Rich

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.

The caption under the pic of her in a bikini "Hot model...Sylvie van der Vaart" FFS You slagging off our media here sunshine?

It was the Sibierski bit on that particular night I think, Bernard definitely came a bit later on.

I'll never forget that deadline day when we brought in Sibierski and Bernard Was in Blu Bambu or some other shithouse of a place refusing to believe my mates when they were getting the texts through with what was happening.

there was the lee bowyer summer, ideal time to buy, possibility of champs league money and we hardly had any debt (to banks or individuals). Wonder if the summer gone will become known as the "Vurnon Anita summer". It has had a very similar feel to it as an opportunity missed.

He would have been, aye. Ffs. We must have thought we could sell him or something. Realistically what's he worth? £2-3m? We should dangle him at San Lorenzo instead. I think there's a canny good chance he'll be off relatively soon and that we'll get decent enough money for him when he goes. He's the type of player some managers absolutely love and he might find a new lease of life if he moved back to a slower-paced league. Could be massively wrong, of course.

He would have been, aye.

As I posted on here last night (Jonas thread!) - he was on the opposite flight yesterday connecting to Rome! So he's been to Rome and back within 24 hours? Intradesting.

Suppose you are willing to take him off his club if they pay you a million? How nice of you. You know what this bloke deserves, don't you? This? http://static.neatorama.com/images/2012-06/picnic-table-stackign.jpg And this? http://itsrockingwrestling.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/stonecold_2.jpg

Not many injury prone Frenchmen who are on a free going at the moment though. That's true, but you know what I mean. The Cisse deal was similar (knew I should have used him as an example to avoid such pedantry ). Pedantry and toil is all I have these days Know what you mean though, unlikely these days with so many agents involved and clubs struggling financially so trying to flush out a higher bidder. Ha! I really hate to see you (and others) like this, but then I find myself doing exactly the same some days It's a fucking grim state of affairs. Like you, I can't really see it, but there's got to be some players out there with release clauses or (God forbid) some clubs that just have certain asking prices for players and aren't interested in a bidding war (like Freiburg? Athough we don't really know what went on).

Suppose you are willing to take him off his club if they pay you a million? How nice of you. You know what this bloke deserves, don't you?

Shame we don't support a balance sheet. Aye, but at the end of the day we haven't got a couple hundred million invested in the club. He's coming from a totally different angle to us lot, understandably (and sadly). Maybe the bloke should had done some research before getting into the football business as it's pretty clear he didn't. This conversation has been had a million times. I'm still not sure why he bought us. Just as an advertising vehicle? Just simply to "get into" football and make some very powerful contacts for his business empire? Was it a decision on a whim when the opportunity presented itself and he thought he could do well at it? Does he just love a bargain that much? In the early days I thought it reeked of enthusiam and they ploughed the money in to back Allardyce, but at the end of the day he was never like a Fernandes figure who got involved much and he's always had someone else running it day-to-day. Maybe he just wanted a toy?

If it's disappearing, it will only be to reduce the debt to Ashley. Just on the earlier subject of luck btw, where we definitely got very lucky last season was that Chelsea and Liverpool had unbelievably bad seasons by their own standards. Chelsea were always going to spend stupid money and go through managers for fun in order to rectify that, but we still had that over them for one summer. More importantly we had a golden chance to show that we had just as much promise and ambition as Liverpool and Everton to compete with Spurs and Arsenal and yet all of those clubs are already out of sight. Aye, was going to suggest this but just didn't want to really. Don't like the idea of him taking his money back in increments at all and would be quite saddened by it, but again I suppose it's his prerogative if he does.

Shame we don't support a balance sheet. Aye, but at the end of the day we haven't got a couple hundred million invested in the club. He's coming from a totally different angle to us lot, understandably (and sadly).

Not many injury prone Frenchmen who are on a free going at the moment though. That's true, but you know what I mean. The Cisse deal was similar (knew I should have used him as an example to avoid such pedantry ).

I genuinely don't think there's anything Machiavellian going on, just think they get as much "joy" out of balancing the books as they do seeing us perform well. I'd even go so far as to say that whatever joy they do get out of us performing well is probably in-part due to how much better we'll be financially as a result. I don't think any money is disappearing or anything, and I never have done.

We're crying out for a Marveaux-esque move or two like, just to get everything back on track. Just "boom", out of nowhere.

Get in. Haven't seen "smokescreen" used enough this month yet, it's usually trotted about a million times every time the window opens. Everything is a smokescreen.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. The 5th placed finish was a little fortunate and the wage budget (which is a far better guide than one league placing) should see us in midtable. when we went down we held our hands up and said you finish where you deserve, the league table dosen't lie at the end of may, why the change when we do well ? Who's we? I didn't say that, did you? Someone at the club? Of course it's possible to play above yourself and get a bit lucky and finish higher than you'd normally expect to, and of course it's possible to have a rubbish run and finish lower than you'd expect. Teams have surprisingly good seasons and surprisingly bad seasons all the time. What I'm saying is it is a stone cold fact that leagues normally finish roughly in order of wage bill, and that where you come in the wage bill league is generally a very good guide as to where you should expect to end up. Check the stats for any league going and you will tend to find that that principle applies. Afford more good players = probably do better. We deserved to go down because we'd spent a few years putting together an absolute joke of a club and had managed to compile a team of overpaid duds. That doesn't change the fact that, on the whole, expensive squads do better than cheaper ones because, on the whole, the other factors tend to balance out. I'm talking about averages, rough guides, and as far as working out likely league positions goes, total wages are the most accurate predictor going. LOL the team that went down had one of our highest wage bills. And I could probably pick out a few more exceptional examples to add to that one if you like? It doesn't change the fact that, by and large, league tables finish pretty much in order of wage bill. You know how statistics work, yeah? We're talking about averages, trends etc... Do a graph of final positions vs wage bills in every Premier League season ever and every Serie A season ever and every Liga season ever and every Bundesliga season ever all rolled into one and you'd get a smooth diagonal line showing a direct relationship between wage bill and league position. I don't give a flying f*** if an overpaid team went down once or Muggins Utd won the league. There's some homework for you. No need. Stefan Szymanski and Simon Kuper already did it in "Why England Lose" Did they also mention the clubs that pay the biggest wages usually do so because they've got a larger turnover and can afford to do so? Yes. Then I look at the table posted above and see us spending 61% of our turnover on wages Is that an unreasonable amount? It's a nice amount for where we are right now, because we've got a couple of gaps to fill, are trying to get a couple of bodies in, and have a few % to play with. So if we pick up a couple of first team players in this window we should be about bang on. You don't want to go over 70% if you can avoid it so this suggests we're in a decent position. You're working on figures are from two seasons ago here, so it's not "where we are now" by any stretch. Since then Campbell, Nolan, Routledge, Enrique, Barton, Smith, Guthrie, Lovenkrands, Forster and Best have left from the first-team pool. We brought in Cabaye, Ba, Marveaux, Obertan, Santon, Elliot, Cisse, Amalfitano, Bigirimana and Anita to replace them. There's the youngsters to consider as well, a lot more have left than have arrived, but by the same token we have dished out a fair new contracts in the meantime. Obviously Ba's just gone out the door and Debuchy has come in on top of all of that. In that time it's probably fair to assume that our income has increased after re-establishing ourselves in the PL and performing well last season. I can only work on assumption until the accounts are released for the period ending June 2012 and seeing where the trend goes, but I'd assume the wage-turnover rate is now significantly lower than 61%. In fact I'm fairly certain I recall an interview from Llambias where he mentioned the wage bill being even more under control, I'll go and have a dig. Not trying to argue either way with anyone, but just want to raise a flag about some of the figures being thrown around.

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_meojxtVhZB1ra5b0k.gif

TRon-blocked for the second time in two minutes.

I'm hoping Matty's got him confused with Tim Lovejoy.