Colos Short and Curlies

Hmmm maybe no funds have been available? Or maybe a better player has been made available but Ashley would only sanction another winger if one was sold?

We've got Jonas and Duff who can operate on both flanks. We've yet to see Zoggy on the right for any decent period, but his style of play would suggest that he could play on the right as well as the left. Therefore if we are going for a winger I'd like to see someone else who can play down both sides, gives the team flexibility and unpredictability - Man U and Chelsea are great for this, you never know which flank Ronaldo will play on with Nani, Giggs, Tevez all being able to fill in on t'other side. Turan would be my choice for based on players I have actually seen play and not just read about. More than anything though, we need someone with pace for the flanks. Having said that I would be just as happy if a creative CM was brought in and we made do with our current Trio and gave Lua Lua a chance to bed into the first team squad

He signed for some Greek side last week. Oh well, back to the drawing board

Gonna get slaughtered for this... I'm assuming that KK et al have someone in mind to replace Milner who they may not have moved for before the transfer went through (i.e. on top of their main targets). But assuming they can't get their man in before Monday (but they have secured their other targets) would anyone welcome Nobby back for his trilogy on a short term basis until Jan? He's without a club and despite wanting to move to London to be close to his kids I'm sure he would come back as a squad man for 3 months. Obviously I'm hoping for a younger signing who we can look to long term (as I'm sure the board are looking at), but if we need a stop gap until Jan we could do worse

Oh my god - "B I D S" . . . (or even more accurately - "reported bids"). How many times does THAT need to be pointed out? Fine then, lets look at facts. Coloccini for a reported 9m going up to 10.3m - also reported to have signed the 'contract of his life'. True, the Modric bid (I'll forget the Aimer & Inler ones because as Dave said, could be wrong) was made before any players were sold. In the end the deal didn't come off but it shows that the money is there for players of the right calibre. Gutierrez had an original asking price of 10m but we got around the via a loophole, but I imagine we still had to pay a few to get him in. There's a difference between 'selling to buy' and simply getting rid of players that are no good for us. How do you know (or 'imagine') that a Coloccini purchase would have been funded, if we had got (say) Modric? Also, I don't think Keegan would agree with any of you "Milner haters" on here ("no good for us" !!!!) I don't agree with you either. I also asked if you thought it would just be a 'mere coincidence' if Ashley actually spends some money RIGHT NOW? Well? Have you ever thought that we might not have budgeted to buy another RM, and therefore we need the money from his transfer before we can buy a replacement. er . . . is that not my point !!!!!!!!!! Eh? We had (in Keegans opinion) a strong pool of wingers and therefore wasn't looking to buy another one. Milner leaves so Keegan decides he does now need one. Ashley sanctions the move. This is not selling to buy. This is replacing a player who wanted to leave* *If you hand a transfer request in you want to leave, bollocks to the looking for a pay rise crap Buying when you have sold, when you probably (I said "probably") were not going to buy - irrespective of how the sale originated - is not the sign of a proactive club going forward. I am still STUPID enough to think we should be accumulating good players and moving forward - not taking one step forward and one step backward (in whatever order) . . . I don't think anyone would disagree with your second sentance there. But every club at some stage will have to buy a REPLACEMENT player due to one of their players wanting to leave the club. The point is that you can not say that if Ashley NOW gives Keegan cash to REPLACE James Milner (either a Right Winger or Attacking Midfielder depending on how Keegan sees Duff/Jonas/Zoggy/Geremi fitting in) then we are selling to buy. We are Buying because we have had to sell - slight difference. If however we are selling Milner and never had any plans to buy anyone else and Ashley sees this as a way to offset the Colo fee or to repay some of the deferred payments he has mentioned on past signings then I take your point about the direction the club is going in

That's the only thing that worries me. Though tbf he's been saying similar nice things about Smith and Ameobi that everyone was so keen to dismiss as fibs, so why not the same here? As always, it depends on who comes in. If we get someone like Arda (from what I've seen of him, anyway), KK won't give a flying f*** that Milner's gone. The only way I could see KK agreeing to such a move assuming he has a say which I think he will do is if the money was to be used to bring in someone much better. I still don't think he'd be happy though and to be honest, no manager likes losing players they want to keep even if they get a better player in as a replacement. I'm not blaming the club or anything here btw, if Milner wants to leave which may well be, there isn't much anyone can do. KK might not be happy but he's not stupid either. Someone would have had to pay Milner the extra money for a new contract, do you think KK would offer to give him a cut of his own wages? At the end of the day, whoever pays the bills is the one who makes the decisions and KK will understand that. He paid Terry Macs wages for his first part season

Oh my god - "B I D S" . . . (or even more accurately - "reported bids"). How many times does THAT need to be pointed out? Fine then, lets look at facts. Coloccini for a reported 9m going up to 10.3m - also reported to have signed the 'contract of his life'. True, the Modric bid (I'll forget the Aimer & Inler ones because as Dave said, could be wrong) was made before any players were sold. In the end the deal didn't come off but it shows that the money is there for players of the right calibre. Gutierrez had an original asking price of 10m but we got around the via a loophole, but I imagine we still had to pay a few to get him in. There's a difference between 'selling to buy' and simply getting rid of players that are no good for us. How do you know (or 'imagine') that a Coloccini purchase would have been funded, if we had got (say) Modric? Also, I don't think Keegan would agree with any of you "Milner haters" on here ("no good for us" !!!!) I don't agree with you either. I also asked if you thought it would just be a 'mere coincidence' if Ashley actually spends some money RIGHT NOW? Well? Have you ever thought that we might not have budgeted to buy another RM, and therefore we need the money from his transfer before we can buy a replacement. er . . . is that not my point !!!!!!!!!! Eh? We had (in Keegans opinion) a strong pool of wingers and therefore wasn't looking to buy another one. Milner leaves so Keegan decides he does now need one. Ashley sanctions the move. This is not selling to buy. This is replacing a player who wanted to leave* *If you hand a transfer request in you want to leave, bollocks to the looking for a pay rise crap

So - we may now have £12M to spend from the sale of Milner. The Oxford English Dictionary definition of a "Selling Club" - (Can only buy when they sell . . so NO PROGRESS ever to be made) Waddle / Beardsley / Gasgoigne - the good old days are BACK! (Don't have a go at me!) a selling club sells their best players milner woudn't even be me starting eleven with every1 fit The "need to sell first, to buy" is the main point being made here (not WHO the player we sell is). Like when we sold Andy Cole in order to get Les in? Or then we had to sell Les to part pay for Shearer?

I understand the 'defensiveness' towards criticism of our club, I have reacted like that a million times (perhaps 10 million times) before - but we are in a mess. Denying it, getting upset about it, making comparisons to 'times in the past', and sticking your head in the sand generally, doesn't help! There is something wrong at our club, there is something very "smelly" going on there (can't think of a better way to describe it) - quite simply, all is not as it should be. Look at their faces and the words and body language. I have seen organisations like this before - ill at ease with themselves and with eachother. Things not happenning, significant progress not being made in the way that it should be. I do not know what can be done now (a few last minute - even BIG - signings will not cover up the cracks). And, how likely is that (even) to happen. Keegan's man-management skills with the players has helped get us some reasonable performances - not great performances - and some decent results from those performances . . . so far. When the injuries and suspensions come in with our tiny squad though - we will struggle. We shouldn't even be considering 'struggling' - we should be taking steps to PROGRESS. That is what is wrong with the club, but the reasons WHY it is so wrong at the club at the moment - we are not privvy to, we can only speculate. But, lets not hide from the truth . . . Yes our squad needs additions and yes I am a little uncomfortable with the role of Wise and him being based in London etc. but really, I don't think things are anywhere near as bad as you put it. The team we have fielded this season is strong, and we have Viduka and Carroll still to add to that. With 2 or 3 more good signings I will happy with the squad until January at least. Look at Liverpool, they are supposedly challenging for the title and Champions League on top of what we are playing for, they only have one first teamer currently injured, and look at their bench the other night: Cavalieri, Dossena, Agger, Plessis, Spearing, El Zhar, Babel. If you listen to Ashley's reasons for Wise being based in London it would make no odds whether he was sat behind a desk in SJP or in London. In many ways being in London is a benefit (easy access for initial meetings with Agents etc) and could be one of the reaosns why there have been fewer leaks this summer (agents/players not being flown into Newcastle Airport etc)

if we had 3 targets lined up and the selling clubs wanted, say, another 1m per deal to sell in this window do you think we should pay it? or spend nothing on principle and start the season with what we've got? assuming they're first choice targets of course rather than last minute panic attacks I'd rather we payed hardball up to now, knowing that we would pay the extra million if needed, then strike now with the asking price

James Milner to Villa apparently. Out of the blue that one

whoop dee fucking doo, the club have marginally improved (1st team playing staff wise) upon some of our darkest seasons since joining the PL you don't take much pleasing you Would you rather go back to the summer of 2005? 2006? Of course the club is being better managed then during Freds last couple of seasons

Would rather give The Power Ranger the opportunity to prove himself for 20 minutes at the end of a game then pay Larsson to do the same

The REAL reason Milner has asked to leave.... http://www.newcastle-online.com/nufcforum/index.php?topic=40340.175 Reply 189. (The timeline fits) He's obviously a Cena hater, apologies to all the Milner Lovers out there, my bad.

No he wont, he'll be asked and asked and asked, but he will say 'I'm hopeful of getting 2-3 players in, but its difficult, it will be an anxious few days. We all know what and where we need to buy, just concentrating on Saturday for now'.

this time last year? the one before that? I dunno, maybe the last two seasons have made the majority on here more jumpy. I'll keep the faith until 11.59am on Monday morning, but the general feeling on here is doing my nut in!

I've never wanted a weekend to pass more quickly.

They do, just wouldn't include 'consistent' in there. surely, if something is inconsistent it lacks quality, if something is reliable , it has quality, unreliable, it lacks quality, dependable, it has quality, Disagree there, you can have quality but be unreliable - see Woodgate. the unreliability causes a glass ceiling to where that quality can take you

Completely agree, I would hope however that at least one person there is savvy enough to exploit loan deals to cover the short term issues

Go buy yourself a bar of soap and wash that filthy mouth of yours out

To be honest the best way of looking at spend in a year for the club as a whole is to take profit/loss before ammortisation then add the net spend/income on players in that year. Agreed Thinking about it, it should actually be feasible to give a strong forecasted proft for the year now. The revenue streams are pretty fixed (only prize money will vary) and cost structures will be fixed also

Get in! Just wonder where this profit will end up going though. In his pocket, on the squad or on the balance sheet to make the club look more of an attractive prospect to others. On the squad and on the balance sheet pretty much equate to the same thing dontcha think? Anyway, I haven't got the figures in fornt of me, but any reported profit will be BEFORE any sales and purchases of players. So say we made a profit of £10m and spent net £11m (as I say I aint got the figures here) then we have reinvested all and more of the revenue during the year Seriously? Seems like a pretty big omission from a profit & loss statement to me. Mind you, Mike says we never actually paid for any players before he came anyway, we just gave the selling clubs promise notes to be collected when the club was sold on to a generous (and handsome) Billionaire. Its really not, its a standard way of reporting things in football. The numbers are in there if you go down far enough but 99 times out of 100 the figures released to the press will read: Profit/Loss before amortisation of transfer fees (almost but not quite the cash profit/loss for the year) Profit/Loss after amortisation of transfer fees (the paper profit for the year) This years transfer spend does not hit the p&L directly, its hidden in the ammortisation and spread over the length of the initial contract of the player

To be honest the best way of looking at spend in a year for the club as a whole is to take profit/loss before ammortisation then add the net spend/income on players in that year.

Get in! Just wonder where this profit will end up going though. In his pocket, on the squad or on the balance sheet to make the club look more of an attractive prospect to others. On the squad and on the balance sheet pretty much equate to the same thing dontcha think? Anyway, I haven't got the figures in fornt of me, but any reported profit will be BEFORE any sales and purchases of players. So say we made a profit of £10m and spent net £11m (as I say I aint got the figures here) then we have reinvested all and more of the revenue during the year

Do you not seek to get a payrise each year in your job? I really don't see what anyone has done wrong. Milner asked for a review of his contract which he is entitled to. The club said you are staying on what we agreed last year. Fine Milner has decided that he will ask for a transfer as he thinks he can get a better deal elsewhere. Fine It may well be that he will stay, if so I have no doubt that he will continue to give 100% and continue to provide a split opinion amongst the fans as to his ability. He may well yet end up signing a new contract next summer.