chicago_shearer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/aug/05/joe-kinnear-newcastle-united-mike-ashley-michael-owen

Moat fronts the American bid.  Has this been mentioned?

Keith Harris, Seymour Pierce's executive chairman, has been involved in long negotiations with a group fronted by Moat, a box-holder at St James' Park. Moat, who is believed to have backing from the United States, is now regarded as Harris's preferred bidder. If the sale goes through, it could be good news for Alan Shearer, who took over as temporary manager for the last eight games of last season and is keen to lead the club back to the Premier League. Moat was chairman of Shearer's testimonial committee.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkVXgW6jQFA&feature=related

Shit song really. 

Yeah, whatever.  Let the Moat revolution begin!

It would be a match made in heaven.  Jerry and NUFC were made for one another. 

1) How much money would you need to have in the bank before you were willing to buy the club in the first place? (assume club can be purchased for £100m)

800 billion American dollars.

2) Who do you appoint as manager?

Whoever the hell I want.

3) Do you take a hands on approach with the clubs operations, or do you appoint a chief executive?

Hands on.  Completely.  L'equipe c'est moi.  My money, my club.  Every decision, down to the brand of tea in the tea pot, goes through me.

4) Do you appoint a director of football?

Yes.  Me.

5) How much money per season on transfers?

Shit loads.  Man City style.

6) Who controls how transfer budget is spent?

ME.

7) Do losses (excluding transfer fees) come out of the transfer budget or out of your wallet?

There will be no losses.  Basically we will loan a lot of money from China, funnel it through various ghost companies and disguise our losses.  Enron style. 

8) What is your overall business plan?

Step 1.  Sell out.  Pepsi ads on everything, NUFC sponsoring the Taj Mahal, etc.  Every match begins like the Apollo Creed v. Drago fight in Rocky IV.  Step 2. Win league.  Step 3. Celebrate with a 72 hour binge of alcohol, cocaine and orgiastic sex.

OK, got bored. 

Altidore to Hull.  FFS.  I'd rather have them relegated than the mackems.

Don't know if we had one of these last year, but here it goes:

 

Premiership

Top 4 (in order): Chelsea, Man Utd, Everton, Liverpool

Relegation (in order): Hull, Wolves, Portsmouth

Dark horses: Fulham > Tottenham, Wigan > West Ham

Top Scorer: Drogba

 

Championship

Promotion: Boro, Sheff Utd, Ipswich - Newcastle to finish 18th

Relegation: Plymouth, Blackpool, Scunthorpe

Dark horses: 

Top Scorer: Leroy Lita

 

League Cup: Chelsea

FA Cup: Everton

 

Europe

La Liga: Real Madrid

Serie A: AC Milan

Bundesliga: Bayern

Europa League: Fulham 

Champions League: Real Madrid

 

Other

World Player of the Year: Ronaldo

Who'll be NUFC's top scorer?: Nile Ranger

How many will Nile Ranger score?: 12

First Premiership Managerial casualty: Mark Hughes (sacked), Arsene Wenger (resigns)

Where will Man City finish?: 8th

Will Gareth Bale win a match?: Yes

Hughton is a non-starter. He looks like he's constantly shitting himself as it is...can you imagine him having the added responsibility of buying and selling players? Let's get real here.

If I was a coach and my incompetent employer kept asking me to become a stopgap manager of a largely talentless group of players for an indefinite period of time, in a relegation battle, with no remit to buy players or make big changes to a losing team, I would probably look the same way.

I'm not saying he would be anybody's first choice, but he is a more practical and far less embarrassing alternative to David O'Leary or Joe Kinnear or Terry Veneables.  Neither of whom will be likely to move over when Ashley finally goes (whenever that may be).  There is a reason that normal clubs don't touch these guys with a barge pole.  If you can't sell the club, any decision you make will be unpopular and risky since no good managers will want the job.  Stick with Hughton and give him some authority with the players instead of labeling him an 'interim' boss. 

Hughton are you insane? He has claimed on 3 occasions that he's not up to the job!

http://www.journallive.co.uk/nufc/newcastle-united-news/2009/06/30/hughton-hoping-his-third-stint-as-manager-is-brief-61634-24019703/

Are you talking about that?  Because all he has said (to my knowledge) is that the club desperately need a full time manager.  He didn't say he was incapable or unwilling to have a go.  So why not him? 

We are banking on the fact that the same players that disappointed us next season are going to do the business in the Championship.  Hughton didn't have good results as an interim manager in the Premiership, but I don't see any reason why he doesn't deserve the same benefit of the doubt. 

And then promptly drop dead from a heart attack or abuse a journalist.  He is an embarrassment.  Old, out of touch, unhealthy and a total liability. 

Hughton is, by most accounts, a good young coach.  He could quite easily have quit and found a stable coaching job in the Premiership.  He didn't.  We've asked him to fill in several times now, so let's just let him continue but give him some actual authority with which to do his job.  After all, we are crossing our fingers and hoping that Andy Carroll, Kader, Baheng etc. are Championship quality players so let's appoint Hughton and see if he is a Championship quality manager.  I might get the Patrick Stewart facepalm, but I'd honestly rather take my chances with Hughton than appoint O'Leary, Kinnear, El Tel, John Gregory or whatever washed up mid-90s ex-manager Ashley can humiliate us with. 

If this club isn't getting sold, take it off the market, appoint Hughton on a one year contract and give him the chance to buy players FFS.  At least some free transfers.

Rather have Hughton.  Provides some stability in training and knows the players.  Ashley can reward his loyalty and see what he can do when he isn't thrown in at the deep end. 

Same players, same problems, a summer of NOTHING and quite possibly the return of Joe Kinnear or worse.  This season is going to be as enjoyable as a ten month colonoscopy performed with a gardening trowel.

What is offensive about that song?

Well they are just quoting a Times article in this case. 

Newcastle United in limbo as wary buyers shun Championship club

 

 

• Two investors have backed out after due diligence

 

 

• Warning that there could be no sale until next year

 

 

Louise Taylor

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 August 2009 18.00 BST

 

Newcastle United could be left in limbo for six months or longer as the current owner Mike Ashley struggles to find a buyer for the St James' Park club.

Newcastle United face the depressing prospect of several more months in limbo after it emerged that the stricken Championship club might not be sold until next year. Mike Ashley, the present owner, has spent the summer desperately trying to offload an acquisition he has come to regard as an expensive mistake but he is struggling to find a buyer.

 

Although several consortiums have expressed interest and at least two have undertaken exhaustive due diligence, potential prospective purchasers remain extremely wary of wading into the assorted challenges posed at St James' Park where the annual player wage bill still exceeds £60m and the overdraft is now around £35m.

 

"To ask how long it [the mooted sale] will take is an impossible question to answer," revealed a source close to efforts to find Newcastle a new owner. "It could go through in due course or it could take six months."

http://www.newcastle-online.org/nufcforum/index.php?action=post;topic=62360.9210;num_replies=9229

 

Silly bitch hasn't got a clue

 

Can't even get the wage bill near the truth for f*** sake

She had it right about Keegan. 

Hughton. 

Why the hell would Gordon Strachan want to join a Championship club, under a nationally maligned and incompetent owner who has every intention of leaving at the first financially opportune moment and leaving his position at the mercy of the next owners?

Why would Alan Curbishley want to inherit a massive wage bill, players that want to leave, holes in the squad you could drive a bus through and the pressure that comes from supporters that still inexplicably think we are going to walk this league with the same group of losers that embarrassed us last season?

Jesus Christ, get a grip.  Strachan, Coppell?  This job was career suicide 12 months ago. 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/football_league/article6736633.ece?token=null&offset=24&page=3

Times pre-season prediction has us finishing 20th. 

Now that one isn't so bad. 

Instead of black armbands for the players, they could instead pay a fitting tribute by exhibiting the same level of passion he did for once in their lives.  You can be damn sure he would have wanted that more than armbands or moments of silence.

2:22  "Dos equipes, attack defence, attack defence....no difference...des jugadores, ons jugadores."

Love him.

Same s***, different arab.

Serious Manboob was a fictional Persian, not a fictional Arab. 

Gentlemen, Nicky Butt is unhappy and wants to leave.  This should be a time of celebration, not of pointless bickering about former managers.

He'd walk this league, so he would be a loss.

Yes he would.  Because he lost the ability to run about 5 years ago.

This great news. 

Top level football is screaming out for a personality like Bobby again. There are just too many boring, wooden Managers out there. Not quite sure where the next one is going to come from though.

A rare breed

I don't think it's surprising that one of the few managers to emerge in the last decade with any personality, style and success was Mourinho.  A man that owes everything in his career to Sir Bobby.