Taylor Swift

Don't really care who wins, just hope it's a better game of football than the disaster that was the FA Cup.

Was Tevez not signed yesterday? Beattie as well. There's nothing significant that will stop a transfer on the weekend if it is immenent enough. A medical doesn't take long, most contracts would have been drawn up before a medical is allowed to take place and the signing only really involves two people (the chairman and the player).

Don't think that's the case. I can't recall a transfer stalling because the weekend arrived. The only possible issue is to do with the LSE but that's irrelevant in our case.

Eh? 02/03 - VRoy scored 25, Henry had 24 and Beattie had 23. Manyoo won the title, Arsenal came second and Southampton finished 8th. 03/04 - Only player who scored more than 25 goals was Thierry Henry (30). Pretty sure he guaranteed Arsenal a top half finish. Well, actually, they won the title. 04/05 - Same shit. Henry scored 25, second was Andy Johnson with 21. No one else got more than 14. Arsenal came second. The only anomaly in all the cases is Johnson's Palace who got relegated even though he scored 21 goals. 05/06 - Henry scored 27, VRoy scored 21, no one else had more than 18. Pretty sure Henry really helped Arsenal in that season as well. 06/07 - Drogba finishes top scorer with a measley (relatively speaking) 21 goals, Chelsea come second. If you have a striker who'll get you 20 league goals in a season, you're almost guaranteed a top half finish, let alone a striker who can get you 25, who'll, historically speaking, guarantee you a top 2 finish. In regards to Sven, people still think too much of his time with England. Comparing clubs and countries is like comparing fruits and vegetables - the two things are just different, they cannot be compared. Sven's job as manager of City will mean he'll be in control of many more factors that will affect a player's performance than when he was manager of England. Bear in mind that. And also bear in mind his exemplary record as a club manager. City will be a force to be reckoned with, especially if Thaksin keeps the money flowing.

Don't think he's even in Newcastle atm.

An article from The Chronicle states that we've now raised the asking price to £8m and WH have backed out. Wonder why? Simply trying to squeeze more money out of them? Or are we desperate for funds?

:lol: some fantastic bits in there!

Vic has a point.

We're better off signing a proper midfielder for £6m. Smith's a striker, he's said so on many occasions and hasn't played in midfield for how long? A year and something? We wouldn't get value for money considering the fact that our strikeforce already seems complete as it is. Even if Gudjohnsen signed it'd be an underwhelming signing unless one of our strikers left. Surely there's an actual midfielder out there who's available for six fucking million pounds ? None of this signing a striker to play midfield nonsense.

If it's Smith it'd really be an underwhelming signing. He hasn't had a stretch of competitive football in how long..??! His finishing ability is overrated. If he was really that good of a striker surely he would have played more for Manyoo and/or his career goalscoring record would be much better than it currently is. Comparing him to Shearer is an insult to Shearer. Smith is a grafter. Works hard, runs alot but no real end product. He isn't the striker to get you many goals, he's there for the hold-up play but honestly how many games will he be getting in that position? Does anyone prefer him over Owen, Martins and Viduka? Some may even prefer Ameobi over him. So is he worth £6m then? Especially in our situation of need. Further, his attributes don't make him the best of midfielders as well. Does he have an eye for a pass? Not that I've seen. Does he have the dribbling skills to drive a team forward or launch counter-attacks (in the way Dyer can)? Again, haven't seen any evidence of that. He's versatile, I'll give you that. But he's not one who'll impact the game and as we've seen over the past couple of years, we seriously need someone to dominate the game from the center of the park (in the way Butt, Barton etc. can do). He's very limited as a midfielder. Not agile or creative enough to dictate the flow of the game, which means the only thing he can do is be the defensive 'stopper', which I would think is what Butt is there for. Is a substitute DM worth £6m?

Could it be possible that Ashely and his team knew all about the debt and the original plan was to actually try to reduce it first? It'd be quite naive to assume that they didn't know about the debt beforehand (since we all seem to know about it) but that does not exclude the possibility that their original plan was to withhold the club's expenditure and then find ways to reduce the debt, which is obviously (along with finding ways to increase revenue) what the review is about. Does it really matter what is done first though? Long term the only thing that'll be matter is the amount of £ that Ashley invests in the club. Like Chez mentioned, if he wipes out the debt that's essentially giving £80m to the club. Short-term we'll be fine with a couple of makeshift defenders. Sam and Owen will be worth more than a few points for us I expect so we'll have a decent chance of Europe and then push on in the next season. There's really no rush considering we seriously haven't been going anywhere in the past few years. Edit - Expectations need to be lower, for Sam's benefit and the club's future.

Tbf, Vic was the first person who mentioned the term 'real' fan. Can't blame the kid for trying to argue his case, which is quite a decent one.

Touche. Kinda forgot about that.

Tbf to .com, when Bramble was sent packing, they merely asked whether Allardyce was sticking to his word when he said 'everyone gets a clean slate', a perfectly legitimate question since Allardyce did mention those words (or words to that efffect) in his first press conference.

The arguing between you two should really stop man. It's obvious you have both cared about the club for a long long time and that you still care about it passionately. Just forgive whatever's been said in the past and move on innit? So many of the youngsters on the forum could really use a history lesson from the people who were actually there.

I'm with NE5 here. However you qualify for Europe, you did it and it should count as thus, none of this 'proper' entries or whatever. If we had won it during one of those years we qualified via the Intertoto or being in the FA Cup Final, would any of us have actually complained? Would we fuck. I bet you when Ashley eventually leaves, he'll have earnt quite a bit as well. What do you think all these people are in the football industry for? They're not fucking Santa Claus. All of them - Lerner, Ashley, the US people at Liverpool, Glazers etc. - are in it for the money. They're businessmen and they'll be trying their damn near hardest to make a profit. Of course, in football, the only realistic way you can make a hefty profit and have long-term-ish stability is by 'creating' success on the football pitch. And this is the same for oh so many clubs at present. And it was the same for whoever ran the club from 1969 until Freddie took over, and this includes SJH btw. Man do I sound like NE5! Anyway, expecting a trophy is unrealistic. Shepherd tried his best, and imo failed, but his record is better than most of his predecessors. Plus, like NE5 has asked, would you rather us be a club like Boro or Leicester who won a League Cup here and there? Would you fuck.

If we beat the big 4 this season by employing the same defensive tactics I would not give a fuck.

Can we stop this practice of changing thread names? This update is worth a new thread imo. It's been more than 10 days since we've heard news about the boy. Fuck me I'm bored of thinking a new thread's started then realizing that the first 5 pages is stuff that's over a week old.

A better example would have been the peddling of Titus. The difference between the two is that Dyer's actually a decent player. Dyer epitomized Bobby's team imo. Energetic, exciting and whose potential was unbounded at times, and other times he was weak, soft and disinterested. He was there for the highs (Feyenoord, Leeds away) and was probably at one of the lowest points (Boro away) as well. There's also the playboy image that neither the players or SBR himself played down, which was a big part of our team with all the youngsters (Bellamy, Dyer, Titus, Jenas etc.) being a significant part of the squad. End of an era indeed if he does leave.

Whatever, he can fuck off Is this the transfer that signals us into a new direction? Have we actually moved on what from everything Sir Bob created and dreamt for us? I still long for the days of exciting football, the days when we had Bellamy causing being a nuisance and Dyer tirelessly running around in midfield but if Dyer leaves, I think it'll truly close that chapter for me. Time to move on.

everything alright Chez?

Started 22 games, came on as a sub in 18 other games (soccerbase.com). That's pretty decent for someone who was never guaranteed a place in the team.

A lot of knee-jerk stuff going on in here. It's a thigh strain ffs - a ten day injury. In Owen's season with Real, he played FORTY games. He's shown that he can get over all this niggling injuries and play a big part in his team's season. The past two seasons have been very disappointing for both him and us, but those were injuries that you really cannot prevent, so I see no reason to criticize him for that. Anyhow, I expect Owen to get to play around 30 or more league games. Factor in that we have no European games this season = less traveling = less games = more time to rest = a better and fitter Michael Owen. Honestly, this should be his productive season in a while, and while that's not saying much, it would mean a revival for him (individually) and most probably mean a revival for the club as well.

Which is why you can alert people first, and then close the thread say 5 minutes later, as opposed to last year when threads were locked straight after a match was finished. I don't think people tend to read the opening post if the thread is 10+ pages long. How about an example of how a thread title will look like? 'Thread for Hartlepool match 21/7/07. Match starts from page 5, post match starts from page 14'? Like that? How exactly? If you direct people to another thread, I'm pretty sure they'll decide to post in the 'right' thread. Are you saying if there's a thread that says 'Post-match thread' and another thread that says 'Pre-match thread' that people will post in the 'Pre-match thread'?

Heinze's not as good as he was in his first season. Maybe it's the lack of games and thus being unable to maintain match fitness or his injury has really affected his pace and aggression. Anyhow, he's not worth £7m. Parky mentioned an interesting name, Per Mertesacker, whose bound to move to a bigger club someday very soon, if we get him it would be a steal and a half.