tmonkey

I would take Roy Hodgsen right now. Experienced manager, nothing special based on his career but has shown he's adaptable to various situations, and should be able to avoid us getting relegated. This is his list of previous clubs: Halmstads BK Bristol City Örebro SK Malmö FF Neuchâtel Xamax Switzerland Internazionale Blackburn Rovers Internazionale Grasshoppers F.C. Copenhagen Udinese United Arab Emirates Viking FK Finland Fulham One would hope that Fulham are small enough for him to be tempted by us.

O'Shea

Nutmegged.

Anelka misses from 2 yards out

Second time Joe Cole has fluffed a good chance once being put through.

Ashley Cole's face grabbing dive was worse.

FIFA 09. Big money. That must've been 5-6 minutes of prime time advertisement. Overall a pretty crap advert.

Woah, what a long advertisement for a video game.

Berbatov has been dogshit for ManU. £30m of dogshit at this point in time.

Look at Fletcher preventing a quick free kick by standing in front of the ball and sticking his foot out. Lampard kicks the ball against him, looks at the ref, ref checks to see if its a NUFC player who the ball has been kicked against, sees its a ManU one, then pretends as though nothing has happened.

Ashley Cole is such a diving little weasel cunt.

Same old Chelsea, always cheating.

Please dont tell us you believe that I do. It had a deny it if you dare ring to it. The same article mentioned Riise, Dunne and Woodgate which also seemed to ring true...."wheres the residual value in those" But Lampard man... you really think Kevin is so deluded he thought he could pull Lampard away from Champions League football, probably the Champions elect for this season, and even from the clutches of Jose and Inter Milan. Keegan was never anyone's fool, and its disrespectful of someone who is still clearly a very good manager to be claiming he's "lost it", but I can easily see any of those targets being on a "wish list" of sorts given their situations earlier on in the summer. Ronaldinho - finished as a world star, linked heavily to Thaksin's Man City, so why on earth would he be an impossibility/crazy target? Lampard - threatening to leave if he doesn't get a new, lengthy, highly paid contract, in his final year of the contract. Especially with a new manager at the helm who had just brought in Deco. Thierry Henry - struggled with Barcelona, doesn't fit in there, isnt that important at all to their first team, hasn't adapted well to La Liga, etc etc. It's not the target who is unreastic, but the amount of money required to get them here. If contract negotiations with Chelsea had stalled, and we offered Chelsea £20m, Frank Lampard a 4 year contract on £220k per week and a signing bonus of lets say £8m, would he come here? Probably. Noone would have predicted Robinho choosing Man City after protracted interest from Chelsea as an example. Money clearly talks. And maybe Keegan was promised one or two big transfers if the right players were available, but hadn't realised that Ashley/Llambias/Mort/Wise/whoever were only willing to fund that sort of transfer unless it was someone with a good shelf life? And if Keegan had assumed we had big money to spend because of Ashley bankrolling the club, is it not plausible that they might be on some sort of wishlist of Keegan's? A list which includes a fair few realistic targets, but also a few big money ones that Keegan would love to have if the tiniest of windows opened and the chance/financing was there? The point is that I dont see why this has to be a two sides of the coin type of debate. I disagree that the only two possibilities in this instance are that either these players were on the list and Keegan was bonkers, or someone at the club was lying (or maybe the reporter with the anonymous club insider?). Its perfectly possible and reasonable for Keegan to have a list of players that could have constituted both realistic and borderline unrealistic targets (big name players who might be possibilities in certain circumstances), without him being off his rocker.

I have statements from Mike Ashley, as do you. That's the only reputable source of information we have right now with respect to the club's debts, well Shepherd more or less confirmed all the suspicions but then he's done so craftily without revealing the true amount of the debt that Ashey has had to face (only the largest one). As for paying off the debt, thats a massive thing to do for the club. Had he not done so, where would we be financing our transfers from? The £10m on Oba, the £17m on Owen, the various amounts of various expensive acquisitions - all purchased on credit using collateral of future income. Had he not repaid the debt, we might have had a net spend of minus 20mill instead of zero for all we know? There was a reason why the Halls were so desperate to sell that they flogged it to the first person who would take it, irrespective of what Shepherd intended to do with his 30% stake in the club. Getting pissed in New York - its funny how Ashley is criticised for undermining Keegan, yet when Keegan has walked, he's criticised for having no responsibility in running the club. Maybe Ashley had no role to play in the undermining of Keegan, and didnt even know about it until Keegan had walked? Maybe Ashley was getting pissed in New York whilst Keegan was being undermined by Wise/Llambias? And maybe Ashley wasn't just getting pissed in New York, maybe he had important business to attend to, and merely had a party thrown in the meantime because he's a mega wealthy man and that's what alot of them do in their spare time? What exactly do we know about this unfortunate series of events? My guess is very little. Aside from the fact that the NOTW editor who paid £50k for that picture of Ashley with a beer in his hand and a few nice girls posing alongside him (at least he wasnt shagging someone in a brothel) is probably rubbing his hands with glee at all the commotion it has caused.

So because we haven't done it in 7 days, or communicated with the fans as well as others, we should lynch those running the club? Certainly Ashley & Co have made some major mistakes, things could and should have been done alot better, but the point here is that the ridiculous overreaction by the fans did have a significant part to play in the current situation whereby we have a temporary manager unable to do the job required and no desire by those in charge to change that situation anytime soon. I m absolutely convinced that if the club had spoken to the fans 2 or 3 times in the period between Kevin walking out and the Hull match, the protests that took place would not have been anywhere near as well supported. I think they knew that would happen and played on it. They saw what the instant reaction was and must have realised that it was going to build and build until the next home game. They had a responsibility to calm things down. Instead, their silence and that f***ing ridiculous FACT statement on the web site just fanned the flames. Do that to a set of football fans and you should never be surprised with the reaction your going to get. I am not condoing the (non-violent) protests, but it was always going to happen That statement on the website was indeed ridiculous, and did fan the flames. But maybe it was made to try and put the flames out, but was done so to an extremely incompetent degree? For example, had Ashley's current statement been put up (minus the "im selling part) instead of the "Fact" statement, then things would have been alot clearer about the differences between the two parties. Unfortunately, a mistake was made, maybe a severe lack of communication played its part in it, etc etc. Its also woth noting that on the face of it, the club had waited for Ashley to get back from New York before he could meet with Kevin Keegan in what may have been an attempt to get him back. On the day that news broke about the possibilty of Keegan returning, plenty of Ashley's critics had admitted that this would be a great move, a sensible one. The fact that it failed could have been down to a number of reasons, e.g. maybe Keegan wanted more money to spend in order to do his job, or disagreed with the policy of scouting the world for talent instead of signing expensive Premiership proven players? Who knows. We dont know what happened during that period, and therefore its difficult to come to a conclusion as to what the club, or those running it, were trying to do. Anything else is pure conjecture.

The ultimate responsibility should always lie with those at the top. After all, it's their job. However, im a tad curious about something. What happened to "mistakes happen" and "forgive and forget"? Ashley made a mistake and it resulted in someone as stubborn as they are important to the club in walking out. A mistake made by an owner new to the game itself, an owner with good intentions for the club, with money ready to subsidise the club, with a good policy and plan for the long term running of the club, unlike those before him who had amassed serious debts and an awful playing squad contrary to their dillusional statements. So what do our fans do? We run around screaming for his head.

So because we haven't done it in 7 days, or communicated with the fans as well as others, we should lynch those running the club? Certainly Ashley & Co have made some major mistakes, things could and should have been done alot better, but the point here is that the ridiculous overreaction by the fans did have a significant part to play in the current situation whereby we have a temporary manager unable to do the job required and no desire by those in charge to change that situation anytime soon.

If the fans aren't partly to blame, then why is there a big difference between what is happening with us and what has happened with West Ham? They had a manager walk out under the exact same circumstances, yet they're not in utter limbo as a result of it. IMO the difference is because of the fans' emotional attachment to Kevin Keegan and the supposed lack of backing, combined with this resentment of the club being run by people perceived to be "cockneys", creating a situation whereby the chairman/owner have no interest in appointing a new manager, with very few managers willing to take the job knowing that they'd possibly have a new boss who doesn't want them the next day. Hence, we have someone completely incompetent and unqualified at the helm, someone who has been unfairly thrown into the role but will ultimately result in us going down if he stays there for long enough - anyone can point to how bad we've been since Keegan's departure and blame "the system" for not getting enough quality players in, but they'd do well to remember just how much of a difference a good manager can make on an apparently poor team struggling under a clueless "manager". The owner purchased the club, according to his own words, as a means to enjoy himself, a vessel to live out his love of football - as soon as the fans turned on him to the extent that they have, he was always going to lose the very motivation that saw him purchase the club hastily in the first place. Contrast that to West Ham fans, who have shown none of the vitriol or sheer anger towards a board who have done the same thing as plenty of other boards up and down the country, past and present. Even Shepherd signed players that weren't his managers' targets, as Souness has clearly stated, yet where were the mass demonstrations, and well respected fanzines protesting against the actions of the board and encouraging a revolt? Is it because we disliked Souness as a manager, forgave Shepherd becasue he wasnt a cockney, and in fact had no clue about what happened at the time because the manager didnt walk out in a huff? To quote Ashley: "I have enjoyed sport since I was a boy. I love football. I have followed England in every tournament since Mexico '86. I was there to see Maradona and his hand of God. I know what it means to love football and to love a club. I know how important it is to other people because football is so important to me. My life has been tied up with sport. It was the passion that I felt for sport that helped me to be successful with my business. That success allowed me to mix my passion and my business. I bought Newcastle United in May 2007. Newcastle attracted me because everyone in England knows that it has the best fans in football. When the fans are behind the club at St James' Park it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It is magic. Newcastle's best asset has been, is and always will be the fans. .... I am not stupid and have listened to the fans. I have really loved taking my kids to the games, being next to them and all the fans. But I am now a dad who can't take his kids to a football game on a Saturday because I am advised that we would be assaulted. Therefore, I am no longer prepared to subsidise Newcastle United. I am putting the club up for sale." So, aside from the conspiracy theory, how is that not because of the fans?

Semi-decent performance capped by a goal, but he keeps missing sitters or hitting them directly at the keeper. We need Martins back ASAP, Owen might be our best player currently but we need more firepower.

We should have gone for Martin Jol.

Its amazing how many bad passes Butt gets away with. Although he wasn't directly responsible for the first goal, he gave the ball away cheaply when we were passing it around slightly, just prior to the scrap that ensued which was then followed by West Ham's move for the goal. I'm starting to hate him as a player. Really, its been going on for years now, this utter crapness. Fast forward to the next game and he'll probably run around winning a few useless challenges and still be hailed as a good player. Frustrating as f***. N'Zogbia needs to never play at left back again. It was a decent idea at first, and useful against sides with no right wingers, but he's incapable of defending.

Owen should have buried that chance ffs.

A better team could have been picked today, along with more organisation and motivation with respect to the team out on the pitch. Instead, the current situation has ensured that we have a shit team picked by someone not up to the job, a cobbled together group of players with no organisation in terms of the way they are working, and clearly no motivation from the players. But let's ignore the fact that Hughton is shit and not up to the job and blame the chairman for everything, even though its our fault that he's not appointed a competent manager because we've effectively forced him out as we intended.

Di Michele was a nothing player in Italy, its a joke how good we're making him look.