sicsfingeredmong

Moderators/Admin: regarding my above post. I'm all too happy to accept a ban etc. There are better sites than here tbh, as a means of discussing things NUFC. Rather fuck off from here tbh - as some other members have in the last twelve months - as this site has for most part become a parody of what it used to be a number of years ago. Perhaps you should limit the number of clueless emoticons some clueless cunts choose to use, as opposed to them discussing points etc.

In fairness they weren't gunning for him when the supposed 'feel good factor' surrounded the club in the wake of his arrival, and during the period between Sports Direct's floatation & the club's rapid & downward spiral over the past 12 months. The report concerning the OFT 'investigating him' has really only come about fairly recently and there's no reason as to why the press would sit on such a story if the OFT were heavily scrutinizing/investigating him prior to his involvement in this club. For nearly ten years a low-profile Ashley more likely had brownie points banked in the lockerroom, for having handed over a concrete case/evidence to the OFT in 2000. Whereas he's now jumped into a pressure cooker environment of club ownership, and his profile will lend over to even higher & justified level of scrutiny. From a slightly different angle Douglas Hall, who is small prey by comparison - executive boardmember, minor shareholder unlike Ashley, found some of his more *insignificant shenanigans while in charge of Cameron Hall scrutinized in public, as parts of his dealings were leaked to the business-linked field of the press. I'm not defending the bloke in this instance but take away his then club-related profile for better or worse, and his dealings at Cameron Hall would've most likely never entered the public domain. *an antique car buy & sell scheme allegedly using company funds.

With arsewipes/some of the newer users like you around, it leaves little in terms of wondering why some older users no longer use this website. Perhaps you should stick this type of response, as you seem to know very little about footballers going by some of your brief postings or what i'd describe as 'so-called efforts'. Better perhaps look into your particular useage of the 'mackems' emoticon, ask yourself where it fits into your response. For somebody - ie. myself - who has followed this club for 25 years or thereabouts, has posted as much in the way of positivity when it comes to certain players & figures who have graced this club - and those who disagreed and agreed with me on certain issues would attest to this, and the best you can come with is a mackems emoticon. Sunshine........ what a clueless little cunt you are.

Really? I highly doubt that OFT will get involved. If Tesco can avoid EU anti-competition legislation despite having a Tesco Express, Metro or Superstore in pretty much every every square mile of populated land in the UK, I suspect that having one or two stores (max, I would imagine) in most cities will breach anti-competition guidelines. OFT are always investigating "possible" breaches. That is its job. The difference between this situation and the JJB/Whelan situation is that they operated an illegal cartel in contravention of EU competition rules. If OFT get involved, Ashley needs to sack Chris Mort and Freshfields, or whoever provides him with legal advice, as it is fairly straightforward to ensure compliance with the legislation. Have you considered writing fiction for a living? With a conspiracy theory like that up your sleeve, you could be the next Dan Brown or, at the very least, a budget Jeffrey Archer. Tesco's significant other players - ie. in the milk pricing cartel two years ago - received substantial fines, after admitting to their part. Tesco are still under investigation in this alleged involvement, not for the saturation of the market by filling the UK with Express' and One-Stops. Multi-nationals are major employers, and as such bodies like the OFT rarely take action in the area of store saturation & location and it's predatory pricing methods against the cornerstore traders. Whatever their - aka Tesco - previous efforts have been in the way of avoiding paying their full quota of stamp duty/land tax, by utilising loopholes, the corporate tax they plough into the government's coffers far outweighs what is put in by the aforementioned small trader hence such companies rarely come such scrutiny. Welmome to the world of capitalism. By comparison Ashley's chain is small fry. The removal of the occasional Sports World/Sports Direct store - to promote competition in the sports retail sector, providing a lifeline for JJB/another local chain - is hardly going to make the sort of blackhole in the government's coffers to lets say Tesco being forced to pull the plug on X amount of Metro, Express and One-Stop stores. Besides this is not an examination of both situations, from a legal standpoint ie. cartel found guilty vs Ashley opening a store on JJB's doorstep and whatever sanctions the OFT can/may issue. It's a look at Ashley's current standing in the football ethos, the brownie points he is likely to have had stored away in his company filers in the wake of his whistle-blowing effort. It's taken over three years - since Ashley floated his retail empire, when a PLC's books & trade practices are transparent & easily vulnerable to investigation - for the OFT to properly investigate his practices despite an array of complaints. Having adopted a high profile, and having monumentally screwed up in an area many hold more importance to than the average price of milk, he's suddenly attracting extra attention from the relevant body which is closer to his primary & most important business interests.

Matches the M.O. pertaining to the board in the 80's.

........... namely the Office of Fair Trading, such are the ramifications of his reign here. Collateral damage of sorts. Almost ten years ago he took down what was business-wise a proverbial Gentleman's Club, a cartel involving Whelan/JJB & Umbro in particular. An initial wave of predatory pricing marketing methods on Ashley's part first undermined the market value of Umbro's chief product - namely it Manchester United kits - and when Umbro attempted to reign in the rogue operator Ashley turned whistleblower. Ashley maintained what was becoming an ironclad grip of a replica selling market at the grassroots/retail store level. Cartels exist at all levels when it comes to expenses of living. What we pay at the money-till, and the machinations behind any eventual pricing has long been a bedgrudging & accepted nuance of the retail market sector. Playing the role of 'rat' hardly made a Ashley a 'good guy', he hand provided the OFT enough ammunition to wound at least two high profile companies, and in Whelan a big personality. In this instance i think of Ashley as being more along the lines of Mike 'are you wearing a wire' Ashley with a separate, ulterior motive as opposed to being the 'good guy looking out for the annual set of replica buying mugs, parents trying to appease their kids who need to have the latest in-thing'. A point worth considering when looking at the pricehikes thumped on his exclusive brands, after he gets those same parents through his doors. It has been recently reported that the OFT are now looking into possible breaches of the anti-competition guidelines, relating to the number of & location of his retail stores. Ten years ago he was a friend of the OFT's. Ten years ago, as HTL has alluded to, he was an anonymous budget stall trader who took his practice to the stores when the consumer economy was at it's healthiest. He was just an emerging upstart, still a minor blimp on the radar. Umbro by comparison was a major scalp. Roughly six years later, when he floated his company, his relatively low-profile wasn't befitting of his bullying reputation in the sports retail sector. With brownie points in the bank he still alluded heavy scrutiny from the OFT, despite a murky history in relation to his practices/ethics ie. mock closing down sales. Ten years on, after having bought arguably the third biggest club in the nation, he has purchased not only the resposibility of club ownership - and with it holding aloft the dreams of the supporter base alongside his own level of ambition - he has acquired something unwanted, a profile. Worse than that, and like it or not behind the collective & scrutinising eye of the OFT overseers there is a football supporter. Beyond the suit and ties of the OFT office, each and every one of those suits is just another strand, another thread that forms the passionate kaleidoscope of support. At the heart of it they - the OFT overseers - like yourself and i are football supporters. In all likelihood they/or just one of them may have borne the brunt of Ashley's mismanagement of the club firsthand, or they know of somebody at the very least. That's it all takes for a grudge to develop, such is the importance of football - in it's tribalistic level of support at club level - on the overall social landscape. Ten years on Mike Ashley's 'Scarlett Pimpernell' namesake deserves to be put to the side of the road. Although Mike Ashley's still resolute band of apologists will disagree the tag of 'Destroyer of a proud football club' is more befitting. Ten years on, with this newly adopted & deserving profile, the subject in question's activity in the retail sector is now attracting greater scrutiny from the powers that be. The heart of the footballing landscape - namely the dreams and hopes of the grassroot support - is a minefield that should be treaded through carefully. Mike Ashley may well waddle off from Newcastle United, leaving a championship stricken club in it's wake, with a minor hole burnt in pocket if he has able to snare a favorable deal upon selling up. But, as alluded to earlier, the 'Pile em' Sell em' Cheap Merchant may well have just painted a crosshair on his back. The arm of the collective football supporter base reaches far............... what goes around comes around.

The company has advisors (a merchant bank, stockbroker) who would put a value on it based both on its historical performance and more importantly on its projected performance. The projections are then examined by an independent firm of accountants and tested for reasonableness. It is then "floated". The company's merchant bank would underwrite the floatation .i.e. buy any excess shares not bought by the public or other institutions. The valuation was not Ashley's although he would have had a target in mind and prepared projections accordingly. The company has substantially underperformed since floating. There has also been a lot of criticism of the communication by Sports Direct and its PR generally is pretty awful (Ashley called his shareholders "whingers" in an interview not so long ago). Ashley has also taken flak for appointing people who are mates of his and not considered to be up to the job. In some ways thats fair enough because the City's assessment of being up to a job isn't always fair or based on detailed knowledge, but when results are disappointing its hard to defend. I only mention all this because there is a bit of a familiar pattern in some of it. Used to describe shareholders who were thinking of cutting their losses & selling up. There was also a reference - made by Ashley - something along the lines of 'only having time for investors/shareholders who were in it for the long haul'.

Cole was ten times the striker Martins is - and ever will be... ............ and Cole was able to adapt, into the more rounded role bestowed on to him under Ferguson. It takes football smarts to do that, he was coachable. Martins on the other hand may forever be a one-dimensional but damaging dribbling & long-shooting forward, abeit an inconsistent one. In his defence though - during his stint here - he's been forced to develop his game within the worst period of what has become an era of anti-football on our part.

One of the better outfield displays as well - post season 01/02 as well. We resembled a football team with the required passing/build-up play & movement that wasn't seen since. Definitely had the better of Villa in two thirds of the paddock. Our back four simply imploded that aftenoon. Kluivert's first touch and link-up play across the central corridor complimented Bellamy's movement & pace in the wide channels. And Bellamy was becoming more of a threat through the middle, becoming more adept at reading the play and knowing when to ghost into the box off-the-ball. You can spot the this improvement with the increased number of bread & butter opportunities presented to him now, and prior to his departure here. Kluivert-Bellamy should've been allowed to flourish, as opposed to the resulting emergence of the crack-strikeforce that was Shearer'Shola ie. nil movement, two statues simply occupying space/providing no outlets and a less than 50/50 receiving option further up the park.

What a mess we truly are Confirmation of the reported rumblings pertaining to Ashley's trip to the Middle East last year ie.trying to take the piss out of the obviously wealthy Arabs/a desperate money grab from a gambler in Ashley who attempted to nearly double-up on his total investment. The club was worth nowhere near Ashley's valuation, and the Arabs called the thick c***'s bluff.

Both fullbacks, Beye & Enrique. We were defensively solid - on the flanks - when both featured, and if it wasn't for a lack of cohesion/shape/build-up play in the wide channels both players would have been more than serviceable going forward. Beye : efficient ball user with a varied passing game, a decent shot on him, overall an underrated attacking threat imo. From a defensive standpoint - ie. looking at our lack of cover/whom we picked up in that basement/swap deal involving the sale of N'Zogbia - Beye's injury was a critical turning point.

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/nufc/newcastle-united-news/2009/05/28/big-al-puts-15m-price-on-sebastien-bassong-72703-23733327/ Spoken like a true club/Ashley arselicker of the press. A trademark of his over the past months in particular. A pointed but unjustified choice of wording - ie. what i've highlighted in colored print - given that three successive managers have played hardball in getting Ashley to release transfer funds. Whereas it should read something like,"or bank his transfer fee on top of whatever amount of water Ashley might drip into the transfer funds jug"

West Brom will overtake us in the Championship. Unlike us they're not a work in progress, played some good football in the engine room but ultimately lacked the required ability at the bookends of the park in order to keep afloat in the premiership. Whereas imo they're ready made to bounce straight back up. As for our situation. Too many questions unanswered with regards to our youngsters - kids who should've seen more 1st team action already. Speak of the likes of Lua Lua & Ranger in particular. The championship - and i refer to physical nature of it - is a tough blooding ground for the youngsters, when compared to the accelerated pace in which kids to seem to flourish thanks to the open expanses they enjoy in the premiership. Not impressed so far in relation to the area of team shape - which would become an inherent problem for any of Kinnear's successors in the wake of JK's anti-football - under Shearer. I expected some improvement in this department, just a slight improvement down the season's stretch. Unfortunately it didn't come to fruition. The answer the question posed in the original post. In short, no.

He came through their youth didn't he? Also, was it not rumoured SPurs were sniffing around Ranger in Jan? Sure I remember whisperings of £1m being mooted. edit: without quoting your other post as well, I'm pretty sure he was a second half sub for the u19s and hit the post near the end in a 0-0. Could be wrong mind. Apologies. I meant Reo-Coker. Point still stands with regard to the sort of player - ie. kids who have impressed at the respective u19 & u21 levels on the international stage - O'Neil has targeted since taking the Villa post.

This as well.

This.

Probably the most relevant statement posted in this thread.

Re: Ashley's apology. I'm taking it with a pinch of salt after seeing this ignorant/aloof c***'s smile - as caught on camera on matchdays - on too many occasions amidst the heat of the relegation slide, and it wasn't a battle on our part going by our board's efforts - or lack of - in the January transfer window & the team's on-field display's down the stretch. How anyone display such level aloofness, and it bordered on 'i don't give a f***' status imo - beggars beyond belief. Following weeks of the aforementioned aloofness, all eminated from his protective viewing sanctuary away from the blood & guts supporters, he delivers a heartfelt apology etc. Another PR stunt, from a walking PR Gimick...................... to go along with a lengthy list under his watch ie. the 'King Kev' replica, and a few of his previous press releases when many branded him a breath of fresh air - most notably his 'i stand at the head of the Toon Army' proclaimation which was delivered around the time when Allardyce was sacked. As big a walking waste of space this club has ever seen.

Didn't he just sign a new improved contract here recently? Seemed pretty happy up here as well from his quotes. and to go along with that, - and approaching what you're saying from a different angle, in terms of Ranger's worth in the transfer market - played a decent game on debut for England U19's as well. Didn't he make an impression on the scoresheet? If so, and with respect to the various clubs/scouts who keep tabs on such games, it represents decent news for the club's/Ashley's spreadsheets - given that we are & have been selling club under the current ownership, that's before the emergence of the current & relegation induced player clear-out.

Looking further down the track at the Summer transfer window, and with a sense of trepidation i can see Ranger offloaded as well. Alot of potential there, and a cheeky bid - lets say 2m as a ballpark figure - from a mid-table/second tier outfit - ie. Fulham - should be enough to persuade Ashley/Llambarse snap up any mooted written cheque that's placed under their respective noses, especially if the player in question is making the wrong noises with regards to his own future here & personal ambition/playing goals etc. I'd add Aston Villa to any list of potential suitors, going by their recent buying record relating to their interest in & their snapping up the highest rated talent in the U19 ranks, or thereabouts when talking about the age demographic of the talent pool. Their reported interest in Delph is one example, and the higher profile & expensive purchases of Agonlahor & Milner are others. Ranger's immediate future here is in doubt imo.

f*** off. ................. although he is just a mouthpiece for the thick,unambitious prick further up the food chain.

Matches your similarly clueless & well used punchline in the wake of Bellamy's departure, after having fully backed Souness' systematic removal of Bellamy. I applaud your consistency sunshine ie. fully supporting the club's destructive decision makers & their respective policies and/or pivotal decisions.

He's a very fortunate man that our season closer is away from home. The fixture gods, whatever the parameters are behind the programming, have inadvertently smiled on the bastard.

And to think that some directed a fair amount of vitriol at, and some openly laughed at the bloke in the wake of his first pre-match team talk, against Arsenal - "we simply have to pass the football better than them". Obviously Keegan's one of the profession's great motivators, but after you break down all the systems of play and the finer points of the game football is still the simplest football code around, to learn/follow, coach etc. Passing & movement, that's what it's all about. Two basic & essential fundamentals - along with team shape... attacking and defensive shape - which Keegan restored in the wake of Allardyces analytical/Pro-Zone based approach to midweek game preparation. Pre-match, post-match and half-time team talks etc came under the same banner during Allardyce's reign. In contrast Keegan is branded as a 'Yesterdays Man' despite having the team playing it's best team-based football since season 01/02, it's cringeworthy stuff really. It's very easy for a manager to over complicate the coaching side of the job, and throw a spanner in the works in the process,- as Big Sam unfortunately accomplished imo - because in essence footballers are instinctive. Stat driven induced drivel is one for the film rooms in the NFL, where players/teams are scouted to the minutest degree and defensive/attacking gameplans are formulated in accordance with their findings. Players/footballers just need to be motivated, whilst having the positional discipline - which comes into side of the equation covering the overall team shape (one & off the ball) - drilled into them via the training paddock. Pro-Zone - and the other stat-driven, lap-top based management systems - especially is a convenient 'get out of jail free' card for managers who are not adept at spotting the ebb & flow of a match from the dug-out with a naked eye, and where changes need to made on the fly from the touchline. A weakness which had crept into Robson's gameday management during his final two seasons. SBR felt that he needed to resort to Pro-Zone late in his tenureship here. It wasn't going to tell him much more than what the average punter could see ie. that out build-up play was becoming decidedly more one-dimensional as Shearer's legs started to give way. Stats wise the indicators would've been the increased miles covered off-the-ball by the likes of Dyer & Bellamy, through the attacking central corridor. Pro-Zone, as a dug-out accompanying tool for SBR, would've been like powering up a life support system for a manager who was past his prime - a manager resorting to any type of new-age fad in a bid to extend his career by finding any new found advantage. And that's what SBR was imo -ie past his prime - going by his non-existent use of second half substitutions, in comparison to 01/02 where our subs destroyed teams late in games, and his *reluctance to rotate his squad amidst a heavy Champions' League schedule........................... whereas Keegan is once again branded a 'Yesterday's Man', despite trying to find dug-out induced & new mechanism/system of play - to accompany previously mentioned & basic fundamentals - in a bid to extract the most out of his then & thin sqaud - notably the 433. *underusing Acuna in particular. His entire first choice eleven backed up too many times, for cup ties as well. IMO he bled too much lactic acid out of that team in 02/03. Ironically Pro-Zone probably would've provided an indicator in this instance for what was an obvious flaw on his part.

Agree with all of that *tin hat placed on head*. The first point being a key one. For the sake of sounding diplomatic, some - out of the names/posters mentioned - eventually saw the picture unfolding. Different story for some ala mandiarse, to just mention one name. And those who saw the writing on the wall - early in the peace/the direction the club was taking under *Wor' Ashley - were abused etc for posting as such. * i still remember the branding of Ashley as 'Wor' Ashley' by some, and by many as 'that breath of fresh air'. Well some of those very little piggys have had that their straw & so easily influenced houses blown down by that so-called breath of fresh air. An example being one of mandiarse's well worn & cliched one-line responses to a post i made with regards to the inevitable evaporation of Keegan's second stint in charge. I detailed enough points to explain my conclusion that the 'clock was ticking'. mandiarse's reply was 'overwritten bollocks, as usual'. Typical response i'd expect from somebody who thought that some fictional writer - that Stephen Spence bloke, or whatever the name was - was an instrumental assist provider, in one game, for Shearer back in his heyday. As for the second section placed in bold. I'm in complete agreement, and have posted as such in the past for numerous reasons. For the starters the club was chewed up in the second division, before the Halls & Shepherd arrived, thanks to McKeag's and Co lack of ambition post-relegation. Ardilles, as poor as his record was, never had a chance. Just like Jim Smith. IMO the current incarnation of the second division is more competive/cutthroat now. Over cautiousness, or a continued lack of ambition on Ashley's part, will result in further punishment beyond this season.