tmonkey

Lovely goal by Di Michele tbh.

Coloccini is struggling against Cole.

Nicky Butt's shit first touch leading to another dangerous counter attack by West Ham.

Butt needs to be moved on at the end of the season.

We are all individuals with our own wildly differing views and opinions and standards of behaviour, on this planet, and I accept that. It is difficult at times (and I often wonder if some of us ARE on the same planet!) but I accept it and the bizarre views on many aspects of life (football included) that some people have. The above (in bold) though, makes me wonder afresh, whether we should seriously consider setting up 'secure compounds' for some people . . . I really do. It sounds like the 'compounds' remark is directed at me, but I'm not 100% sure. Can you confirm? If it is, and it reads like it is, you'll have to do what all people with a valid, sensible opinion that differs from the masses have to do - put up with ridicule because there's no real counter arguement, just a differing opinion, to throw back. Hence, the "youre a NUTTER" replies.

Previous board was shit and had crap philosophies. They would rather back a manager who wanted to sign has beens on high wages like Smith instead of bothering to set up a policy that seeks to encourage youth development and discourage spending on "established" players who have already had their peak.

We're 17th right now.

Emre barely played last season so they must not take appearances into account when working out their statistics. They also don't seem to take the number of games in charge and who the opposition were when they say Allardyce was more successful than Keegan. Embarrassment of an article for 'The Times'. Statistics will only tell you so much, but the gist of the article isn't far wrong. Newcastle's decline began well before Ashley got here, the slump was initiated by the sacking of Robson, and the disastrous appointments of Souness and Roeder. Even under Allardyce, another appointment before Ashley arrived, the performances in relation to wages were appalling. So while Ashley has made some mistakes, it's hardly surprising that we have taken the direction we have done, in trying to get the over-paid footballers in line or out the door. 4th to 21st under Shepherd's regime using their statistics. I think that is an accurate reflection of the latter stages of the Shepherd era and an indiciation of just how incompetent a chairman he was to oversee and fund (using the club's future income) such a slide.

Care to explain how paying off £110m of debt, isn't subsidising the club? I thought Ashley was referring to transfer budgets, i.e. this mysterious £20m per season? If he's paid off the debt as he likes to keep stating, then there would be no need for him to keep subsidizing paying the debt anyway, no? Scare tactics, emotional blackmail, toys out the pram, peddling the we owe him a favour line, reads like "love me, sob for me, don't boo me, if you don't and do boo screw yous" And you've bought it! was he f*** talking about transfer budgets. he said he'd invest 20mill in the club per season, where do you get "on players" from. "I knew that the club would cost me money every year after I had bought it. I have backed the club with money. You can see that from the fact that Newcastle has the fifth highest wage bill in the Premier League. I was always prepared to bank roll Newcastle up to the tune of £20 million per year but no more. That was my bargain. I would make the club solvent. I would make it a going concern. I would pour up to £20 million a year into the club and not expect anything back. It has to be realised that if I put £100 million into the club year in year out then it would not be too long before I was cleaned out and a debt ridden Newcastle United would find itself in the position that faced Leeds United." Quite clearly he says he was prepared to put in up to £20mill of his own money into the club per season. That could have been to reduce the finance costs each season, subsidise additional player wages, transfers, etc.

Anyone who disagrees is being "negatively biased".

One of the best right backs in world. He was excellent but never close to the likes of Zanetti or Cafu.

Holy shit, what a great first goal by Cluj.

Smells like they've had this all rigged up from the off to me or at least courted interest before all this blew up. I shall book a flight there tomorrow and try and sell them something, must be a piece of piss. To be honest though, if they do sell to a rich investor who pumps money into the club, we're still far better off than heading into administration under Shepherd with Big Sam at the helm. It just seems strange how yesterday Ashley had no intentions of selling, then 24 hours later he's having talks with some Arabs or whoever. We should forget about signing Spanish based players which seem to take months to conclude, shop in Arab land where deals take 24 hours or less. The club has been for sale all along, now he's cashing in his chips. Seeing as though we have all eaten a little bit of humble pie with the fact the papers appear to have been correct about whats been going on behind the scenes, it is therefore hard to ignore the constant stories over the past few months about us being for sale. I said it before but that statement wasnt written Saturday night after the furore at the match. Thats been written and prepared for days just because the papers we're right about that its no indication that they were right about the club being up for sale. Louise Taylor has been telling us the club is for sale ALL summer, as soon as this thing happened, she started saying ashley wont sell. if this doesn't show you what the papers are like nothing will. just because they have struck lucky here, it doesn't mean they can be trusted in general, some of the time the papers will strike lucky, but you cant use these rare occasions to justify the majority of times they are wrong. In defence of HTT: 1) The papers were running that story without any apparent reason. It seemed very strange that they would even run with such a story - they've done nothing like that with Villa for example (AFAIK), and I dont buy the notion that they're merely out to "get us" - they're out to sell papers, and they'll print these rumours whenever they can. Alot of these journalists have links and sources that might know something, and likewise if we flip your arguement on it's head, just because they get things wrong alot of the time doesn't mean they don't have that inside information. Given how easy it is for players to turn a club down, or a club to turn another club's bid down, we have no idea what stories or rumours have any truth in them. Given that it was so odd that they were constantly running with this rumour at a specific point in time, odd from the point of view that there was no logical reason for them running the story that such a rich man buying the club for enjoyment would contemplate selling so soon, I think there may have been good inside knowledge behind those stories. On the face of it, Ashley had realised he wouldnt be able to fund the club's rise to the top four at some point prior to Keegan's resignation, and had been looking for either a buyer and/or an investor. 2) Ashley comes across as completely naive. He's a billionaire, but that doesn't mean he's a Bill Gates type rich man. He's made his money by implementing a retail concept that has been done elsewhere, but not in this country with sports clothes. That doesn't make him a genius or someone in complete control of every single aspect of his business. Hence, when the Dubai group were looking to purchase NUFC, he might just have been doing what he was reported to have done - been partying, been too busy to receive the phonecalls, unaware that the Dubai group would switch targets thinking he could negotiate at a later date, etc etc. Hence, I dont think that failure of the group that bought City is concrete proof that Ashley had no intention of selling prior to Keegan's resignation.

Smells like they've had this all rigged up from the off to me or at least courted interest before all this blew up. I shall book a flight there tomorrow and try and sell them something, must be a piece of piss. To be honest though, if they do sell to a rich investor who pumps money into the club, we're still far better off than heading into administration under Shepherd with Big Sam at the helm. It just seems strange how yesterday Ashley had no intentions of selling, then 24 hours later he's having talks with some Arabs or whoever. We should forget about signing Spanish based players which seem to take months to conclude, shop in Arab land where deals take 24 hours or less. The club has been for sale all along, now he's cashing in his chips. But where's the downside? The resignation of a former great manager who may have had no long term future in the game anyway is nothing if the price for that is the club's existence, or at the very least, financial stability. Had Ashley not taken over, we might have finished the season with Big Sam still in charge. We could have been relegated under that pathetic excuse for a manager. And ignoring the manager, the awful team, the awful performances, there would probably have been nothing to spend at all. We'd have had to sell our good players and replace them with cheap ones - a net spend of zero is alot better than a net spend of minus 15 million. Surely you must be able to put two and two together, and realise that Sir John Hall was absolutely desperate to sell his shares for a reason? The summer we appointed Big Sam must have been the summer that all the chickens came home to roost. The previous owners did a runner because the cash had dried up, all spent on a team of s***, highly overpaid players and the club having a reputation to match that mediocrity, meaning no established good manager or players wanting to come here any time soon. We have no idea if anyone else would have bought the club that year - from the looks of it, only someone impulsive and foolish enough to buy a club out of blind love for the game, someone who had recently made a fortune and therefore able to take a risk without really thinking it through, only someone like that might have even considered buying the club in the state that it was in. We should be thankful to Ashley for what he's done overall. Well, at this point in time anyway - theres still both the time and opportunity for him to leave us in the lurch. I hope he doesn't, and if he doesn't, then the blot of stabbing Keegan in the back is a minor one compared to securing the future of the club.

Smells like they've had this all rigged up from the off to me or at least courted interest before all this blew up. I shall book a flight there tomorrow and try and sell them something, must be a piece of piss. To be honest though, if they do sell to a rich investor who pumps money into the club, we're still far better off than heading into administration under Shepherd with Big Sam at the helm.

That ship has sailed. He's as good as gone. And tmonkey I'm not just talking about the hull game, he's a class apart all the time imo. He's certainly a higher calibre player than most of our squad, but then we know we dont have a squad full of good players - and ignoring the fact that its far too early to judge, Gutierrez hasn't looked too far off in terms of quality, his opening game performance against ManU was significantly better than any Owen has had for us against a top side. Owen is a quality player to have because he has the ability to be the difference between us and a mid table or lower side - although in all honesty, more often than not he seems to be that "difference" when he's coming off the bench, whereas he's usually nearly that difference when he starts. Above that level of opposition, im not so sure Owen is really that good a player to make an impact against better sides. For example, against a team full of classy young players like Arsenal, Owen along with the rest of our team (bar Gutierrez - again) looked distinctly a calibre below what Arsenal had out there, in terms of their all round ability anyway. Hence, I dont agree that he's someone we'll not better for a long time - hopefully we'll sort things out by next season and start building from there, and the truth is that there are alot of players of Owen's calibre dotted around world football, we just need to be lucky or well equipped enough to sign some of them. We've moved on from better players in the past certainly - considerably better ones in fact if we're looking at purely contribution to our club on the pitch.

That living in Newcastle was like living in a goldfish bowl. But he maintains he didn't actually say it. Who knows. I just remember alot of hatred being aimed towards him because of those comments. Or maybe it was because he was badly off form yet was [allegedly] blaming others, including the city itself, for said poor form, hence coming accross as a t***. That's pretty much how I remember it too but I think he claimed Souness said the immortal words though. Still think he was a useful midfielder who was merely suffering from some poor form in an extremely s*** side under an even worse manager, and hence the hatred of him was way over the top. Even his poor form under Sir Bobby's eventually failing team was pretty harsh to single out given how often he'd either carry the aging Speed, or at worst, be just as bad as him.

That living in Newcastle was like living in a goldfish bowl. But he maintains he didn't actually say it. Who knows. I just remember alot of hatred being aimed towards him because of those comments. Or maybe it was because he was badly off form yet was [allegedly] blaming others, including the city itself, for said poor form, hence coming accross as a twat.

That living in Newcastle was like living in a goldfish bowl.

Jenas is a decent player who hit some poor form and was then slaughtered for a nothing comment.

Gomez is very lucky.

Not wrong, mad.

This is like the Milner thread after the game against Coventry. Big fan of Owen since he's switch to this midfield or dropping-deep role, but not sure its worth getting carried away about the inevitability of losing him on a free just yet, not based on a good performance against Hull City anyway.

Was he not there on Sports Direct business?

Nailed on he'll leave on a free. Impossible to see him staying with a club in such turmoil. Can only hope that he is motivated enough to have a good season with us. That way, we have more points on the table whilst at the same time good form from him will surely see a top four side pick him up on a free (Liverpool as a minimum), which means at least he wont sign for a "rival" mid table Premiership club.