OzzieMandias

Greek fans are fucking mad, though.

What you say above is good and correct and I agree with it, as I always have. It is difficult to estimate how much of this MESS was Ashley's fault, but (as owner) he has to take by far the bulk of the blame. Now, without you having met him, or 'seen the photos', I would imagine you will agree with that. The reasons Keegan left (that you mention) are all valid, as I have always said, and are undoubtedly part of it. BUT, many people continue to rationalise and over-simplify the reason why he left, "latching on" to the Ashley-and-funds-and-choice-of-players, thing. It is most unlikely that anything as simple as that would have caused him to leave - it he came here to "finish the job" etc - with the speed with which he did. It just does not FIT. It smells. There must be more to it than just that. There is a lot more complexity in why Keegan returned and why he left so soon, that the simply-presented "reasons" of the funds and choice of players, that so many people (as said) happily latch on to as being the be-all-and-end-all of the situation. C'mon, the whole thing STINKS. I really cannot find any other way to say this now. I have described the "Ashley & Funds" bit, as the 'last chapter' and the 'last page', and I have tried many other ways to get the message across here - so I can do no more. Simply, there is more to it than that - it stinks to high heaven. He came back as soon as the Halls and Shepherds were out of the club, he came in thinking Mike Ashley was going to at least take the club forward, it then became apparent that Ashley had no intension to spend and he was going to reduce the operating costs of the club. KK couldn't deal with Ashley, Lambias and Wise as they were f*** nuts without a clue so was either sacked or quit. I'm not sure where you get this "must be another reason" for him to return from. Are you basing your argument for KK coming back with other motives on that shitty lazy article in one of the papers sayng it was because Soccer Circus was struggling and he needed cash. The same Soccer Circus which is still going even in the recession. Keegan, the person, the "motives" . . . have to share the blame for our demise with Ashley. They have both 'done us in' for the next few years, at least. Playing in the Europa League, The Champions League and challenging for the League Title - are still a long way off - thanks to BOTH of them . . . This club would never have played champions league football in it's history were it not for Kevin Keegan. And yet it's apparently partly his fault we're not very close to it now. Fucking staggering. C'mon! People can't do something right one decade, and then fuck it up the next? We all have our successes and failures, and KK is just another human being... though you wouldn't guess it from the way some people seem to see him.

Because the £10 million compensation he is reported to be seeking is a major issue in discussions with banks and potential buyers – ten percent of the asking price for the club!

At the time I interpreted that as a consequence of him having been out of football for a while and, by his own admission, not having being paying much attention to it. The only names he could come up with were these ultra-famous, rather obvious ones.

And there it is. It really is fucking easy to make this club a success as all one needs is common footballing sense. Ashley and his cronies have clearly lacked this and here we are, slowly clawing back to normalcy despite the fat one's ineptitude. I wish. If it was as easy as you make out how come the people who have done the best job of trying in over half a bloody century are despised by so many and thought of as shit, unless the "so many" who think this way are total know-nowts? You tell me, mate. Because they lost their touch many years before they relinquished control, and left the club in a godawful fucking mess. Obviously. Which as I said earlier to someone else, this would make sense if people like you hadn't been rubbishing the previous Board way before they "lost control" as you call it. You weren't happy with top 6 finishes. You said it was shit. You really should be quiet about this otherwise I'll have to remind everyone that you were one of the main whingers about the previous Board during the time we finished 4th, 3rd then 5th. I may go on to remind people that despite having signed Woodgate in January 2003, Darren Ambrose and also Lee Bowyer (England international at the time) on a free during summer 2003, you slagged the Board for not spending millions that summer. I might even remind people that you then amazingly backed the destruction of the team by Souness and the bankrolling of him by the Board to the tune of ~£50m, then you ironically slag the Board for spending despite your boring mantra of "judge him when he's built his own team." Mate, you're full of shit most of the time, almost everything you post is based on 20/20 hindsight and is still tripe. If you can't respond to a post without trying to shove words into someone else's mouth, perhaps you should acknowledge that talkboard discussions aren't really your strong point, chum. As for our failure to strengthen a demoralised squad in the summer of 2003 -- the absolute pivotal moment in the decline of this club, the moment where the old regime started pissing away everything that had been achieved by Sir Bobby Robson -- I still fail to see what the purchase of Woodgate six months earlier has to do with it. Chronology is obviously not your strongpoint either. But you score pretty high on selective memory. A weak response, tbh. And total bollocks as usual. If you could just for once leave aside the ad hominem blather, are you denying that the old lot lost their touch years before they relinquished control and left the club in a real mess? Just trying and failing to keep up with you. Fact is, nobody comes out with more personal insults than you do. You've been doing it since you first appeared here, which is why you attract it in return. If there was any point in debating anything with you I would answer your question honestly. Sadly, there's no point. So are you denying that the old lot lost their touch years before they relinquished control and left the club in a real mess?

Good thread!

Degenerated? At least these two discussions have meant we are talking about 'events' as opposed to 'non-events'. Still, NOT what this thread should be about, really. So, who is going to win the takeover war? (1) Incompetent, 'thick-as-they-come' ASHLEY. (2) Pauper, 'have-you-got-10p-for-the-meter', MOAT or (3) Mega Rich, 'but-do-they-exist', YANKS. Wow . . . what a set of choices! Yeah, be just our luck to be bought by a bunch of mega-rich Yanks only to find out that they don't exist.

And there it is. It really is fucking easy to make this club a success as all one needs is common footballing sense. Ashley and his cronies have clearly lacked this and here we are, slowly clawing back to normalcy despite the fat one's ineptitude. I wish. If it was as easy as you make out how come the people who have done the best job of trying in over half a bloody century are despised by so many and thought of as shit, unless the "so many" who think this way are total know-nowts? You tell me, mate. Because they lost their touch many years before they relinquished control, and left the club in a godawful fucking mess. Obviously. Which as I said earlier to someone else, this would make sense if people like you hadn't been rubbishing the previous Board way before they "lost control" as you call it. You weren't happy with top 6 finishes. You said it was shit. You really should be quiet about this otherwise I'll have to remind everyone that you were one of the main whingers about the previous Board during the time we finished 4th, 3rd then 5th. I may go on to remind people that despite having signed Woodgate in January 2003, Darren Ambrose and also Lee Bowyer (England international at the time) on a free during summer 2003, you slagged the Board for not spending millions that summer. I might even remind people that you then amazingly backed the destruction of the team by Souness and the bankrolling of him by the Board to the tune of ~£50m, then you ironically slag the Board for spending despite your boring mantra of "judge him when he's built his own team." Mate, you're full of shit most of the time, almost everything you post is based on 20/20 hindsight and is still tripe. If you can't respond to a post without trying to shove words into someone else's mouth, perhaps you should acknowledge that talkboard discussions aren't really your strong point, chum. As for our failure to strengthen a demoralised squad in the summer of 2003 -- the absolute pivotal moment in the decline of this club, the moment where the old regime started pissing away everything that had been achieved by Sir Bobby Robson -- I still fail to see what the purchase of Woodgate six months earlier has to do with it. Chronology is obviously not your strongpoint either. But you score pretty high on selective memory. A weak response, tbh. And total bollocks as usual. If you could just for once leave aside the ad hominem blather, are you denying that the old lot lost their touch years before they relinquished control and left the club in a real mess?

With the debt we're carrying, we seem to need big investment just to stay in the same place. Any club with terrible manangement is going to need more investment then normal just to stand still. Which is why some common sense and an idea about Football is much more important then lots of money (especially at a club with so much financial muscle of its own). Whether Moat actually has that is another question of course, but that's the question I'd be asking. I think we need both things. We'd need some kind of Nobel Prize-winning football genius to get us back into the top half of the Premiership without substantial investment.

And there it is. It really is fucking easy to make this club a success as all one needs is common footballing sense. Ashley and his cronies have clearly lacked this and here we are, slowly clawing back to normalcy despite the fat one's ineptitude. I wish. If it was as easy as you make out how come the people who have done the best job of trying in over half a bloody century are despised by so many and thought of as shit, unless the "so many" who think this way are total know-nowts? You tell me, mate. Because they lost their touch many years before they relinquished control, and left the club in a godawful fucking mess. Obviously. Which as I said earlier to someone else, this would make sense if people like you hadn't been rubbishing the previous Board way before they "lost control" as you call it. You weren't happy with top 6 finishes. You said it was shit. You really should be quiet about this otherwise I'll have to remind everyone that you were one of the main whingers about the previous Board during the time we finished 4th, 3rd then 5th. I may go on to remind people that despite having signed Woodgate in January 2003, Darren Ambrose and also Lee Bowyer (England international at the time) on a free during summer 2003, you slagged the Board for not spending millions that summer. I might even remind people that you then amazingly backed the destruction of the team by Souness and the bankrolling of him by the Board to the tune of ~£50m, then you ironically slag the Board for spending despite your boring mantra of "judge him when he's built his own team." Mate, you're full of shit most of the time, almost everything you post is based on 20/20 hindsight and is still tripe. If you can't respond to a post without trying to shove words into someone else's mouth, perhaps you should acknowledge that talkboard discussions aren't really your strong point, chum. As for our failure to strengthen a demoralised squad in the summer of 2003 -- the absolute pivotal moment in the decline of this club, the moment where the old regime started pissing away everything that had been achieved by Sir Bobby Robson -- I still fail to see what the purchase of Woodgate six months earlier has to do with it. Chronology is obviously not your strongpoint either. But you score pretty high on selective memory.

With the debt we're carrying, we seem to need big investment just to stay in the same place.

Well, I guess if you simply ignore the financial picture then everything's just rosy.

West Ham? Get real. They're in a whole heap of trouble. http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/content/west_ham_united_football_club/story.aspx?brand=RECOnline&category=Hammers&tBrand=RecOnline&tCategory=ahammersnew&itemid=WeED09%20Sep%202009%2017%3A00%3A46%3A760

The idea that it doesn't matter that Moat has no cash is naive in the extreme, by the way.

And there it is. It really is fucking easy to make this club a success as all one needs is common footballing sense. Ashley and his cronies have clearly lacked this and here we are, slowly clawing back to normalcy despite the fat one's ineptitude. I wish. If it was as easy as you make out how come the people who have done the best job of trying in over half a bloody century are despised by so many and thought of as shit, unless the "so many" who think this way are total know-nowts? You tell me, mate. Because they lost their touch many years before they relinquished control, and left the club in a godawful fucking mess. Obviously.

He's set out his stall. I've held my hands up.

Flatter to deceive.

Agents are never free.

The main reason all the prospective buyers talk about appointing Shearer is because it's the only solution they can conceive to deal with the problem of a fractious fanbase.

Films can feed fashions or fads, but they don't create this kind of problem. It's hardly new that either West Ham or Millwall have sizeable thug elements among their supporters. Hell, it's a tradition that's been passed down across generations. It's like all the fuss there was when A Clockwork Orange came out in the early 1970s. Stanley Kubrick himself withdrew the film from UK distribution because it was widely assumed to be responsible for increased street violence. And sure, gangs in Newcastle started naming themselves after the movie – Longbenton Aggro became Longbenton Clockwork – and skinheeds started wearing bowler hats for a while. But of course the skins had been around for ages already, and in my memory (I was a teenager at the time) the violence was no worse than it before. (It was a good look, like: Crombies, Sta-Prest, highly polished Dr Martens, check Ben Sherman, bowler hat, and sometimes an umbrella with a sharpened point.)

Old Wembley, Euro 96 final. Then probably the Germany 1-England 5 at the old Munich Olympia Stadion. Biggest non-football crowds I was ever in were the afternoon demonstrations in Wenceslas Square in Prague during the Velvet Revolution in 1989 -- 400,000 or so.

I guess, if Ashley has to keep the club, he doesn't want a manager who is the fans' choice -- especially if he can't meet his demands. Look what happened last time, from his point of view. I absolutely loathe and detest O'Leary, but in the circs he wouldn't be soooo bad a choice. We're not in a position to attract the top candidates. He'll have the crowd on his back from the off, though.

Let's not all forget that the club was sold quickly last time -- to the benefit of the sellers and to the detriment of the club. Maybe this slow process will work better for us in the long run.

Unlikely to be what'shisname himself being shown round, though. Be some minions with shiny briefcases.

We've no idea what Shearer will be like as a manager. So I'll go for the cash.