afar

KK said we are waiting for things to happen like a lot of other clubs. How much more do you want him to say? The reason we are not hearing anything is because the club has moved away from the wankers in the media and stopped leaking stories like the fat one used to. You'd better get used to it as it will be this way for a long time. Here we go again, another "Oh it's just the wonderful way we are doing business now" merchant. Fact of the matter is that we are somewhere close to 7 or 8 players short in numbers and the collective quality of those that we can field is average at best. There are less than four weeks to the start of the season and we've still got a huge amount of work to do. Action speaks louder than words, but all we are getting here is lack of action and lack of words.

I'm moving towards the opinion that something is decidely not right in the camp. Time is running out and we are not getting the players in. Wouldn't be surprised if he's gone by christmas, one thing we know about KK is that if he doesn't feel he's getting the support he'll not hang around.

He's a good player. It's a simple decision for me. No he's not, he's average, inconsistent and past his peak. If you built a you tube compilation of him you could probably make him out to be a world beater, because he makes the odd great pass but that doesn't make him a good player, shit I can make the odd great pass but I'm a shocking player. Spurs have found this out, that's why they are letting him go. If we've spent all summer looking for a creative midfield that'll add a touch of class to our midfield and all we end up with is Malbranque, then it's been a shocking waste of the summer.

Can't believe people are even considering another Totenham reject, Malbranque is average at best, that's why spurs are getting rid, if he were any good they wouldn't be letting go. It's one thing buying Chelsea, Manure and Liverpool rejects (which we've done to not great effect), but rejects from a team that finised one place above us last season. Do me a favour, we haven't sunk that low have we ? Unbelievable how low people's expectations have sunk.

How can you say that, when the very reason we're not in direct competition with them, is because they've signed those players (ie, spent that money). (Alright - i'm being hypothetical - i know we've bombed anyway since the pre-Roman Sir Bobby days. But the point is Chelsea could have bombed too without the cash...) Exactly the point I was making, things evolve, Chelsea could very easily self destruct, their model is not sustainable. It's just not our time at the moment, it is Chelsea's and Manure's. But I say again it's not always going to stay that way.

TBH it wouldn't make me sick at all, Love to see a player of Kaka's quality in the PL. Fact of the matter is we are not competing on the same level as Chelsea, so who they sign is really immaterial to us. Things in football are always evolving, at the moment we are light years away from the top 4 but that doesn't necessarily mean we'll stay that way, even if the likes of Chelsea spend 100 mill on 2 players. The top 4 will change in time, it's hard to see that right now but teams drift in and out of that top group from time to time as we did recently. We are fortunate to not be like Spain, Scotland, Holland or Italy where the top clubs just won't change. That's more to do with the fact that our local populations in England are far more loyal to their local clubs than they are in these other countries. IMO, enjoy watching the best leauge in the world, if NUFC were one of the big spenders and successful clubs I think people wouldn't have too many issues with this. We are not going back in times to the day when it was just a game and players had second jobs down the mine. If you want those times back, go watch non league football, it's a much more "pure" form of the game without the commercialism. Personally I prefer the "glamour", the quality in the PL is the highest and that's great to see. It's big business now and be thankful that our league is the envy of the rest of the footballing world. I have no problem with the way it's evolved, yes the money players get paid is gross but that doesn't really effect me personally too much and it gives kids from all walks of life a dream of huge financial rewards for playing the game they love. Good luck to anyone fortunate enough to have the footballing ability, I sure wish I did.

LOL, more people think Newcastle will be relegated than Boro !!! I went for the obvious: WBA Stoke Hull Of the three though, I go against what others have said and think Stoke will have the best chance of staying up. Got a feeling they may surprise a few people, I like the Kitson signing for them and if they can get a good keeper, some quality at Centre Half and some premiership nounce in the middle, they may be able to scrape enough points to finish 17th. I think WBA will try to play too much football to be honest, they don't have the quality to do this at PL level, unless they significantly invest then they'll get their fair share of arse kickings. Hull I think have just too much work to do on their squad, they've signed a few but I can't see those they have bought helping them enough. If Windass and Barmby are still playing the majority of their games then tbh they are fooked. I think they'll finish bottom but probably not threaten Derby's record low. One thing KK teams have always been pretty good at during his time with us is putting away the poorer sides in the division, I can't see any of these teams taking 4 points from us like Derby did last season.

I hope NE5 goes straight to bed when he gets in from the pub tonight. NE5 should try to consider other people's idea's, not just his Since he's not here, I'll try to defend him, firstly if you think you'll start paying less for your season ticket cos we are only paying Owen 80k as oppossed to 100k. You are living in cloud cuckoo land. Each year the club will try to increase their match day revenue, they are a business after all, they'll continue to squeeze every penny they can out of us (well not me anymore since I live in Canada now). Your season ticket will only go down if you buy in bulk or we get relegated. If we look to cost cut and fail to invest in the playing staff then yes we will have more money to spend on transfers but you'll also be either in a divsion lower or at best in the lower league that exists within the PL. You'll find it hard to attract any players from that postion. NE5 bangs on about speculating to accumulate and despite the other crap he talks about the old board, I completely agree with him here. Unless you get extremely lucky doing things on the cheap and reducing costs will get us nowhere and may even have the reverse effect to what you were trying to achieve.

He's used this line many times before and I don't agree with it. Take RB for instance, we need more cover here, under this we need to be looking for a better player than Beye. Well good look finding one, that'll come here and fits within our budget. In some instances we should be looking for players who are not as good as what we have but have the potential to be better than them. He kind of contridicts this also by bringing in Guthrie, I don't know much about the lad but surely he didn't buy him to go right into the first team ?

You mustn't have been on here then very much cos there's a bloody 60 odd page thread on the topic !!

Assuming these quotes are real, here's my view on them. Not buying for buying sake is all well and good but when you have a squad as thin as ours you simply have to buy otherwise we'll be relying on academy kids more often than not. The team doesn't need a spark, it does need an overhaul, sorry to say I don't agree with him here. It's aging in parts and lacking in quality in other areas. So if he doesn't want anyone else to leave then why has he been trying to sell Emre and Ameobi ? TBF the goalkeeping situation is about the only area that we can be content with atm. I love KK but these comments are not exactly inspiring me.

And for those of us with longer memories, not splashing the cash got us to worse places in the past.

Excellent post, I agree with most of that but it's actually only 4 weeks to Old Trafford. 13..I have just counted more first teamers than that..or would that be 13 you think are worthy of a first team spot? I think he's referring to the number that showed up for the start of pre-aseason, our first team squad probably stands at around 18 players, which is extremely worrying.

I wouldn't to be honest RW is far from our priority position.

It's an interesting point that NE5 brings up, we were very much a more appealing proposition in the past and proved it by signing players in spite of tough competitions from other clubs. Competing with the likes of Villa, Everton, Portsmouth, Man City and even Spurs was not even close, rarely would a player have gone to one of those clubs ahead of us. However things have changed in recent years, and they probably started changing before FS left. The majority of people on this forum regard all the above as more attractive than ourselves. Is this purely down to succces on the field or because they are located in more exciting locations ? Well that didn't seem to be a problem only a few years ago when we were beating Champs League Everton to the signature of players, or players spurning the bright lights to sign for us ahead of Spurs. Unfortunately, despite the fact that we all know Newcastle is a great city, with a lot of things going for it. There are still a lot of people who regard it as a backwater and mock it. This means you really do have to sell the place, the best way to sell a move to Newcastle is for the club to be successful on the pitch, the next is to offer a better compensation package to your employees. I think we have to face the fact that we'll probably always have to pay a little more for the same quality of player than other sides until we can generate some sustained success.

Excellent post, I agree with most of that but it's actually only 4 weeks to Old Trafford.

CORRECTION....OLD BOARD PRE-SOUNESS v new board NE5 doesn't actually have to post anymore there's always plenty of other posters to helpfully (yet incorrectly) tell us all what "NE5 would say...". Are you referring to my post ? Because if you are, I take issue, as this is one of his fundamental arguments, that we were nothing before Hall took over.

thats my point, the media should be writing about them. instead they turn to us. fantastic Everton have a good team in the first place. not good enough for not buying anyone and still compete in the top of the league and other cups. but this wasn´t the point. I think you know what I mean I do wish people would stop saying well this team or that team hasn't bought anyone yet either. It's not that simple, I will use a house analogy if I may: We need more than a lick of paint and a touch up here and there, we need a bloody gutting and rewiring, there are barely foundations that we can build around. If the likes of Everton don't start their touch ups until the last two weeks of the window, then they'll still have enough time to see that their house will not fall down. Even if we start earlier on our work, if we don't move at fast enough pace then we'll not have a home that will stand up to a harsh winter.

I voted cracking for the comedy value. I'm honestly so pissed off with the lack of urgency from the club that I'm beyond caring. Which of course makes no sense but I feel like one of the the prisoners who's been sent into solitary confinement and started out being angry about it but slowly over time started going completely mad. Call me impatient but new board or no new board, I'm fed up with transitional seasons, I thought last year finally we have turned the corner, new owner with lots of money behind him and a new manager who had a good track record and at first certainly seemed to talk a lot of sense. But of course that was just another false dawn. A lot of posters on here don't remember the pre Keegan/Hall era our unambition knew no bounds back then. We were a selling club who funded the building of stands through selling of their playing assets. The club yo-yoed as much between the 2 divisions as the mackems do now, we were a nothing club pure a simple. The reason I bring that up now, in pure NE5 fashion, is that it scares me to f*** that we may be heading down the path to nothingness again. The Aimar deal was dissapointing, even if there was never any interest there, the fact is the fans expectations were raised and sunk in the space of 24 hours. You can blame the fans for believing the journos all you want but with absolutely zero communication coming out of the club then obviously when something like this story is printed fans in hope more than expectation will want to believe it. However that wasn't the most concerning thing to happen this week for me. That took place on a football pitch within the city, where Newcastle United Reserves were beaten 6-2 by Newcastle Benefield. These are the players our paper thin squad will rely upon to cover injuries and loss of form. Losing by the odd goal would not have set any alarm bells ringing, first game of pre-season and all that but to be conclusively thrashed by a team of amateurs is embarassing and hugely concerning. There is still time of course, although we keep saying that, Harper says we were 2 or 3 short last season and if Emre evetually goes and Shola finds a club willing to take him then we'll have lost another 6. With another one in jail and unlikely to be ready to start a football match (assuming we don't sack him) until September/October time, then we are looking at a shortfall of around 9 or 10 players, we've bought 2 so far and I can't honestly see us buying another 7 or 8 before the window closes let alone be ready to start of the season with us. I'm scratching my head to understand where this confidence that everything will be rosey in the garden is coming from. Did FS do such a good job in alienating the fans that we'll blindly put our faith behind anybody else despite a complete lack of evidence that things on the pitch will improve ? I hope to god Ashley and his team make this post look completely stupid within the next week or two becasue if they don't then we may be at best writing August off and at worst writing the whole season off.

Don't think many people are complaining about the article (I specifically said it was alright), just the pointless nature of the whole 'big club' debate. There are a lot of pointless debates in football and I agree this is one of them, doesn't get away from the fact that the text is pretty entertaining though.

Is that really true? I don't know how you'd measure the column inches, but there was quite a bit of fuss about Martin Jol being out of favour and then Ramos arriving. No where near the coverage of KK's return.

Have those people complaining, actually read the article, it's a damn good read actually. Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes. Please spend some time to actually read the text before you complain about it.

I was gonna ask the same thing, thought I was being stupid or something cos I have no clue.

I really don't understand this thread. Bit negative to say the least. Anyway never really hated any player who pulled on the black and white shirt. I know plenty of people who used to sit by me at matches would slate a player from his first touch to his last, I could not understand that attitude. Yes there are players I never rated such as Gillespie, Darren Peacock, Andy O'brien and Steven Carr. But I never really hated them and certainly would never show any dislike towards them when they were out on the pitch.

Mine was actually a serious question, he must be over his injury by now, so why isn't he back in training, he's still our player.