Colos Short and Curlies

Would love to see him back. Good back up striker for the remainder of the season, good for 5 goals or so

Who's coming in to replace him? Surely 'Pool won't let Crouch go at this stage and after last night? (That's the rumour I've heard.) Apparantly were in for Marlon ' i look like the baddie in the mario brother film' Harewood and Teddy 'where's my walking stick' Sheringham. Worst transfer business in the clubs history if this comes off. Oh and we dont want the beanpole. We flogged him off years ago. Liverpool are welcome to him. Harewood does look exactly like a Goomba (Mario), as well. I love that someone else has noticed. http://www.dan-dare.org/Dan%20Mario/SMBMovie-Goombas.jpg I was saying this in the summer when we were being linked with him. No one took any notice then. boo.

Monkey, I think you're genuinely a top-class poster but that last line is pure bollocks. Smacks of nowt but ego to me and it basically alludes to you being 100% correct with this and everyone who disagrees with you being way-off. As for the "debate", I'd venture to say that there have been good points raised on both sides, but much like everything else that sparks interest on here the main protagonists are never going to agree. Anyone could simply sign-off by saying "agree to disagree", but wording it the way you did isn't the way to go about things. You've made points based on not much more than personal opinion with a lot of guesswork/prediction interwoven, just like everyone else has in here. I came at you without calling you a Mackem (laughable that people have), or ridiculing you, and offered an alternative to your story of "what might have been", now you're bowing out of the "debate". Bad form. Theres nowt else for me to contribute to in a thread where there are plenty of posts that do nothing except ridicule anyone with a different opinion. Its not arrogance, ego or me saying im 100% correct - ive not said any of that, and im not sure how youve got that from one line where im trying to cut myself off from debating this topic any further because id merely be repeating myself, and hence wasting time. What you also need to realise is that although I initially replied to you, I also have the habit of replying to other posts/posters within the same reply. I dont mind debating if youre going to bring up some actual points that can be debated, which youve done, I was more pissed off at the childish replies on here that noone can "debate" with since theyre just one line comments bearing no relevance and followed up with a smiley or two. Yes, I do, otherwise I wouldnt be arguing any different. IMO we lost the title for several reasons, but most of all because we lacked the defence to win it, that was the key difference between us and ManU. Games like Blackburn away when Shearer and that other Geordie lad, Fenton or something like that, bagged two sitters iirc, with horrible defending, is what cost us big time. Too many away games like that that season. Bring some good defenders in and wed have been a different team. I was hoping at the time wed move for someone like Southgate, who imo we could have landed at the time had we put a good bid in, or one of the many highly rated defenders from Euro 96, like Thuram who looked really good (and others who have turned out shiite but also looked good, cant really remember them now). Instead, we got noone for the defence. Why? Because we spent all our money on one forward for a world record fee. The defence was shiite for a side looking to win the title. Any team in the Premiership could score against us, and easily so, completely different to the likes of ManU. It was a lower mid table defence, the reason why the stats would probably show that defence to be in the near the top is because the rest of the team was very good, and at times sublime - St James' was a fortress, many a team spent most of the game pegged back in their own half Obviously there are always other factors into why we failed to move forward since 95/96, no doubt the new board put a chokehold on the finances, which was probably why Keegan walked - but thats not what is being discussed - its whether or not we were right to spend 15mill on one forward, when the squad could have done with several players and the defence particularly needed a top class recruit. For example, the notion that Asprilla caused the side to be unbalanced - imo it was Gillespie's injury that did that, not Tino's arrival. Like the defence, Gillespie's injury and the resulting lack of cover cost us the title, although imo not as much of a factor as the defence. We went from a fluid, two flanked team, to one with an out of position player doing nowt on the right, and Ginola being the only true winger getting marked out of the game - which is why in the second half of that season, the likes of Ginola and Ferdinand were shiite in comparison to the first half. We needed another winger, I remember it took ages for Gillespie to get fit, and when he returned he was poor, a shadow of what he was previously - like us needing a defensive recruit, did we buy a replacement right winger? No, we bought another striker with all the money we had, and as you suggest, probably more than we had. Thats the thing, we wont ever know. It could be either way, but it pisses me off that people say with such certainty "wed have gone down". Of course wed have gone down if we hadnt had Shearer AND noone to replace him, but then thats a silly notion to think that without Shearer wed have just sat around doing nothing. Shephard has never been that thick to think wed do well without a decent goalscorer. If we hadnt bought Shearer in the first place, or had sold him at some point during the time we were shiite, wed have replaced him like weve replaced him today. Maybe we got lucky with Martins, but the point is that there are plenty of good forwards out there, ones that we either dont know about or dont watch regularly because theyre not in this country and rarely on telly, and its just not on to say theres absolutely noone. Who knows. Maybe we wouldve been the ones who signed the promising Vieri from Juve (following summer after 96), and not Athletico, and wed have been laughing it up when hed have been banging it in for fun, or maybe wed have gone for someone like Yorke, or Heskey, or someone shit. Who knows. Shearer deserves praise for what he did, but again, its not about what he did. Its about what Newcastle United did at a point when they had enough money to spend to break the world transfer record and a team that was lost the title because of inadequacies in the defence and an injury that upset the balance of the team in midfield. IMO, they spent the money wrongly, and the fact that Shearer had to keep us in this league just 2-3 seasons after we lost the title suggests that it was the wrong thing to do. Top class response, that, more like the usual you. I'll happily take all that on board as my recollection of the 95/96 season is shabby at best, which is why I asked those questions that I did. I can't really argue much of it back with you, which is a great shame, but surely there's someone else who can take up the debate without being a complete arsehole over it. It's a shame that there are posts like that on this board and all people can do to reply is take the piss and make daft comments. Granted, not everyone has the time/knowledge to debate like demons, but there are plenty on here who do. To anyone else who wishes to join in, or just back to Monkey... do you think it was the defensive players themselves that were poor, or was it the style of play that put too much pressure on them? From what I remember of that season, Albert somtimes went on darts forward and our fullbacks were hardly defensive-minded. Was it the personnel or was it the style of play that was our undoing? The right-winger (Gillespie) argument is one I've never heard before and I'd love to hear some other opinions about it from some more that are older than me. The 95/96 is fascinating to me looking back, I was only 9 at the time like, so can hardly speak with authority on that particular year (regarding the defence.) My main defence of signing Big Al is for what he did in those subsequent years here. I'm a fully paid up subscriber to the 'Phil Neville cost us the title' club. His challenge on Gillespie cost us the title. Well that and our strikers fondnes for putting every shot into Schmeichels chest rather than slip it through his legs when he did his star job routine. As to was Shearer a misake? Signing him no, allowing him to become as powerful as he did yes. Not selling him to Liverpool under Bobby, possibly. For what its worth I fully believe that if he hadn't knacked himself at Goodison we would have gone close in the league again. is injury ruined any chance of Tommason being successful and resulted in the game agaisnt PSV in the Champs League (home) where our strike force consisted of Rob Lee and JDT alternatig in making runs from midfield. One injury shaped at least 2 seasons, from which we still havent fully recovered despite the brief flirtation with the top under Bobby.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/07/uk_politics_enl_1170159528/img/1.jpg I'm not sure which one of those is the Casino "The casino would be based at Sportcity in the Beswick area, close to the City of Manchester Stadium. The proposed site will also contain an entertainment complex with a range of facilities such as a multi-purpose arena, a swimming pool, an urban sports venue, restaurants, bars, a nightclub and a hotel. " The most unrealistic photoshop job ever. There''s blue sky ffs, it always rains in Manchester. FACT

Only problem is that its the bottle of cleaning Ajax that the cleaning lady left out. Fred thought it was sugar, ate a few scoops and presto!

The same was said in the Summer. Not expecting much activity, but expect at least one on loan and one permanent buy by the 31st

I meant permanent, long-term signings, not token gestures and desperate stop-gaps I'd be delighted with an d'Alessandro type 'stop gap' that Pompy got last season

We should sign him and play him up front with Dyer. 'And the Toon strikers today are Bent and Dyer' Almost as good as when Curry and Rice played from Forest

One a free transfer, the other a loan I believe

Sheva on loan

If you're the real Ronaldo and are willing to give 100%, then hel yeah you can be in the team

I fucking hate ashley cole!

not something leaked by one of the buying parties to try and put an under pressure board under more pressure. "oh my a piece of nufc news,how can i look at this in a negative way with absolutly no evidence" bet you thought the rooney bid was a lie eh? Not looking at it in a negative way, i'm using common sense. Something which you lack, fuckwit. problem with common sense is it's not very common yet everyone thinks they have it. thanx for the name calling hurt me soooo much and wasn't witty. Never attempted to be witty, just honest. Don't know what you expected. You jumped on a completely innocent comment by me and read it completely out of context. I really can't see how what I said was negative, you care to explain? how's it a completly innocent comment.you suggest they are acting illegally(put that in print and they could sue),like many on here you appear to look for the negative.in what context did you mean it? How's it illegal for a 'source' at the club to tell a Journalist something in the hope they'll print it and drive the share price up hence getting more money for it. Stuff like that happens all the time. I really don't get how it's considered illegal. It's f***ing worked aswell as share prices went up by 8% this morning after this article was published. I wasn't using it in a negative context, it wasn't meant to be an attack on Freddy it was merely an outsider commenting on what he thought was going on. The Daily Mail *spits* is usually fairly spot on with it's sports coverage so they've obviously got wind of something happening. The fact they've quoted exact figures aswell leads me to believe they've been told something which later turned out to be bollocks. It's not in the intrests of any of the consortiums to tell the press shite like that so that leads me to believe it was someone from the club. Like their 5 page Becks to Toon story conplete with comments how we need a new hero etc? Just as (in)accurate as the rest of em

My missuses was going to buy me shares in NUFC for Christmas, warned her not to due to the takeover, fun to see her scratch her head to think of what else to get me. Good news for Jan anyway, just hope Glenn uses the cash in the right places

He could be playing on Saturday at this rate

Biggest shock in Premier League history? Le Sib for the winner (fitness assumed of course)

Its already been mentioned but.... PLC. At that point we became a book balancing club with the board desperate to flog Les to compensate for Shearer. From then on in its been a mismatch of bad and good decisions which has got us to where we are now

Backflips. nuff said

I'd still go JFH for half a season if we could get him to leave Charlton. The summer is the time for a big striker signing, give us a chance to evaluate how Owen returns. (plus Bent will be available when Charlton go down). I'm still nailing my colours to the Sheva for the Toon mast.

Did he not also restructure the finances of the club in question with a shit load of debt in order to do it as well? Not that it really matters, he used the divi to fund further ventures, all his money and his clubs so he can move money around them at will

B&W hero come January. Jose don't want him, he doesn't want to go back to Italy, nearly signed for us in the past, we're Chelsea rejects etc etc. About as accurate a rumour as the Sunday tabloids, but hey I'd love to see him here for the second half of the season

A loan striker is the best option for me. Saw Shevchenko in the Mirror dropping hints that Jose doesnt' really want him around. He'll end up at Milan, but until that day I will assume he's coming here.

Given Solano Taylor Ramage Babs Butt Milner Emre (playing acm) Zog Sibs Oba I would give Emre the license to stay in Readings half and look to be the pivot for our attacking play. Butt to hold and Milner and Zog running their little butts off down the flanks. A win takes us to 14th (I think) - we need to go for it

He did admit he was very close to signing or us pre Milan, maybe he wants to clean up some unfinished business (hoping)

I'm not sure I follow the arguments re Miguel and Rooney. We had been told for a while that there was a Shearer replacement fund - i.e. funds specifically earmarked for signing a striker. The Rooney bid and subsequent Owen signing came from this fund, either from years of saving or more liekly a cute deal with Northern Rock. The Miguel/Carr fund was from the annual transfer budget (as it goes I too would have preferred Miguel, but could see the sense in signing Carr as he was proven Premiership quality). No-one seems to have acknowledged that the Rooney bid came after we had agreed to sell Woodgate - bringing in £10m plus into the coffers after fees, bonuses etc were paid. So whilst 2004 did appear to be a summer of chairman signings vs manager signings, I very much douby that funds were withheld from a fullback to bid for Rooney (who at the time had made no indication of wanting to leave Everton either)