TRon

A better idea would be tio bring him on as a sub for 20 mins.

Needs to give Ranger more time as well. Would agree with that. Carroll is scoring goals so fair play to him, but he looks an awful footballer sometimes. When you chuck in Nolan who is the same, it's hardly surprising the football is dire sometimes.

The Butt decision looked on the surface a terrible decision, but we were playing awful before he came on so the major gaffe by Hughton didn't really turn out to be one as it turned out. Other than that the bad football seemed to be down to injuries and poor performances especially from Guthrie, Nolan and Carroll. It can't always be Hughton's fault if the players don't turn up.

Neither of them are natural athletes and in games like this one it shows. Another fluky win masking a shit performance would be most welcome here.

1-0 might well be enough, boro are hardly over loaded with goal scorers.

Hall and Kadar are hardly the worst replacements to bring in and at least with Pancrate starting again we will be sending out another very well balanced team. Pretty happy with it considering our injuries.

The best times we ever had as a club were before Shearer arrived. The next best were under SBR who supposedly tried to flog him because of his pervasive influence. We ended up hiring Souness and flogging Bellamy instead.

Said this a few pages back but then context is usually a casualty in these type of debates.

Seeing genuinely talented players like N'Zogbia getting slated by our fans...not good enough for us with his headless chicken impersonations.

No doubt Coloccini and Jonas would have been on that list in September. Luckily we have sensible people in charge at the club at the moment who are getting the best out of them rather than hounding them out only to watch slack jawed as they perform perfectly well elsewhere.

There are just a few people other than Ashley putting something into the club either directly or indirectly, and their combined contribution far exceeds Ashley's. Llambias for one would do well to remember this. So to paraphrase the above post - no one should complain about anything Ashley does because he bought the club and no one else is willing to pay the price he has put on it to buy it off him, so "whingeing" is pointless? Your choice, but not for me. The mere fact that the chanting is annoying Llambias and Ashley show that it is not in fact totally pointless. For now it may not have the desired effect of getting him out of the club, but at least it encourages articles such as this to counter the "Mike saved the club" spiel that's once again being pushed out to anyone who'll listen. BTW, I hope no one agreeing with BT's post was "pointlessly whingeing" about the old board (or even encouraging people to protest and boycott matches) when Hall was looking to sell but no one until Ashley was willing to pay the stock market valuation for the club. That would be a bit hypocritical wouldn't it. Not sure what your point is about the stock market value tbh. Stock markets react to known situations and known negotiations. The stock market value of the club was about half what Ashley paid for it until the previous board starting seriously touting it around. Remember Polygon and Belgravia? Belgravia even completed due diligence, and I can assure you from my own experience you do not go through that unless you are a willing seller. And even after that it got nowhere near £130 million until the word on Hall's discussions with Ashley got out. Just one further point, Shepherd had plenty of opportunity to buy it if he had wanted to. He obviously had his reasons for chosing not to. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6904072.stm I'm fully aware Hall wanted to sell and had done so for a number of years before Ashley came along, I've said so on numerous occasions. It was well known he wanted to sell long before anyone was predicting imminent financial meltdown (in fact in spite of freely available sets of accounts on the club website I don't seem to remember any of those predictions until after Ashley tbh). He managed to do so and attract potential buyers without appointing short term interim managers or putting the whole club in limbo over the Summer though. I mentioned the stock market value as that is the price Ashley had to pay to buy the club at the time. Whether the club was worth that figure was down to the potential buyer to decide, but it wasn't some arbitrary figure put on the club by the Halls, Shepherds and the other shareholders. The club was for sale, and it was for sale at the market value. If you are going to take the point of view that complaining about the running of the club is "pointless whingeing" if the club is up for sale, then you have to surely agree that it was pointless whingeing back then too. Really not sure what you're on about with the price rise once the "word on Hall's discussions with Ashley got out". Unless I missed it there was no hint of it until it was deal done with Hall. Ashley bought the shares off Hall for £1 per share, and he bought the rest for £1.01 per share. Hardly a rocketing increase. There's not much detail on the share price graph in the article you linked to, but it looks like a steep but gradual increase in shareprice throughout 2007 at a time when a large increase in TV revenue had been announced and Premiership football club ownership was becoming fashionable amongst those looking to make a name or a profit. I would imagine the graph would look similar for any other club on the stock market at that time. Ashley may have paid a few pennies per share extra, but saying it was "nowhere near £130 million" is simply not true. I believe Shepherd would have loved to have bought the club, the minor problem of him not having enough money to be able to afford it MAY have been one of his reasons for him "chosing" not to. Just guessing there though. Which is the key point. Shepherd and Hall didn't have/weren't prepared to put their own money into the club and were probably at the limit as far as taking out more loans to fund further investments which is why they gladly sold up and took their MASSIVE cash bonanza.

The key thing is that the long ball tactic then has to progress into something more attractive to watch once we're established in the league. Bolton have been playing long ball, defensive football for years, the fans grow tired of it eventually. Agree with what you say. Everton are a great example to follow IMO. They have been playing functional football for a few seasons while they built up the quality of their squad within a realistic sustainable budget but are now not only capable of giving the better teams a bloody nose but are playing some very decent footbaqll as well. The point is they built a solid base first and have added quality over time. We can worry about playing pretty football once we are in the top 8, until then points must come first next season.

It's comments like this that make me about some of our support, football is emotive, but after 12-18months you'd hope that people would start to get a sense of perspective, particularly when other events in the footballing world unfold and shed some light on the underlying situation at every business. Footballing-wise, there have been some horrendous mistakes made, especially the attempt to sign Harry Redknapp (wtf?!) then the doomed appointment of KK; however, it is noticeable that their decisions are improving (even if it's just because they are making fewer of them). Business-wise, we can only really go off the numbers published at the end of every year, as we all know that the club have deliberately misled the supporters in the past. To date, the financial situation is improving, so I find it hard to fault Ashley for those decisions. So what's the problem with HTL's point??? The "whole series of bad decisions" made by the "inept wankers" led a lot of people to draw the conclusion that they were deliberately trying to destroy the club. The ineptitude is beyond question. Drawing the conclusion that were deliberately trying to destroy the club is laughable. 1. Did ashley deliberately buy the football club without understanding exactly what he was buying? 2. Did ashley deliberately appoint Keegan? 3. Did ashley deliberately install a system that would not possibly work with a manager of that temperament? 4. Did ashley deliberately back Wise over Keegan? 5. Did ashley deliberately appoint a bloody joke as a manager? 6. Did ashley deliberately appoint a coach as a manager? 7. Did ashley deliberately appoint Shearer as manager, a man has no previous experience, thereby showing his panic at the situation? 9. Did ashley deliberately put the club up for sale then withdraw it from sale more than once, undermining the entire football club? 10. Did ashley deliberately see a surplus of money from transfer dealings during Jan 2009? 11. Was the club relegated by 1 point at the end of that season? Whether the bastard deliberately set out to ruin the club is not the point because nobody said that anyway, but his actions have lead to almost total ruin of the football club and there is no excuse. It wasn't just his actions though, you can't simply ignore what went on beforehand under Shepherd where we borrowed heavily and sooner or later the belt would have to be tightened. You can't just roll Souness and Allardyce's time here under a carpet when so much damage was inflicted by these appointments. I never have. I know they were bad appointments, especially sourness. I've said so numerous times. I also know that those who are somehow supporting ashley now are the same people (like mandiarse) who were telling everyone to give sourness time to build his own team. I also remember that when I posted I didn't want the Board to back Sourness with money in the January window I was slated and told that the Board HAD to stump up the cash otherwise they would be confirmed as being shite. I do understand that people want to whinge on about the previous Board because we had a good team but didn't win the title, especially after only signing 3 players in 2003 when we should have apparently signed half a team, but everything Ashley has done has been far worse than anything done by the previous Board. So what? The previous board sold up and fucked off with the money because they wanted to. No one held a gun to their head otherwise they could still be here now...and in fact if they wanted to invest some cash they could buy it back same way as Ashley did. But they won't because they don't want to put their money in Newcastle and neither does anyone else. Until someone does it's pointless whingeing at the only bloke who's putting anything in no matter how reluctantly he's doing it.

Zoggy was always one of the players who were capable of looking a genuine star. Quite galling to think that him and Milner used to get so much stick when the reality has now been proved that it was our awful midfielders and big name strikers who were the real problem. Not to mention the utter incompetence of Souness, Roeder and Allardyce. Fucking hell. Well the fact that Milner and Zog are doing well at their clubs (in the premier) does sort of hint that the real problems were elsewhere. So it was the everyone's elses fault that Milner's crossing was piss poor? That N'Zogbia's performances were abysmal as well? What about the fact that Keegan got those big name strikers performing and those awful midfielders? All while N'Zogbia was only a sub and Milner was injured. Well if you'd read the post in context rather than the bit you highlighted you might have noticed that Keegan was the only manager I didn't hold responsible for the inability to use his assets to their full potential. Milner's crossing might have been piss poor but there were more than a few posters here who thought we'd get the best of him playing him down the centre. O'Neill obviously agreed and kudos to him for doing what good managers get paid for. Zog raped Liverpool last night and it didn't surprise me in the least. He might be a cunt but he's going to go on to be a lot better player than those who were picked ahead of him when he was here.

Zoggy was always one of the players who were capable of looking a genuine star. Quite galling to think that him and Milner used to get so much stick when the reality has now been proved that it was our awful midfielders and big name strikers who were the real problem. Not to mention the utter incompetence of Souness, Roeder and Allardyce. Fucking hell. Well the fact that Milner and Zog are doing well at their clubs (in the premier) does sort of hint that the real problems were elsewhere.

It's comments like this that make me about some of our support, football is emotive, but after 12-18months you'd hope that people would start to get a sense of perspective, particularly when other events in the footballing world unfold and shed some light on the underlying situation at every business. Footballing-wise, there have been some horrendous mistakes made, especially the attempt to sign Harry Redknapp (wtf?!) then the doomed appointment of KK; however, it is noticeable that their decisions are improving (even if it's just because they are making fewer of them). Business-wise, we can only really go off the numbers published at the end of every year, as we all know that the club have deliberately misled the supporters in the past. To date, the financial situation is improving, so I find it hard to fault Ashley for those decisions. So what's the problem with HTL's point??? The "whole series of bad decisions" made by the "inept wankers" led a lot of people to draw the conclusion that they were deliberately trying to destroy the club. The ineptitude is beyond question. Drawing the conclusion that were deliberately trying to destroy the club is laughable. 1. Did ashley deliberately buy the football club without understanding exactly what he was buying? 2. Did ashley deliberately appoint Keegan? 3. Did ashley deliberately install a system that would not possibly work with a manager of that temperament? 4. Did ashley deliberately back Wise over Keegan? 5. Did ashley deliberately appoint a bloody joke as a manager? 6. Did ashley deliberately appoint a coach as a manager? 7. Did ashley deliberately appoint Shearer as manager, a man has no previous experience, thereby showing his panic at the situation? 9. Did ashley deliberately put the club up for sale then withdraw it from sale more than once, undermining the entire football club? 10. Did ashley deliberately see a surplus of money from transfer dealings during Jan 2009? 11. Was the club relegated by 1 point at the end of that season? Whether the bastard deliberately set out to ruin the club is not the point because nobody said that anyway, but his actions have lead to almost total ruin of the football club and there is no excuse. It wasn't just his actions though, you can't simply ignore what went on beforehand under Shepherd where we borrowed heavily and sooner or later the belt would have to be tightened. You can't just roll Souness and Allardyce's time here under a carpet when so much damage was inflicted by these appointments.

I'm pretty sure you were predicting we'd struggle this season as well mind. Oh well...better luck next season.

When you said Laurent Robert was shite you showed how little you know mate. Nowt seems to have changed... I doubt very much I said that mate. He was one of the players I consistently stuck up for so I think you've got your wires crossed there.

Zoggy was always one of the players who were capable of looking a genuine star. Quite galling to think that him and Milner used to get so much stick when the reality has now been proved that it was our awful midfielders and big name strikers who were the real problem. Not to mention the utter incompetence of Souness, Roeder and Allardyce.

Just our luck to get one willing to spend hundreds of millions on an Evil Plan to deliberately piss off a few thousand Geordies. My mate who's ITK reckons Ashley has cunningly inserted a Cockney Wanker clause in the contract terms for any sale of the club. The clubs not for sale for less than £300m unless you have 5 years residence in London in which case you can buy it for a quid. Don't shoot me I am only the messenger.

Agree with HTL tbh. What we obviously need is someone to buy the club without borrowing money, who is then prepared to pump in millions more of his/their own cash to get us where we want to be. Ashley is clearly failing to do this, I'm just absolutely disgusted that no other billionaire has come in and bought him out? What is the matter with these rich bastards FFS? It's clear as day what's needed to any toon fan yet these mega millionaires are dragging their feet to give us what we want.

I'd agree with this for the most part, he plays like a horse with blinders on sometimes so I'm not convinced he'll make a top striker, but he's got a great leap and attacks the crosses well with his head and that's a genuine talent in itself.

Midfield is still our weakest area at the moment so a fit Joey Barton will give us an option to add some quality in there...provided he still has something left in the tank. There has to be a question mark whether he will regain his force as a player following a few serious injuries.

Couldn't agree more. He generally looks lost when he's asked to play wide and it's not hard to see why, he's physically not built for it. Same goes for Barton, but similarly he's been asked to play wide far too many games in a Newcastle shirt, usually to accomodate Butt, Smith or Nolan in the centre.

it might just be down to settling in to another country and getting fit again after a period without a club. mind you, i'd still have routledge on the right as soon as he is fit. aye but pancrates might just prove to be another useful option on the right for when we need it. For all the criticism of his ability or lack of, he's had a very crucial part in getting us wins in his few appearances. The winning goal against Watford, the unexpected success when he was asked to play right back and obviously yesterday allowing us to stick with two wide players. It's been a decent loan signing when looked at in context of where we are right now.