Unbelievable

WTF

Fuck. He'll be a good player for them.

Clasie to Southampton agreed between clubs for 10-12m euros. Player yet to agree terms. Excellent piece of business for Southampton.

Sounds about right. How ironic if true

Didn't know unbelievable was over there. For fuck's sake

Imagine if we can't even convince a player to join us who has us down as his favourite club

You don't like Janmaat or De Jong?? Not as captain, no. Janmaat because I don't think he is really leadership material and I would prefer him to concentrate on bombing down the right hand side all game long. Also, ideally I would prefer the captain to be a midfield player or forward, to avoid getting caught on the break as the captain often has to get out of position to speak to the referee. De Jong would be a better option, but he is yet to prove his fitness and establish himself as a respected player at Newcastle.

Don't like any of these options really.

Number of the beast

Even last season I couldn't really enjoy him scoring goals as he was single handedly keeping Pardew in a job by scoring those braces vs Hull and Swansea.

Wouldn't say that, Austin's goal record is far more impressive, albeit in poorer leagues. He's 4 years younger as well. Really though? Is Belgium any better than the championship (apart from a couple of teams) He's comparing Austin and Cisse

10 goals in 60 PL appearances in the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons.

Time to sell a few assets

Two bad seasons, and he didn't exactly cover himself in glory last season either.

As has been mentioned, I think people have forgotten how good Sterling looked playing alongside Suarez and Sturridge.

Fees and wages have risen significantly since 2004, and I don't think Rooney at that age was twice the player either. The deals are quite comparable and only time will tell which one will have been the best.

This is getting a bit embarrassing

The thing that strikes me is that I think of Ben Arfa as a very passionate player, but one with a brittle mentality. Man manage him well and he would probably walk through fire for you, man manage him badly and he would just give up, as churlish as that behaviour is. The club full well knew this to be the case when they bought him (we wouldn't have been able to if he wasn't damaged goods mentally), which makes it even more frustrating that we put a Neanderthal in charge of managing him and a number of other highly talented players over the past few years.

Having something resembling a capable squad rather than just a few above average players would be nice, in theory.

Absolutely. If Wijnaldum has been brought in as Sissoko's replacement we will effectively still not have strengthened/invested and will still be significantly weaker squad wise than at the start of last season.

Has he ever done anything for Holland in knockouts of a tournament? Not enough. This past World Cup was probably his best tournament for us in terms of end product. Still, his presence up top has been invaluable in those two World Cups regardless of lack of end product. Van Persie is a fantastic forward to lead the line and bring others into play. I do wish he could have really shone on those major occasions by scoring a few more - it could have been the difference between winning the cup or not - but I wouldn't say he had failed. He will go into the history books as our NT all time top scorer who led us into one World Cup final and one semi final. On a personal note, I sincerely hope he will finish his career at Excelsior Rotterdam as he has always promised he would. It will signal to me that through it all he has kept the love for the game that has set him apart from others as he rose through the ranks.