Unbelievable

What a load of rubbish.. Ok explain how in 5 days we will get someone guaranteed to do better for us, who that player will be and how much they will cost. As far as I am concerned if somebody is willing to pay good money for him I wouldn't pass on the opportunity to finally rid ourselves of him, even if that means risking a small step backwards in the short term. More arguments here: http://www.newcastle-online.org/nufcforum/index.php/topic,68821.msg2761262.html#msg2761262 The rubbish remark was more to do with your 'part of the fabric' melodramatic nonsense.

What a load of rubbish..

Whatever happened to keeping threads "on topic"? Heh? Shola is being rumoured to be on the radar of Birmingham City, so we are debating whether this would be a good transfer, just like we would with any other transfer rumour...

There's not much in it really. None of them is (currently) good enough for the first team if we want the club to move up in the world. One or two out of that list have the potential to improve, two certainly don't, so if somebody offers good cash for any of them I would be seriously interested in trying to offload them and use the money to try and get a better striker in. We don't need four so-so strikers, we need one good one to complement the excellent one we already have. I agree in part. Ideally we would have Carroll, Someone Competant, Back-up and a couple of youth players coming through. I can see Shola fitting in as back-up and Ranger maybe as one of the youth players. But the others are very sellable. The problem is that we need all of them at the moment because we've only realistically got one first team striker. Well, in an ideal world I would of course sell Xisco, Lovenkrands and Best before I would want to sell Shola, but this is not the ideal world and if there are no takers for the first three than I would still consider selling Shola if the opportunity arose. As long as we have all of them on the books I can easily guess Ashley's reaction to any request to free up the money to bring in another striker on top of the 6 we already have. You say the others are sellable, but they are not unfortunately... Dispensable, yes, but nobody will take them of our hands. Selling Shola may be a slight risk in the short term if we cannot get a replacement in before the window closes, but one I would be prepared to take for the greater good of being able to move forward with our striker department. One step back to make two steps forward and all that..

There's not much in it really. None of them is (currently) good enough for the first team if we want the club to move up in the world. One or two out of that list have the potential to improve, two certainly don't, so if somebody offers good cash for any of them I would be seriously interested in trying to offload them and use the money to try and get a better striker in. We don't need four so-so strikers, we need one good one to complement the excellent one we already have.

True story. However, it is probably the worst compliment anyone could ever make. It is 0.0000000000008% better than a derogatory comment. That's irrelevant though. The point is that Shola is our second best striker and as such selling him without a superior replacement coming in would be madness. I don't know... Normally I would agree, but in Shola's case I would be tempted to grab the cash if somebody is foolish enough to stump up a few mill for him. The lad's been here for ages. He's never been a Premiership striker and he should realistically have been let go ages ago. In fact, sometimes when you look at him he doesn't even look like a footballer (for example: his pass/shot vs Spurs this Saturday), just so uncharacteristic. For every goal he scores he misses a number of absolute sitters, so his finishing is much more hit and miss than some people on here would have you believe ("best finisher at the club" my ass). He's marginally improved his hold up play in recent years, and the fact he is now somewhat useful to us is more testimony to how much the club has gone backwards than to any progress he may have made. For me, he is and has been a constant source of frustration as you think if he would be a little more direct and apply himself a bit more he could achieve so much more. If we can replace him and this gives us the funds/incentive we need to push through with a long term partner for AC (preferably now, but if needed in the summer) I will be very happy to see the back of him.. For where we want to be is he at best backup, and I prefer my backup players to be young and talented. I guess the critical questions are whether AC will stay for certain, if he will be back shortly and whether we feel our Premiership status is secured for next season (which I am edging towards). If so, I think it's a gamble worth taking providing we can get a good fee for him..

Talented, but very, very raw.. I think they are allowing him to stay on loan at Feyenoord for the next 1,5 seasons though, which is good for the player and both clubs. Unluckily for Feyenoord though they have sold 75% of his transfer rights to private investors, as they do a lot with players from their academy, so they will not get a lot of money to replace him with..

No offense, but what a load of bollocks. He is the one player we would not be able to replace. He will only get better as well if he carries on the way he is. Plus, if the last two matches have showed us anything it's the team have created plenty of opportunities and the one man we can't afford to let go is our only striker who is capable of putting these chances who turn draws into wins away...

Regarding a), didn't Pardew come out saying he "didn't know what his transfer funds would be but he would be banging on Ashley's door to get some reinforcements in" (or words to that effect) shortly after he became our manager?

Strange comment considering we were still bursting forward to score a second even though it was ET and we were in the lead. Not really. The odd break after long periods of simply defending and having the ball in our possession for a matter of seconds in each 10 minute period, is hardly what I'd call playing normally. Are you seriously saying that you didn't notice a change in the way we were playing about half way through the second half? Both team played differently after we scored, which tends to happen doesn't it? It's only logical that Spurs would start committing more men forward. Your criticism as I understand it is we stopped playing and set back inviting pressure on us. I don't think we did that at all, quite the contrary. We continued to go forward (often on the counter attack) to try to kill off the tie. I didn't work due to poor finishing, and eventually the inevitable happened, but certainly not because we sat back and invited pressure. Maybe in this case we would have held on to our lead if we had been a little bit more conservative/defensive, although I prefer what we tried to do. Unluckily we didn't have the quality up top today to finish the match when we could...

Strange comment considering we were still bursting forward to score a second even though it was ET and we were in the lead.

Fuck off...

Shit... That was coming with all the chances we missed...

Very, very, very harsh...

What?

That deserved a goal...

Ranger so close.... Fantastic technique..

Trying to get back onside as Shola wouldn't dispense of the ball innit?

Rightly so. That was outrageously bad...

Ameobi you pillock...

Ranger coming on..

Ooooohhh, great counter. Should have capitalised...

5 minutes... Hang on lads!!!

Our shooting..