Dokko

Strange, anyone know why? Typo maybe? Anyway, the witch is dead!

Hope we do go in and he does turn us down and they can throw it back in our faces simply because sitting on our arse waiting for decent players to turn up on our doorstep begging to be signed is working well so far. If Baines was or has been in our sights and we've allowed another team, especially our rivals to get this close to a deal then the new board and SA want shot with FS's shit imo. But my guess is we were never after him as at £6m its too much for this club to spend when we've got no money at all.

No.

Barton being injured doesn't change my stance on him or Emre, both can fuk off for fees above £6m. Anything less and we keep a hold of and use until someone starts talking proper money for them. Why the fuk do WHU think they can get one of our players on the cheap after their spending this summer and the fact they'll be direct rivals this season to us? Fuk off you ugly cockney cunts, you can have him, you can have both (same goes to Tottenham) but you will pay us fairly you rotton cocks.

I've only been saying this for over a year.

But we've got loads of money!!!111

£15 I think. Cheers. I wonder how a 1 year old would react to SJP?

Sam heaping praise on Zoggy calling him probably the best LB at the club confirm were not in for any LBs this summer for me, and that we've got less cash (if any at all) than we all hoped for. N'Zogbia is the best LB at the club at this moment & it is something the needs addressing urgently. Babayaro (when fit) shouldn't be in a position to challange for a reserve team place never mind the 1st team. Suppose it could be a slur at Babayaro, but thats simply not SA's style, especially if he wants to sell him. Us having a decent amount of money to spend just doesn't add up when presented with all the evidence over the last 2 weeks.

How much are the tickets?

Sam heaping praise on Zoggy calling him probably the best LB at the club confirm were not in for any LBs this summer for me, and that we've got less cash (if any at all) than we all hoped for.

Dude how old are you? At least he is letting us know why things are not progressing as quickly as we would all like. It's good to know that we are at leastactively pursuing people and have the resources to do so. Would you rather hear the manager is out scouting players like Roeder was doing? Or hear that we are about to sign someone only to find out we aren't and have in fact brought in Sibierski and Bernard instead? Relax and find something else to do for a little bit. Any news will most likely be coming through at around 1:00pm when the evening chronicle articles come through. Dude are you retarded? Well we will at least here something. We can then decide how true it is. It's where we have heard about most of our targets initially isn't it? We shoukld at least have an update on whether or not the Baptista and Hangeland talk is "wide of the mark" or not. Seriously, you might as well go ask the cat at 12:00pm, at least you'll get the news an hour earlier, and its probably got closer than Anal. Tomorrow ask a random wall at 11am and be right ahead of the game.

The players we have now simply do not have the ability to play in two different formations, they struggle coping with one. I'm all for trying new things but this is just going to add fuel to the fire that were a Bolton MkII or that we've no money to spend and are having to make do with the utter shite we've got.

Dude how old are you? At least he is letting us know why things are not progressing as quickly as we would all like. It's good to know that we are at leastactively pursuing people and have the resources to do so. Would you rather hear the manager is out scouting players like Roeder was doing? Or hear that we are about to sign someone only to find out we aren't and have in fact brought in Sibierski and Bernard instead? Relax and find something else to do for a little bit. Any news will most likely be coming through at around 1:00pm when the evening chronicle articles come through. Dude are you retarded?

Sunderland apparently have met Wigan's £6m valuation of Baines, and are now in talks with the player. Great news since Bridge is injured, Heinze wont come here and were still in dire need of two competent leftbacks. Well done Sam & Ashley, working well so far.

Boozers & bookies? 95% usually unintelligent racist clap trap.

In 110% agreement with that. If that's how the new board are looking at the club then i'd be delighted. We desperately need a DOF and some more experience on the board since were a bit short up there right now. Again same with playing staff but also backroom staff. I like the war room idea, but its no good if its going to be 'filled' with Terry Mac & Lee Clark!

They have to be good players. As you know, I'm not one of those who thinks big money signings are "trophy" players, they are quality players, full stop. We will not find 3 players good enough for what we want among the 2 or 3m quid bracket, if we are lucky he will find one, if he is very lucky he will get 2, but this is going to take a lot of cash to get us the quality of player that we need, or the quality that we ought to be signing. Whether Ashley is prepared to bankroll this, remains to be seen. Whats frustrating is that we've basically got a clean sheet at the back and the ability to start again, right from the bottom up. We can live with the strikers quite easily, mid is a bit patchy, but overall barring any major injuries we can cope again. At the back there is nothing apart from Taylor. Rozy is unkown, we've no idea what he'll be like, Geremi is another good squad player. If we spent £25-30m on defenders, and that alone, we could build a CL quality defense. Its worth paying over the odds right now for the right player because the difference they'll make to next season will be huge. Its what i'd do. Then next season's money can go on remodeling the mid or attack if needed, while the defense just had a years experience together and will become even better for next. Is that asking too much right now? I don't think it is, and its what i expected. Perfect time to do it (apart from it would be easier and cheaper if we had Europe) maybe they are, and its just not pulling off, but the longer we leave it, the more expensive it will become and we'll end up with Average players which we've done with for the last several season at the back, just different names, and the calamity known in the media and the stands as the defense of NUFC lives on. That's my fear.

I doubt anything knowingly came from Ashley himself or Mort, as for all the reports sounding the same, well most papers copy one another but put their own 'unique' spin on things. I'm getting more fed up with the knee-jerk reaction to what is clearly a lull in transfer negotiations, than anything else - personally speaking. You make it sound so easy, I'm sure WBA have placed a massive fee on Davies' head where as Wigan have already knocked back bids for Baines from the mackems, bid believed to be in the £5m region. Perhaps we just don't have those kind of funds yet, perhaps Big Sam doesn't rate them, perhaps they are overpriced, perhaps we are indeed after them and close to signing them. Who knows. All I know is that the manager and board, in very difficult times, will be doing their best to get in sufficient quality prior to the big-kick off. Rome wasn't built in a day. Since May Big Sam has had to identify new targets, sign 4 of them, look for more, been knocked back, had to change his plans once or twice, try and resolve back-room team positions, end an injury jinx, prepare the team for pre-season, field questions from the media and all of this at a club that has just been taken over, a club that can no longer attract players as easily as it once did due to a change in policy (paying huge wages and transfer fees), not being in Europe and stiff competition from others who are now all flush with money. Perhaps this is the point where we all need to accept reality and not build our hopes up too much or expect too much too soon. The task at hand is a mighty one facing the manager and board. I am prepared to put up with these frustrations as I know in the long-term we will be all the more healthier for it. Of course Ashley could never have happened and Freddy could have giving Big Sam £20m to spend and we'd have all our players signed by now. But we'd be an extra 20m in debt, still fallible to Freddy's mismanagement and because we'd be under massive financial pressure to qualify for Europe, Big Sam himself would be under just as much pressure. Honestly, you can't make the sweeping changes we all want to see enforced over night, be thankful we ARE heading in the right direction. Yes be frustrated with things and yes question certain things, but how anyone can be so downbeat is beyond me. Here's a tip: instead of looking at things from today, look at things from a few years down the line. Tell me you aren't smiling? I am, I'm positively beaming You are right, it is frustration, and looking at the bigger picture we are heading in the right direction, only my fear is this season and how important it is to get ourselves back into Europe, ATM we wont be capable of doing that with the current squad. That will have more impact on us if we fail, players will be even harder to find to come here without European football and we will have to overspend just to get some decent players in capable of doing the job. We need both a quick fix and a long term plan, one or the other wont sort out the mess that is NUFC. Agreed, it's a balancing act isn't it. We just have to trust the manager's abilities to get the best out of players and work a bit of magic which is why we appointed him. Our squad today is vastly superior to the one he had at Bolton yet they still qualified for Europe, and at one point with a few weeks to go, were right behind Arsenal fighting for 4th spot. Even if all our plans don't come off, there is still a lot there to work with. Balancing act it certainly is, and without doubt he has a better quality of players in this squad than at Bolton, but at Bolton when they lost a player to injury, he had another 3 ready to come in and make their mark. We not only don't have a 1st team right now, we don't have a squad to rotate, we don't have a reserve team, and we don't have enough young players, academy or bought in. Lack of depth at all levels right now. For example, Billy Jones & Billy Sharp moved for less than £3m between them. I'd have loved to see those two come here get some real EPL coaching and take a chance. Chelsea do it, Arsenal do it, Manu do it, even tottenham do it. Liverpool have brought in another 8 unkown players this season, some will fail, but one or two might become handy. To be a big club thats what we need right now, players at all levels to succeed, and we need to take chances in the transfer market at the lower end, i'd had hoped that would be part of SA's policy when bringing in new palyers.

By the papers? Because Ashley hasn't said anything much less promise anything and neither has Mort or the manager for that matter. If you honestly believed what the papers were spouting or rather expected there to be huge sums of money to spend, more fool you. It isn't as straight forward as that. I suppose he didn't say anything, but the hype was there, and he generated it one way or another. Those words were put into the papers by his team and people speaking on his behalf. The papers didn't just make it up, i know they do a lot of that, but every one was wording it the same, it had a source, and it came somewhere from him imo. I'm just getting a bit fed up with the lack of a defense. You can say players are knocking us back, were not offering daft money anymore etc..But truth is nothing major seems to be happening anymore. Unless SA sees Baines & Davies (and the likes of) as last minute deals when others haven't pulled off, i cannot see why we haven't gone for these players. Young, English, and at clubs smaller than us. £6m for Baines & £7m for Davies would be accepted after some player and agent pressure, are these players not good enough for us now? Is Babayaro & Ramage that highly rated? Were gonna miss the boat even more so, and with the season kicking off not so far away, we are nowhere near ready, still dogged by injuries, still with players on our books that have a negative effect on the club, still lacking a defense and still in the papers for all the wrong reasons. Nothings changed, and the new regime is moving too slowly for my liking in changing this club around. This season is the most important season for NUFC in a long time, every effort needs to be made to push the club on with so many new rivals in place for Euro spots next season, nevermind Champions League. Stand still and you go backwards, this season more so than ever. Agreed. At the moment, we are worse off defensively than we were last season. Yesterday's injury to Barton compounds the need for more players, and not just any players, they have to be good players. Ashley is reaching the stage where like it or not he is going to have to release funds, or we could really be in trouble. Yep. No point sticking our head in the sands saying 'ooh we've still got 20 days until the start of the season' or 'chill, we've got 6 weeks until the window closes' because we've seen what happens when that attitude sets in, we miss the mark and are left with half a team terribly unbalanced and lacking direction. Barton's injury is just fuking typical, our star signing of the summer already crocked and with the court date looming over him, Viduka missing the start of the season, Duff out injured, a couple of star strikers with release clauses and 3-4 players going missing for African Nations duty, its not a healthy squad right now. And agreed, the defense is as poor if not worse than last season, not just at the departures, but at the fact some of these players are now known not to be good enough for us to build a squad with. last season some of them used up their last chance.

Funds must have been given to Allardyce or he wouldn't even be talking to players, it looks like things are stalling at the stage where wages are concerned and I have no idea why that is, maybe we've now got a wage structure or agents are seeing TV money and are going way OTT when trying to negotiate contracts. None of us know. The new TV money could be causing problems. Its probably done us favours with our current squad, the likes of Carr, Babayaro & Dyer don't seem to be on as much inflated wages anymore, and clubs might be willing to match them for the 1st time and take them off us, but its probably hindering us at the same time with new players, especially with the lack of Europe. Saying that though, Tottenham manage to bring in some decent players, and keep even better ones working on a tight wage structure, maybe were looking at the wrong types of players then as well.

I doubt anything knowingly came from Ashley himself or Mort, as for all the reports sounding the same, well most papers copy one another but put their own 'unique' spin on things. I'm getting more fed up with the knee-jerk reaction to what is clearly a lull in transfer negotiations, than anything else - personally speaking. You make it sound so easy, I'm sure WBA have placed a massive fee on Davies' head where as Wigan have already knocked back bids for Baines from the mackems, bid believed to be in the £5m region. Perhaps we just don't have those kind of funds yet, perhaps Big Sam doesn't rate them, perhaps they are overpriced, perhaps we are indeed after them and close to signing them. Who knows. All I know is that the manager and board, in very difficult times, will be doing their best to get in sufficient quality prior to the big-kick off. Rome wasn't built in a day. Since May Big Sam has had to identify new targets, sign 4 of them, look for more, been knocked back, had to change his plans once or twice, try and resolve back-room team positions, end an injury jinx, prepare the team for pre-season, field questions from the media and all of this at a club that has just been taken over, a club that can no longer attract players as easily as it once did due to a change in policy (paying huge wages and transfer fees), not being in Europe and stiff competition from others who are now all flush with money. Perhaps this is the point where we all need to accept reality and not build our hopes up too much or expect too much too soon. The task at hand is a mighty one facing the manager and board. I am prepared to put up with these frustrations as I know in the long-term we will be all the more healthier for it. Of course Ashley could never have happened and Freddy could have giving Big Sam £20m to spend and we'd have all our players signed by now. But we'd be an extra 20m in debt, still fallible to Freddy's mismanagement and because we'd be under massive financial pressure to qualify for Europe, Big Sam himself would be under just as much pressure. Honestly, you can't make the sweeping changes we all want to see enforced over night, be thankful we ARE heading in the right direction. Yes be frustrated with things and yes question certain things, but how anyone can be so downbeat is beyond me. Here's a tip: instead of looking at things from today, look at things from a few years down the line. Tell me you aren't smiling? I am, I'm positively beaming You are right, it is frustration, and looking at the bigger picture we are heading in the right direction, only my fear is this season and how important it is to get ourselves back into Europe, ATM we wont be capable of doing that with the current squad. That will have more impact on us if we fail, players will be even harder to find to come here without European football and we will have to overspend just to get some decent players in capable of doing the job. We need both a quick fix and a long term plan, one or the other wont sort out the mess that is NUFC.

If one newspaper comes out with a quote from an unknown club source they all jump on it and use the same source, I'd take any of that with a huge pinch of salt. As for the getting into the papers for all of the wrong reasons, you can't pin that one on Ashley or Mort. We do need to see players coming in but I'd rather not see another Boumsong, Owen or Luque farce. There are players out there which we can be making moves for though, and were not doing so. SA said something about the new board not really knowing whats going on and that he's missing out on players. Why would he miss out on players with a new board? Surely all they have to do is release funds? Why are they not doing so?

By the papers? Because Ashley hasn't said anything much less promise anything and neither has Mort or the manager for that matter. If you honestly believed what the papers were spouting or rather expected there to be huge sums of money to spend, more fool you. It isn't as straight forward as that. I suppose he didn't say anything, but the hype was there, and he generated it one way or another. Those words were put into the papers by his team and people speaking on his behalf. The papers didn't just make it up, i know they do a lot of that, but every one was wording it the same, it had a source, and it came somewhere from him imo. I'm just getting a bit fed up with the lack of a defense. You can say players are knocking us back, were not offering daft money anymore etc..But truth is nothing major seems to be happening anymore. Unless SA sees Baines & Davies (and the likes of) as last minute deals when others haven't pulled off, i cannot see why we haven't gone for these players. Young, English, and at clubs smaller than us. £6m for Baines & £7m for Davies would be accepted after some player and agent pressure, are these players not good enough for us now? Is Babayaro & Ramage that highly rated? Were gonna miss the boat even more so, and with the season kicking off not so far away, we are nowhere near ready, still dogged by injuries, still with players on our books that have a negative effect on the club, still lacking a defense and still in the papers for all the wrong reasons. Nothings changed, and the new regime is moving too slowly for my liking in changing this club around. This season is the most important season for NUFC in a long time, every effort needs to be made to push the club on with so many new rivals in place for Euro spots next season, nevermind Champions League. Stand still and you go backwards, this season more so than ever.

I'm with you on this, its getting borderline pathetic considering the hype surrounding Ashley's arrival. Deco? Ronaldinho? No, don't be daft, but 2 quality players for every position is a must if were are to get back into Europe and while other clubs around us cant stop spending we dish out £1.5m, which is 10% of what SA was supposed to have had under FS. Something is up, i'm starting to think we've been lied too.