. But anyway that's a totally different argument I'm not going into, and also - it's the manager's choice. That's bollocks actually as you're completely ignoring wages, and over 8 years wouldn't cover the cost of an extra Luque.