TRon

I could be wrong but I'm sure the actual amount is closer to £230-240m.

If we can get a performance like we did 2nd half against Everton, it might be worth easing him back in with Owen out. I'd like to see him with a decent team around him before passing judgement. He was on a hiding to nothing coming raw into an injury ravaged team deflated by Keegan's departure.

http://www.schemamag.ca/archive2/images/speedy-gonzales.jpg Seems to be approaching full fitness again

We've nowhere near the quality Arsenal have, replacing Owen will be 100x as hard for us as it was for Arsenal to replace Henry. The whole Henry thing was his arrogance and his holier-than-thou demeanour. Owen is absolutely nothing like that and is our one gem on top of a huge pile of average. Do you think Owen seriously wants to stay here unless he's offered stupidly high wages? If I thought he really, really wanted to be here rather than somewhere else I could probably justify offering him a bundle and hope he stayed fit. As it is I'm not fussed if he goes. For a player like Owen at this stage in his career, I think the short to medium term prospects of the club will come into it far more than wages IMO. Probably true, but as our prospects are ropey short to mid term I think we'll be saying adios to li'l Mikey.

It's probably because we've heard so little about him recently. JFK has talked up a storm over the likes of Ameobi and Duff but I was just wondering if he was even aware of Gonzalez? Hughton didn't use him much, I don't know if he was carrying an injury back then. It just seems with the midfielders all coming back to full fitness and available again, we might not see much more of Nacho for a while. Bear in mind Barton is due back against the Unwashed.

We've nowhere near the quality Arsenal have, replacing Owen will be 100x as hard for us as it was for Arsenal to replace Henry. The whole Henry thing was his arrogance and his holier-than-thou demeanour. Owen is absolutely nothing like that and is our one gem on top of a huge pile of average. Do you think Owen seriously wants to stay here unless he's offered stupidly high wages? If I thought he really, really wanted to be here rather than somewhere else I could probably justify offering him a bundle and hope he stayed fit. As it is I'm not fussed if he goes.

Well if the current board are here they won't be breaking the bank for a striker of Owen's class. That's for certain. I'm assuming the club will be under new ownership by then.

Speedy is just an ironic nickname as he looks anything but to date. It's Nacho I'm talking about if that's confusing.

How depressing is that. I know what you mean, but once Jonas is fully fit and Barton returns from suspension that should no longer be the case. Because Gutierrez has proven delivery or Barton for that matter ? Surprised how low people rate Geremi; he provided the most amount of assists in the squad last season and is by far our best proven provider of goals among the squad. But he can't run. I'd say that probably plays quite a big part in people's relatively low perception of him. That's my only problem with him. I don't think you can have Butt and Geremi in the same midfield otherwise we'll crawl to a standstill.

Is he still injured/in the squad/in the country?

UV is bookmarking posts going back years and waiting for the opportunity to confront the original poster with them. Bizarre and slightly disturbing

This is one of the reasons I'm a bit meh about Owen leaving next year. When he's out with injury it's usually for a substantial amount of time, rarely for a minor tweak or niggle although I hope he proves me wrong on this one. He's done well on the injury front recently to be fair, but when it's all added up, the injury record, loss of pace and high wage demands I'm not sure it's a package we need beyond this season. He's still a top player obviously but it's becoming a bit like the Henry situation at Arsenal. When he leaves and we buy a striker next season the team might develop in a positive way assuming we can bring some quality in.

There's a lot of sense in there HTT. Lerner seems to have a lot of trust with O'Neill for example, they seem to have a very good working relationship. In contrast, Ashley has a very hands off approach and delegates a lot of work down a chain of command which appears to have left Keegan out of the loop, something which he wasn't happy with going back even last season. What I would say though, is that money plays a big part in all this. It was the reason KK became disillusioned in '97 and it's got a lot to do with why he left now. Even with Lerner and O'Neill the true test of the relationship will be when the purse strings have to be tightened if things go wonky. At the moment though O'Neill has invested very well so everything looks good. I suppose Keegan would argue that he was never really given that chance.

Considering the fact that the deadline for bids has been put back and now shunted aside altogether, I get the feeling that Harris is trying to talk up a sale but no one's biting at the price of £300m. There's obviously genuine interest if Ashley drops the price by £30-50m. If it's a case of brinkmanship he's taking a big risk that the sale will fall through IMO. If a new buyer can't get in in time to work the January window, they'll just step back till next year or look somewhere else.

It's easy this game. Funny isn't it how so many chairman refuse to back their managers even though big claims are made on behalf of a certain former Chairman? I was merely being facetious. Just making the point that it's easy to draw parallels between the different chairman/owners not backing their chosen manager at certain times. Which makes it strange your opinion differs now. Shepherd sometimes didn't back the manager - bad. Ashley/his system sometimes didn't back the manager - good? Maybe it's best we don't open this can of worms on second thoughts. We all know how it will end...> Well at least I can't be blamed for the hijack this time. He's got you there, and you want to leave it at that then ? No I just didn't want to hijack the thread

That's incorrect. If they'd all been available we'd have been talking about what good business £12m was. The problem is, we didn't bring in enough players to pad out our squad, so we are missing him, no doubt. In order for us to "miss him", he must be a better player then what we currently have. On the fact that Geremi had more assists than he did last season, and has at least a semblance of understanding with Owen (in delivering free kicks and crossses), no we don't miss him at all. According to ESPN, in 3 seasons with 89 starts + 8 sub appearances, Gutiérrez had 5 goals and 8 assists with Mallorca, that's less than 2 goals and 3 assists per season. I guess we haven't been missing him either and should stick with Geremi? We should also be looking to sell him on in January if we can make a decent profit. I'd call £8 million a decent profit on Milner, £12 million is a lot more than decent. £8m is probably what we got after Leeds took their sell on fee, but £10-12m + increasing his wages is what Everton & Villa were willing to pay. How much do you reckon we can get for Gutiérrez in January? I'm rubbing my hands at the thought of the cash already. We could possibly get £12-£15m which would be a big profit. Obviously that would be scandalous so it's best we release him from his contract to return to Spain. We don't want players that could in future be sold for a profit here thanks very much.

Why? because they will have loads of money probably. Mike Ashley's got plenty of money. Ambani's got a hell of a lot more. So? Well having plenty of cash has had a fair bit to do with Abramovich turning Chelsea into a force, and I would imagine it had something to do with City buying Robinho. I assume we don't want another owner like Ashley who will be unwilling to spend big. I'm not all that arsed about Abramovich/City-style spending tbh. I want someone who's in between Ashley and those lot IMO, someone who believes in organic growth and building on a solid base but at the same time not unwilling to spend to back the manager if required. Wishful thinking perhaps, but I hope for someone like Randy Lerner. He's worth less than Ashley from a quick peek at Wikipedia btw. Hate to bring this up but even Lerner took a season before spending big in the transfer market, his initial two transfer windows were pretty tame. Not unlike Ashley's. Keith Harris also praised Lerner for not saddling the club with debt (sound familiar?) and investing his own money. The key difference seems to be that Lerner was prepared to back O'Neill's judgement, whereas Ashley preferred Wise/Jiminez's choices. I wouldn't call 10m after six months for Ashley Young tame tbh. Fair enough. I'm not a close follower of Villa I just remembered an article I read that suggested Villa fans were initially unhappy that Lerner didn't spend cash in a hurry.

Why? because they will have loads of money probably. Mike Ashley's got plenty of money. Ambani's got a hell of a lot more. So? Well having plenty of cash has had a fair bit to do with Abramovich turning Chelsea into a force, and I would imagine it had something to do with City buying Robinho. I assume we don't want another owner like Ashley who will be unwilling to spend big. I'm not all that arsed about Abramovich/City-style spending tbh. I want someone who's in between Ashley and those lot IMO, someone who believes in organic growth and building on a solid base but at the same time not unwilling to spend to back the manager if required. Wishful thinking perhaps, but I hope for someone like Randy Lerner. He's worth less than Ashley from a quick peek at Wikipedia btw. Hate to bring this up but even Lerner took a season before spending big in the transfer market, his initial two transfer windows were pretty tame. Not unlike Ashley's. Keith Harris also praised Lerner for not saddling the club with debt (sound familiar?) and investing his own money. The key difference seems to be that Lerner was prepared to back O'Neill's judgement, whereas Ashley preferred Wise/Jiminez's choices.

Why? because they will have loads of money probably. Mike Ashley's got plenty of money. Ambani's got a hell of a lot more. So? Well having plenty of cash has had a fair bit to do with Abramovich turning Chelsea into a force, and I would imagine it had something to do with City buying Robinho. I assume we don't want another owner like Ashley who will be unwilling to spend big.

Why? because they will have loads of money probably. Mike Ashley's got plenty of money. Ambani's got a hell of a lot more.

It's easy this game. Funny isn't it how so many chairman refuse to back their managers even though big claims are made on behalf of a certain former Chairman? I was merely being facetious. Just making the point that it's easy to draw parallels between the different chairman/owners not backing their chosen manager at certain times. Which makes it strange your opinion differs now. Shepherd sometimes didn't back the manager - bad. Ashley/his system sometimes didn't back the manager - good? Maybe it's best we don't open this can of worms on second thoughts. We all know how it will end...>

It's easy this game. Funny isn't it how so many chairman refuse to back their managers even though big claims are made on behalf of a certain former Chairman?

I don't think many have loyalties above the club as a whole tbf. I think all Skirge/cp's point is that where we don't know the facts, one is forced to ask who they trust on gut instinct and past experience alone. Keegan has surely done much more for this club than Ashley has, and so many retain the view that the former is the one they choose to trust and therefore back. This may seem daft to some, but it doesn't to me. If Keegan's compensation was going to come out of Ashley's pocket I'd go along with that. As it will come out of Newcastle United's coffers, I'd want the club to win.

Eh? Examples? Held the club back from the heady days of nearly dropping into the 3rd? How does a supporter's loyalty to an ex-manager hold the club back exactly? One a smallish scale not allowing the promising Bellamy/Kluivert partnership to grow in order to allow Shearer to get to the goal record? Example no. 2. There are more. How about refusing to back SBR's judgement in going for Miguel, Portugal's RB and spending £2m on Carr instead? That was a good call wasn't it?

I'm heartened that he included India as one of the countries where investment might come from. It could be a clue that Ambani has thrown his turban into the ring.