TRon

Barnetta could be seen as a replacement for Routledge rather than Barton if we are to take the view that Barton might still be here come the start of the season.

Would prefer if Barnetta came, Barton stayed and everything turned out Hunky Dory! Barton doesn't strike me as the type who would sit happily on the bench while Barnetta started in his place.

If Barton stays it's because they type of clubs who might have an interest in taking him will refuse to match his wages IMO. Everton and Stoke for example aren't going to pay 60k a week, this might have something to do with Barton's decision to stay put unless he gets a club who will match our wages. Hence his agents insane blabbering about top clubs being interested.

Looks like the Barnetta deal is off then. Joey obviously realised his twat of an agent was talking shite about CL clubs being interested and has now climbed down. The club will probably take this as a golden opportunity to save £4m on signing Barnetta and paying both players wages if Barton refuses to fuck off. Personally I hope they sign Barnetta anyway and keep Joey well away from the team.

I hope this signing isn't dependent on Barton leaving because I can see the bitter turd sitting tight just so we can't sign his replacement.

Ashley signed off on all of the contracts you mention. It's not an excuse. Like buying us, the contracts are a mistake he should live with and make the best of. He can't expect them to take fucking wage cuts when wages in the game are still rising everywhere else. It's not like Colo, Jose, Nolan or Barton got any worse since we first signed them, if anything they are/were at their most valuable at the end of this season. Yes, live with until the end of the contract, which he is doing, then either party can choose to strike a new deal, or walk away. Situations change, and apparently in terms of the wages we feel we can offer, they have for us. It's hardly unusual or underhand, a number of contract jobs I've taken on recently have been for a lot less than I could have got away with in the past, so I don't see why footballers should be a particularly special case in that regard. I'm fairly certain not everyone else is paying less, though, and if anything our revenues have increased in the past season and will again this season. If you want to grow and move up the table, you'll generally need to pay more wages year on year to achieve that and keep the players you already have, etc. How can people not see this? We got relegated and trimmed the wage bill hugely. At a pure guess it seems to me like we appear to be at least breaking even so far this summer in wage terms, without even taking Barton and Enrique's potential departures into account - and any others that may now come in/go out. Revenue will have increased massively with the return to the Premiership and will again this season thanks to even better TV money and probable higher season ticket sales/general attendances, etc. I can't ignore the huge figures from player sales, either. I'm not one for being overly negative/reactionary (I don't think), but this baffles me. You keep your best players if you want to get better, even if you have to pay them very well to do so. I think there's some players who are perhaps considered among the elite in their position and you have to stretch your wage structure to accomodate them. There aren't many at Newcastle and you get a fair idea of who they are by the calibre of club interested in buying them. Enrique by dint of commanding a significant fee from a club like Liverpool is the obvious one. Coloccini I think we could keep within our current wage structure as he's not massively rated by other premier clubs so there'll be less demand. Barton and Nolan don't even come into the equation. They had their chance and they blew it.

Telegraph reckons that Barnetta is close to signing, and that Barton is looking at digging his heels in to stay due to the low grade teams that have shown an interest, even on a free. Looks like agent Willie McKunt has been leading him up the garden path with his tall stories about top 4 clubs rushing to fight for his signature.

no he isnt 'Just because ur told to jump, it does not necessarily mean u have to. I may choose to stand perfectly still. It's my right...just a thought' It might also be that the top 4 club interest hasn't materialised despite the guff his agent keeps spouting on any show which will have him. Or he might just be clarifying that he doesn't actualy have to leave if he doesn't want to? Knowing the evil little shit though it's probably some Zodiac style code for "Heil Hitler! Heil mein Fuhrer! Sieg Heil!"... Of course he doesn't have to leave the club if he doesn't want to. But that was the case before twittering about the crap dressing room spirit and rotten bosses. If he's being moved on quicker now it's because he chose to be disruptive and his agent is talking up his move to anyone who'll air his views.

no he isnt 'Just because ur told to jump, it does not necessarily mean u have to. I may choose to stand perfectly still. It's my right...just a thought' It might also be that the top 4 club interest hasn't materialised despite the guff his agent keeps spouting on any show which will have him.

Following relegation, it could have been a lot, lot worse than that. And the person most responsible for our relegation being... Yeah, I know he's responsible, I'm just saying we did alright to bounce back. If he gets the criticism he should have to take some of the credit for that as well. Whether the players going out this summer will have undone that good work remains to be seen. I do think the players need to take a large slice of the blame for our relegation as well though. A lot of them performed a long long way below their best, and Ashley isn't solely to blame for that. A lot of those players were of the Billy Big Boots variety who commanded large transfer fees and salaries yet still took us down. I think their non-performances had a lot to do with Ashley's move away from big wages. This was a problem even before Ashley arrived and now it seems we still haven't recovered from that as even when we have money we are guarding it jealously.

I don't know anything about this lad other than he plays for a s*** club. Why is he available on a free? because he's crap? I think so. ok

I don't know anything about this lad other than he plays for a shit club. Why is he available on a free? because he's crap?

It's my honest opinion that this sort of action will just antagonise Ashley and make him even more determined to run the business on a purely profit basis. Nothing to be gained at this point by getting antsy. in other words we've got nothing to lose? I did expand on that further down the page: Your honest opinion is flawed, he's running the business on a purely profit basis now and that has been his aim for at least as long as Llambias has been here. He could make a lot more profit out of it without signing players like Cabaye, Ben Arfa, Marveaux and Ba. In fact I reckon to run the club on a profit maximising basis he would have been mad to sell Nolan as you could get enough goals from a side playing long ball football with Nolan and a few other big hard players to ensure survival every season. Top that off with interest charges on his loan and he could make a tidy sum surely? fair enough but i wholly disagree. imo ashley doesnt care either way who plays for us or who doesnt so long as we 1. stay in the premier league 2. spend as little as possible Therefore to me, after having witnessed the Carroll sale and the things around it, cabaye, tiote, ben arfa are speculative buys. They'll do a job for us in that they'll keep us up but he wont think twice about cashing in on them if the offers come in, which they will. It's profit based player acquisition, hence the 'sell on value' that's trickled down to be in the forefront of so many supporters minds. Gone are the days when we consider the transfer fee and wages as a fair swap for what we get on the pitch, what we get when the player leaves the club is more important. This is all absolutely fine if you have balance, and our club is so out of balance now it's a frightening gamble, but we've seen him gamble before haven't we? And he'll keep doing it. We've been down the other route with Fat Fred where he was paying players far more than they were worth in order to sign them or keep them here, sometimes for emotional reasons rather than performance based. That landed us in a lot of debt. Now unfortunately we seem to have an owner who is going the other way completely and is being so tight with the finances it's in danger of stunting growth. Difficult to support either approach really so I'm with you, we have lost the balance required.

So what if we suddenly buy three players before the window closes like Alan Brazil reckons? Does that mean you and your mates will lose credibility? Agree about Johnny H btw. Tragic. Didn't realise it was against the law to change my opinion like. Credibility ffs. I stuck my neck out and said that Carroll was a one-off and that as long as the money was spent right, then I'd be happy. Carroll was followed by Enrique and I even half understood that situation, although I was disappointed that we didn't do enough to try and keep him. After that we sold our captain and that pissed me off. Then we got halfway through the transfer window, it became clear that we weren't going to spend a huge chunk of this Carroll money. Then we let N'Zogbia go elsewhere, a player I thought we should have definitely been in for. Then we do what we've done to one of attacking threats in Barton. You can kind of understand why I'm not happy and have 'changed my tune', even if it disagrees with your opinion. Not that I have to justify myself to you good post mate. seems that it's a bit of an alien concept to some to comment on things the way you see them, as they happen. I should maybe just point out here that it was Ian W who was coming in for stick for holding his views by people who didn't share them...and it was also Inochi who derided the concept of changing opinion. I don't know why some people think this is a one way thing.

Isn't that the whole point of the entertainment industry?

It's my honest opinion that this sort of action will just antagonise Ashley and make him even more determined to run the business on a purely profit basis. Nothing to be gained at this point by getting antsy. in other words we've got nothing to lose? I did expand on that further down the page: Your honest opinion is flawed, he's running the business on a purely profit basis now and that has been his aim for at least as long as Llambias has been here. He could make a lot more profit out of it without signing players like Cabaye, Ben Arfa, Marveaux and Ba. In fact I reckon to run the club on a profit maximising basis he would have been mad to sell Nolan as you could get enough goals from a side playing long ball football with Nolan and a few other big hard players to ensure survival every season. Top that off with interest charges on his loan and he could make a tidy sum surely?

So what if we suddenly buy three players before the window closes like Alan Brazil reckons? Does that mean you and your mates will lose credibility? Agree about Johnny H btw. Tragic. Didn't realise it was against the law to change my opinion like. Credibility ffs. I stuck my neck out and said that Carroll was a one-off and that as long as the money was spent right, then I'd be happy. Carroll was followed by Enrique and I even half understood that situation, although I was disappointed that we didn't do enough to try and keep him. After that we sold our captain and that p*ssed me off. Then we got halfway through the transfer window, it became clear that we weren't going to spend a huge chunk of this Carroll money. Then we let N'Zogbia go elsewhere, a player I thought we should have definitely been in for. Then we do what we've done to one of attacking threats in Barton. You can kind of understand why I'm not happy and have 'changed my tune', even if it disagrees with your opinion. Not that I have to justify myself to you WEll why did you then? Because I don't like my opinions and credibility put into question. Sorry like, but it's rather offensive. EDIT: In fact, it's even less credible to continue to blindly support the club's decisions because it's 'what i thought in the first place' I would agree with that Johnny, but how many people do you know here who actually do that? Not as many as continue to put that 'h' in my name. You've lost me there mate, I'm not even sure where this is going any more.

So what if we suddenly buy three players before the window closes like Alan Brazil reckons? Does that mean you and your mates will lose credibility? Agree about Johnny H btw. Tragic. Didn't realise it was against the law to change my opinion like. Credibility ffs. I stuck my neck out and said that Carroll was a one-off and that as long as the money was spent right, then I'd be happy. Carroll was followed by Enrique and I even half understood that situation, although I was disappointed that we didn't do enough to try and keep him. After that we sold our captain and that p*ssed me off. Then we got halfway through the transfer window, it became clear that we weren't going to spend a huge chunk of this Carroll money. Then we let N'Zogbia go elsewhere, a player I thought we should have definitely been in for. Then we do what we've done to one of attacking threats in Barton. You can kind of understand why I'm not happy and have 'changed my tune', even if it disagrees with your opinion. Not that I have to justify myself to you WEll why did you then? Because I don't like my opinions and credibility put into question. Sorry like, but it's rather offensive. EDIT: In fact, it's even less credible to continue to blindly support the club's decisions because it's 'what i thought in the first place' I would agree with that Johnny, but how many people do you know here who actually do that?

So what if we suddenly buy three players before the window closes like Alan Brazil reckons? Does that mean you and your mates will lose credibility? Agree about Johnny H btw. Tragic. Didn't realise it was against the law to change my opinion like. Credibility ffs. I stuck my neck out and said that Carroll was a one-off and that as long as the money was spent right, then I'd be happy. Carroll was followed by Enrique and I even half understood that situation, although I was disappointed that we didn't do enough to try and keep him. After that we sold our captain and that pissed me off. Then we got halfway through the transfer window, it became clear that we weren't going to spend a huge chunk of this Carroll money. Then we let N'Zogbia go elsewhere, a player I thought we should have definitely been in for. Then we do what we've done to one of attacking threats in Barton. You can kind of understand why I'm not happy and have 'changed my tune', even if it disagrees with your opinion. Not that I have to justify myself to you WEll why did you then?

So what if we suddenly buy three players before the window closes like Alan Brazil reckons? Does that mean you and your mates will lose credibility? Agree about Johnny H btw. Tragic. Depends who those players are, no? I'm expect us to make signings that improve the squad, that's precisely why I'll be pissed off if we don't. Replacing who we've lost/are losing is the bare minimum. Time is running out and I don't believe there are any excuses. There's still time to make three more signings of enough quality to come out of this looking stronger across the board than we were last season IMO. The question is down to the intent to make it happen which we can only guess at. If we make only token buys and attempt to appease the masses with that I don't think it will work. Ashley's in danger of burning all his bridges this time round and if he's a businessman he'd be bloody stupid to do that.

So what if we suddenly buy three players before the window closes like Alan Brazil reckons? Does that mean you and your mates will lose credibility? Agree about Johnny H btw. Tragic.

If Erdinc was a genuine target I don't think we would be fucked about for 7 weeks before calling it a day. It's either a smokescreen for the real target or a stalling tactic if you are sceptical we are going to sign any more strikers.

He could start by not saying stuff instead of making promises he can't keep. Theres a reason you never get a real answer from Hughton. Yes, lack of communication is always well appreciated by our fans. If you'd rather the listen to the nonsense from Pardew than what you got from Hughton enjoy it It's not me whingeing about lack of communication or examining Pardew's comments with a magnifying glass for discrepancies. All a load of fuss over minor details if you ask me.

as if...

How the hell can clubs like Leicester bid £7m for a player?