BottledDog

Guess you had to be there. At least JK found it amusing.

you're not going down the "hope they fail" route I hope ? At my age now, I've seen far worse than this, and even the suggestion of it is pretty sad. Sorry but that is true and how I see it. For the record, I'll say what I've always said. The more "trophy players" the club sign ie just like the other trophy winners do, the better. If Owen DOES sign, is it a sign of a change or direction or Ashley trying to paper over the cracks and get deluded people on his side ? Do you think it would be a sign of him realising he has been wrong and is prepared to attempt to match the european qualifications of his predecessors ? What do you think ? I think it'd be the first sign that if he can't sell the club, then he's going to give it a shot, yes. As for the European qualifications of his predecessors comment, we're not a million miles from a European place despite all the crap that's gone on. Well mate, I want to be back in europe as soon as is possible. I've said before I would welcome a genuine change of heart by Ashley, although it would take a lot now for me to believe it or trust him. I'd say keeping Owen and making a couple of signings in January would be a start mind. Always said that it'll be the start of February before I really judge the direction of the club. I would agree with that, but its 12 months too late. Trying to patch up a sinking ship is really all it is, unless its an unlikely and genuine change of direction. As has been said. There's not that many times under Shepherd we spent more than £5m on 5 different players in a 12 month period. Add to that Jonas, Guthrie, Bassong as new first team starters and I would hardly call it patching up a sinking ship. It could be argued that the team we can now put on the park has improved considerably since Ashley has arrived. Well, the Halls and Shepherd punched the clubs weight, you can't deny that. Plenty of players were of the highest priced transfers at the time, including a world transfer record. They also broke the clubs record fee for a defender at least twice by the way. And didn't sell a player behind the managers back for the same price to finance it either. Punched above their weight financially in the end which cost them sadly, but I know what you mean. I'm as much a sucker for a big signing as the next man, though beyond that it's also the draw to other players (including even academy players) such signings mean. Fingers crossed that despite the turmoil, Owen, and just as importantly for me, the likes of Collocini, Jonas, Martins, Beye and Given stay on, so that Ashley (or whoever is finally in charge) can continue to attract such decent players in.

The quotes they've used are just from that Countdown thing. Nevertheless, it is in the statements section ('Time Left') on the official site. Therefore to be fair the article is quoting an official NUSC statement.

you're not going down the "hope they fail" route I hope ? At my age now, I've seen far worse than this, and even the suggestion of it is pretty sad. Sorry but that is true and how I see it. For the record, I'll say what I've always said. The more "trophy players" the club sign ie just like the other trophy winners do, the better. If Owen DOES sign, is it a sign of a change or direction or Ashley trying to paper over the cracks and get deluded people on his side ? Do you think it would be a sign of him realising he has been wrong and is prepared to attempt to match the european qualifications of his predecessors ? What do you think ? I think it'd be the first sign that if he can't sell the club, then he's going to give it a shot, yes. As for the European qualifications of his predecessors comment, we're not a million miles from a European place despite all the crap that's gone on. Well mate, I want to be back in europe as soon as is possible. I've said before I would welcome a genuine change of heart by Ashley, although it would take a lot now for me to believe it or trust him. I'd say keeping Owen and making a couple of signings in January would be a start mind. Always said that it'll be the start of February before I really judge the direction of the club. I would agree with that, but its 12 months too late. Trying to patch up a sinking ship is really all it is, unless its an unlikely and genuine change of direction. As has been said. There's not that many times under Shepherd we spent more than £5m on 5 different players in a 12 month period. Add to that Jonas, Guthrie, Bassong as new first team starters and I would hardly call it patching up a sinking ship. It could be argued that the team we can now put on the park has improved considerably since Ashley has arrived.

Still have no fucking clue what they mean by 'working together' there. After the 'snub for clear the air talks' (sigh), are they now wanting to work as advisors on how to get the club sold? Does this spokesman work for Foxtons?

How is it Mike Ashley's fault if dicky dosh has resigned? The system was all wrong, clearly constructive dismissal.

Arf!

"...He wants to sell. Our position is clear, we want him to sell, but in the meantime he must take steps to protect the club, including making money available to the manager. SO……WHY NOT LET US HELP YOU GET WHAT WE BOTH WANT, MR ASHLEY? YOU WANT TO GO, WE WANT YOU TO GO. LETS WORK TOGETHER ON THAT..." Huh? What are they offering to do?

I was being sarcastic. Nice to see your name posting again by the way. Ah sorry about that, thought it was a bit odd when my sarchasm detector failed to fire. Should have know better than to try and twist it into one one of my arguements really. /you know me, always turn up when there are scapegoats to defend.

When someone signs a better £ for £ signing at Newcastle than Rob Lee it will be good day. Or we sign striker from the lower leagues as good as Andy Cole, I will be very impressed. Who are these relatively unknown players we signed for the first team? Because everyone of them played in one Europe's major leagues the previous season & I think all of them have some type of international caps. That was a fair old while ago now. How well do you feel he did in terms overall signings at his more recent clubs like Man City? He signed a lot of older players at city which helped them stop pinging up down as they have not be relegated since KK took them up iirc, which is big thing especially for Man City. Did he sign Benarbia? As I always enjoyed watching him play football. I agree, but will go into more detail below. When someone signs a better £ for £ signing at Newcastle than Rob Lee it will be good day. Or we sign striker from the lower leagues as good as Andy Cole, I will be very impressed. Who are these relatively unknown players we signed for the first team? Because everyone of them played in one Europe's major leagues the previous season & I think all of them have some type of international caps. That was a fair old while ago now. How well do you feel he did in terms overall signings at his more recent clubs like Man City? Keegan brought in a lot of good foreign players at city, but i think his problem with the failures was being TOO adventurous in his transfers, the opposite of what some are suggesting. of his better signings - Anelka, Distin, Bernabia, Berkovic, Tarnat, Van Buyten, Foe. Anelka was an obvious signing, certainly not uncovering a gem, though I grant he was one of the few he ever made a profit on. Van Buyten was only on loan, as was Foe I think. Distin was a good buy I'll grant you, though you would hope so as a record signing as a defender (just like Colo) and he left on a free (not Keegans fault though). Berkovic, yes a good player, but he had already been through 4 british club on big transfers so hardly a massive spot. Besides he only lasted a year or so after er... falling out with Keegan, and left on a free. Tarnat lasted what, a season as well? Same with Bernabia who was 32 when he arrived. So I wouldn't class any of those as showing the ability to spot a bargain or as we were discussing, showing an ability to sign talented youngsters. When KK took over getting & then keeping Man City in PL is the main thing, as in recent times they have slumped as far down as the old 2nd division. You don't need to sign many youngsters when you have Jim Cassell running your Academy, I am sure the KK teams had a number of homegrown players in the side like Barton, Flood, SWP etc. It is like saying when KK tookover NUFC (1st time) from Ozzie he did not sign a lot of youngsters he didn't need to as we already had as stack of home grown good players coming through or playing 1st team football. Agreed, he got them back up and kept them up, but that does not take away from the fact that the majority of his signings, and especially the younger ones brought in as the next big things were misses, or abject disasters, and as a consequence they were not continuing to move forward. That was my point which I had further down in my post, and why I was happy with the setup showing a certain amount of quality control when spending our money. If as HTT said, it doesn't matter, Keegan is purely a motivator and not interested in the other facets of the job (pretty astounding thing for him to say considering his pro Keegan stance, but would point towards why Keegan was never a world class manager), then that adds even more weight to the arguement for having those safeguards put in place. It didn't work out (whether that was down to Keegans unwillingness to relinquish a degree of control, or quite possibly just a complete breakdown in trust from both sides), but that does not take away from what this thread is all about. That the Wise/Jimenez/Vetere/Keegan system as a whole did a good job in not wasting money while bringing in talented players with good characters who have improved the sqaud. And for me, whoever the manager, its a shame that it has seemingly now been scrapped.

When someone signs a better £ for £ signing at Newcastle than Rob Lee it will be good day. Or we sign striker from the lower leagues as good as Andy Cole, I will be very impressed. Who are these relatively unknown players we signed for the first team? Because everyone of them played in one Europe's major leagues the previous season & I think all of them have some type of international caps. That was a fair old while ago now. How well do you feel he did in terms overall signings at his more recent clubs like Man City? He signed a lot of older players at city which helped them stop pinging up down as they have not be relegated since KK took them up iirc, which is big thing especially for Man City. Did he sign Benarbia? As I always enjoyed watching him play football. I agree, but will go into more detail below. When someone signs a better £ for £ signing at Newcastle than Rob Lee it will be good day. Or we sign striker from the lower leagues as good as Andy Cole, I will be very impressed. Who are these relatively unknown players we signed for the first team? Because everyone of them played in one Europe's major leagues the previous season & I think all of them have some type of international caps. That was a fair old while ago now. How well do you feel he did in terms overall signings at his more recent clubs like Man City? Keegan brought in a lot of good foreign players at city, but i think his problem with the failures was being TOO adventurous in his transfers, the opposite of what some are suggesting. of his better signings - Anelka, Distin, Bernabia, Berkovic, Tarnat, Van Buyten, Foe. Anelka was an obvious signing, certainly not uncovering a gem, though I grant he was one of the few he ever made a profit on. Van Buyten was only on loan, as was Foe I think. Distin was a good buy I'll grant you, though you would hope so as a record signing as a defender (just like Colo) and he left on a free (not Keegans fault though). Berkovic, yes a good player, but he had already been through 4 british club on big transfers so hardly a massive spot. Besides he only lasted a year or so after er... falling out with Keegan, and left on a free. Tarnat lasted what, a season as well? Same with Bernabia who was 32 when he arrived. So I wouldn't class any of those as showing the ability to spot a bargain or as we were discussing, showing an ability to sign talented youngsters. (as for the rest of his signings such as Bischoff, Sommeil, Mettomo, Negouai, Macken, Vuoso, Jensen, Fowler and McManamanaman who cost around £20 million between them..... Hmmmmm) I love Keegans ability to get good players to play even better, and sell the club to stars, but I have never had great confident in his ability to get the most out of a transfer budget and despite reservations about his return, thought the new setup would have been the perfect combination. Sadly, for us, he couldn't work under those conditions.

When someone signs a better £ for £ signing at Newcastle than Rob Lee it will be good day. Or we sign striker from the lower leagues as good as Andy Cole, I will be very impressed. Who are these relatively unknown players we signed for the first team? Because everyone of them played in one Europe's major leagues the previous season & I think all of them have some type of international caps. That was a fair old while ago now. How well do you feel he did in terms overall signings at his more recent clubs like Man City?

After his Man City signings, from the off I was very glad that we had a team in place to take care of bringing in players/recommending players outside of the obvious pool of players. Keegan had more than his fair share of misses outside of the guaranteed quality of say Anelka.

Bah, so much for trying to be diplomatic.

I may be wrong but don't they have association with Northumberland through the Hotspur family or something like that? Its in Nortumberland Park i think Ah, ok. The sentiment remains the same though.

Isn't the bit you've quoted an editorial from the bloke who effectively runs TF? Well, er... maybe. But, as the dude might say, it's, like, just his opinion man.

Northumberland Development Project? What cnuts.

Oh and I'm not saying his views represent TF before anyone starts, as with any mag they allow a range of opinion from their writers, and this fella just happens to be fairly hardcore I guess ("Best of luck to KK and the legal action between himself and Ashley." etc).

Yeah, that tickled me too.

Even their backers say that (read below), though sadly it would be back to the hard line stance, not the more measured approach we thought they might be moving towards.

I don't see how either you or Johnny can say what he was planning to do, the idea behind bringing in younger players is that it does cut down on expenses in that you have them develop at your club rather than have them develop somewhere else, our biggest problem in the Summer was that we didn't buy enough of them but who's fault that was I don't know. As for Milner, Are you for real? He was fucking shite, man. Even the Villa fans think so yet we should have tried to keep even though we sold him for double what he was worth?! Madness. When all other things are equal (existing contract duration, current ability, etc) a young player will cost more than an older player. You pay a premium for potential. As a way of putting together a team that can compete NOW it would be a more expensive route to go, not a cost saving exercise. If the young players you're bringing in are cheap, they're usually cheap for a reason, and the chances are they have a long way to go to before they are ready to be first choice selections. Of course you can get lucky and find a player like Bassong, or to a lesser extent Guthrie, but more often than not these youngster's who all clubs are on the lookout for will take years to develop, and in in most cases wont in fact reach their potential. Also, the system didn't find these players, the people within the system found them. The ones which were brought in, Keegan was obviously happy with. Who knows how successful the ones Keegan tuned down would have been, maybe Keegan was the one who could filter out the good ones. There's more chance that he knows how to spot a player than Wise, simply through having more experience at it. As for Milner, he's 22 & at least 2 clubs were in for him. It wasn't a one-time not to be missed sale, yet we were so desperate to offload him and get the cash before Mike tried to sell up, we rushed it thorough so he could play for Villa at the weekend while we were short on numbers in midfield. When you consider the low wages he'll be on & the years of professional, fairly consistent, low injury rate, uncomplaining service he'll give Villa, I think he'll easily be worth his transfer fee in value in the long run. I bet he'll create and score more goals than Jonas this season for a start [puts tin hat on]. Considering Milner had to hand in a transfer request to get things moving, it would suggest we were far from "desperate to offload him". A fantastic bit of business all things considered, just too late in the window to use the money (though Keegan himself defended that issue when he brought up Cole and spoke of waiting for the right player even if that meant sitting on the money for a while).

Is he supposed to be a town cryer or something. I thought staying out of the press was something demanded of the 'next' regime. He is happy with Kinnear to keep the ship steady for the time being, nothing to report on any other front. Anything else you would you like him to say before he gets on with his actual day to day work?

I still don't see where the arguement for lack of money comes from. Keegan always said that funds would be made available for the right players, and that the Milner money would be part of that. I thought the only issue was that the system failed as it did not bring in enough players, maybe punched above it's weight going on wild goose chases for the likes of Schweinsteiger, and the biggie - not going for the players Keegan actually wanted. I don't think money has been held back only now to be released to Kinnear.

Or any other decent manager. Just more lies. As I've been saying for a while now, they're ripping the piss out of us. What the hell are you talking about? What lies. Nobody knows how much, but Keegan clearly spent money, and said if he didn't have time to spend the Milner money, like with Cole he would use it in the next round of transfers. We are now at the next round of transfers and they are unsurprisingly looking to get some players in. Again nobody knows how much there will be to spend, I doubt it will be a great deal as it will only be what the club has available to it with no further outside investment, but there is no flip flopping here. Again, what are these 'lies'?

Good post. Ta. Agree with a lot of what you say in terms of negativity in whatever form not helping the club. Chez getting a "Great post" 5 minutes earlier puts a bit of a dampener on it though.