Unbelievable

I love our squad depth..

Bloody hell, didn't even know about that..

This season is shaping up much worse than any of my worst worries..

Don't know.. Was still banging them in for fun in the Serie A not so long ago, but his latest injury has probably finished him off. What a player he was though..

I suggest we have 50,000 fans wearing white shirts with "FACT OFF" printed on the front. That should get the message across..

So they've been sacked off, they haven't walked. In the words of Worms: "Incoming"? Not necessarily they may simply want to get rid of people they see as Keegan supporters from the "inside" of the club, in order to stop any "damaging" leaks. Someone's been going to the press with "pro-Keegan" inside info for a while now, maybe they think it was Terry Mac? Like they are going to stop these people talking by sacking them..

top post, especially the (bit I put in) bold Yes indeed, a decision was made to take transfer responsibility off Keegan. Well, more than one decision, because it seems to me the acquisition (and disposal) process evolved throughout the summer, culminating in the farcical deadline day. But for me the questions are who made the decision to... relieve Keegan of his transfer duties, and why did they come to that decision. Those are important question, but not more so than: Why did they decide to lie about it?

I can see them turning to Ronald Koeman, and it would be disastrous for the club..

Let's put it plain and simple: their cards are marked now and they have some serious work on their hands if they want to win over the fans again.

I think we had the "realistic summer transfer targets" thread which surpassed 300 pages, but as it turns out in the end hardly any names mentioned in that thread have turned out to be ´realistic´..

Indi, fair play for digging up the old posts and I accept you may have been of the opinion this was unclear to some people even though I don't see it myself, but I'll let that be as you are right there are other intersting views to discuss and we know where we stand on this one. Regarding the "whole squad up for sale" argument, I don't think that statement was factually correct. What I think may have happened is, as is being reported, is Keegan came in the office on deadline day or thereabouts for transfer discussions and found that the board had written down a price that they would find acceptable for every player in the squad, might an offer come in for said player on deadline day. Of course this is more a statement of "everybody is available at the right price" than "everybody is for sale", but I can see how this would have pissed Keegan off, because to him some players weren't available at any price due to it being impossible to find a suitable replacement considering there was hardly any time left and we are in no great position to attract top class players. If anything, the board may have been naive in doing this, but I don't think it was engineered to piss Keegan off, just the club saying if we receive an offer we consider too good to refuse we will take it (if it happened at all obviously). I can see both sides of the argument here, but what I find most amazing about this argument is how poorly both sides handled the situation. It should just have been a matter of Keegan stating the players he would find this agreement unacceptable for and the board accepting this stance. We will never know exactly if it even got that for and what exactly happened and who said what, so no point speculating really..

You know what, I can't even be arsed to ponder about a replacement for Keegan at this point in time.

The likes of Baggio/Wise I imagine..

ala Frankie Boyle: "My dad'll shag yer dad....and yer dad'll enjoy it!" Love Frankie Boyle, effing hilarious, but I think he tries too hard to be controversial sometimes. Anyway, that's a topic for another forum. So Lien, what's your take on this affair from an outsider's perspective? Do you think there is any way back for Ashley after the events of this week? Also, looks like we may be in competition for the Indian billionaire.. Do fans/you want him at your club?

http://www.teamtalk.com/football/story/0,16368,1767_4113385,00.html Bit in bold is very interesting. I tjink the bit just below is much more relevant.

If this was all agreed on the 16th Jan, how come KK was apparently still unaware of it just 2 weeks later? The statement from the club is trying to rewrite history, we've had Wise saying Keegan had the final say on transfers and Keegan saying that Wise reported to him - the club never stepped in to say any different and is now claiming this whole set up was in place from day one and everyone had agreed to it. "The structure at NUFC is clear, and has been clear from 16th January 2008." Has it fuck!

Just pointing out where they got that link from. Also, I actually agree with Keegan on this one; sometimes a window of opportunity opens and you can try to attract a player above your station, just like we did with Owen.

Source: http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11661_3119637,00.html

A comment allegedly made by one of Ashley's competitors - "Ashley is like a Locust - He finds a brand, utterly rapes it then moves on to the next" - I seriously fear for our club while he remains in charge Where's that from?

I doubt they were expecting us to be a top 4 club after one summer's spending tbf. The emphasis was on long term improvement I believe. While every year falling behind our competitors? I would say the squad is better than it was last season, even though we have not spent enough. Even though I think that is arguable I won´t, but rather ask you the question if you think most Premiership teams have strengthened their squads, so it´s unlikely to make much of a difference?

I doubt they were expecting us to be a top 4 club after one summer's spending tbf. The emphasis was on long term improvement I believe. The sad reality is without significant investment we will only fall further behind the likes of Arsenal, let alone Chelsea and Man City.

As I've argued elsewhere the club saying it will be run like Arsenal and expecting us to challenge the top 4 that way is a completely delusional and simplistic view on things. Arsenal is completely unique. It is nigh impossible to replicate, and hinges almost completely on the ability of the people involved, something we seem to badly miss.

Don't know if this is for real, but a poster on TT has apparently emailed Chris Mort about this shambles and actually got a reply: QUOTE(Stevie @ Sep 7 2008, 11:32 AM) * QUOTE(Ally @ Sep 7 2008, 11:27 AM) * QUOTE(Stevie @ Sep 7 2008, 10:41 AM) * I got a reply from Mort. QUOTE RE: ‏ From: [email protected] Sent: Fri 9/05/08 9:05 AM To: [email protected] Thanks Steve Having brought KK back to NUFC, I am obviously very disappointed with recent developments. I have not had an involvement with NUFC or individuals there since early June and do not expect to have a role influencing where things go from here. Regards Chris Can't blame him for wanting fuck all to do with it. He seems a top bloke tbh. What did you send him? QUOTE Hi Chris, I know you are a busy man so I won't take up too much of your time. I'm saddened by the fact you left your position at NUFC, the reason I am is because you are probably the best chairman we've had. You communicated with the fans, didn't tell us any lies, and made sure our thoughts and opinions were noted and acted upon. This new bloke Llambias, is the complete opposite, I don't think I've ever heard his voice, he's clearly not up to it, and this crisis this week, would never have happened had you still been here. It must be boring as fuck being a solicitor compared to the ups and downs as chairman at one of the biggest football clubs in Europe, so I think you should consider coming back, you are very popular on Tyneside, more so than Mr Ashley, and we feel you could steady the ship. Regards Steve

I think it's obvious the "rules" by which the club moved forward changed - in a reactionary manner too. For starters Keegan was hired knowing he'd be working under a DoF, but that person had not yet been appointed*. Just that simple fact effects the whole paradigm, from the very off. Indeed, the changeover from Mort to Llambias involved another significant shift given the (reportedly) sharply contrasting personalities One snippet barely touched on in this gargantuan thread is the "showdown" talks in May. Even if you think Keegan agreed to any terms just to get the job, and planned to do his own thing once he had it, then the "showdown" talks would have reminded him very clearly what the rules were - and there is also scope in that conversation to say "Well, this facet isn't working and needs to be addressed". I remember thinking at the time there was no real danger of KK leaving then, that it was all a media beat-up. Well, in hindsight, it probably wasn't, which begs the question: Would it have been better for Keegan (and the club) to have left then? Do Keegan's knights have a rebuttal for the claim that KK refused to work co-operatively with the acquisition team? Consider the Smith and Barton rumours - Keegan apparently (reluctantly) said they could be sold if they were replaced, but claimed Xisco and Gonzalez were not adequate replacements. To me, that demonstrates the acquisition team trying to accomodate Keegan who in return offered only intrastringence, recalcitrance and pure pig-headedness. * The club's statement says that Kevin knew he would be working under a director of football - but NUFC doesn't have one! We have a Vice-President (Player Recruitment) and an Executive Director (Football) - the ambiguity of the titles is clearly intentional (ie they went to the effort of inventing titles!) But the very names point more towards Jimenez rather than Wise as the "underminer" You've almost got it figured out Raconteur, and you make some very valid points, but the word in bold is what this entire episode possibly revolves around. In the initial statements they quite clearly indicate that Wise is there to help to and report to KK; a chain of command is set, but it is the reverse of what you are implying here. In the end KK must have felt that his "assistent chef" was suddenly telling the "head chef" which ingredients to use in which quantities, and I'm pretty certain this was not how they set it out to be. Which begs the questions, who instigated the shifting of the goal posts, and who sanctioned it?