Cronky

Prepare for dummy spitting. Why is it only when I post something deliberately stupid I get a responce? Does no one want to talk to me? Do I have some internet version of bad breath and inappropriate erections? The last responce I got was when I siad a dumb comment about not wanting Poyet because he scored against us in an FA cup semi final. Well on your first point, I think Hughton's options are very limited with all the injuries and suspensions, so I wouldn't criticise his selections particularly. On the second issue, I'm sure nobody's got it in for you. But if you don't mind the observation, it helps if you only make one or two points in a post. In this case, you've made several.

Considering the team we put out, we played a bit better than I was expecting, but we still looked a bit predictable going forward. Martins, Guthrie and Jonas would have given us that bit more of a threat. At the back, Colo is still adjusting to the pace and physicality of the Premiership. Hopefully he'll develop, because he does show touches of real class, but I do wonder whether he'd do better as a defensive midfielder. Trouble is, I'm not sure if Bassong is quite ready enough to play CM. Taylor is just Taylor. He often seems to get caught in no man's land, and reacting to situations rather than imposing himself.

Well the reason why I post on N-O and not on other forums is because generally speaking I've found the level and quality of debate and opinion to be that bit higher here. You occasionally have to put up with a bit of abuse, but on other sites it's far worse. I'm not signing up because this is in reality a pressure group that takes a particular stance on a dispute between the owner and the ex-manager. I don't care what name is attached to the organisation. I think their stance is a naive and incorrect one, and their attempt to intervene is harming the club.

Because I am a part of it I will refrain from posting what I would have liked to post in reply to that little gem however I will say that these "guys" as you put it were here before you and will be here long after the likes of yourself has given up on the football club. These are the same "guys" who fought for fans rights when seats were being taken away, the same "guys" who were being intimidated by a football club who employed bully tactics against them. To put any blame on any fan for the current state of this club is at best poorly thought out but more likely moronic. Well actually I was a fan before The Mag and True Faith came out, but that's not the point at issue. True Faith and The Mag joined in with the mob mentality in the aftermath of the Keegan departure, at a time when cool heads were needed. They are completely anti-Ashley in their stance. If this was a group to generally promote the rights of supporters, as with the Save Our Seats campaign, then fine, but it goes beyond that. I'm not saying 'the fans' are at fault, because you only have to read this forum to see that there's a range of different opinions and responses. But I do think the fans who are trying to drive Ashley out with these pressure tactics are at fault, yes. They're making a difficult situation worse.

I'm not against supporters clubs in general, but this one has clearly been formed by a group of people who have a particular view of the current regime and a particular agenda. In the circumstances, their activities are bound to reflect that. That's the reality, no matter what they might say. And these guys have already done enough damage as it is.

Sorry, if there's any confusion, it's not my article. It was on the Beeb website. I've made that clear now. On the other hand, perhaps I really am Peter Beardsley, posting anonymously. Ha ha. It's often been remarked that you never see the two of us in the same place at the same time.

You beat me to it. This is the full article from the Beeb website. Personally, I'm glad to see someone who's prepared to buck the trend. And Peter Beardsley has never struck me as a fool. Beardsley backs besieged Ashley By Matt Slater Beardsley says Ashley deserves better from the Newcastle support Newcastle legend Peter Beardsley has told Geordie fans to lay off under-fire owner Mike Ashley and thank him for reducing the club's debts. Ashley put Newcastle up for sale this week when protests revealed the extent of his unpopularity. But Beardsley, who enjoyed two great spells as a Newcastle player, believes Ashley has been harshly treated. "He didn't come here to fail and he has put a lot of money into the club, so credit to him," said Beardsley. "Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out but I'm a little bit disappointed he has to walk away. "His heart was in the right place. Maybe he didn't always show it in the right way but I think he really cared about Newcastle." A successful businessman in the sportswear sector, Ashley has found sporting success harder to come by. Ashley might be at the club a while yet - he should be allowed to watch the games Peter Beardsley The 45-year-old completed his purchase of the Tyneside outfit in July 2007 and has invested almost £250m of his estimated £1.4bn fortune in the club. A large chunk of that has gone on reducing Newcastle's previously alarming debts, although he has also made considerable sums available for transfers and wages. Forced by supporter unrest to sack Sam Allardyce as manager in January, Ashley appeared to have secured some breathing space when he handed the reins to fans' favourite Kevin Keegan. But results on the pitch did not improve drastically and off-field tensions between the manager and the continental-style structure Ashley put in place around him to handle transfers and scouting led to Keegan's resignation earlier this month. Fans did not take long in deciding who to blame and Ashley, who was born in Buckinghamshire and lives in Hertfordshire, became a target for growing dissent. Matters came to head last Saturday when a depressing home defeat to Hull City was almost a sideshow to vociferous protests against Ashley, executive director Dennis Wise and the rest of the board. The following day, the supporters got their wish when Ashley, who has been a regular at St James' in his replica shirt, issued an emotional press release stating his intention to sell. 606: DEBATE If he'd have come out with something like this sooner it may never have come to what it has Mirandinha "I am not stupid and have listened to the fans," the entrepreneur said. "I am now a dad who can't take his kids to a football game on a Saturday because I am advised we would be assaulted. "Therefore, I am no longer prepared to subsidise Newcastle United. "I am putting the club up for sale. I hope the fans get what they want and the next owner is someone who can lavish the amount of money on the club the fans want." But Beardsley, who received a Football Foundation award on Thursday for his community work for Newcastle, regrets the manner of Ashley's departure. "Ashley is trying to do the right thing," said the 47-year-old. "He's always tried to do the right thing, but it's hard, because Newcastle is Newcastle and unless you're used to that part of the world it does take a bit of getting used to. Keegan's exit was the final straw for many Newcastle fans "I feel a sorry for him. But he'll sort it out and hopefully everybody will be happy with the conclusion." The former England star said he understood why the fans were upset with the situation and praised their support for the club. "We have a passion that probably isn't equalled anywhere," he said. "If you look at the lack of success - and that's not Mike's fault - the support is unbelievable. They've been there through thin and thin. "I don't think the fans are the problem - they care. They used their power and Mike has decided to walk away. But I think that's a shame, I really do." Any sale of the club, however, is dependant on Ashley finding a buyer, and that might take some time. With an asking price in excess of £480m, Ashley does not give the impression of a man looking for a quick sale and a trip to Dubai this week interested the British media more than any potential buyer. "Ashley might be at the club a while yet," admitted Beardsley. "And if he is he should be allowed to watch the games. It's his club and he has spent a huge amount trying to make us a force, first by clearing debts and then for transfers. "It might not even be too later for Mike. If he brings success as an owner the fans could still forgive him. Geordies are like that."

We are all individuals with our own wildly differing views and opinions and standards of behaviour, on this planet, and I accept that. It is difficult at times (and I often wonder if some of us ARE on the same planet!) but I accept it and the bizarre views on many aspects of life (football included) that some people have. The above (in bold) though, makes me wonder afresh, whether we should seriously consider setting up 'secure compounds' for some people . . . I really do. It sounds like the 'compounds' remark is directed at me, but I'm not 100% sure. Can you confirm?

I don't think this tells us much about the mood in the camp. He talks about determination and keeping spirits up, but at the same time there's talk of depression and players leaving. I think the whole of the club - fans, players, coaching staff, owner - are all in a bit of a state of shock and we need some stability. I'm a serial Owen-basher, I know, but how effective can he be at rallying the troops when he himself is patently uncommitted to the club? The captain and ex-manager seem to have been getting a lot of support recently, but in practice they've been the pair that have been the least committed.

Sorry, Chris, you're just wrong about this. Things are achieved by good leadership, not a bunch of well-intentioned people driven by emotion. Ashley was the right man to take the club forward. The crowd are not always good judges of this kind of situation.

He bought the club for £130 million, and then spent £110 million to ease the debt, making an outlay of £240 million. Within a week, he's supposed to settle for £200 million. Am I missing something here?

It's only a week since he put the club up for sale. You can't expect him to have done a deal already. Potential buyers know that he's keen to sell, so they'll be testing him out with low offers. I think he's genuine about wanting to sell, because he must be very hacked off with the way things have turned out. The thought might be in the back of his mind that the present storm might blow over, and the mood become more conciliatory, but I doubt it.

Not as easy as thought, no, but as was discussed a while back, a lot of the Arabian consortiums and investment groups are doing it as a show of financial strength / positive western publicity. They aren't necessarily looking to run the club as a business, more of a status symbol. I'm not sure which of those two options is best, mind. What happened to clubs being run as football clubs? As and when i have kids how rubbish is it going to be trying to explain how it used to be about the fans and a passionate birthright? All football is now is a big business, it sucks. If you're right, and the primary motivation is to acquire a 'status symbol', than that's a worry, because that kind of motivation won't last. I don't think Ashley was all about big business. He wanted to run the club in a stable fashion, but he's a genuine football fan and he wanted something more than that. He's been dismissed far too quickly, all on the back of this emotional reaction to Keegan going.

Christ, what a choice. I think I'd rather stick with Hughton. I can't see why Curbishley would want the job by the way - he left West Ham for the same apparent reasons that Keegan left, the club's imploding, the fans are in revolt, cockneys are persona non grata especially short or fat ones, plus I don't expect he's ever worked out of the London area. The only thing that seems to link him with us is that he's out of work. To say Curbishley resigned is only half the story tbh. He was on the brink of getting sacked anyway due to his disastrous transfer dealings, shit man management, huge unpopularity with the fans, and generally being a glum arsehole. His "resignation" was a million miles from Keegans. I think Curbishley did okay at West Ham. He took them out of a disastrous position when they looked certain to go down. Last year, he was very hampered by injuries but still took them to mid-table. I don't think he'd want to come north, because he's very rooted in the London / Essex area, but his overall record is a good one.

It's hard to tell where all this is going to end up. It's very hard to run a top-level professional football club at a profit. I think that Man U are the only exception, because of their enormous world-wide commercial power. Other investors can only hope to make money at the point when they sell the club on to someone who wants it more, and there's no guarantee that will happen. In practice, the new investors - Eccelstone, Lerner, Hicks, Abramovich, Ashley etc - have some particular interest in sport that attracts them. There are far better ways of making money than through owning a football club. It used to be local businessmen with an affinity with a local club - now it's bigger businessmen who want the same kind of vicarious thrills. We're now hearing about 'Investment Groups', 'Hedge Funds', 'Consortiums' etc - all of whom would want some ongoing returns on their investments. I don't think they'd be pumping in their own money just for the thrill of it. Ashley's £20 million a year might not be Abramovich-style megabucks, but getting more might not be as easy as some might think.

I suspect that the people who want a fans' takeover also want the club to be competing at the top end of the Premiership, alongside the clubs that are run as multi-million pound corporate businesses. It's known as having your cake and eating it.

The team is so decimated by injuries at the moment, that you can't read too much into the Hull game.

I thought Guthrie had a very good game. Hopefully, he'll learn from that mad moment at the end.

He didn't want to come here in the first place, so no-one should be surprised at his reluctance to sign again.

Silly article. The idea that Ashley's relationship with the fans would improve if he was to outline why he favoured Wise and his team over Keegan is just daft. It would only inflame the situation to no good end. The fans - or rather those with the loudest voices - have already sided with Keegan and Ashley is right in recognising that nothing will change that.

That's a good appraisal of the situation, but unfortunately the 'Keegan is God' brigade are the ones who have prevailed. I don't think Keegan is the sort of manager like Wenger, who takes tapes of South American Under 19 tournaments home with him to study the talent, and in any case, he had barely watched any football for three years. Delegating the player recruitment to other people was a necessity, but at the same time Keegan is a person who doesn't back down in an argument. All an accident waiting to happen. it's not true that 'delegating the player recruitment to other people was a necessity', at least not in the terms you seem to understand it. what was a necessity was getting in a first rate scouting team to help Keegan identify players for his team. He's a shrewd judge of talent and has worked with scouts all his career so he wouldve been able to take advantage of this and used the system to good effect. but that is not the issue - the issue is taking the final say on who comes and goes out of his hands, selling players and then failing to bring in the promised replacements, or telling Keegan we've signed players he has never discussed with the scouts or given the greenlight to. that is a very different issue to establishing a good scouting team and sadly some people on here have conflated the two things into one. secondly, you're right that it was an accident waiting to happen. This is compounded by Keegan's confrontational character but not primarily caused by it.. if you look through recent football manager history, you'll see it is littered with bustups and departures due to interference from above - our original choice Harry Redknapp has left twice in the past few years for this reason, one slated replacement in Deschamps has walked out from clubs due to it, and in the same bloody week as keegan left, Curbishley did exactly the same thing. Santini left Spurs because of it and even Jol had a very frosty relationship with his employers. you cant get more obvious than this but some people are totally ignoring it. The situation has replicated itself even when there were different people involved. that tells us one thing - this is not essentially a personality based problem but a systematic problem. Therefore removing Keegan or any other individual such as Wise, while retaining the system, does not remove the problem itself, rather moves it on and guarantees a repeat further down the line. any strong willed manager (ie, the successful ones) will have problems unless the system is tweaked. Ramos at Sevilla had a good relationship with Monchi his director of football because Monchi never went out and disregarded what Ramos asked for, he was there to help the manager and not the other way round. On the other hand, Benitez left Valencia for a club where he'd have more control because their directors 'bought him a sofa when he asked for a lamp'. So that's not to say a DoF system can't work, but that it has to be structured correctly, as Parky has touched upon in another thread. Either you forget about the entire concept of 'managers' and appoint a first team coach who knows his place (difficult), or you tailor the system to the manager to fit his needs. what you don't want to do is get a mish-mash of both as it brings out the worst possible results. I suppose whichever system you have - whether the manager is reporting direct to a Chairman or to a DOF - there's always going to be some crossover of responsibilities and it depends on trust. It's never as simple as the Manager identifying the players and the Chairman / DOF going out to get them, because whoever holds the purse strings has got to have a major say. In fact, it's that individual, not the Manager, who really has the final say. Which players are brought in depends on how much money there is available, and which players get shipped out will also be influenced by finance. This relationship is the most important in a football club. It can be a very tense one, and occasionally it can break down. British managers are used to dealing direct with a Chairman, but that's no guarantee that things will work better, as with Sir Bob and Freddie Shepherd, and some of the other examples you've mentioned. Keegan was a poor choice on two levels - and this would have been the case regardless of whether it was a DOF or a Chairman system. He wasn't suited to an Arsenal-type plan of recruiting and developing young players because he's never had a record of that in the past. He's always sought to persuade his Board to go out and spend big on established names. If you've not taken any interest in football for three years, it's even more inevitable that your knowledge and interest is going to be limited in that way. He was also a poor choice for a long-term plan. His motivation can crumble when he experiences frustration, as we've seen from the previous walk-outs, and after the Chelsea game. It's easy to keep your spirits up if you can run to the Chairman and get him to spend big on a new player to keep the upward momentum going, but when that's not an option, his head goes down. Ashley, Mort and co have to bear some responsibility for their poor judgement. They were hoping to ally Keegan's relationship with the fans with their own more scientific approach, but the gap between the two mentalities has been too wide. But I keep reading about the Manager having 'full control over who comes in and out', but that's never the case. Not anywhere. In practice, they're always working as part of a team.

Why a warning flag? We were hardly going to try and keep hold of an unhappy player. Reports at the time said that he wanted to go. Source? People trying to rationalise a pointless sale? Faye got subbed at half-time, I think in the final game of last season, and didn't appear to be injured. When someone falls out with Keegan, it's not easily mended, as we've seen this last fortnight. Faye was our best defender last year, yet there's not been a hint that Keegan wasn't happy with his transfer. Also - one of Keegan's stranger decisions last season was not bringing Faye straight back into the team for the Villa game when he recovered from injury or suspension - I can't remember which it was. Speculation I suppose, but it fits together.

I think that Ashley has already done the right thing in announcing that he's going. He's recognised that it won't do the club any good if the current turmoil continues. It's sad, because I think he had the right ideas and had got the club moving forward again. But once this all kicked off, neither Ashley nor Keegan were likely to survive.

That's a good appraisal of the situation, but unfortunately the 'Keegan is God' brigade are the ones who have prevailed. I don't think Keegan is the sort of manager like Wenger, who takes tapes of South American Under 19 tournaments home with him to study the talent, and in any case, he had barely watched any football for three years. Delegating the player recruitment to other people was a necessity, but at the same time Keegan is a person who doesn't back down in an argument. All an accident waiting to happen.

Said to have fallen out with Keegan.