Mr Logic

Is it officially summer, madras has changed his avatar.

I've said before end of June, but tbh that's hope and not confidence that makes me choose that.

I got the feeling it was after Ashley heard the Shearer/Dowie conditions that he paraphrased "f*** it, can't be arsed with this - I'm selling." Hence the negotiations ended up in limbo. thats tyhe feeling i got. not so much on the personal terms but with regard to how much they wanted him to put up. Yep, I don't think personal terms had anything to do with it - that's just the usual press bollocks.

But if enquiries came in surely Ashley could just authorise a sale? And assuming that, it would be of more concern to me if he sold a player that was happy to stay and the new manager, (be it Shearer or A.N. Other), wanted to keep.

I got the feeling it was after Ashley heard the Shearer/Dowie conditions that he paraphrased "Fuck it, can't be arsed with this - I'm selling." Hence the negotiations ended up in limbo.

Just read that myself, but considering the level of debts some clubs run at - and indeed our own in the past, £40m doesn't seem that much or risky.

Using a stanley knife?

Forgot about the Zog, he may well flourish under Martinez if he can get his bottom lip to stop jutting out.

Can't see him writing off the £110m, but then I couldn't see a lot of things he ended up doing.

http://i39.tinypic.com/2ihuouc.jpg

New owners will sell him to raise money tbh.

Christ what a mess! If Ashley is 'owed' 100m? by the club, (ie the money he put in to pay off debts), I can't see us finding a buyer. They'd need 250m minimum. Longer this goes without some resolution and that's another season finished before it begins. And finally, why am I repeating what everyone else has already said?

Well the 15m price tag, if correct, is a hands off signal not a 'come and get him' offer. Nice to see you again MJ, how are you?

Not only by surprise, there was quite a lot of shock and bewilderment initially.

Mike: Stavros Flatly, who'd have thought it. - (Who is sitting on the wall?)

Great news.

Yes, hang them! With all the other people who take extreme positions alongside them.

I think there's a lot of people on here trying to point out that Ashley is not solely responsible, he took over an ailing club. There's also one or two who are still prepared to give him a chance, even if they occasionally shiver in trepidation at the thought. Just as there's quite a few who blame Ashley for the whole shebang. The only thing that can be said wihout fear of contradiction is that it is impossible to isolate any one factor as the root of the problems. No aspect of life works like that, everything is holisitic. (Though I'll have a stab at it, the day we floated on the stock exchange!)

It's not just like it was this season though. This is a culmination of a whole series of mistakes dating back seasons. It would be extremely difficult if not impossible to pinpoint one turning point where the decay set in but I found myself wondering if it might be the decision to float the club April 1977 - which led to a whole series of upheavals that I'm not sure we ever recovered from. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/directors-arent-united-at-newcastle-752721.html and All that apart, the infrastructure had been built, such as state of the art training facilities they kept bragging about, but it seems there was always at least one area suffering from serious neglect, wether that was the lack of a reserve team or something else. There was never a consistent business plan, it chopped and changed as frequently as the people who were making the decisions and the managers who came and went. Most importantly there was never the right man appointed as manager and given sufficient control/length of tenure, though SBR came damn close and if an attempt at appropriate succesion had been made all this may have been academical. Freddy (he always backed his managers you know) Shepherd, mocking the fans whilst whoring it up in a spanish brothel, should never have been let back into the club, but even at our peak under SBR and his good team it was still papering over a creaking skeleton waiting to fall apart due to the aforementioned neglect and lack of consistency in a business plan. Shepherd kept getting the wrong man and I wonder if it was because he actually felt it wasn't that important - after all it was HE who really ran the club and the manager could be anyone under HIS guidance. That and the player selection policies of Douglas Hall and himself should easily run the ship and keep the mong fans happy.

watch me. it's what i plan to do. (who knows by 4pm though) I'm off to Druridge Bay, with a bit of luck I won't get home till it's all over. Or, alternatively, I'll start nagging the wife about 3pm telling her it's too cold and we should go home now. Decisions, decisions.

Head and shoulders above everything else.

Just looking through our seasons results and 4 times we've played Hull and failed to win any of them. How shocking is that? Still inconcievable to me that Hull could get something from Man U irrespective of what team Fergie fields. The only question I wonder about is, can we draw or better at Villa? We have to, but I just can't see this lot raising their game for anything longer than 10 - 15 minutes before collapsing again. Miserable pessimist that I am.

Now is that a simile or a metaphor? Either way it's pretty good.

I think that's a cracking post and I can find nothing to disagree with.

I'm going into hibernation, will wake up when we're back in the Premiership.