TRon

Sounds like an ideal place and time to finalise a big deal like this. Just reinforces the idea he's not interested in selling. As I said, the tw*t doesn't want to sell the club, if he did it would be sold by now. You just have to look at how many other clubs HAVE been sold. It's so transparent he's using this "I want to sell up" to give him an excuse not to appoint a real manager and to neglect investment in the team. He's deliberately running the club down. There should be riots at the match every week but I think he's beaten everyone into apathy while he's laughing all the way to the bank. One of the questions I often ask myself is why did the SJH sell his shares to this tw*t. I'd be surprised if he wasn't aware of the type of bloke Ashley is, word gets around at those levels of business. SJH sold Ashley the shares for the money, he'd been trying to sell up for a while and at the end of the day he was more bothered about getting the cash than how Ashley might run the club. John Hall did a good job when he was at the helm, he was superb for the club as both owner and Chairman, but he was a businessman first and foremost. He made a mint from the club both directly and through his subsidiary companies. Shame Ashley hasn't got any of his business sense, if he could make the club half as successful I wouldn't begrudge the fat cunt making some money.

According to that he's only going to be named manager to the end of the season with the option of another year. That seems fair enough tbh, under the current circumstances.

Fucking unbelievable. Up there with Allardyce going to Derby "to not get beat" and still getting beat. what narks me is his constant talking up of the opposition which is very similar to Allardyce. Phrases like "championship hardedned teams" for example - what the fuck does that mean? Second rate would be more accurate, and before anybody jumps down my throat for assuming we have a right to win every match, that's not what I'm saying. We have to expect teams wil try hard against us, it's up to us to rise above that with our supposedly superior quality. Hughton needs to find an effective game plan to utilise that quality, at the moment it all looks very confused.

As opposed to a boring place where we all come to say unsupportive things about the club... Strangely enough I think this place has a great cross section of views, it's even demonstrated in this thread. There's a few other forums where certain views aren't welcome at all. I think this is mountain out of molehill material tbh.

I think too much blame that the players deserve is being deflected to Hughton personally. That I would agree with.

Maybe so, but tbf, I was concerned about some aspects of our performances even when the results were good. The only part of our game I'm really not too worried about is our defence ironically. The midfield and forwards ahve looked dis-jointed all season and if people are pointing these things out I can't say I blame them.

No he hasn't he's played Smith because Butt was injured at the start of the season and after playing well he didn't deserve to be dropped. That's hardly a snub, but if he fails to pick Butt when Smith's out, that clearly will be.

I don't condone anyone whingeing constantly or expecting fantastic results every time, but when oour team has by far the biggest wage bill in the division, I do resent seeing them struggle to play decent football against teams on a fraction of their salaries. You win some, you lose some, but you would expect a few better performances tbh. As for Hughton, I like the bloke but it's a sad situation when a club of this stature has resorted to appointing a coach as a manager when he has proven nothing yet. I think that is what people are finding frustrating.

Agree with this basically. I thought Caroll and Harewood both failed to hold the ball up against Forest and Ranger has done that consistently well even if he hasn't scored. I would like to see him alongside Harewood or Lovenkrands.

I am pretty sure that Butt will fill in for Smith as he is the natural replacement for a defensive midfielder. Not that I agree with it but I can't see Hughton failing to pick Butt as it would be a massive snub to a senior pro, and I just don't think Hughton has the balls to do it.

Don't be harsh on Sillius ITK capers he gets his stuff from online papers add some random speculation and post for gullible internet nation

and leave us with Andy Carroll and Nile Ranger? It might be worth giving Ranger a go with either Harewood or Lovenkrands. At least the lad can bring other players into the game, whereas Carroll doesn't really link well with his partners imo.

Come on Sillius there's a good chap feed us with your random crap

In this division any team can win games, it's just that sort of league. What position were Scunny in before last night?? Donny have looked good every time I've seen them on the box, maybe they aren't as good the rest of the time but from what I have seen they always seem to move the ball quikly and fluently. Chris Hughton keeps peddling this line that this is a tough division,and constantly harps on about hardened Championship sides. The truth is of course, that the vast majority of the teams in this league are shit. Utter shit. It's just that we don't have enough quality to rise above them ourselves.

What is it about Newcastle that attracts such ugly, low class owners?

Ashley isn't going to spend because we already have the most expensive squad in the division. Unfortunately they are not as good as their salaries would suggest, and until the under-performers are off the wage bill I can't see any more investment happening, although if Ashley has any sense he will see that Shearer was right - an investment of £10m or so on the right couple of players will be worth millions if it means we go up. At the moment though, I wouldn't trust anybody at the club to identify the right players.

If we keep getting bad results I think Ashley might get cold feet and sell up anyway. Finally the utter shitness of our over-paid football squad will have proven useful for something.

The biggest criticism I have is that Hughton didn't address the problem of lack of width in midfield. Everywhere else we have got options, but we end up shoe-horning central midfielders out wide because we don't have any natural options. We can moan about his selections all we like, but it doesn't matter which combination we try, they all fail to produce on the pitch.

How many points behind us are boro?

We haven't got a paper thin squad at this level. FFS Harewood, Lovenkrands and Butt were on the bench and they are probably on far higher wages than the players who have been out-playing us for the last few games. What does that say about the players picked as first choice?

Will we be playing 'Dignity' in the dressing room before kick off?

Most teams in this divison don't have strength in numbers. Bit of a weak excuse imo.

So we got relegated and one of the few crumbs of comfort was that we wouldn't have to watch games where we were out-classed by Premier league sides any more. Now we are watching players on Premier league wages struggling to get the best of second rate league sides. It's all very well for players to call for more investment, but when we are paying the highest wage bill in this division, what are they giving back in return?

It is a shit league. We are in the right place. I quite like how tight the league is, there doesn't any longer appear to be a 'runaway pack', which is rather nice-ish. No team has enough quality to run away with it, including us.