Bad Mongo

So he's put in place a completely new structure in the club, one which will ensure some consistency throughout changes of managers, with beginnings of an ambitious youth system, a healthy economy, etc., and it's all because he wants to sell at once? Looks more like the start of a long-term investment to me, but maybe I'm just a total idiot with no business sense at all.

You're crazy, oldtype. If we do that, he'll end up at Spurs.

This would be an awesome transfer, if only because it would make Rosenborg weaker. Fine player, though. And allegedly supports the Toon. [edit/remove/somesuch: quoted wrong post]

The expectation of not being a completely useless twat, you mean? You're right, though, the boy might find it a bit unambitious.

You're basing this entirely on one tournament then. Nice one. He can't be much worse than Milan Baros, can he?

There's more to it than just finding a good club that will let you start every game. For instance, if the player feels actually wanted, and not just as another good player in a good squad, but as THE player the manager wants. I imagine Kevin Keegan's enthusiasm may well swing a player in our favour. If the player wants European football, I'm sure Keegan will remind him that England technically is a European country and that he'll play in Europe every week. Why not? He got Sylvain Distin to choose a newly promoted Man City when Newcastle were in the Champions League.

Don't forget that for much of the season, Milner was on the left wing of a lopsided 4-3-3, and his job was obviously to whip in crosses from outside the edge of the area with his right foot. With our strikers, those are easy to defend against, but it was obviously central to our tactics. Do we have stats for Milner under Allardyce vs under Keegan?

Scary, he looks more like Souness than Souness ever did himself. Evil character.

Fate worse than death, obviously. Surely the thought of UEFA Intertoto cup football with Rennes must be enough to lure him away from our inevitable relegation fight under Kevin Keegan. /Makeshit

Then what's the point? It's not like you're stating facts or provide insights for meaningful discussion, or doing anything worthwhile.

We're signing a Yeti?

For how many weeks has he been gone now?

I always thought that was Middlesbrough, with their fine collection of veteran strikers. Now we have Viduka.

Emre has played well.

But what if the actual market price for a player of Smith's calibre is 6M? Then surely Milner is worth at least twice. It's silly money, of course, but the market seems to be severely inflated.

Parker and Smith are hardly injury prone, are they? At least Smith isn't injured often enough.

The video still exists on that site which must not be named (or at least embedded from (I mean Youtube)) under the name "NUFC, Hellas Hell". We gave their boys one hell of a beating.

I'd delete that if I were you. Football clips aren't allowed, because of copyright fears.

What activity? They've been linked with every player under the sun, but have they signed more than two of them?

How do you know this hasn't already happened?

Under the former board, it would have been 20:00 as a sign of ambition, but now with Ashley, I'm sure he'd stay up as long as he wants.

Fine, we get it, we've known for some time now that you're a mackem, at least in spirit and soul and whatever mode relevant for making mackems subhuman scum.

If you watch one of the Milner clips on Youtube, you'll see a player with an amazing awareness, an accurate cross, and a fierce shot. You see, they tend to take away the boring parts when making tribute videos.

Fear not, he's retired.

I think you've got it exactly wrong. We didn't have any mobility up front, so Milner would have to work an opening instead of just whipping in a cross. Consider his assist against Villa as an example what he's able to do when he does have an option. When he's on his own out on the wing, and the midget strikers are sandwiched in between the defenders, then he doesn't have a choice. He doesn't have Nobby's sublime right foot, but it's far too early to say he's not adaptable to different roles in the team. And unlike Nobby, he's also got a useful left foot. I'm sure Keegan will get more out of him than Roeder and Allardyce did.