BottledDog

David Young warned United "If the club is to maintain its position, it's very important it returns to the European Champions League as soon as possible." "The financial rewards of the Champions League have become so great there is a danger that those clubs who are participating in it now will become so rich that clubs will be unable to challenge them." How right he was. Sadly we missed the boat long before Ashley turned up Bimpy.

Are you suggesting we did the dirty on Cabaye so that nobody would offer anything for him and we get to keep an unhappy player? Sounds about as plausible as some of the other ludicrous conspiracies demonising the club on here.

FYI http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=NPW

Because we don't tend to sell our top players?

I'm sure you're right, the players we have bought and sold have consistently left the team considerably weaker. Pardew has been doing an astonishing job with the shit players hes been given.

Is there a reasonable number that fit into this cycle you've hit upon? Erik Pieters is about the only one I can recollect, and so far I'm not unhappy in the slightest we ummed and erred over him.

http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii318/mickransommich/skegness.jpg

There isn't a yawn big enough.

£4 million more than Arsenal to be fair. Reckon £18m would do it.

Don't think Cardiff will want to sell. And Joe can't speak Welsh. I think you'll find Joe can speak Welsh. And Amharic, and Urdu, and Buginese, and Tagalog, and Cornish, and...

You're probably right about the replacement being worse, but TBF that is the same capacity for transfers that saw us buy Cabaye in the first place. Sometimes it's like the signings we do make don't exist on here. Meant more than given we limited ourselves to a very narrow market and Cabaye is at the peak of that market (starting for France) the only way would be down given that the other French, Dutch, Belgian national team starting midfielders would not entertain a move here. Maybe temporarily down, but we always seem to aim to replace players with better (or potentially better) and are generally quite successful at doing it. Under Pardew, you could argue the only player who has been replaced with worse is Santon for Jose (though the gamble was fair, going for a young Italian international, and Jose has hardly got a look in at Liverpool recently). Carroll to Ba to Remy is debatable, but are all good in their own right imho.

No chance, he's far too devious to not know what he and Mike are achieving together. Just because the bloke wears glasses occasionally, you're not going to fool me into thinking he's clever enough to be knowingly devious like that. The guy's is a good manager in the greater scheme of things, but strikes me as a decent unsubtle reactionary, and not someone with the nous of a Mourinho or a Ferguson to be playing mind games (even on the supporters).

"but Newcastle offered Basel a good first offer and now him coming to us in the summer was in doubt if Basel & Newcastle agree a fee" Hot damn. What are we doing going around offering good first offers.

Do you know where in Kent? Sandwich probably, the fat cunt. Deal.

So long De Jong.

Get used to him making excuses as you put it. Doesn't mean he's not as desperate to win something as the rest of us.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ce22aQ-yWKI/TGG_KJ56dVI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/0Ox315SJGMg/s1600/ufo_i_want_to_believe.jpg

Whey, I can agree with the first but not the last bit of that. Cups sadly seem to come second to the Premiership. Personally I don't like or understand that. But we nearly overcame Man City in the LC, we looked set up to win the FA cup tie against Cardiff but buggered it up. I don't think we aimed to go out of either competition. It was only in October he contradicted the club’s money minded bods – who had said in the fans forum that cups were not a priority – by saying he wanted to win some silverware. Regarding Europe. If you remove any context from the quotes and repeat the idea often enough, it tends to stick. But while he clearly (like most clubs tbf) hates the format of the competition, it's not to the extent of not wanting to be part of it again. "We have the same points total as we did when we finished fifth after the same amount of games, so we have got to take that belief into the second half of the season and try to improve on it. "If we can, then we have a chance of Europe, and that must be a realistic goal for us in the position we are in at the moment." Asked if Europe is still a target given last season's difficulties, Pardew said: "Yes".

Except the players that make up one of the better teams we've had in recent decades.

Can't see it, but to be fair to you Arsenal were on less points than us at the same time last season. They managed it.

Ince gone.

Makes no sense to wait until all the other Premiership clubs also have that 60m cheque burning in their back pocket. Guess we'll have a ready made excuse for not investing in a hugely inflated transfer market. Makes no sense to us yeah, but it seems like classic Ashley though. Sense to us was spending some of what we were guaranteed to be receiving in the summer. How do you come to that conclusion? Most evidence points to a pretty canny policy to try and get deals in place well in advance. Caballa apparently for this summer, and a whole raft of players last summer which presumably because we had put the groundwork in were able to be brought forward.