macphisto

1 win by mid-January?

Even more depressing when you consider that he only won 2 of his last 13 Premier League matches at Bournemouth. Worth noting that both Bournemouth then and Newcastle now are not newly promoted teams that you might expect to go on these type of winless runs. I'd love to what his relegation with Bournemouth taught him?

You wouldn't say Pep, of all people, doesn't meet all of this criteria? Going back to Howe, one of the most important things you need to do be able to do in a relegation fight is to inspire players to believe they are better than they are/play without fear and he just hasn't done it. We have all mocked Bruce but I can see how he initially lifts the morale of a team when he first joins a club and I just don't get that with Howe.

Completely disagree, I think it's the most important quality in a manager. All the top managers have it, looking at our own history you only have to look at Keegan, particularly Keegan, and Bobby Robson. Further afield look at Klopp now or Clough in the past. All those managers have/had the ability to lift players and make them feel they could win any game through their natural personality/enthusiasm/charisma to inspire players. There's a load of top managers who leave training to their assistants and the reason they are where they are is through their charisma and ability to motivate players (all connected to man management). Howe has spectacularly failed to lift the mentality/inspire the team. There's been no significant difference.

I think a lot of the motivation for Wood was to weaken Burnley.

Each to their own but he doesn't to me. Indeed, I find him quite bland. He's well presented, probably had good media training as he talks well enough but that's not charisma in my book.

The biggest weakness of Howe for me is that he's just not inspiring, no charisma. With Benitez, you can see he has a natural authority/respect and with Bruce you can see why players would take to him at the beginning of his reign. With Howe, I just don't see him having any impact, he certainly hasn't so far and you could argue that the mental side of a relegation fight is the most important part.

I never thought we'd go down until today. Got no faith in Howe at all now, he's had an awful start. Hope I'm wrong.

100% agree with everyone, hopeless.

It was in Jeddah in around 2009 that I got the most pissed ever on a work trip. In my hotel room chilling when there was a knock on the door and a Saudi guy who I'd meet over there on business asked me to come out with him for the night. Went to his place and got absolutely wrecked drinking whiskey. He then wanted to go on to a place with Lebanese prostitutes but by that time I'd already been sick in his apartment. Got back to the Marriott pissed out my head talking/shouting very loudly to all the hotel staff. Next day on the way to the meeting I had to ask my driver to pull over to be sick on the motorway too. All of that day, the Saudi's kept asking if I'd been out with naughty people? To top it all off, the Saudi guy again knocked on my door that day to give me flowers as he felt bad! All in all, a good trip! Fond memories of the place apart from my last visit as that was the January where we sold Andy Carroll.

No, I don't think they were great business (Krul wasn't under Carr). How long did most of the players above and others like Sissoko, Thauvin, and Wijnaldum stay at the club? None of those players were hidden gems, everyone knew about them; Cabaye had won the French league the previous season. It doesn't take a genius to work out that the midfielder in a league winning team might be half decent. We make out that he was some great guru at scouting when in fact he mainly operated in the closest country to our shores and had a good relationships with some agents; relationships that were "cultivated" on the premise that the players would be off as soon as we received a decent bid. I don't think that latter part is conjecture as what was the longest a Carr buy stayed at the club? Indeed it would be interesting to know what the average duration at the club was for a Carr player? 1 and half years-2 years? Truth is though that none of them had the fight in them to really put themselves on the line for Newcastle as they knew they'd be off soon enough and most agitated to move as soon as possible to be off. Yes, we have recruited better since he left as we haven't been relegated (yet) since he left. I never said anything about a 100% success rate in the transfer market, I just don't think he did anything exceptional. Doesn't say a lot about the bloke that he kept on being told no by Ashley for all these soon to be world class players that he wanted to recruit and yet stayed at the club. Anyone with any self-respect would have left and gone to work with a club with a bit of ambition where he could have bought some of these players. I wonder why he didn't leave? Speaks volumes that one of Benitez's, who's knows football, first acts was to show him the door.

All this talk about Carr, we're looking back on his time with very rosy glasses. He worked with one or two agents in our nearest neighbouring country where agents and players were sold on the idea that players could come to Newcastle for a year or two and were then guaranteed to move on if they performed well. In the process, the player and agent received big payments/bonuses in quick succession. We were an easy introduction to the Premier League for players with no pressure as they only had to avoid relegation. Do we really want Newcastle to still be selling itself as a stepping stone? Carr wasn't that great, if he was then he would not have stayed at Newcastle for so long. He would have gone elsewhere where he could have signed all these "supposedly" missed players.

By the time Allardyce came to the club, we had an established boom and bust cycle after Keegan. Some years we didn't have much, parts of the Dalglish era/the year Robson could only sign Bowyer whilst at other times we spent a fair few quid, Owen and Luque. I suspect Allardyce was promised a few quid in a season or two after he arrived.

Ashley was a dick from the beginning. His "strategic review" of the club at the start and "surprise" at the debt of the club were a load of crap, he knew all about it and never had any intention of spending a a penny on the club and bleeding it dry/promoting his tat for no outlay. Same thing that he's done with House of Fraser, Lillywhites and any other business he's taken over; they all go downhill. Probably only exception is Flannels.

As the Saudi's are involved it's almost guaranteed that they'll splash the cash to get ahead of PSG (Qatar) and Man City (UAE). I realise nothing is certain but it would go against everything they have ever done in the past and relations with their neighbours. Difficult to put into words but I have visited Saudi a few times for business and their national pride wouldn't allow them to play second fiddle to the other countries in the region.

I'm still very confident we'll stay up but that is only based on what I expect in the transfer window and deals are done early.

What major companies, Newcastle Brown Ale? We'll just have to disagree on whether coming from the bottom of the 2nd division to spending what we did in such a short time is organic growth or not. To make the strides that we did back then was not organic growth in my view as that would imply building a club over a much longer time frame and having the right foundations in place; by the end of that period we didn't even have a reserve team. Newcastle was falsely built up at the time through external debt to maximise the return for the Halls when they floated the club. After that we were never able to spend like that again. As I say, my major point was that no one complained back then when we were breaking transfer records which is something we had never done in our history.

That's not organic growth, 2nd to Man U after only 5 years, ahead of Liverpool. It was fuelled by debt, our income didn't cover a transfer like Shearer's together with our other expenditure at the time. That's why we had the years under Dalglish where we had to buy players like Rush, Pearce and Barnes. We were fairly skint due to our debt. For info, I know what you're saying about our commercial deals, for example I remember the Adidas advert with Ferdinand kicking a ball being shown around the country. Anyway, my major point is that we have had dramatic growth in the past and no one cared less; everyone loved it.

Our income didn't cover what we spent at that time, no where near. If this link for 1997 is correct then the money we were spending at the time was not matched by our income. The only difference between now and then is that our spending was fuelled by debt rather than the pockets of our owners. The point still stands that it wasn't organic growth and we grew rapidly by spending money, more than our competitors. In addition to what we spent on transfers and wages, also worth noting the money Hall and Shepard were taking out too, i.e. warehouse in Gibraltar.

We can still go the way of Man City and keep our identity. We went under Keegan, within a few years, from nearly being relegated from the 2nd division to breaking the world transfer records for a defender and a forward. Not a single person in Newcastle a that time thought we had lost our identity or complained about the money we spent. Keegan's teams weren't built over time, they followed a model not too dissimilar to Man City and Chelsea. As I said above, we broke the world transfer records for a defender and forward during that time.

I'd have Keegan back as a scout if possible. People have spoken in this thread about his man management skills, quite rightly, but his biggest asset was being able to spot a player; very few of his players were duffers.

Not if he's been fully vaccinated, no question at all if he got it on the NHS.

Qatar buying PSG was a condition of France (Sarkozy)/Platini, in his role at UEFA, supporting the Qatar World Cup bid. There was also some big investment in France (maybe an arms deal or gas, can't remember) attached to the World Cup. That's what I read in David Conn's book The Fall of the House of Fifa. Leeds weren't in the equation.

Great player, might have been a decent person or a dick but I don't care as long as they do it on the pitch. Would have been up there with the best of he could shoot properly. Shame Dyer was a replacement for Hamman when I'd like to have had both at the club. Went under the radar but I always thought Solano was the one who caused more problems for Robson. As soon as his place was in doubt, stories started coming out about having to leave for his family who were down South rather than fight for his place. Strange as he didn't have the same problems when he was past it and came back a second time. Goes to show the benefit of having the Chronicle onside.

Think it was more about Ginola being a half-season wonder. Was never the same after getting kicked off the park by Dixon in a league cup match (I think it was the cup) at Arsenal. He then went in a huff the summer after when he couldn't get a transfer to Barcelona. Batty was a much better player than Clark, different level in my opinion. A key midfielder in two teams that won the league says it all when compared to Clark.