morpeth mag

Striker and RB are my priorities

Remember watching Bridge play for England v Turkey at the SoL some years back. In the 1st half he gave the worst performace I've ever seen from an England international - but to be fair to him he totally turned it around for the second half. God knows Eriksson was a poor manager but he said the right thing that night.

don't worry we have a no loans, no 30 year olds policy, so we're safe - unless the free transfer rule over rides. Can only be saving all our cash for Benzema!!

I think you have to consider what the base spend for the club should be before you can decide if the £35m is supplementing this or not. I've just done some basic calculations that are there to be shot down. Based on a turnover of £100m plus I've given myself a player budget of £70m pa. This may be a little high but I'd guess is about the present position. With this budget I'm going to fund a squad of 25 players plus 10 youth players who may play first team football in the season. I'm going to have 5 star/international players, 6 first teamers, 9 who could expect to always expect to play or be on the bench and 5 utility players together with the 10 youths. I'm paying them £60k pw, £50k pw, £40k pw, 30k pw and £10k pw respectively for each category in my budget. Even with oncosts of 10% this is a total of £69m - just under budget. If you then compare who we have in each of these categories I get: Stars - Colo, Smith, Barton, Ben Arfa (4) 1st Team - Saylor, Tiote, Cabaye, Marveaux, Ba, Enrique, Xisco (7) Regular - Krul, Harper, Simpson, Williamson, Jonas, Ameobi, Best, Lovenkrands (8) Squad - Perch, Raylor, Kadar, Ferguson, Guthrie, Gosling (6) Youth - Ameobi, Foster, Abeid, LuaLua, Vuckic, Ranger, Soderberg, Tavernier, Richardson, Moyo (10) The allocation of players to status is my guess of their salary. From that you'll see that we have a full squad as we stand with our player budget used up. If you then assume that Smith and Xisco are a total waste of space and that they have one and two(?) years respectively left on their contracts then you might use £10m of the Any Carroll windfall to buy their spaces from the squad. This then enables you to sign two more players this Summer. Equally if you are able to move other players on like Best / Ranger then you free up spaces. Despite the earlier ridicule of some I still think a club like NUFC should budget for at least £10m pa in transfer/agent fees. By my reckoning we've spent £5m or so net to date this summer including agent fees etc. It is clear that we have a budget of some £20m plus left so I'm still expecting a top striker to arrive this Summer or else I think we can genuinly ask where has the cash gone.

how much for defoe? not sure i reate him but alot better than what we've got and might fit our new style.

Inbetween Jan and now we had the end of season dispute about player bonuses which allegedly featured MA v Nolan / Barton. What happens next?

The point is the selling club risk getting nothing in 12 months - whoever is the buyer - so their position is weaker with 12 months to go on a contract. In the case of the Zog Wigan can only play hardball if they are sure they can sell in this or the next window. Zog can play hardball on his £65k pw as he knows this is what he could get in 12 months. NUFC don't want to play a regular transfer fee and an out of contract salary. Who blinks first........not MA.

plus the £4m for Nolan, the salary savings for Nolan, Campbell & Kuqi plus the £10m plus that every club has to budget for every Summer for xfer dealings plus any money for future player sales and you can see there's quite a bit of shopping to be done yet

Souness talked a good game but was crud Depardieu talks a good game and...........where's the fence.........but I like what he's done so far in his first 8 months

I think Pardew just said he was one we were watching.

champions league footy and a govt that knew how to run the economy

if he was that consistant he'd buy Smith now and go up in my estimation

Would have loved him two years ago but he's a player to build a team around and we've rightly chosen to do that with HBA.

you knew it was trouble when the owner had No 17 on his back - thank god his player appreciation seems to be improving

Was excellent in the championship but you just get the feeling he hasn't the mental strength for the PL

Maybe of Freddie was still in charge but I'm kinda happy with the current buying strategy

......and you give HBA a choice of Benzema or Shola as a partner for next season and............

they've made up now - it was just a bit of rivalry as to who was the best young thing - they've both played together for France since splitting clubs with no bother

said all along that the No1 target is Benzema - and with Neymar bound for RM it's just whether we can convince the player. Oh and find £20m.

Hope he stays - but he won't be as good without Enrique to link with.

so does that mean he's sleeping with Ashley? Dedication beyond the call.

Must be struggling to get a welsh translation of the offer

he needs to stop backing off, run with his man and provide more quality going forward. Will never play for England and should be a squad player.

He's got another two years - decision time should be next summer not now

I like what he's trying to do. I we're going to plat 433 or 4231 its important the full backs get forward to provide width. Hope Enrique stays but if not he'll need replacing and in my view simpson should be a back-up so a top RB is needed. On top of that we need at least one more striker.