GM

Ashley slashes price of Newcastle United Sep 21 2008 by Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun "Elsewhere, Ashley may try to revive the interest of a Nigerian consortium whose offer of around £300 million — again, revealed by us — was rejected early last month." Nigerian consortium? I presume the offer came in by email?

Spot on. He's not coming back. Nor should he or could he. Can we just get on with sorting this fucking mess out now please?

21 days later and I'm still waiting for his Resurrection and Ascension. Some fucking Messiah he's turned out to be.

The incurable romantic in me would have liked to see us win some silverware before SBR leaves us forever. Makes Wednesday even more important. I don't understand how the team could ever need anymore motivation to play their socks off mid-week. Do it for Sir Bobby.

Good post Chris R...I think Llambias is far more culpable for the current situation than Wise.

Seriously. Change the thread title.

Sounds like most of the youth back-up is either down the Bigg Market or in a police cell, most probably.

Have signed up...mainly because I want someone other than Frank Gilroy or Steve Wraith talking for the fans on SSN in future. I'd like midds to do the interviews in future, tbh.

Ashley's supposedly lost a shit load of money this week on the HBOS crisis, according to one of the papers. If that's the case, he may be even more reluctant to sell, and he may be rethinking his decision to sell up and move on...or it may explain why he's asking for so much more than he paid for the club.

Yeah. Thanks James. Feared the worst there, you melonhead.

"Who Do You Want As Keegan's Replacement?" now seems a redundant question really. It's not about who we want anymore and hasn't been since the off. No self-respecting manager worth his salt will come into this scenario for any amount of money...and for people to be talking of Robert Martinez simply serves to underline that brutal fact.

Make yourself a nice cup of camomile tea and go sit in a darkened room with a cold facecloth over your eyes. And breathe into a paper bag for a few minutes as well.

Yup, but I don't think he really wants to sell. In which case, he's hardly going to sack Wise etc - and leave himself open to even more financial and legal wrangles. Is it possible that having been hurt by the fans turning on him, Ashley is now going to have his revenge by pissing them off even more and becoming the footballing equivalent of a slum landlord? Hmmm....

Instincts are good but I don't trust mine at the minute. Keegan has done a lot for us in the past both as player and manager. On the other side of that we have an owner who claims to have bought the club so that he can go to the games with his kids and does so and acts like any other father taking his kids so appearances tie in with his claims. He's also been partially involved with bringing Keegan back, if only by rubber stamping the deal. Why would he try to undermine the manager he brought to the club? My instinct tells me that he would have no reason for doing so. Like you Mick, I'm not sure I can really trust my instincts at the moment either. But the only "rational" theory of why Ashley would seek to undermine the man he brought back to the club is one of sheer daft inexperience when it comes to footballing matters, i.e. he acted in a misguided manner, wanted to curry favour with the Geordie faithful, and played his trump card straight away. Misguided ultimately, but not malicious in its original intent. Circumstances - the reality of working with Keegan on a day to day basis - have obviously changed over the intervening 8 months, up to the point that conflict was inevitable - and we know the rest now much to our collective misery. Other than that, the only other reason I've been able to come up with why Ashley would seek to undermine Keegan is that Ashley, as a Spurs fan, has been on a wrecking mission from day one, and that this whole episode has been a ridiculous charade designed to smash the club to bits from top to bottom. And frankly, that doesn't make much sense either, so you have to discard that idea completely. Throughout the past few weeks I've not comfortable with the line being adopted by so many people which simply just venerates Keegan as an actual Messiah rather than as just a polemical one. Some people's unquestioning adoration of the man is just bordering on the psychotic - and it just leaves me feeling uneasy. Yes, I love the man too, but not with such a completely uncritical and subjective eye as some, who without any thought have just assumed he would never act selfishly, would never be so rash as to hurt the club or the fans he loves so much. Maybe questioning that makes me a lesser or unworthy fan in the eyes of certain people. All I know is however much I admire Keegan, my love for the club still extends far beyond whatever (considerable) respect I have for him and all he's done for this club, and I would much rather he'd walked after the pre-season friendly at Doncaster, when he looked just about downcast and dejected as possible. What concerns me most is that in the current economic, and let's face it political, climate - NUFC is nowhere near as investable as to be worth the vast sums Ashley is purported to be wanting for it. He's clearly going to be around for a while, and we're clearly not going to have a decent manager (by which I mean someone able to rally the troops and improve morale and the quality of play) anytime soon.

Oh I think the press may well have a different take on that than you do.

I would agree with that if this was just a job but it isn't, he's supposed to love the club and the fans, dropping us in the shit is a funny way of showing it. Was just about to say the same. Keegan knew what he meant to the fans. Just seems to me that he abused that power quite cynically and irresponsibly in the end. I'm not laying all the blame at his door, but his petulance in departing when and how he did has just left me feeling rather betrayed.

Or to paraphrase on your behalf: "Here's my gaping sphincter. Please sodomise me". Get a grip.

Nice try MiguelJon - but I don't think you've quite understood just how determined certain quarters of our support are to be miserable, depressive, histrionic, over-reacting, over-emotional, nihilist, defeatist twats.

Do you honestly think that I am stroking my ego here? Trust me, being an accountant is not top of any egotistical stucture! All I'm doing is trying to dampen down the flames of 'administration' etc through pointing out what I've experienced - for the record I worked for the worlds top accountancy firm for 4 years have a chartered qualification and have worked on the audit of Manchester United - I have a fair idea how football accounts work (ok that bit was ego massaging). If anyone took a premier league football club into administration they need shooting, it should be virtually impossible - Leeds were a Championship club when they went in btw. As I said I haven't seen the auditors report in the accounts but it would be VERY unusual to issue a 'clean' audit report with the provision that x amount of cash is injected, either the cash is guaranteed and the report is clean or it is not guaranteed and the report modified to show the club not being in a going concern basis. I'll repeat a point I made earlier, Companies can recover from havng an audit report showing them not to be in a going concern position, of course just a smany don't but its not simply a case of 'not a going concern' = 'administration'. Conversly many companies who go into administration had a perfectly healthy balance sheet at the previous year end. As for the Shepherd is s*** argument, I've tried to remain neutral in this thread, but fwiw: Shepherd - tried his best for the good of the club AND himself. He wanted a succesful club and he wanted the rewards for it. He bollocked up in the timing of sacking Bobby and the appointments after that were disasterous. But rightly or wrongly he gambled high stakes to get us back in the top 4, unfortunately his managerial appointments rendered the cash impotent in many ways. His time was up when Ashley came in. I also don't think that he and Doug should have returned to the club after the fake Sheik sting. Ashley - had/has a vision and it is a longer term approach. Again he bollocked up in his appointments of both Wise and Keegan. I (like many) was caught up in the emotion of Keegan coming back, but looking back it was never going to last. Given time I do believe that Ashleys vision could bear fruit, but it would take a season or 2 to rebuild. A large enough percentage of fans are not prepared to wait for this. I fully understand NE5's viewpoint, I'm sure then manner in a lot of what he says is for effect though. Conversley though, I was a big supporter of Ashley, and was prepared to see where he was going to go post Keegan. Unfortunately though I think it has reached the point where anything he does will be ridiculed by fans and again his time has come and gone. A final point, I have no axe to grind with MacBeth or anyone else who comments on the finances of the club, however puttnig together http://www.football-finances.org.uk/ suggests a financial expert has compiled the website - I wouldn't attempt to do something like this without knowing what is behind the numbers as you only have one viewpoint on the website. Its a good website, but it is flawed. I have simply tried to explain why I think some of his statements are exaggerated. Oh and Dave, I know my English is crap - thats why i went into numbers (and use spell checker on my professional work!) Great post. I'm impressed. I actually understood what SP60'sHaircut was saying there. Thanks mate, made perfect sense and as such made for a very convincing argument. Shall certainly pay heed to your posts more often in future.

I'm quite sure it does - in your own funny little world, perhaps. Fair enough, it's hardly giving a glorious reflection of the Toon Army, though.

I've read precisely 4 posts in this thread. I'm not listening to the match. I have absolutely no clue how we've played today...I just know it's been bad. Really very bad. But for anyone to pass comment on our relegation prospects at this stage in the season is defeatist/triumphalist bollocks. And you wonder why people see us as the laughing stock of the Premiership?!

HTT. You're beyond redemption in the silly stakes now. Tragedy is, you can't see it.

Thought it was fantastic satire, actually. Inspired. Very funny as well. Only thing that bothered me was the atrocious typos and spelling mistakes in the subtitles.