Rich

I spent £28m on him at the end of the first season in FM so this represents something of a bargain to me.

Drives me fucking crackers. January 19th ffs.

Do you not accept it though? FWIW I agree it's sad, but the problem is with the league not us. Not long-term I don't, which is what the question is. Might as well not bother. Surely the whole point of football is to try and win stuff? Especially the domestic league. Course it's the point, but the current situation in the league makes it virtually impossible. Whether or not people will start to think of football as pointless remains to be seen. For me, it just about offers enough on a weekly basis to help me forgot how futile the bigger picture is. Obviously it needs to be done in steps, but it can be done. In our current model we'd need to get into the CL first to garner the revenue/status necessary to get the class players in/keep our current ones, of course. It's naturally a lot easier if you've got someone chucking money at it. Spurs operate a similar way and got relatively close to challenging at the top, mind. They're still up there amongst it now despite a rocky period, although of course they're not in the title race right at this moment. I dunno, taking a long-term view I just don't see why a club of this size shouldn't be trying to compete at the top-level and harbouring the aim of winning the PL. Spurs will have a bigger stadium and revenue will go through the roof in a few years too when they've their new ground. Aye, was telling me Dad this earlier. If they'd had a stadium the size of ours in place then who knows what they could have done, it's hamstrung them enormously being stuck at WHL. Obviously they have the added benefit of being in London and stuff like, so it may balance out currently. It came up because I asked him the question posed by the OP here. I was that intrigued by the responses I've seen. Unsurprisingly he said the same as me.

We're getting Payet though, so it's alreet.

But the camera is at ground level. The ball however. Did we actually go through with those barriers? They're visible on the training pics from today.

Notorious for meddling weren't they? Maybe just a change of philosophy/structure.

Do you not accept it though? FWIW I agree it's sad, but the problem is with the league not us. Not long-term I don't, which is what the question is. Might as well not bother. Surely the whole point of football is to try and win stuff? Especially the domestic league. Course it's the point, but the current situation in the league makes it virtually impossible. Whether or not people will start to think of football as pointless remains to be seen. For me, it just about offers enough on a weekly basis to help me forgot how futile the bigger picture is. Obviously it needs to be done in steps, but it can be done. In our current model we'd need to get into the CL first to garner the revenue/status necessary to get the class players in/keep our current ones, of course. It's naturally a lot easier if you've got someone chucking money at it. Spurs operate a similar way and got relatively close to challenging at the top, mind. They're still up there amongst it now despite a rocky period, although of course they're not in the title race right at this moment. I dunno, taking a long-term view I just don't see why a club of this size shouldn't be trying to compete at the top-level and harbouring the aim of winning the PL.

Do you not accept it though? FWIW I agree it's sad, but the problem is with the league not us. Not long-term I don't, which is what the question is. Might as well not bother. Surely the whole point of football is to try and win stuff? Especially the domestic league.

The concept of being a part of 20 team league and having no ambition to win it should be fucking alien. Cannot believe how readily accepted it is, although I do understand it. Horrendous. Thought there'd be more dafties like me kicking around.

It's magic that they put barriers up while the official site has got extended footage of our training regime readily accessible on it.

Based on the way they were set out at training today the team for this is: Krul Debuchy Williamson Coloccini Santon Obertan Anita Cabaye Gutierrez Marveaux Cisse 4-4-1-1, 4-2-3-1, whatever you want to call it. Hardly groundbreaking, I know, but Taylor doesn't walk straight back in as many suspected following the clean sheet. It was pretty cut-and-dry btw, obviously lined up A team vs. B team. Only two I'm not 100% on are Cabaye and Marveaux, but as both appear in the training photos (rather than the spliced video from Pardew's press conference) I think it's a safe bet.

You son of a gun.

It is the same here for that though, and quite probably everywhere else.

There was a spell when it seemed the only people getting banned were Norwegians like. It's more the trouble-poster ratio and the general posting style for me. Not sure how much clearer I can make it.

Yup.

4 is generic as fuck. Just noticed the curly headed guy in the background Jesus, the short-haired guy behind 5 is even better, total "soon" face

3 looks like the undisputed champ to me.

tollemache's like Invicta, if Invicta had spent the time he's been banned from this forum getting an education.

Only way I could see this happening in this window is if someone makes way. There's very little chance we'll pay those kinds of wages to a player unless he's going to be considered a first-teamer.

Jesus. So tempted to just use that immense TBG gif every time a picture like this is posted now, but I'll refrain.

Read Haidara's latest comments here sausage.

Kasper is my only knowledge of Finland, so I think that place must be great.

Scaled back the thread title a little bit as the player himself says there's been no contact as of yet.

Can someone explain to me why so many of them are so rubbish? This place has given me a slight hatred of Norway in particular. Apologies to the good ones that we do have, but some of your compatriots are absolute divvies. They're s*** because their general knowledge of football is s***. Most just choose an English team 'cause it's expected of them and take a miniscule interest in the sport except when something good or bad happens, either club-wise or Internationally, then they go on about it like they've always paid attention yet what they're saying is absolute horseshit. Their favourite thing to do is also to talk down any Scandinavian country, league and/or players because it's/they're so much shitter than anyone/thing else. Again displaying their total lack of knowledge since the leagues aren't too bad, and neither are the national teams. I see it all the time, and it's not even just the glory hunters. People can go "I support Southampton/Leeds/Blackburn" and not be able to name any player on the team. They just "have" a team because that's what they do. c***s. In short, they suck because they have no knowledge of football in general and just want to be a part of something so they can argue with their mates (who also know nothing). I hate the Scandinavian football fan almost more than Asian glory hunters. At least the Asians tend to be interested in the teams they follow that week. Gives the people who actually care a bad name and brings everybody down with them. f*** the world. (Obviously there's exceptions though. But still.) I'm editing the biggest Swedish fan site (that has a forum attached). I want to be part of and create an interesting community for Newcastle supporters in Sweden, even though it's difficult and proving frustrating more than often. People post every rumour everywhere, want to buy Swedish players for the sake of it and post FM-like formations ahead of every game. The main problem is the acceptance of every news source and the fact that our coverage (both TV and other forums) is filled with attention seeking idiots who know nothing about football in general, Newcastle in particular. Once these people become a point of reference, the general Swedish fan becomes worse than some of the worst posters on here. Rich: what in particular drives your hatred towards us? I think there is a far bigger proportion of local fans who contribute with nothing but rubbish. You know those times where you wish you never said anything? Especially when it's diverting a transfer thread... sorry folks. Anyway: the "slight hatred" comment was fairly tongue-in-cheek. I certainly wouldn't jump to outright "hatred". It's just frustration I feel more than anything. To be fair, it tends to be Norwegians more than Scandinavians that I have an issue with on here and even then it's far from every poster - as I said we do have (very) good ones too. I have to stress that it's purely related to the people we've had on here, nothing to do with the actual country/area itself in any way shape or form. Not the politics, football team, famous people, etc. I'm simply talking from an N-O perspective as it's all I have to go on. The fact is that for the amount of Norwegians we have on here (or have had on here) there have been a disproportionate number who have caused trouble with offensive comments like those from thorin or who have just been horrendously immature/unstable in their posting style. I think Kaizero has explained the latter part of this very well in his post and you've alluded to it in yours as well. I think "hyper active" is the most polite term I could use to highlight my opinion of the general style we're talking about. Of course there are a lot more locals/Brits who post "rubbish" but then there are a lot more signed up to this place, naturally. I can't really put it any other way - the facts are there to back it up in the ban log. Inochi has obviously noticed it as well from the perspective of a regular member, given the post which started all of this off. Sorry to those of you who are excellent posters on here if I've offended you, but hopefully this clarifies my reasoning behind the original comment.