BottledDog

And the other guy is part of the coaching staff by the looks of it. -

If I thought the club were even interested in N'Zogbia I would also be critical if they were unwilling to match a reasonable offer. But I still don't see why people are getting exited by the idea of a transfer in the works where the only positive indications are a source saying he fancies a return, and Pardew acknowledging (but playing down) reported interest in January.

What for? Wanting to go to a more ambitious club? Play for his country? Not deciding or giving an indication of what he bloody wants, leaving the club hamstrung by his silence?

Barton has all but admitted as much himself on twitter, hasn't he? Yup.

Think it's his last year.

Bollocks. What a stupid thing to say. Of course it is, his record spunks all over Gyan's but if we were to sign him for £13 million people would be over the moon. Give over. Seriously... Think he was a craking deal, and now he's here, looking forward to seeing him play for us... ... but if we'd have spent over £5m million on the bloke I can't help thinking I'd have been sweating.

I think we need one more. Anything happens to Coloccini, and then we're sweating on the other three. Am I wrong in assuming we have no bruiser centrebacks coming through th reserves? Can't say I've noticed any.

http://www.newcastle-online.org/nufcforum/index.php/topic,68821.msg3048309.html#msg3048309

If we can seriously push and get above the Evertons of the world after this shakeup, I'll be delighted.

Completely agree, I'm 99% sure we'll sign another striker though. If we don't we deserve to fail. If Best go's I'm 100% certain we'll sign another striker. Fuck it! i'm 100% sure we'll sign another one anyway. /don't let me down you feckers.

Havn't got time to dig around for the quotes, but he was apparently fit to play at the back end of the season, but his club chose not to bring him back into the team due to the dispute over his contract and him inevitably buggering off.

Interesting that he doesn't know whether the striker coming will be worthy of the number 9 yet. Guessing that the probably not would be Long, and also guessing he's far from first choice. Hope whoever the mystery striker worthy of the number 9 comes off. I don't think we'll sign one. I'm sure some will see this as ultra-cynical but I really don't think Ashley/Llambias like the idea of favourites, club legends, tradition, sentimentality and so on. Yeah, that does seem is pretty cynical to be fair. I think the only reason Pardew (and Hughton while here) keeps coming out with these quotes is that they are, if anything, putting too much store in the tradition. I'd be pretty disappointed if Ba ended up with the number due to us not bringing in another biggish name striker able to carry the role. But it would be even more rediculous to flat out not give it to someone for yet another season because nobody's deemed worthy enough.

Interesting that he doesn't know whether the striker coming will be worthy of the number 9 yet. Guessing that the probably not would be Long, and also guessing he's far from first choice. Hope whoever the mystery striker worthy of the number 9 comes off.

Only thing I can get from that backpage is that we should definitely sound out Rapid Solicitor to be our next manager.

That's gotta be good news, right?

Press conference at 3pm! /maybe not.

Fair enough. Still, the discussion was reacting to Wullie saying 8th would be a failure (not the degree of progress particularly), a pretty astounding view in my opinion.

You seem to be putting words in peoples mouths there. I believe Ian said it would be steady progression, not massive progression (personally anywhere top 10 after a second season rebuild would do me at this stage). Do you side more with Wullie in thinking that 8th would instead be an absolute failure?

Quite. Has been pretty standard to pay a premium to get decent players to the north east for starters. He'd take £50k p/w like a shot if Arsenal were in for him imho. Think he'd be happy to come to us for somewhere between the two.

8th, an absolute failure? Feck me. Looks like you'll not be having much fun again next season.

Yeah, it's nearly July, time to give up, they'll be no more money spent.

Disappointing.

I know a bloke who did signwork on it, will ask what it was/ask for a photo if i can Signwork? Assumed there'd just be a monster SD sticker on top of it?

Well, indeed.

It's very similar to when Ashley first arrived, actually. We brought in quite a few players in the first window under Allardyce but in reality all he was doing was recycling the Parker, Dyer and Solano fees. We only spent net like £30,000 or something. I don't think that's true. Barton, Smith, and Enrique alone cost a total of something like 20m if I'm recalling correctly. Dyer and Parker alone cost 7m each whilst the three named above were 18 million in total. Cannot remember who else left but I know Faye, Beye, Viduka, Geremi only cost about 3 million between them. Just checked again, Under Allardye, We spent 18.9K but we got 18.2K back in. Net deficit of700K Checked where? Not that it matters but rough guestimate is he spent around the £25m mark. Barton £5.8m, Rozehnal £3.1m, Smith £6m, Jose Enrique £6m, Faye £2m, Beye £2m. Viduka, Geremi, Cacapa were frees, but were far from on a pitence either.