Mick

Nowt to do with football but Hamilton will not be the first ever to become world champion in his first season, Farina did it in his first season, I've no idea if anybody else has.

That bit, combined with your signature, makes me want to spew.

Typical shite from Thompson House, an unnamed journalist quoting an unnamed source.

Harper has just has one of his longest runs in the team for years, mistakes aren't inevitable, his mistakes have been at times when he's had one game out of the blue and before he's had a chance to get used to the players in front of him. Given has also made match losing mistakes, all keepers do. The biggest howler I've seen from either was probably by Given against Coventry when he wasn't aware of Dublin being behind him, he dropped the ball on the ground to kick it when Dublin ran around and put the ball in the net.

I thought we pissed all over West Ham.

No I wouldn't rather have Stead you brought him into it, I just showed how Owen hasn't proven to have been any better for us than Stead was for Blackburn and how much they've cost per goal. I said at the time we bought Owen that we could have spent the money better instead of putting £17 million into an injury prone player. I also said at the time that we were crazy to bid £9 milion more than our nearest and only rivals to his signature, Liverpool who bid £8 million.

Roeder had no right to have a go at anybody regarding blaming things on injuries.

Jon Stead and Owen have something in common, the number 8. It's the number of goals Stead scored for Blackburn and the number Owen has scored for us. The cost per goal for Owen here has so far been £3,375,000 the cost per goal for stead was £1,740,000 while he was at his worst for Sunderland. Both figures are estimates based on the reported wages and transfer fee of both players and the number of goals scored, 8 against 2.

Throw in a link to where he said that, I missed it but would love to take the water out of him for saying it.

Some of us said that £17 million for Owen was crazy, we were right.

Results have always been most important, a poor display only matters in defeat. It's the same with draws, people are pissed off when you drop points after leading but are happy when you come back from behind.

It's interesting that the most Northerly club has the most injuries and the most southerly has the least, also most of the clubs with most injuries are from the North and vice versa, maybe it's the temperature and what it does to muscles. Who knows? If it is the temperature than we should look at how we warm up before playing, wrapping people up to improve the heat that warms up the muscles.

It happens at most clubs, Keegan and Rush both left Liverpool when club and players were at the top of their game.

How many times has Bobby Robson turned us down and who was in charge?

I disagree that we should aim for top 10, we should be trying to get as high as possible before the next transfer window opens. A lot of good players will be out of Europe by then and possibly looking for a move. If we look as if we're going for Europe we might be able to bring in the creativity we need to start winning tight games.

I'm not sure either keeper would have saved any of the goals that the other let in, both are good keepers who have saved our arses at times.

I don't see what the reason for going out has to do with any player coming back, if a player is doing well when he's playing in the team, he should keep his place until that player does something to lose it. I've never liked a player walking back into the team just because he's fit. It sends the wrong message to the player who comes in and does well, a player should know that he will be rewarded for putting in good performances. That is the incentive to come in and do well, that is what will drive the players on to do better, it's dangling the carrot.

Where did he say the world began in 1997? Here you go again putting words into people’s mouths which they haven't said and you have the cheek to use .

Sorry, I don't think Shepherd was any better than McKeag, I base that on the amount of time both men were in the job and the failures of the two. Both had to fight off possible takeovers, Shepherd has complained that the speculation which was surrounding the club was having a negative effect on the way he was doing his job. Shepherd had to contend with that for a small percentage of his time at the end so it had no bearing on how he performed at the start, as a Chairman McKeag had it constantly. McKeag was Chairman for 2 years, Shepherds first 2 full years saw us drop from 2nd in the league to finish 13th twice while the club was financially stable. McKeag was running a club that was financially struggling, they had debts which made sure that he had his hands tied behind his back, Shepherd took over a club that was cash rich and he still failed, he dropped us 11 places in the league. McKeag didn’t do a good job, neither did Shepherd, 2 poor Chairman. I can’t be bothered trolling through your posts to find where you said something along the lines that you could see why Souness was appointed, even if you didn’t want him but you did say it. I said take Sir Bobby out of it and it's all failure, I didn't mean that Bobby's time should actually be taken out, 1 Success, the rest failure.

I have answered this before, I've also ignored it because I don't like saying the same thing all of the time. I would have been over the moon to have qualified more for Europe and would have preferred to have kept Gazza and Beardsley. I think Shepherd was handed a legacy and for too long wasted what he was handed on a plate. I don't think he made the most of the situation which was the club being as strong as it possibly ever had been in our history, certainly the best in recent history, I don't think he made the most of it. You keep banging on about McKeag, I don't think he did a good job, I just don't think he's any worse than Shepherd, McKeag was handed a poor club and made a poor job of it, I think Shepherd would have been as bad if he'd been in that same position. Either way, I can't prove that and you can't prove I'm wrong so arguing the case is a bit pointless. Shepherd was handed the 2nd best club in the Premiership and left it the 13th best, Shepherd was handed the 2nd richest club in the Premiership, he left the club with probably the 2nd highest debt, a debt which was probably unmanageable under his regime, Hall took over a club in danger of going out of business, Shepherd left the club in the same position, a position which is miles away from the club he took over. Yes, the Hall's had a hand in that, if only in allowing him to do it, Shepherd as Chairman was the man who made the decisions, he had the casting vote in a board of directors which was evenly split between two families. If Shepherd was the puppet you make him out to be by doing the Hall’s dirty work then he’s as much an idiot as I think he is because he could have pushed things through and took a stand. He either didn’t have to and made his own decisions or jumped when asked to, either way he was a poor Chairman who got things right when appointing Sir Bobby, he got it terribly wrong when he sacked him. All of his other appointments have been failures except for the last appointment who will now be lucky enough to work under a better Chairman than the one who appointed him. You seem to think that our failures are down to the managers yet you think the Chairman has no hand in that, you have even defended the appointment of Souness because of his CV, youu defended the appointment of Roeder because he had a shite CV, you thought that it was logical to appoint a shite CV because good CV's had failed, all of these good CV's failed, most of them for the first time ever, do you not think that might explain something? People fail for a reason, Dalglish had never failed before he came here, he'd won things at two different clubs yet he failed under the leadership of Shepherd, Gullit also failed for the first time, he also did that under Shepherd, Souness and Roeder were serial failures yet the man you support thought both were good enough for us, Souness was the man to improve on those European qualifications you repeatedly mention. The only common denominator in all of these failures is Freddy Shepherd, the man all of these "Top Managers" had to work with. If I keep buying perfectly good cars and crashing them then I think I'd start to suspect that my driving was the problem, not the cars, you would probably blame the cars. Take the record of Sir Bobby out of Shepherd’s time and he would look as bad as most of our poor chairman, poor chairman who didn’t get 10 years to get something right.

This story will not reflect on the current situation at the club, it will just remind people why were better off now that they've gone. They'll still be defended by some but who cares, they've gone and we're better off because of that.

Anybody who thinks Allardyce needs to go is mad, he's had so much to do in such a short space of time that it would be impossible to put right overnight. He should be given all season before being finally judged then if we've improved he should be given another year. Some of our football has been awful but some has been good, I hope Allardyce moves away from 4-3-3 as I hate the formation but he's the manager and it's up to him to get the players to play the way he wants, his job will be on the line if he gets it wrong so he's entitled to do the job the way he wants it to be done. Allardyce wouldn't have been my choice for manager but having said that, he's better then the last two we've had, better by miles. If we play shite then say it’s shite but give the manager a chance, unlike the last two, he deserves a chance.

The dumbest thing is that it was well reported that the mackems were getting money from the EEC because they were building on an old mine.

You couldn't be more wrong http://www.newcastle-online.com/nufcforum/index.php?topic=45654.msg1026292#msg1026292

Winter in September, I hope not.