TRon

Like Cappello would walk away without a golden handshake.

I also think Best has goals in him, he takes up too many good positions for it to be a purple patch. Still don't think we can rely on him to be our main striker though. We need a forward who the opposition will fear and that means someone who's a class above Best.

Pardew was talking about players who would get the crowds on their feet (or sliding ill advisedly on their knees). Well Zog fits the bill on all accounts. He scored some absolute pearlers for us and he's gone on doing it elsewhere. He can whip in a mean cross as well.

If he wants to be closer to his best mate Bramble then he'll come to Newcastle as that's where Bramble lives. Bramble lives in Durham,Chester-Le-Street to be precise. That's his decoy address to stop wearsiders getting irate that he actually spends all his time on enemy turf. Go check yourself, the blinds are always drawn.

If he wants to be closer to his best mate Bramble then he'll come to Newcastle as that's where Bramble lives.

As for this stuff about him being a better player now I'm afraid it's rubbish. I saw him as a fantastic player before we sold him and so did a few others. I don't think we are all psychic.

The good thing if he comes back will be that he'll have seen that the grass isn't greener on the other side so he'll probably be more settled as a result. Mind it wasn't his fault that the hierarchy at Newcastle put too much store by what useless arseholes like Nicky Butt used to say.

Zog and Ben Arfa in the same side....it's what dreams are made of.

1) It wasn't the biggest fee ever in British football 2) You don't know they wouldn't have sold for less if that's all that was offered. 3) It's nothing like that analogy at all He had no choice about the club selling Carroll. However he made a big song and dance when he joined about being given a guarantee that Carroll would not be sold. If he had any integrity he should have made a stand and threatened to quit if the player was sold (unless he was replaced immediately with a striker he considered to be better and was given a guarantee that all the remaining money would be put back into in the transfer budget). As it was we went into the second half of the season where we were doing okay, but were by no means safe from relegation with 1 striker who was proven to be adequate at this level, but who is very injury prone, 1 striker who was proven to be inadequate at this level, and 2 strikers who were completely unproven at this level. Newly promoted clubs are notorious for having a good start and nosediving in the second half of the season, the sale of Carroll with no replacement could easily have triggered that decline. It's risky management to the point of negligence from an owner who has supposedly learned from his mistakes, but the manager being the senior man in charge of the footballing side of the club should be doing everything in his power to try to stop it or at least try and compensate for the loss of the player with an immediate replacement, permanent or otherwise. For all we know he may have. I don't particularly believe that he did, as for me it would have involved using the press more to put the onus on the owner not to sell, eg with "the owner knows that if the player is sold after the assurances I've been given then I'll walk" kind of ultimatums, rather than typical raise the price press talk. However, if he did in fact in private do everything in his power to stop the transfer or ensure an adequate replacement was brought in for the second half of the season, the fact that the club made no attempt to even pretend to do so (a la the Richardson/N'Zogbia "enquiries") goes to show just how little influence he has, and how highly the owner and the casino boss value the opinion of their manager in footballing matters. It certainly shouldn't encourage people to put much credence in what he is now saying about the Summer and in his ability to have much say in what happens. We've just sold Carroll for £35m. I'd be surprised if Pardew didn't spend a fair whack on new players this summer. If that doesn't happen I'll happily come back on this thread and say you were right.

Could be risky, he may want to see what transfers we make first, we cannot afford to push him to hard. Eh?! Why cant we? The club is more important than one player. We cant wait until a couple of weeks till the window closes before he decides he wants to go. Oh I agree to a point.. we cannot piss about but we also do not want to force him into making a decision now. This is a long transfer window unlike the January one month limit, time is on our side. Transfers in or out usually drag on well into the summer and often depend on other players moving on before a move can be made. If we are left waiting on a player to make his mind up we'll more than likely be left high and dry when the season starts. We don't want another Owen saga where the little cunt was delaying us while drafting his come and get me brochures to other clubs.

I'm glad the club are pushing Enrique for a decision. If he's going to go we might as well have definitive answer so we can push on and get a replacement. If he does drag his feet then maybe we should just buy a replacement and sell him.

exactly. Those of you pissing yourselves at the thought we might blow our wad on one striker can simmer down. Pardew's budget is limited unless there's something we haven't been told so let the lad go to Arsenal.

When Shearer was out of the side he did absolute shite and signed Andreas Andersson as a replacement without a clue how to use him alongside the midfield stoppers he assembled in the same team.

They were the same players who should have won the league a few months earlier. Ronaldo is talking about the Liverpool side of today not the post Keegan Newcastle United one. Short term results don't mean that much whoever he's talking about. Dalglish had a similar effect on the squad Keegan left when he first arrived.

+1 It surprises me the amount of people who start picking flaws with players who are obviously a class above. By now you would think they would just agree with what I say. Seriously anyone who doesn't think a big club won't be taking him needs their head checking. No doubt in my mind either that it'll be that cunt Dalglish in for him siphoning off our talent like the sour faced leech he is.

They were the same players who should have won the league a few months earlier.

Not so surprising if you think about it. Strikers are the most expensive commodities in the game because finding one who can deliver at the top level is beyond a lot of managers. Wenger's teams look crap when Van Persie is injured for example.

Absolutely. Speed on the left wing and Des Hamilton on the right was Dalglish's idea of width. Even then they played more as supplementary full backs as Dalglish didn't like to see too many players in the opposition half in case we got exposed. It's amazing really when you think what we were under KK and what we ended up in Dalglish's time here. He's landed on his feet at Liverpool with a squad of quality players who will make him look fantastic as Benitez' system will suit KD down to the ground.

What about Given, Hamann, Solano, Tomasson and Speed? 3 of them were huge in any success we had since, and the other 2 went on to be top European players. Yes he bought a lot of filler early on, but so did Bobby, the big difference being he was allowed to continue building after a a mid table finish and Dalglish wasn't. I'm the biggest Keegan fan going but you can't blame him for breaking up his team, if you've got different ideas to your predecessor chances are you'll need different players. That's actually a bigger indictment of his managerial ability. He actually bought some good players which is why I never had a pop at his signing history. But the inability to put out balanced sides or buy players to compliment his battery of hard working midfield stoppers was his biggest failing in my view.

It's a league campaign, not a cup tie.

Dalglish's best results were with the players Keegan bought. The more of them he replaced with his own turgid shite, the worse our results got.

Fat mike will make them pay though He'll get at least 10 mil off someone How many left backs have gone for 10 mil + 60k a week. That's a big outlay for someone with faults If you think Ashley will hold out for £10m for a player who can walk away for free in 12 months time you've got a different idea of Ashley's resistance to offers than I have. This is the same bloke who sold N'Zogbia and Bassong for the first decent offer he got despite the fact they were two fo our best young players being held back by aged decrepit shite who couldn't negotiate a free transfer to the J-league.

Having watched the horrible unbalanced sides he put out at Newcastle I'm with Johnny on this one. Like Allardyce at Blackburn, he's walked into a side built for his defensive mindset. A side he wouldn't have had the imagination to put together himself. If he's a top manager he must have hated us with a passion to have put out some of the fear-ridden line ups he did.

He really isn't worse than Lovenkrands like Lovenkrands will score every 4-5 games so that counts in his favour. Mind Lovenkrands is as good as he's going to get - which is pretty shit. There's still the hope Ranger can improve and given a few games I don't think it's impossible he could start hitting goals.

I couldn't stand Pardew when he wasn't our manager but I quite like him as our boss now. I don't cringe at the thought of him representing us when I see him on the touchline.