James

You think most of our players are shit though, so if they'd signed for us, you would have complained about most of them. Can't win.

I've found another photo of Emre, this one might be important: http://www.wsoccer.com/players/e/emre_belozoglu/emre_belozoglu3.jpg

Wha?

What a bunch of twits

That was my original thinking, and if I was getting paid to do this that would have been how I'd chosen to do it. Still may do this for PL teams only, that would be a good comparison. My main intention though was to make a crude point that we have very few players in our team currently playing at the highest level.

Yeah, a few teams like those two and Steau and Villa to a lesser extent seem to sweep up a lot of local internationals.

Silva Brazil 1518 Fabregas Spain 1323 Lehmann Germany 1264 Rosicky Czech Republic 1244 Gallas France 1205 van Persie Holland 1123 Walcott England 1098 Eduardo Croatia 1044 Song Cameroon 1005 Vela Mexico 988 Toure Ivory Coast 870 Eboue Ivory Coast 870

Varied slightly from club to club depending on injuries/provisional squads/players getting rested. No less than 22, no more than 28. Generally the larger nations had the slightly larger squads.

Can't deny that position of teams like Everton and Steau Bucharest don't make this a perfect league table, but the best squads have a good core of international players, surrounded by a bunch of veterans, fringe players and youngsters. We certainly don't have that core, and compared to us being the 13th richest club in the world (Forbes) this is nowhere near acceptable, as we don't have the players that match our riches.

1 Chelsea 21277 2 Real Madrid 19930 3 Barcelona 19425 4 AC Milan 16301 5 Inter Milan 16090 6 Man Utd 14125 7 Bayern Munich 14020 8 Liverpool 13677 9 Arsenal 13552 10 Lyon 12768 11 Werder Bremen 10481 12 HSV 10316 13 Juventus 9086 14 Panathanaikos 9017 15 Galatasaray 8869 16 Tottenham Hotspur 8681 17 Aston Villa 8568 18 Benfica 8532 19 Man City 8504 20 Steaua 8310 21 Portsmouth 7797 22 Stuttgart 7587 23 Sevilla 6948 24 Roma 6789 25 Valencia 6423 26 Schalke 6354 27 Celtic 6347 28 Atletico Madrid 6276 29 Villareal 5813 30 CSKA Moscow 5798 31 Nuremberg 5784 32 Marseille 5630 33 Lokomotiv Moscow 5516 34 Getafe 5445 35 Beitar Jerusalem 5430 36 Fenerbache 5290 37 Spartak Moscow 5244 38 Betis 5236 39 Zenit St. Petersburg 5136 40 Rangers 4917 41 Porto 4913 42 Leverkusen 4734 43 Udinese 4711 44 Frankfurt 4624 45 Feyenoord 4492 46 Dinamo Bucharest 4328 47 Libertad 4285 48 Deportivo 4275 49 Sporting 4250 50 Newcastle 4203

I'm doing a course next year that needs lots of maths and Excel, so I have been working out of maths textbooks doing self designed excel projects for a short time each day to help me do this kind of stuff quicker and better next year.

I've done the maths, two or three national teams a day. The players are either in their current or most recent national squads, or are absent due to injury or being rested.

Ok then... In the World: 50th with Roz and Emre 96th without In England: 9th with 18th without Acceptable or not?

I'm sure that people can pick holes in the logic and assumptions, but please bear with this: Assume that the best players currently plying their trade in the proffessional game are the 600+ players who feature fairly regularly for one of the Top 25 ranked nations in the world. Assume the quality of these players is determined by their nations points score in the world rankings, ie Tevez = 1520, Arshavin = 856. Domestic clubs are entered into a ranking system based on the scores accumulated by their players, for example Werder Bremen score 10,481 as: Diego Brazil 1518 Mertsecraker Germany 1264 Fritz Germany 1264 Frings Germany 1264 Borowski Germany 1264 Almeida Portugal 1131 Klasnic Croatia 1044 Sanogo Ivory Coast 870 Rosenberg Sweden 862 Where do you reckon Newcastle will feature in the World Rankings based on this scoring system? And where would they feature if the rankings only included English clubs? I know the answers by the way both with and without Rozehnal and Emre, but I'm interested to observe people's assumptions on this first.

The bad thing about losing Emre, is that Newcastle have just four current representatives in the top 25 nations: Rozehnal, Owen, Geremi, Emre, and two will be gone by the start of next season. Embarassing for the 15th richest club in the world.

Amara Diane linked- £2.75m fee rumoured.

Emre's time loop NUFC career in five easy steps: 1. Comes off bench for much anticipated return, looks bright, plays well, fans call for first team reintroduction, believing him to be the answers to our woes. 2. Gets a start, and looks off the pace. Substituted. 3. Gets injured out for weeks. 4. Returns for international game, plays well, fans anticipate return to first team. 5. Return to 1. More often than not, he's been a drain rather than a help, while Turkey's Belozoglu Emre is worse than England's Michael Owen. I'd be happy to see him gone.

Like you want to ignore: 1) Were getting beat to signings One player, happens every season, at least we did make our move when we had to 2) Our manager doesn't need a holiday and should be doing everything for the club over the summer Was part of the agreement when he joined NUFC, would you rather we didn't have him? 3) Not all players are on Holiday No, some are on international duty 4) Players are the last part of a deal, clubs and agents are still working Not everywhere, last season we couldn't sign public target Rozehnal because the PSG chairman was on holiday 5) Not all players are called up for NT duty No, they are on holiday 6) Prices are going to sky for players who do well in 2008 Why should a club sell now then? 7) There's no smoke without fire, and currently there isn't much smoke There was even less smoke when we signed Jose Enrique 8) We've a lot of work to do As have all teams, only five players bought for a fee in the PL 9) We've a lot of shit to get rid of Doesn't matter who we don't sell, it is who we have available to play 10) Talk of a power struggle in the tabloids 11) talk of low summer budgets Yet bidding millions for Modric in April 12) Player contracts still not sorted Negotiations take time, plus we need to check wages of potential signings first 13) Club not as big as it used to be Signed good players when in worser state 14) KK not doing the negotiations and or meeting the players Says who? 15) Current targets prices rising everyday Then why sell now?

Aptly timed article from Shak: http://www.newcastle-online.com/2008/05/30/should-he-stay-or-should-he-go-emre/#more-986

Needed saying, as a significant number of people seem to want to ignore all of these technicalities.

Rather than hearing endless complaining about things not happening at SJP right now, why not properly consider the number of reasons why these kind of things aren't happenning anywhere: 1) Players are on holiday far away from the clubs that want them. 2) Players are on international duty a. National coaches are enforcing an agent ban b. Players are fully devoted to their countries and want to avoid distractions. 3) Buying club manager is on holiday - they have been working all season too. 4) Selling club manager is on holiday 5) Buying club chairman/officials on holiday - don't forget that they have been overseeing the operations of the club over the past 9 months. 6) Selling club chairman/officials on holiday 7) Agent's are busy looking after other clients on their portfolio. 8) Buying club wants to analyse player's performances against higher standard players in Euro 2008. 9) Selling club hoping Euro 2008 will cause a price hike. 10) Player hoping to impress bigger clubs at Euro 2008. 11) Agent/Player hoping Euro 2008 will strengthen position during wage negotiations. 12) Selling club making sure that they can find a replacement. 13) Buying club talking to several people about several players to ensure that they get the best possible group of players rather than waste their budget on the early deals. 14) Players waiting to see what other clubs are going to make an approach. 15) Buyer playing hardball when the only interested club to keep fees/wages low. 16) Selling clubs assessing anticipated departures and how much money they expect to/need to raise. 17) Negotiating parties just being very quiet.

Lets not forget those players we signed last summer whose deals we didn't hear about until the transfer was in it's final stages (Enrique, Beye, Alan Smith)

As I see it, if we are genuinely interested in Dunne, there a few reasons why we couldn't get him, and many he would: Former Keegan player Keegan is bigger in England than the managers of Dunne's other choices, including Ramos. Choice is between clubs finishing 10th, 11th, 12th. Not much difference between either side and no guarantees for next season. He'd be third choice (albeit playing 30 games a season) at Spurs. He'd be vice-captain here. I don't believe not being in Europe would be too much of a turn-off for a player like Dunne. Premier League is his bread and butter, UEFA Cup football at Spurs is a short term novelty, and signing a long term contract, there is no guarantee that any of the clubs he is linked with can offer regular European football. Of the reasons he may reject us: Goldfish bowl - like it or not, our fans have a reputation for creating such an environment. Dunne has previously had problems that affected his performances, and if he is worried that he isn't mentally equipped to play for Newcastle, we are better off steering clear anyway. Joey Barton - We know that at least one player (Silvestre) refused to come here because of Barton. If further targets use this as a reason, Barton should be sacked.

What about the constantly repeated 4 or 5 players comment? Or the mention of two lists of players for every position? Keegan isn't a liar.

I think a Spurs hijack is long overdue. If we don't hijack Dunne, we'll hijack the next quality player Spurs try to sign.