Rich

Some FM legends right there. Babacar, De Silvestri, Gamberini, Jovetic and Montolivo. Should be a good game, really.

Perch, Smith and Xisco all omitted after being on the training pictures. I would love it, love it, if they all got fucked off this summer.

I'm sure Ameobi/Ba are currently first choice in Pardew's eyes, but I agree that Ba/Best would probably qualify as first-choice for many on here at this moment in time (myself included). Really, if he can stay fit, it's Ba/Ben Arfa you want to see if we don't bring in another forward of quality.

Hopefully on his way soon if NUFC.com are anywhere near being right, with a tidy wedge in his back pocket as well by their account.

Skills. They really need to sort that out like, as if I was working for an opposing Premiership team and part of my remit was to find out what the starting XI of the upcoming opponent was before the morning of the game I'd know exactly where to look. It was the same for many games last season as well, even when people started saying "you can't read anything into the bibs anymore". You could, if you looked properly. Does Flickr qualify as social media? Exactly

Skills. They really need to sort that out like, as if I was working for an opposing Premiership team and part of my remit was to find out what the starting XI of the upcoming opponent was before the morning of the game I'd know exactly where to look. It was the same for many games last season as well, even when people started saying "you can't read anything into the bibs anymore". You could, if you looked properly.

Ambivalent about this one, simply through not having seen enough of him to justify having a strong opinion either way. Naturally hope he's more Gillespie/Simpson than Butt/Smith. One major positive I can see is that it appears he's another player with some real pace about him. Add this to the fact we're still expecting (some of us) to see a striker of quickness brought in, then we're hopefully going to shed that "pedestrian" tag we'd rightly accrued over the last few seasons. I appreciate you need a certain amount of end product and ability to go with it to really be successful, but it does seem that Ben Arfa and Marveaux have both. If Obertan isn't quite at that level, which it sounds like he won't be, he could still be very useful for us.

Training pictures lead me to believe the starting XI for this will be Krul, Simpson, Taylor, Coloccini, Enrique, Gosling, Cabaye, Vuckic, Jonas, Best and Lovenkrands. The opposition team looked like it included Forster, R. Taylor, Williamson, Tavernier, Sammy, Xisco, Smith, Marveaux, Shola, Ba and Ranger in some kind of bastardised formation. Perch might have played in defence somewhere like, but he's not on any of the pictures. They'd then have used 12 players, of course, so hopefully there weren't any knocks to anyone.

One source. 12 pages. RMC have been pretty swift on NUFC this summer, non?

I actually am.

I was led to believe Colocho had fucked off. Not happy.

Double bonus.

There's been worse.

Ashley signed off on all of the contracts you mention. It's not an excuse. Like buying us, the contracts are a mistake he should live with and make the best of. He can't expect them to take fucking wage cuts when wages in the game are still rising everywhere else. It's not like Colo, Jose, Nolan or Barton got any worse since we first signed them, if anything they are/were at their most valuable at the end of this season. Yes, live with until the end of the contract, which he is doing, then either party can choose to strike a new deal, or walk away. Situations change, and apparently in terms of the wages we feel we can offer, they have for us. It's hardly unusual or underhand, a number of contract jobs I've taken on recently have been for a lot less than I could have got away with in the past, so I don't see why footballers should be a particularly special case in that regard. I'm fairly certain not everyone else is paying less, though, and if anything our revenues have increased in the past season and will again this season. If you want to grow and move up the table, you'll generally need to pay more wages year on year to achieve that and keep the players you already have, etc. How can people not see this? We got relegated and trimmed the wage bill hugely. At a pure guess it seems to me like we appear to be at least breaking even so far this summer in wage terms, without even taking Barton and Enrique's potential departures into account - and any others that may now come in/go out. Revenue will have increased massively with the return to the Premiership and will again this season thanks to even better TV money and probable higher season ticket sales/general attendances, etc. I can't ignore the huge figures from player sales, either. I'm not one for being overly negative/reactionary (I don't think), but this baffles me. You keep your best players if you want to get better, even if you have to pay them very well to do so.

Ashley signed off on all of the contracts you mention. It's not an excuse. Like buying us, the contracts are a mistake he should live with and make the best of. He can't expect them to take f***ing wage cuts when wages in the game are still rising everywhere else. It's not like Colo, Jose, Nolan or Barton got any worse since we first signed them, if anything they are/were at their most valuable at the end of this season. You should evaluate what they accomplished throughout the whole of the contract. Some players just have single good seasons while others tend to perform best in "contract years". Nolan and Colo may have earned with 2 good years of service, but I certainly would not extend the same courtesy to Barton. I think you evaluate how valuable they are to you at that point in time, project how valuable they will be to you in the future and offer them what they're worth, so I suppose we just disagree about that. I'm sure "rewarding" players for good service does come into it though, or it should at least. It seems the board did it this way with Nolan as well, to be totally fair to them. It was extremely difficult to justify a 5 year deal for him, I'll admit. I don't disagree that wages should be scaled down as players get older/near retirement and they become less able on the pitch, but I'm not entirely sure that happens yet. If it's used as an excuse with Coloccini then it's an absolute joke. I'm fairly sure both John Terry and Rio Ferdinand signed new contracts with their respective clubs at around the same age as Colo hopefully will in the near future, and I'm fairly sure both of their contracts saw bumper wage rises. I appreciate that it's Chelsea and Manchester United I'm talking about here, but surely Colo is as important to us these days as those players were to those two at the time? With all the extra wages released next summer due to certain wasteful contracts expiring, it will be an absolute disgrace if Colo doesn't get a good offer.

Ashley signed off on all of the contracts you mention. It's not an excuse. Like buying us, the contracts are a mistake he should live with and make the best of. He can't expect them to take fucking wage cuts when wages in the game are still rising everywhere else. It's not like Colo, Jose, Nolan or Barton got any worse since we first signed them, if anything they are/were at their most valuable at the end of this season.

If we're liable to be posting not a loss now (as the finance thread informs me we might), why not? Bearing in mind Smith, Lovenkrands, Harper and a few others are likely to all leave. Aye, there has to come a point where we do start paying those wages again, surely? If we consistently maintain our PL status there is no reason why we shouldn't be able to in the very near future.

As daft as it may sound, but just really to put it on some sort of scale for perspective here, it's more-or-less the equivalent of us selling four of Beardo, Ferdinand, Ginola, Albert, Lee and Gillespie from the 95/96 team, or four of Shearer, Bellamy, Robert, Solano, Woodgate and Given from the 02/03 team (two of my other favourite periods)... In six months.

I know I'm a big lad now and all that, but we've almost shifted four of my "main" favourite players (Tiote and Coloccini being the others) in just over six months. That is worse than shite as a football fan.

In all seriousness, there's still time left before we judge. No really, there is.

Apparently he's been bullying the young players the greedy shit cunt. He's apparently got poor distribution as well. So I'm sure whoever replaces him will be an improvement in that area, at least.

Urgh.

Bit of a shit placating tool, based on the reaction from here at least.

Thanks boss.