OzzieMandias

Like that Didi Diggler we've been linked with.

Sounds like a made-up name.

While watching CL Final... Female friend (Chelsea fan): Why isn't Gerrard captain of Man United tonight?

So you think that Mourhinho or Wenger would be risky or crap appointments in case they [with hindsight of course] failed ? Not that reaching 2 FA Cup Finals for the first time in 24 years is a disaster, but we won't go there. Dumbo. Too much coffee this morning? Spare us all the deluded ramblings and tatty straw man and attempt to address the facts. You do know what a fact is, don't you? Here's a fact: Out of five managerial appointments made by Shepherd, only one was a success. Twenty percent. Pretty pathetic, eh?

He got one appointment right out of five. That's a fact, dumbo.

The prob for Man City is that Thaksin will only be throwing his ill-gotten gains around for as long as he still feels the need to try and buy popularity. Rather have Fat Fred than that bastard, tbh. I hope he ends up in prison.

He got one appointment right out of five. Given that it's the one of the most important decisions a chairman can make, that's one piss-poor record.

I probably do. Aye.

Freddie fucked off, debt cleared, Allardyce gone........aye, definitely going backwards. Aye, and one place higher in the table than last season -- clearly a case of terminal decline.

Nonsense. People talk whiny, scaremongering bollocks on here all the time.

More useful on this thread would be a smiley of a bairn pissing his pants.

My first thought also. Didi Digard?

quick reply, but if we had won just one Cup Final, by virtue of playing the smoggies instead of the premiership champions, would your perspective of the Halls and Shepherd be different ? And yet, the Champions League is supposed to be the be all and end all these days ? Leeds fans were in their element during those European Cup semi final days etc, they would hardly have been anything else. The ones I know were anyway. They also condemn Ridsdale for BORROWING money to buy too many players. They know they aren't big enough for that, they certainly know they don't have the support of Newcastle. As for Everton, its taken them 6 years (SIX) to get to 5th in the league, at least 4 of those were watching Allardyce type stuff, and we already know the answer to the question would we really want to watch that for 4 years. And they aren't challenging their neighbours, nothing like it, and when they upgrade their wooden delapitated stadium, they will be in debt Maybe it won't stop them from winning a cup or two though, just like the current top 4 clubs though Anyway mate, your're cherry picking, the vast majority of clubs aren't successful because they don't spend money, not vice versa, I held up the mackems as an example. They are a big club too you know ? I'M cherry picking, ME?? masterful, masterful mate it's taken liverpool over a decade of big spending to scrape 4th every year mate, and everton making 5th in SIX years (i'll ignore that 4th place they had just in homage to you) is considered bad by you? don't bother wheeling out the cup wins 'cause i know already amazing...i was always under the impression you had unrealistic ambitions for the club and you've just confirmed them, just how much bigger than leeds do you actually think we are? if you think under the old board or new NUFC getting back to anywhere near the top 4-5 by spending big alone then you are severely deluded, it's unsustainable for a club our size in the current circumstances of the 2008 EPL we had 80m of debt did we not? and we'd have needed to increase that debt significantly to even come close to the top five, but yeah EVERTON are the mugs err.......Liverpool have been winning trophies since 1958, when Shankly took over as manager. During that time, they have ALWAYS set high standards of footballer, and paid the money when they wanted the absolute top player. As UV has also said, loads of clubs are run like Everton, and get precisely nowhere, so you are cherry picking. Would you really swap our last decade - and a further 5 if you like - with Evertons ? I think we are a canny bit bigger than Leeds. We always were, until Don Revie took them over at the same time as McKeag, Westwood etc ran us into the ground for 40 years taking us in the opposite direction. Also - they were massively in debt and that is WITHOUT doing anything to their council owned crap stadium. Do you think that these clubs are going to be able to carry on for decades with the stadiums and avoid going into this crippling debt that you appear to think prevents clubs from winning trophies - I've quoted the top 4 already as role models, I have no idea why you want to choose mediocre teams as role models instead. THAT is what I call unrealistic ambitions and belief in your club. Makes me wonder how many people on here really understand what mediocrity is all about, my guess is not too many. By the way, please point out where I have EVER said that ANY of the top clubs - ie meaning us as in following the way they do it - have done what they have done "by spending big alone" fair enough on the spending big alone thing, they don't just do that, but then i don't recall saying YOU said it either, perhaps implied it was your primary or maybe ONLY judgement on how well a football club is run just out of interest are you not cherry picking your favourite decade of the clubs history and trotting it out to suit you in every situation? you're the guy who always refers to a decade so when did that start? 92? 94? 96? whenever you're starting it add ten then start the argument with the new decade; so 2002, 2004, 2006 onwards? all ratshit basically in the grand scheme of things when you start that "decade" would you swap our last decade with evertons in the 1980's? such a question is just as relevant and meaningless as when you reference liverpool circa 1958 and leeds under revie while at the same time talking about our last decade? laughable... i'll combine both your replies into one with the next bit; don't try and tell me what i advocate, i'll say it myself when i have an opinion...i raised this whole point about the balance between succeeding and financial sense/suicide (call it what you will) - i don't deal in absolutes, idiots do that, so i can see the virtue of running a club the way everton do, the way blackburn do; it doesn't mean i automatically think we should copy everything they do as i've told you in the past i think there's a certain strength to your argument about building on the potential of the club; to me we had 2 times to do that, under keegan mk1 and robson and we basically f***ed them both up with the best of intentions...you might think we're as big you do but cementing our place on either of those occaisions would have sealed it - as it is in everywhere else but your mind we're seen as a bit of a failure all round, a bit of a joke to many just so we're clear this is what i think - we had a go, a good go at success and i applaud shepherd/hall or whoever you want to name for it, i had some of my best footballing moments during the period and i doubt i'd swap them for anything...i remember walking out of wembley after arsenal turned us over and thinking how glorious we were in failure and how numb they were in victory, i'm not sure i'd swap places with them then to be honest 'cause being us is something they'll never understand THAT SAID there surely has to come a point where it became clear that the money we spent in this over a decade had caught up to us and realism needed to kick in, if you can't see that i pity you, but 80m in debt with an out of control wage bill and a team utterly unable to get out of the bottom half isn't gonna fix itself overnight is it? if i hold everton up as an example of anything it's of a club who were riddled in debt and stuck to a plan that's got them from the brink of relegation to europe in a few years, surely you can see that this is our only hope short term? we need to get to a point where have a decent balanced squad and can spend on the big players to make our claim AGAIN...if we go out now and spend 50m on 3 magnificent players or whatever i simply think we'll end up back where we were 'cause the squad is imbalanced and weak it's what needed to happen under bobby - he spent 3 (?) seasons balancing the books and building a nice tidy squad then hit us with the summer of robert and bellamy and we took off again and the spending started, THIS is all i'm advocating I'm not cherrry picking anything. My point is that to succeed and sustain success, you MUST have players the top 4 want themselves, and this means buying players for the top fees, or they will ( key point ). As I keep saying, they haven't spent the money themselves if they didnt' think it was necessary. As a slight aside, the best team we have had at Newcastle in the last 50 years was also done by spending like the other big boys. If nothing else in what is being said here can be taken on board by you - perhaps because you are younger - then surely you can grasp this particular truth ? You will not challenge these teams by taking the approach the also rans take ie leaving the big players to someone else. With a good manager it will take you so far and thats all. A club with the 3rd biggest crowd in the UK ? Well there is something wrong if they can't compete with the other big boys. I know the reason why you and others reject this, its just because you feel the need to reject everything the fat b****** did, just because he's the fat b******. Thats true and you know it. Which brings me onto your point about the last 10 or 15 years. Personally, I see it as 15 years, but as a lot of people seem to split the era of the Halls and Shepherd into 2 parts - which I don't because nothing really changed other than the figurehead and spokesperson of the group - I do this just to humour them and point out that the past decade wasn't really so bad as they make out. It's pretty obvious that SJH was far better at PR than Shepherd, but personally, I don't give a monkeys for PR. The only PR that concerns me is winning, and 52000 fans every home game - over half of which weren't interested in the club for years previously - must have been attracted by something. Basically, if you are saying the expansion of the stadium was a bad move, then you are massively wrong. There is just no way that anybody can say that this was not a long awaited and excellent move by the club. Add to that the new training academey, facilities etc. I would have certainly swapped our decade in the 1960's, 70's and 80's with Everton, I'd have done that before you could say Gordon Lee, but no way would i have swapped the last 15 years. Not a chance. I don't disagree that we messed Keegan up the first time, but its rather strange that nobody mentions this, this is probably because it was the major shareholders decision to take the club onto the stock exchange though and unfortunately, as with Ashley, it seems some people are beyond criticism whereas others are damned whatever they do. I'm not denying that things went wrong with the appointment of Souness, and never have. Others on here supported him until the end though so there is no point in telling me that the club spent money on s*** players and undersold good players, because I was one who said it was going to happen. When you talk about realism, you should realise that nobody appoints the "right" manager all the time, thats why the top 4 clubs haven't always been the top 4 and they won't remain so either. That is realistic. You have to accept that everybody makes mistakes. When it comes down to it in the end though, you are better off with an ambitous board that will reach out rather than one playing the prudency game and operating a "sell to buy" policy. Are you prepared to see the club lose top players, and lose out to top players, by capping wages in future ? Do you seriously think that a club like us with the support we have should be operating at the lower levels of the likes of Portsmouth and blackburn ? you're not reading what i've posted, you're putting words in my mouth to suit yourself so there's little point in continuing NE5? Outrageous accusation!

plc. Huge, massive change. You were asleep and didn't notice? Shepherd wasn't much good at that either. Aye, but one successful appointment out of five is a piss-poor record. Stop making flimsy excuses and face the fact, for once. see my sig. You must have been dreaming about this Stephen Spence fella. You must have also been dreaming when you thought that Rob Lee was keith Gillespie mackems.gif and you must have been dreaming when you said that Souness would turn into the new Alex Ferguson just for getting rid of the "cancer" like he did at Manu mackems.gif Pleased you think appointing a manager who had won 4 league titles with 2 different clubs, 2 FA Cups and 3 manager of the year awards was a bad appointment. Better than Mourhinho and at least on a par with Wenger. Night Ozzie. You don't improve, there's a few facts for you to dream about. White flag from NE5.

plc. Huge, massive change. You were asleep and didn't notice? Shepherd wasn't much good at that either. Aye, but one successful appointment out of five is a piss-poor record. Stop making flimsy excuses and face the fact, for once.

I disagree completely!! Are you some kind of mackem WUM???!?

So it goes.

So there's no such thing as a poor decision. It's a lottery, as UV suggests. Best thing to do is just buy a load of players and hope for the best. Sorry, but whether a decision was good or bad depends ENTIRELY on the outcome of that decision.

What else could possibly define a poor decision?

Was my decision to buy a lottery ticket in a roll over week a good one or a bad one? When it turns out that you've wasted your money, are you going to argue that it was a "good decision at the time"? Painfully stupid analogy, tbh.

I love this "it was a good decision at the time" horseshit. If it was a bad decision it was a bad decision.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/gabriele_marcotti/article4045215.ece

Meanwhile... http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/06/01/quotas_wont_cure_money_worries.html

If you can back something up, then it's not a rumour. Face it, the reason papers print this stuff is because people are hungry for it, bollocks or not.

Oh, and in terms of GDP per capita, Australia ranks a lowly 22nd.