Mick

*Insert old Mick joke here.* Not possible.

I thought they were smarties.

Kids of today, no stamina.

You can go out tonight and celebrate and pretend you're celebrating the birthday.

This is like waiting for your first child to be born.

I expected this but it still seems surreal. Rafa Benitez is going to manage us in the Championship.

And we thought that he was the right manager for us.

4 of us walked away 2 seasons ago against Cardiff and all 4 are going back if Rafa is manager.

I bet he's pounding around his house tonight thinking about how his players have let him down.

We'll done Alan, you piece of shit. 2nd best to a foreigner.

So Alan, how does it feel to be a loser, again?

Take that you twat..

What a shite first half.

I'm sure we're past the point where this was going to fall through through either side screwing up, I would imagine that the issues to be sorted now are minor and the only major possible problem would be a better offer coming in from another club. We have everything going for us, Rafa has been here and the fans love him and he knows it, nobody should underestimate the value of that. We're a potentially huge club which just needs to be run properly and Rafa seems to be the type who will tap into that and has the self confidence to believe he can pull it off. We're down on our knees and seem willing to change the way we're run and seem willing to go with what Rafa thinks is a blue print to success. Amazingly, Rafa seems to get on with our cretins and seems to have a reasonable working relationship with them. I'm quite pleased that nobody is rushing into this and are instead sorting everything out before making what is almost certainly a major commitment from both sides. Them taking time gives me more hope that they will get this one right and that we'll soon be heading in the right direction. Far too often we try to build on sand and we all know what happens when we do that. For once, we're putting in solid foundations and we can only be the better for it and I'm still excited about our future.

It could be because he doesn't want to give us an interest free loan when he can receive interest if he invests elsewhere. An overdraft means the club finances the loan instead of him personally financing it. I think it ties in with him saying, once the money has gone, it's gone.

Please stop removing bits of this thread.

I would guess the news that he's had a bypass isn't too bad as I would suspect that they would only do it if he was in a good enough condition to cope with it. My dad had a massive heart attack immediately after a few minor attacks and he had to build himself up for the operation which took 8 hours and he needed 5 grafts. My dad had a blockage which caused the minor attacks and they injected rat poison to thin the blood and that's when everything turned to s***. The heart was struggling to get blood past the blockage and then all of a sudden the pressure was released. His heart stopped and they had to use the jump leads to bring him back. His recovery was amazing. 24 hours after the operation and he was sitting up in a chair. 24 hours later and he was walking around. 5 days after the operation and he was home. 25 years later and he's still with us and getting about as well as anybody his age. Hopefully Ginola will do as well because he's much fitter than my dad was.

Shelvey would be one of the first out of the door for me, he's useless most of the time and offers very little.

Lee Dixon kicked lumps out of him when we played at Highbury and he wasn't the same player for us after that, he was still good but he didn't do it as often.

I've got a 200mb broadband connection and the sites videos still buffer and adverts lock my browser.

I hope this is bullshit and the tweet was true, he's one of the best player we've had at Newcastle and scored one of the best goals St James' will have ever seen against Ferencvaros.