Montey

You only need to own 50.1% of a company to have 100% say over the operation of said company. Companies are democracies at the shareholder level. 1 share = 1 vote. If one person owns more shares, and hence more votes, than all other share holders combined that one person now operates that company 100%. It is very usual to start running a company, 100%, as soon as you have achieved 50.1% ownership. The decision to not run the company until you have 100% ownership is entirely by choice. In Liverpool's case the new owners will have made the decision to do things that way, but they could easily have started hiring and firing, etc, as soon as they owned 50.1% of the shares.

I doubt Allardyce has initiated any contact with Ashley. As far as he is concerned, Freddy Shepherd is his chairman, and the man who holds the purse strings, and until he's told otherwise he'll stick to dealing with Shepherd. Whether Ashley has contacted Allardyce is anyone's guess, but I would think that unlikely too, as it's only likely to piss Shepherd off more. There certainly wont have been any communication that anyone will admit to. But you don't get to Sam's position without knowing how to run a few below the radar conversations. I am in no doubt that as soon as Sam heard he will have been searching for Ashley's mobile phone number.

There is absolutely no reason why the change in ownership has to interrupt recruitment. One needs to keep in mind that business operations are only affected by business ownership if the new owners decide they want to review hiring practices. But given Ashley has stated he is happy with Sam's plans it can be assumed his hiring plans are included in that. Sam will have rung Ashley by now and asked him what his plans are, or at least whether Sam needs to alter his plans. Ashley will most likely have him to continue business as usual.

Cautiously enthusiastic. Far more happy than "Gutted" or "Worried", but not quite to unmitigated delight.

Titus would be useful in an all-in brawl. He may punch the lights out of a few of his own team mates, but he's too dumb to know when he's beaten, so he'd just keep getting up.

I loved his comment about fixing diet and its correlation to injuries, right after FAT Fred was excused for having an injury.

How funny would it be having 52000 people chanting, "Sack the Tea Lady!"

Well thank f*** that mystery is solved. help·ful /ˈhɛlpfəl/ –adjective : giving or rendering aid or assistance; of service http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/helpful Just in case you were wondering, since your post was such a positive contribution to the evolution of humanity.

For those in Australia, 1pm (1300hrs) Tuesday in UK is 10pm (2200hrs) Tuesday in Sydney

Would/Could ManCity offer anywhere near 3mil a year over 4 years?

Even shit diggers find something valuable once in a while. Just because circumstances conspired to work out this time, does not mean FS meant it to happen.

Uber-meh!

If Sam delivers, then 12m is great value. I have always thought that we spend way to little on managers, given their relative effect on the performance of the team. My only concern, at this point, in regards to Allardyce is whether he is purely using Newcastle as a stepping-stone and as soon as a decent international squad offers him a job he'll be gone.

Sam, Sam he's our man, if he can't do it... Sack Freddy!

So FFS has just come out and challenged Owen to pledge his loyalty to the club. This removes all doubt for me that there is a low-ball get-out clause in his contract. Does the UK have laws that protect the interests of shareholders from negligence? Surely buying a player and having re-sale clause that is less than 2/3rds than the buy price and no other conditions is negligent? It's like buying a Porsche for $250,000 and allowing the car dealer to insert a clause that if someone wants to buy it from you for $150,000 you have to sell. That's insane!!!!!!!

I have said this before (just before Glenn joined us I think), but if the opposition don't score any goals you can't loose the match. If SA comes in and locks down our defence, gets us plenty of shut-outs and the game gets boring in the process, then so-be-it. Once we have gained a consistent shut-out record then I'll start worrying whether I think there needs to be more attack, but never at the expense of shut-out results.

Absolutely Not!!! Sure, maybe at some point in the distant future, but until he has all his accreditations and has proven himself in both the lower leagues and foreign leagues we should not consider him for the top football job. (p.s. I include foreign league management experience to ensure that when he arrives he has the knowledge to take us to and play us in Europe.)

What's he saying? BBC Radio Newcastle cant be played outside of UK.

Any Alladyce chants? alladyce is not the f****** point anymore...its the fans' desire to boot the board and roeder that matters now... spot on, i can't believe the amount of fukcers willing to tug on alladyce's dingaling at any given moment. this club is rotten to the core. There is no doubt in my mind that for the club to return to the glory days will require a top-to bottom change, starting with the departure of Shepherd and the Hall's. But the biggest issue facing us right now is that the longer we hang on to Roeder, the longer that recovery to glory will take. Sacking Roeder is about stalling, or at least slowing, the rate of decline, it is not about going after a championship. Right now we are in free-fall as a squad, let alone the clubs fortunes. We need a more competent manager to come in and stabilise the squad to try and make it attractive to other prospects.

I want my night of sleep back. I stayed up until 7am to watch this game (game telecast started at 5am), and I had to witness this utter crap.

It looks like a hospital bed-pan.

No, with the exception of one scenario. If he played for England and became injured again, where the injury was likely to keep him out for more than 5 games in to next season, then I'd sell him in a shot.

I can see a lot of people being disappointed yet again when they get their hopes up only to find yet again we bring in a couple of freebies in the last 5 days of the transfer window. If anyone has the data, it'd be interesting to plot the promised spending (from manager and/or chairman, rather than pure media speculation) versus actual spending over the past 5 or 10 years worth of transfer windows.

Aren't they starting the smoke a little early this time? Has anyone seen any mirrors yet?

but there's no way out of the situation we're in - fans can sing shepherd out and roeder out all they want and get on message boards kicking off but at the end of the day the first guy runs the club and dictates the future of the second guy.... it's no use believing that making noise will push the board members to oust shepherd 'cause that won't happen 'til they stop getting dividends, the dividends become very small, or we're headed for relegation it's no use believing that shepherd will sack roedebot 'cause he won't for the simple fact Glenn will do what he says, never criticise shepherd, and again unless we're headed for relegation there's no catalyst for change at that level accepting mediocrity doesn't come into it anymore, accepting the reality of where our club is does Like was said by someone else, I think you're wrong, but for a different reason. It is fairly obvious that the root cause of -all- our issues is Freddy. As long as he is at the helm we're screwed and I think that is a fairly well accepted fact. So the issue is how do fans get rid of Shepherd? Shepherd is chairman of our great club for two primary reasons, money and fame, and as I see it will stay in charge of the club as long as certain conditions are maintained: 1. The club must be generating a dividend for him. 2. The club must provide him with a position on the world stage. 3. The environment in which he works must not become intollerable. Now, it is very hard for the fans to affect number 1, without punishing themselves (i.e. not going to games, buying merchandise, etc...). But numbers 2 and 3 are almost entirely controlled by the fans. Number 2 can be addressed by just ignoring the guy. If people stop reading articles featuring him, stop watching interviews with him (etc...), then the media will stop showing him (as there would be no ratings in dealing with Fat Fred). At that point he loses his stage, he stops being the centre of attention. Number 3 can also be affected and controlled by the fans, especially the local fans. Make his life intolerable. Start a direct local action group to make his life a misery. Drive past his house doing burn-outs at 3am with the stereo on full, verbally abuse him on the streets, sing insulting songs at the game during live telecasts for the world to hear. If no one is paying attention to him, and his life in the community stinks he will soon go away. So I don't think resigning ourselves to our fate is the right answer. It creates a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, that is to say predicting mediocrity and then accepting nothing can be done to change it, will result in mediocrity being achieved because no one is saying "it ain't good enough!"