OzzieMandias

Well he's on £50k, they should be able to offer him £15k, i think if he wants paying we should only match what they'd offer for his final year. He's been told he's not wanted, he's made his money, now is his chance to make peace with the Leeds fans who despise him for moving to Manu. Who can afford 15K for Alan Smith in the Championship?

I can see us having to pay off some or all of his contract just to get the squad place back. Probably the best we can hope for is that some Championship or League Two club takes him and we end up paying 95 percent of his wages.

Pardew is almost certainly an anglicization of the French "par dieu". http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/pardew

Or diner à deux.

Or a rendezvous. Or a ménage à trois. Or a soirée.

Or a rendezvous.

Take time off work for an extra-marital affair.

Write a letter, have some toast, eat some fries.

What does that mean? Some Newcastle fans don't want a mobile midfield? More like some people want to slash their wrists because we've sold Nolan and Barton's in a bad mood.

This is an interesting point. It's not just the fact that they'll have fellow French-speakers about the place that makes us now an attractive destination for young French players. They also know the national team is more likely to take note of them.

Very true. When did we last have a full pre-season with a bunch of new players?

I've met Morrissey. Twice. He IS a bit of a twat. (Johnny Marr, otoh, is an excellent bloke.)

Good post. My 2 major concerns so far would be 5 and 2, 2 especially as I think there's a big value in keeping senior players and economically speaking good older players usually have earned decent contracts. It brings up a bit of a paradox in the sense that we cant/won't offer good senior players who's experience are priceless the kind of contracts they're experience and ability warrants. Not sure if any of that makes sense!! It seems the club basically offended both Nolan and Barton by offering terms but refusing to discuss them, when the players' agents were coming along prepared with a negotiating position. In a way I think the club's right not to get involved in these contract games. We've clearly thought it through -- OK, if we we're going to keep this player, then this is how far we're prepared to go. They've decided how much they think the experience you speak of is worth. In a general sense, given the overall financial lunacy of football -- unprecedented riches coming in but even big clubs in deep financial problems because all the money is going to the players -- it's about time someone stood up to it. I'm not sure I would have chosen for us to be in the vanguard here, but there we are.

Another striker, a right-back, a left-back if we lose Enrique.

It's been a fascinating transfer window so far. Some fairly random thoughts... 1. We've obviously thought everything through pretty carefully in advance. That's good to see. The early bird catches the Bosmans. 2. We've become pretty hardball on negotiations with the older players whose contracts are running down. It's clear that we presented deals to Nolan and Barton and that was it: If you want to stay with us here are the terms, take it, or run out your contract, or leave on a transfer. We're not actually negotiating. This may change once the old high-earners have all moved on. 3. Enrique an exception because his best years are still ahead of him. In this instance it's the player who's not negotiating. The Enrique situation also puts the lie to the idea that we're looking to move on all of our best players. We clearly want to keep him, but he thinks he can do better. 4. No one is sacred and every player has their price. It's certainly the Tottenham model (Carrick, Berbatov) to accept bids for players if they exceed valuation (Carroll, possibly Nolan could be looked at like this, and certainly Best if we can get £4 million for him). 5. Notion that we're replacing too much experience with PL-untested players is a reasonable worry. 6. The club's aim is to pull off the difficult trick of improving the team/squad while reducing the wage bill, and this is the context in which it all has to be understood. Sure, there are risks involved. It's a tight-rope act. But I think we're looking reasonably steady up there.

We'd have no doors left if he was 3rd choice.

He won't be away until he's run down his contract, unless a CL club comes in and offers him more money than he's on at the moment. All this Twitter bollocks, demonstrating that he's still a magnet for negative headlines, will make it even less likely than it was already that a "bigger club" will come in for him. It also shafts any chance there might have been for him to come to a new agreement with us. Result: until next summer he'll continue trousering more money every week than most of us will earn in a year. We can only hope that he'll stop being disruptive in the period until he moves on a Bosman to Stoke or wherever.

Yay!

It is high comedy, this, like. It's almost as funny as when the mackems had to sell Lee Clark after he was photographed posing in someone's SMB t-shirt on Wembley Way.

You're happy -- nay, eager -- to snout out ancient, dusty quotes from discussions of yore, but can't be arsed to look through one thread for the information you want?

Really don't mean this in a cuntish way, but it's frightening to think about where we would be if he hadn't had that heart attack. You think he would have kept us up, like? Because if he hadn't, he'd have got the sack, and everything else would have happened pretty much as it did, IMO.

3 goals and Asprilla become one. For me, in an era when for the last 5 years or so the vast majority of our players have been proper mercenaries, crocks or scumbags or all 3, Nolan represented the good things about this club of ours and our game and he carried himself well as captain. It hardly ever gets mentioned but he did a s*** load of community work, he visited 4 hospitals in one day for example and helped with the club's foundation a great deal too. He also scored a hat-trick against the mackems and scored a s*** load from midfield in consecutive seasons. Not bad for a very limited player. All well and good, and I think most people admire him for that. However would you have advocated a 5 year deal on said wages? I would have yes. Thank God you're not our chairman then. Funny you talk about an age of "mercenaries, crocks or scumbags", yet would happily have paid a player £50k a week aged 33 when he'd no doubt be on the bench if not out of the squad full stop. And before you say we could sell before that point, look how hard it's been to shift Smith & Butt on that sort of wage. Without his goals we wouldn't have been promoted. Without his goals we would have went down. Nolan is worth 50k a week even over 5 years. Nolan wasn't just a player or goalscorer, he was our captain who had a positive influence on every aspect of the club, most importantly in that dressing room. You can't buy that almost and such contributions as have been proved can be priceless to a club. Nolan could have become a coach here, maybe for the academy or reserves and perhaps even one day assistant manager and even manager. He is that kind of dependable bloke, a good guy, a passionate football man who can contribute much more than playing and scoring goals. I'm not surprised he's been sold though. The powers that be have zero foresight and zero loyalty to a man who made them millions and saved them even more. Me, I'd have used the saved wages of say someone sold like I don't know Ranger and given a percentage of that to Nolan, our club captain and star trooper if you like. I bet Pardew is seething personally at this and you just know Nolan will be gutted and so too will the squad in general too. This thread has been quite an eye opener for me, people really don't seem to think this is important. For me it is as you say, priceless. If you have a player who is extremely influential in the dressing-room, and he's in a major grump about not getting the contract he wanted, then that influence is actually, if you think about, all the more reason to move him on.

3 goals and Asprilla become one. For me, in an era when for the last 5 years or so the vast majority of our players have been proper mercenaries, crocks or scumbags or all 3, Nolan represented the good things about this club of ours and our game and he carried himself well as captain. It hardly ever gets mentioned but he did a s*** load of community work, he visited 4 hospitals in one day for example and helped with the club's foundation a great deal too. He also scored a hat-trick against the mackems and scored a s*** load from midfield in consecutive seasons. Not bad for a very limited player. All well and good, and I think most people admire him for that. However would you have advocated a 5 year deal on said wages? I would have yes. Thank God you're not our chairman then. Funny you talk about an age of "mercenaries, crocks or scumbags", yet would happily have paid a player £50k a week aged 33 when he'd no doubt be on the bench if not out of the squad full stop. And before you say we could sell before that point, look how hard it's been to shift Smith & Butt on that sort of wage. Without his goals we wouldn't have been promoted. Without his goals we would have went down. Nolan is worth 50k a week even over 5 years. Nolan wasn't just a player or goalscorer, he was our captain who had a positive influence on every aspect of the club, most importantly in that dressing room. You can't buy that almost and such contributions as have been proved can be priceless to a club. Nolan could have become a coach here, maybe for the academy or reserves and perhaps even one day assistant manager and even manager. He is that kind of dependable bloke, a good guy, a passionate football man who can contribute much more than playing and scoring goals. I'm not surprised he's been sold though. The powers that be have zero foresight and zero loyalty to a man who made them millions and saved them even more. Me, I'd have used the saved wages of say someone sold like I don't know Ranger and given a percentage of that to Nolan, our club captain and star trooper if you like. I bet Pardew is seething personally at this and you just know Nolan will be gutted and so too will the squad in general too. 50k a week for five years is £13 million. Selling Ranger isn't going to do the trick.