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Shouldn't be nearly so confident. Wouldn't be surprised in the slightest to see him go this month.

Not anymore... Hadn't read this at the time but assumed it was a balls up...

Massive. If I was Pardew and I knew his track record I'd be embarrassed...

Yeah, like most, mainly respect from me now. God I used to hate him and Man United.

Magnificent person. Personally thought before the match we'd win in this fashion or lose depending on whether he played or not. Think he's regularly that important to us.

That's a pretty excellent post in my view, though there are some bits and bobs I disagree with. Your first post was interesting too - I reckon we could write something decent together about this situation and the strategic manipulation of cognitive narrative, but it'd probably be a bit esoteric, eh... There's one important area I wanna pick up where I have some disagreement though - the bolded paragraph. You say that the money's now in the media, and that you don't need 50,000 fans to be Stoke, but I'd point out that a chairman does need 50,000 fans if he doesn't want to wake up in a cold sweat every night thinking about relegation from the Premiership. It's traditionally terrified all teams, but it's the Boltons and Blackburns who know for sure they're really in no way different to the Charltons and Huddersfields. In contrast, I now believe Ashley is far less disturbed by the prospect than he was. The truth is that while media money is potentially hugely lucrative, it isn't and shouldn't be assumed to be the core of a football club's business - ticket money remains by far the largest secure source of income for all football clubs at present, even moreso for those with big fanbases. Ashley, from experience, now thinks he's got a large one of those - one that means that if his company is efficient and never stretches itself, it will never make a distressing loss and will always be in with a shot of obtaining those bundles of media cash if its fortune is better than terrible. This is what makes our ticket money the key to destabilising him - take that away and you take away the shelter his ambitions now rely upon. You're right that we can't really stop him earning good media money in the Premiership if the club's in the Premiership, but he knows better than us that NUFC is a far riskier asset if relegation from it guarantees an implosion instead of just a reduction in profits. He can't control his media income, it's conditional upon onfield success - he's at the mercy of his footballers' talents. As a result he wouldn't be able to run the club in the 'efficient' way he wants to which will on the one hand make relegation tolerable but on the other make it much more likely, and will always allow him to take satisfaction in dominating the interests of his personal enemy, us. This is the piece of his soft-underbelly that we definitely have control over. Looking to the future, I will say one thing. I do have concerns that the balance of power between us and him might shift. There is the possibility that media/international income really does become more important - that the Premier League cuts away from the Football League and embraces the '39th game' - and the 40th, and the 41st... I predict it won't happen successfully, but I can't be sure and I don't want to risk letting him stay here for five or ten years only to find out I was wrong and that we really do become irrelevant. But in the mean time it's not true, we do have power. The sooner we guarantee our control the better.

No, that's bollocks. 1. Basic economics - price also alters buyer interest. Offer me a 1996 BMW 5 Series diesel with 200k on the clock for £15k 'because that includes how much you've spent to keep it running over the years' and I'm not interested. Offer me it for £500 and you're on. 2. The unrest was fleeting, bewildered, confused and ultimately docile. As I've effectively argued over and over again here, a repeat of that truly will be worthless at best. It was nothing like what I now advocate. 3. Take your head out of 2005's arse and you'll read better. Predication - IF we act as I say we should, Ashley's priorities will have severely changed and a future relegation would be quantitatively different to the last one where we DID NOT act as I say we now should. No one would try and draw lessons from one experience and apply them to a totally different one unless they don't know what they're talking about. Buyers will buy at the right price, and this is fundamentally a much fitter company now. Funnily enough I started to write earlier today that you're so overcommitted to the 'Anyone But Shepherds and Halls' brigade it's embarrassing, but had to go out and abandoned the post. You invested so much of your life in groundhog day internet arguments with NE5 about why they had to go that you're afraid to let yourself think there might be someone else as bad if not worse. So you don't think, you don't actually engage with anything anyone says, you just post smart, trite shite and punch straw men instead.[/b] The weakness of your argument is evident to the degree that you resort to personal attack. OTOH, if you can get the club down to, say, League Two, maybe there will indeed be someone willing to shell out a couple of bob for what's left of it. See bold. And you've helped prove my point yet again. I've thought this for a long time and the first sentence of the last paragraph literally contains a cut and paste of the tab I'd left open from earlier that day. You're the one who had the temerity to just dismiss everything I'd said offhand and tried talking down to me despite not having understood what I'd said because you didn't want to. You still haven't even attempted to deal with any of the points I've made with anything other than jokey or abusive comments. 95% of what I wrote is just a statement of the truth as I see it, and I think I'm not alone. If that looks like an attack, that's because the truth's cutting - I'd have to lie to not attack you.

Haha... even Cronky's on the turn.

No, that's bollocks. 1. Basic economics - price also alters buyer interest. Offer me a 1996 BMW 5 Series diesel with 200k on the clock for £15k 'because that includes how much you've spent to keep it running over the years' and I'm not interested. Offer me it for £500 and you're on. 2. The unrest was fleeting, bewildered, confused and ultimately docile. As I've effectively argued over and over again here, a repeat of that truly will be worthless at best. It was nothing like what I now advocate. 3. Take your head out of 2005's arse and you'll read better. Predication - IF we act as I say we should, Ashley's priorities will have severely changed and a future relegation would be quantitatively different to the last one where we DID NOT act as I say we now should. No one would try and draw lessons from one experience and apply them to a totally different one unless they don't know what they're talking about. Buyers will buy at the right price, and this is fundamentally a much fitter company now. Funnily enough I started to write earlier today that you're so overcommitted to the 'Anyone But Shepherds and Halls' brigade it's embarrassing, but had to go out and abandoned the post. You invested so much of your life in groundhog day internet arguments with NE5 about why they had to go that you're afraid to let yourself think there might be someone else as bad if not worse. So you don't think, you don't actually engage with anything anyone says, you just post smart, trite shite and punch straw men instead.

Or cheap...

As I've said elsewhere, the best way I can think of balancing the two is keeping your money but being even more supportive in any other way you can think of. It's not ideal, but nothing is in a bad situation, and for me the bottom line is he created this bad situation, he's keeping it bad now, and he will keep it bad for a long and cold time to come. I don't want supporting my club to hurt either, it's not supposed to be like this, and the only way I can think of making things right is by helping get rid of him as quickly as I can - as far as I can see the alternative of just plugging away, drinking his lager, eating his food, looking at his adverts and hoping it'll all go away will actually make it last much longer. It's a nice idea but... I really think it becomes less and less likely all the time. He's lost as much money as he can possibly lose here if attendances hold strong. If he thinks he can get away with this, that his plans are condoned and won't be stopped, he's got absolutely no reason to go frankly because owning this place and feeling like he's tamed us will make him feel like a god. It's the sort of disturbed person he is. The idea of him and Llambias feeling superior to literally you and me, thinking he's got one over us because we ritually come and pay homage to 'his product' makes me sick. Just for good measure, to make where I'm coming from clear, I honestly believe he can make very good money out of this place if everyone allows him to. The plan involves not trying to achieve the things we all think are the basic concepts of a football club - for him, success is money, not glory, and Division 1 is only better than Division 2 if struggling to be there is more profitable. It wouldn't be a loveless marriage, it'd be a love-hate relationship, with him doing all the loving. He'd feel earth-breakingly smug at the idea he's the businessman who'd proven there's a business out there where the customer is NEVER right, where child-like Geordies can be tricked with identical lies and will take what they're given.

I want us to stay up, I think it's the best thing for the club if the players we have can drag us through this. But - I'll say it yet again - the only reason he can stay here and demand potential buyers make offers on his terms is because of us turning up each week and giving him our money. The price he 'wants' will change big time, and it'll suddenly become much more likely that someone can meet it. So with regards 'something that'll get rid of him', relegation would play in our favour if we keep our foot on his windpipe and stop letting him take our money. BUT, as I say, I don't think it's necessary as we can still win against him as a premiership club - choking him out is the way, relegation would just be a sad force multiplier.

I have to say I disagree that pro football deserves the blame you're saying that it does there, the paying punters have to take the responsibility. I'm not saying this just because of me supporting people withholding funds from Ashley, it's just always been my view. Overall, football doesn't have a false economy - it works. It's just a fragile one because it relies on punters paying up far larger sums than they ever have in the past for it and far more than other parts of the first world do. When we each pay £600 a year for some satellite tv channels and a similar number on tickets, we write a very large cheque to the people we give it to and they get to do what they like with it. So their reality is that they have got loads of money to spaff, and the rewards are there to make it maybe worth gambling large sums on players who are hopefully just that little bit better than their mediocre opposition. It's why wage cap discussions are always arse about face - poorer footballers will just mean richer chairmen. The real change people want requires something else - and it starts with those same people at the root of this economy changing their habits.

I believe the issue is that as far as I can judge, giving money to Ashley's business NUFC (whether we like it or not, the legal thing is his) is gonna pretty much guarantee our club being consistently mired in shit, it's reputation taken apart and us supporters just totally shamed if we sit down and take his snide abuse when we don't have to. I can see that the club would probably, at least in the short term, run up more debt which would look like harm, but to me it would seem to be happening for the greater good in what is a no lose situation. A bit like having to give someone a nasty cut with a knife in order to give them a heart bypass operation. That said, if anyone is intending on keeping going to matches because they think the club needs their money more than it needs them to stay away, I do respect that - it's dangerous to be throwing around terms like scab without knowing exactly what you're talking about... But I will do the best I can to convince these people that despite their best intentions they're making the wrong call - that they'd be trying to do the right thing the wrong way. And as I've said elsewhere, tell me I'm wrong if you want but I think it is possible to make these players know they've got the best support around and give them something to play for even while withholding your money. Display the colours, tell anyone in the world who'll listen, and best of all would be to turn up outside the ground on matchdays and stay there for 90 minutes just like normal creating a great atmosphere - would win admiration from outsiders (potential buyers) and show the players that the empty seats aren't because we'd prefer to spend the afternoon gardening.

A healthy balance of both is what's needed - "we're both being screwed by him, we stand by you" stuff. Roar them on to spite Ashley (while making sure he gets no more money from us because as we know, success on the pitch isn't what he cares about and isn't what will keep him here - it's our money that's important here). Agreed,but it's not an easy one to succeed in. No, maybe not, and I agree that in the team's presence (especially mid-match) support for them should be the focus. But make it real loud support, inflamed, backs against the wall support that we know how to do when we've had players sent off and goals wrongly disallowed. Because we have been wronged, and we need to make it clear we're pissed off - never mind to Ashley, I mean to wavering fans who don't really know what's going on and at ordinary matches are inclined to sit down if they see a sign telling them to. There are people on this forum talking about 'maybe' sending tickets back/stopping going if it seems like other people will do the same - well, some people are going to have to make the first step. Hopefully we can drive the team we're still proud of to victory and still strike a big blow against Ashley and set the agenda. Ordinary people who know what has to be done just have to take care of themselves and belt their message out and not worry too much about whether others will join in. Fearing failure is half of what's required to achieve failure.

Dealing with this point and sort of changing the subject, I actually agree with you to a large extent. I think time and place can be vital in deciding whether something succeeds or fails. That's part of what's so awful about what's taken place. The stars aligned 15 months ago, and the right blend of characters came together by chance - a manager that was inclined to give players individual responsibility and players who rose to that challenge etc. We had the bedrock of a dynasty in my view - a positive and self-policing dressing room who were instilling their excellent ethos into new signings which meant it would outlive any individual. I'll happily quote some social science crap from cutting edge thinkers to back up my view if it would help convince anyone. This has now been majorly disrupted, and I expect it will be extinguished completely very soon by the Board and its' chosen servants' actions. Even someone determined to see glints of sunlight emerge from Derek Llambias' arsecheeks should see this whole affair has been a massive failure of thought and imagination.

Football fans may be fickle but not all of us believe in sacking a manager after a couple of bad results. I can promise you that if we play as poor against Liverpool as we did against WBA and Bolton, people on here will go completely insane. Pardew faces an incredible difficult task, as he would not only have to keep us up, but he would have to impress most of us, both in terms of how they play and results. I have never said Pardew was the right man, or the way they did it was anything other than horrendous, but I think many on here would be calling for Hughtons head if we went 10 games without a win, and I think that was a very likely scenario. (Again, just my personal view based on what I have seen of us this season). Dont know why I even bother..trying to defend some of this decision on this forum is like trying to speak about human rights in North Korea. You still aren't going anywhere with this argument. Your whole argument is based on a mystic meg type prediction. I can't be bothered to look at the facts right now but I'm pretty sure that under Hughton we have followed up most bad results with a good one. Well we have gone 5 games without a win. Against teams we need to take points from, and we managed to get a lucky point against Chelsea in their worst form in the last decade. When our team only plays good in against the big teams, or our rivals I think the manager should take his part of the blame. Its not like its a slump in form, we have only managed to beat 1 of the 9 mid to down table teams we have met, and none at home. Sorry mate you have your facts wrong, very wrong. Who cares if it is home or away? I didn't realise there was a rule in the league that said home wins are better than aways? Look I'm not going to carry on with this discussion because I'm at work and it's just silly. Please enlighten me. What is so wrong about my facts? Do you categorize Everton, Villa and Arsenal as mid to downtable teams? Ill give you Sunderland, but again, that is a local derby which doesnt take away the point about being motivated. Just going by the facts ie the league table. So if Blackpool was in the top 5 when we met them, you would classify them as one of the top teams? Most of us know that its not Everton and Villa we will be fighting against when it comes to relegation. Its Wigan, Blackburn, WBA and so on. We're 16 games into what's proving to be a bit of a weird season. Blackpool are a bit special, admittedly, but a time comes when you have to give results credit and it's Everton and Aston Villa in 15th and 16th and Bolton Wanderers in 6th. Fact is we're nearly halfway through the season and we've not lost to any of the bottom 7 - P5 W3 D2 L0 Still hate Pardew but thats human nature its like someone taking your pet dog and being given a Skunk and saying thanks very much i will give it all my love and attention Well yes, but it seems to me most people on here would want to cut of the skunks head and put it on a pole. I want the head of the guy who took my dog.

I don't agree with this part. Evidently Pardew knew they wanted to sack Hughton several weeks in advance and was lined up to take over the job. Which makes him a liar and a backstabbing son of a bitch, and undeserving of respect and support. Then again, it wouldn't be nice of Keegan to say that. I think Keegan might not be fully aware of the circumstances, but even so, I think it's right not to focus on Pardew. Too much attention on him will just hurt the team and us. We can't let ourselves be distracted by a red rag, Pardew is just a symptom. Ashley is the disease.

A healthy balance of both is what's needed - "we're both being screwed by him, we stand by you" stuff. Roar them on to spite Ashley (while making sure he gets no more money from us because as we know, success on the pitch isn't what he cares about and isn't what will keep him here - it's our money that's important here).

What's your point caller? That have having your hands chopped off is better than your whole arms?

I find it equally strange that, for many people, it would apparently have been okay if Jol, Klinsmann or O'Neill were brought in. They're bigger names, but who's to say that they'd be better people for this situation? All sorts of assumptions are being made about Pardew's ability, based on very little knowledge or insight. The anger about Pardew being sounded out well in advance is also a bit misplaced. Do people seriously think that doesn't normally happen? That an owner who's unhappy about his manager never approaches anyone else before the actual sacking? This decision is a massive gamble, but one that Ashley felt he needed to take. It's normal to wait until a team is in trouble before making a change, but in this case he's decided to act now. The die is cast, and we just have to hope it works out. It depends at the end of the day whether you have trust in Ashley or Llambias' judgement on Pardew's ability. I admit I don't know that much about him other than his inability to make use of Mascherano and Tevez and penchant for sleeping with club staff wives. I wouldn't have been in any position to make the call that Pardew is the man to guide our future for the next 5 years. But the club have gone out of their way to make sure he is that man so the onus is on them and Pardew to prove that judgement was sound. One of my biggest problems is with Ashley and Llambias' judgement is they aren't choosing which manager they think will make our club more successful - they've proven that by appointing Hughton last year who it's been clearly shown they never believed could be a success. It was an accident that he did what he did - and not even a very fortunate one for them. So, Cronky, while I wouldn't have swapped Hughton for Jol and would have hated a lot of things about what they'd have just done, I'm even more furious that it's not just been a stupid attempt to help the club in the way Shepherd might have done - it's something much worse. As for sounding out - that's different to drawing up contracts months in advance which is what's happened here. Totally different and obviously so to anyone who hasn't got lying eyes.

Thought the casino remark was interesting, shows the players are savvy to the situation. Not surprised with ours, but generally with footballers you find they really are ignorant of reports of how stuff like this happens. Trust they aren't swallowing this three day appointment process bullshit. I doubt that part to be honest. I'm sure some players are unhappy (and they should be) but doubt any of our players are aware or have the courage to question the casino connection. Sounds to me like exaggerated shit stirring by journalist, just like the use of the word 'revolt'. Obviously giving the report some sort of credence - those sort of remarks in articles seem to turn out to be essentially true more often than not with our club - but I think we've got a higher squad IQ than most (and a more courageous one too), and given the nature of the team ethos I think they're interested enough to be following/digging up this kinds of crap themselves. Hope I'm not wrong about them, anyway. Half the mantra under Hughton was about taking responsibility, not just letting shit wash over you.

Bittersweet...

Thought the casino remark was interesting, shows the players are savvy to the situation. Not surprised with ours, but generally with footballers you find they really are ignorant of reports of how stuff like this happens. Trust they aren't swallowing this three day appointment process bullshit.

FUCK OFF. Pardew - "It is not something I want and I certainly hope it doesn't last too long. But if there is a protest for Chris in terms of a nice protest and fans wanting to show him their support then I don't have a problem with that. That is their right." Nice of him to let us away with that, eh?