merlin

ALL clubs that profess to be 'big' and 'ambitious' need as much support as they can get ; parochialism, as sometimes expressed by a minority of NUFC fans('you can't support the club if you're not a Geordie' etc etc) has NO place in today's Prem. Man U and Arsenal have much larger Financial turnovers than NUFC and a large part of this is sales of merchandise etc in countries where they have a large fan-base. ALL fans who want to follow the club are welcome, and should be made to feel so at matches...

That's because he's built a squad, like Dennis Wise was apparently employed to do. No I won't bother if that's ok with you. Right ok then. Lets try it. Take RB LB 2 centre midfielders one winger and 2 strikers which is what we are currently missing (I'll consider 1 if you don't see Viduka as first team). So thats, Young, Shorey, Reo-Coker, Barry Young Agbonglohor/Carew. Meaning this leaves you with the following villa team. Friedel. Cuellar Laursen Davies Bouma Routeledge Sidwell Petrov Gardner Harewood Milner Not quite top 6 team now is it. As is the same with most, look at how much ball riding Man Utd got when Tevez and Ronaldo weren't there. The team you have quoted would still pee all over our so-called 'second' team...O'Neill is a very good manager who has bought good players - Milner included...Get over it, I would have LOVED to have O'Neill at SJP, yes, even in front of KK. I would have bet every last penny I have that MON at SJP with a similar board to the one he has a Villa, would have been just as successful as he has been at Villa - even though they had some good young players(like Agbonlahor)when he joined them.

This is the reason the Arsenal model would never work here, tits like yourself shooting players down less than a month after they joined, I wonder if the Arsenal fans were on Adebayor's back this soon when he looked on par with Shola? If you think the Arsenal model would ever work here you sir are an idiot. It starts with being able to determine the potential in players, and excuse me, but so far nothing I have seen from Xisco suggest he is about to rip this league apart anytime soon. Re Adebayor, he got a lot of stick when he first broke into their team, but the potential was there (I definitley saw it) so he was worth perceveiring with. We paid 6 million for Xisco, about the same as City paid for SWP or about twice what Arsenal paid for Van Persie; who do you think looks more 'promising'..? Does anyone not ask themselves just why so many players from the Spanish League have been signed? Are there not small alarm bells ringing in anybody's head ? Does anyone REALLY believe, for example, that Real Mallorca actually received 5.8m for Marcelino whe he signed in 1998, and if not, where did the rest go...!? Xisco does not, up to now, look as good a player as, for example, a fit Viduka and he is at the end of his career....

There is NO way a player with Owen's quality would join NUFC until the club starts producing both on and off the pitch, takeover or no takeover - if he goes before the end of the season we will be odds-on for relegation.

Already, one-sixth of the League programme has been played - NUFC has 4 points.. There is little chance of major improvement before Christmas as Enrique has hamstring problem and that can take up to 6-8 weeks to put right(Beardsley was out for 8 weeks with one back in 86) ; LB is a major problem area, midfield is pedestrian and non-creative and Central defence is shaky because Taylor is NOT proving to have developed any further this season ; up front, only Owen looks like scoring on anything like a regular basis and Martins is out for 6 weeks..... Add it all up, PLUS Hull looking unlikely to blow up soon(bad teams do NOT beat Arsenal at the Emirates - when did NUFC manage it..??), and as has been said, Stoke look to be NUFC's target, NOT Everton, Villa etc. Even after a takeover, it will take time to sort this lot out and despite everyone waxing lyrical over Jonas, he has never looked like scoring, and, as far as I can remember, only really created one clear-cut scoring chance for forwards by his crossing - he carries the ball well and defends well(for an attacking midfielder),but the side needs goals from midfield as well as up front and NONE of the midfielders look like scoring.. Yes, as I have said before, I would take 17th place YESTERDAY,and I reckon most fans will be saying the same by end of October...This side has relegation written all over it.

Couldn't agree more, and it's a prospect i've raised quite some time ago.......... a prospect some here privately dismissed - or likely - as being overwritten bullshit. The forecast for next season, if we're relegated. A promotion campaign isn't necessarily on the cards. It would resemble more of a survival campaign where the team/club will look to consolidate/secure it's place in the league. The U/18 results at the minute aren't impressive. A worrying sign for an element that will play a part in the senior first X1 after wage expenditure is reduced in the wake of relegation this year. Go and jump off the f***ing Tyne Bridge. Yours Sincerely Nixon. A Reality check is needed here, or you will be following him...

Some are crazy, but not THAT crazy...!

I would be far more confident that this bid was authentic if it was a well-known Arab consortium, or similarly well-known Oriental outfit ; if this IS a scam, it will send morale at the club even further down...

This IS the worst time of all - I saw relegation in 77 after a couple of good years, relegation in 89, fear of Div 3 in 92, but through all that, we had hope of renewal and something better coming along ; this is NOT the case today because football has changed so much in the last 10 years(esp the last 5)that relegation would probably mean never again being the club we were in the mid-90s... Mega-rich clubs like Man C, Man U , Chelsea etc will monopolize all the top players, and I even think there could be a break-away Euro League in a few years, leaving the rest of the Prem adrift in the same way as the Championship is today. What also makes this situation even worse is that it looked as if, at long last, we had started to recover from the drift and were going to make progress with Ashley & KK, only to have the whole thing collapse through lack of good management and inefficiency. If we go down this season, we will end up like Wolves - a former 'big' club who have a nice stadium which they only fill every time a Prem club arrives in the FA Cup. These are terrible times for a once-great football club.

Brilliantly accurate - well done.

Nothing to forgive - he was being undermined as manager and walked ; most would do the same. End of story.

that is the first time you have ever written down clearly what you think, and feel. EVERY other time you have tried to put words into peoples mouths, made accusations about what you think they think, or what they want. If you had expressed yourself as you have in this post then you would have few arguments from me, or others. My grouse with Hall and Shepherd began in 2003 n they seemed to take their eye off the ball. Up to then they had speculated to try and improve, then, for some reason they just started randomly increasing salaries, givinbg out 5 year contracts, randomly appointing managers, and not speculating to improve, but gambling to survive. That was the difference. Without a shadow of a doubt staying in the top division was a major achievement, worthy of credit. I am old enough to appreciate this. Every side in England has a new stadium, or vastly improved stadium, though, us having one doesn't Shepherd apart from the rest. The last season under McKeag we lost £3m, on only £4.2m coming in to the club. The club spent £440,000 on new players. We also spent £300,000 getting rid of a Jim Smith. We had a wage bill of £2.6m. We had debts of £7m. The reason I quote all these boring numbers is that if you multiply them all up it is essentially the state that Shepherd left the club in 16 years later. £32m loss on £87m income. Spent more than 10% of income on new players. Spent the same sort of percentage sacking the manager, again. Wages were 70% of income, debts of £70m. To me Shepherd has left the club with the same financial mess that John Hall inherited, we have had great fun along the way, many fortunes have been made, but looking at what he has passed to his successor, it is scarily similar to 1991. Just as it couldn't go on in 1991 it could not have continued in 2007. We were fortunate to get Sir John, we have been unfortunate to get Mike Ashley. If Shepherd had stayed in charge there would have been no money to "speculate" cos there was nowhere to get the money from, it had all gone. You're a liar. You wrote a piece in the mag in 1998, around the time of the FA Cup Final, whinging on about dividends etc. I quoted this once before. Have you forgotten , because you replied to it, and also harped on about your moronic support of that cretin Adam Crozier and how he would be the "ideal" chairman of the club. I have ALWAYS said, and said it often, that the Halls and Shepherd left the club miles better than how they found it. If you weren't so obsessed with reading your balance sheets, and concentrating on the football which happens to be the industry that we are in, you would have seen it. The fact that you have disappeared for all this time, and re-appeared talking yet again about nothing but finance should tell its own story. I really couldn't give a toss about those figures above. The simple fact is, the club was bankrupt in 1991, counldn't sell it for 2.5m quid, had one foot in the 3rd division, played in front of a cow shed masquerading as a football stadium and 15 years later, had qualified for europe more than everybody but 4 teams, played in the Champions League, expanded the stadium to one of the best and biggest in the UK, and filled it, bought major international players instead of selling them, and was worth one of the highest valuations in the country through massively raising the profile of the club, is the legacy. By the way, you have constantly whinged on about the club "doing a Leeds", through overspending. Well, the club is now heading the way of Leeds, and its for the opposite reason to your claims. Its heading that way because of underinvestment on players. Even you should find this slightly ironic. I'm sure a smart lad like you will recognise the irony of this.............. You're clueless. And you have one hell of a chip on your shoulder, just because the ex board refused you a say in the running of the football club, which is a strange demand to put it mildly. One last point. You say we were "lucky to get Sir John". Well, Sir John was lucky to have Fletcher, Hall Jnr and Shepherd as his co-directors, because these were the people who were completely responsible for getting Keegan to the club first time round, when Sir John didn't want to change the manager and they almost threw him into his lap and forced him to sack Ardiles. Depending on who you believe, but I tend to believe what Keegan says in his own book. Unless you think what we achieved would have happened with any old Charllie Bloggs as manager of the football team, such is your apparent view that the "business plan" and the balance sheet come first. You really couldn't make this up. Someone else who has learned absolutely nothing from the events of the last 2 weeks. 'Sir John lucky to have Fletcher..' Sorry, NE5, I'm afraid that it was the other way round ; Fletcher was a FORMER exec at Rangers before he got involved in NUFC,and his initial brief was to sort out the club's Promotions/ Retail Op.. SJH placed a great deal of trust in him and gave him plenty of licence ..he made himself into a millionaire with SJH's help and, if you were able to ask SJH what happened in later years you would not get a very happy story... Ask KD what HE thought of Fletcher.... As for complaining that SJH didn't want to sack Ardiles, yes, maybe he WAS misguided, but this club has been criticised for lack of stability on too many occasions ; KK had NO interference in his job when SJH was Chairman - can Shepherd make that claim about his managers, esp SBR, when he sold Speed without Robson's approval ??

And what, pray, would have happened to NUFC if he HADN'T rescued the club in 1992? We were going BUST, man - get real... And as for your political comment, I am no fan of EITHER UK major party, and if you think the Tories are any worse than Labour, you need to wake up and smell the coffee.. The UK Govt is no more powerful than a Town Council these days...you are run from Brussels, my friend... Amazing how weird the world seems to look when you're stuck on the arse side, thousands of miles from civilisation, in a place with more sheep than people. You are somewhat out of touch, Mr Mandias... Its NZ which has more sheep than people ; We can fit the UK into Australia 32 times ; 11 times into the State I live in...Now THAT is what I call 'civilisation'... There are over 60m crammed into your little island, and now the French are holding you to ransom over Nuclear power after your Council Leader sold off Westinghouse to the Japanese 2 years ago... The state of Western Australia's economy grew at 3% during the June Quarter ; UK is in Recession, and jobs going down faster than house prices.. IMF has just praised stability of Australia's economy & Banks, as opposed to Europe's & the States... OH YES - we are on the 'arse' side of the world' alright...!!!!

souness dalgleish curbishley peter reid howard wilkinson etc etc etc al preferable to a 3rd cockney gangster You think Souness and Wilkinson are preferable to Venables??(Dalglish has already said No to the job before being asked).........Dear, Oh Dear, Oh Dear....

Stop whingeing about the lack of fans - NUFC should think themselves lucky that even 20,000 turned up. The club have taken the fans for granted for years and they deserve a pasting until they start repaying the fans' great support over the years. People have EVERY right either to make their views about the club known, or not to turn up at all - anyone who thinks otherwise is a hypocrite because they would be the first to squeal if they got ripped-off by buying something that they considered sub-standard or a Rip-off.

IF Ashley cannot sell NUFC and the club goes down, you will be proved right especially about damaging the club. On the other hand, any new owners will know that they cant take NUFC over and f*** about with the fans and take them for granted like Mike Ashley and his mates did. This could and should ultimately result in us getting a more stable club that is ran in a far more professional manner than what it ever was under Mike Ashleys "team" of non communicators. Nufc fans will only take to an owner who's gonna lavish them with transfer funds - they're too impatient to see a long term policy and system take shape especially at the expense of a statistically mediocre manager. How many Abramovich's are there out there? Theres something like 2000 billlionaires out there, how many do you think would be keen to blow there money on nufc? A club which now has a history of forcing out the previous incumbents, maybe even 2 of them. How many of these billoinaires at a guess do you think would be keen to own a club where the fans are more powerful than the man with the purse strings? Im still unsure how you've come to the conclusion that he's taken the fans for granted. As for your final dig - the club spends its entire tenure keeping a privacy shield away from the media and with that also the fans and the club is congratulated for keeping out the poisonous press, but the fans couldnt wait 2 weeks to see how things transpired before the club made a statement and is lambasted for the lack of communication.....damned if you do, damned if you dont. You really couldnt make it up. Rubbish, frankly. Was there any sign or sound of fans' revolt in the air in the last few weeks of last season? The majority were happy we seemed to be making slow but steady progress under Keegan, with the promise of the squad being significantly - but NOT spectacularly - in the summer. It wasn't. KK felt betrayed. So do the fans. Why would we look to revolt at the end of last season? If you're trying to say that nufc fans would be happy with an owner who has a long term plan for the club with slow steady progress, then what was wrong with Ashley's plan? Putting aside the still unknown circumstances of Keegans departures, what problems did you see with a club who looked to invest in younger players from around the whole of europe and not just the big clubs of the major leagues, looking to develop them and making them stars for the club? I am more than happy to admit i was very dissapointed with the lack of acitvity surrounding this club - however with a club that was rowing in seperate directions i can see, but not understand why we had so little activity. EDIT: The sad fact of this case is that the fans are using the lack of numbers as another stick to beat Ashley with (which they are well within there rights) but are conviniently forgetting that the clubs squad has dramatically improved. Which was more important out the 2? Put it simply, would you rather have a good sized squad with similar quality to last year or would you rather have a similar sizeds squad which was better than last year? I know which is more important - you have to ask yourself if you do and if you do you'll understand where you arguments fall down. Only just logged back on now, so apologies for late reply. Of course there is nothing wrong with a plan to curb over-spending on trophy signings and search for talented youngsters worldwide. But Ashley pursued that plan with men totally ill equipped to follow Arsenal's lead. Dennis f*****g Wise and an ex Chelsea steward ffs. Had he put a Frank Arneson type in to do the job of finding talent, we'd have found some worth having, Keegan would still be here and the fans would be saying nowt. As it is, Ashley's stuck by men who have unearthed precious little in the way of decent young talent (Kadar aside, perhaps) and made one undeniably good senior signing (Gutierrez), while ignoring blatant shortcomings (lack of full-backs, creative midfielders) in a squad that you, bizarrely, claim has been "dramatically" strengthened. That's not to mention that Ashley himself was promising corporate fans a "wow" signing before the close of the transfer window..... Hold on - so you dont think the squad has improved dramatically? By getting rid of a few personnel the squad improved - by adding 6 players of which at least 4 look to be good quality in my book is quite a dramatic improvment especially since we havent had a transfer window equal to this since the days of SBR (in terms of quality). How you can therefore castigate a transfer team based on that strength of evidence, to the extent you think they should leave the club, ill never know. Think about it. Yes, they did make mistakes and they did not address certain positions, that we know of (remeber Keegan was very optimistic after the Milner sale saying 3-4 players were in the pipeline - who's to say the positions were being addressed but didnt come off?), but they did the number one thing that needed doing and they improved the quality of the squad. You also have to rememeber that Keegan seemed to buckle on the last day of the season and was unhappy with having either Xisco or Nacho hoisted onto him, there was no suggestion that he was unhappy with the lack of personnel at certain positions, making me believe that you are looking for another stick to beat Ashley with. The bottom line is that we finally seem to have a system which did seem to be paying dividends in its first season together but we still value the whims of a statisitcally mediocre manager over the direction of the club and that for me is unbelievable. No, the squad has NOT 'improved dramatically'.. We have obtained 2 - yes, TWO - players, Coloccini and Gutierrez, who LOOK to be an improvement on what we had...N'Zogbia has gone backwards(probably because he is being played out of position ), Taylor has NOT improved, Guthrie is no better than most bog-standard Prem midfielders ; we have two snail-paced players in Cacapa & Geremi, Butt is ageing and, like an old predatory animal, paying the penalty for being no longer quick enough to catch its prey... After a promising start at OT, Given has once again showed frailties in his 'keeping and we have lost a promising England U-21 player, albeit for a large fee(which cannot be spent until Jan, and probably not then, unless it is wasted because nobody worth their salt wants to join NUFC...) We have ONE recognized LB(a position KK wanted to strengthen and was let down by the wonderful 'Continental' System that was supposed to support him), and the morale of the squad couldn't be worse ; the best player on the club's books(Owen) is despised by many so-called 'supporters',and despite showing his professionalism in a horrendous set of circumstances , is likely to be off in January.... We have NO prospect of major improvement until end of season, by which time the club could be in the Championship... Anyone who thinks the squad has 'improved dramatically' is in dreamland. WE ARE HEADING FOR RELEGATION UNLESS A MIRACLE OCCURS.

Said this last week - we have few other alternatives and at least he can coach(reputedly..!). If he turns us down, its George Graham next - if HE turns us down, its Sheff Utd, Doncaster etc next....

And what, pray, would have happened to NUFC if he HADN'T rescued the club in 1992? We were going BUST, man - get real... And as for your political comment, I am no fan of EITHER UK major party, and if you think the Tories are any worse than Labour, you need to wake up and smell the coffee.. The UK Govt is no more powerful than a Town Council these days...you are run from Brussels, my friend...

It's all about risk & return though. I don't recall many others queuing up to put £8m in. In fact supporters have been offered a piece of the action in the past & turned down the opportunity. Yes, this is true Liam - the Share offer was a flop, mainly because ;- 1.It competed with an Electric flotation at the same time 2.Fans knew McKeag & Co were still on board. As a side issue, SJH DID do OK out of the 97 flotation, but I don't think he got as much as Ozzie says ; wasn't the club's total valuation only 144m at the time(still not too far behind Man U's which shows how far we have fallen).

MON only ever does 5 year stints, so he wont be there for much longer. Only another 3 years then - how long has the average manager of NUFC been in place.. If MON is doing well at Villa & thinks he can take them further, he will be there longer than 3 more years ;look at the clubs he has managed in the past - only Celtic were a 'big' club & he couldn't take THEM any further in the Scottish Prem. Absolutely staggered that there are STILL some people here with their heads in the sand about O'Neill, while he quietly gets on with making Villa into the club NUFC should be..!

The problem is that any new owners cannot really get a top class manager at the present time, and are unlikely to be able to do so until there has been a period of stability in the club - or until the season's end at the earliest. The club is in a desperate position and CANNOT afford to be relegated, new money or not - the bad reputation which the club now has will make it very difficult to rebuild if we go down, so in that case i would bring him back in order to keep us up ; in any case, whoever is appointed cannot buy players until Jan, so the new manager will have to have great powers of motivation - and KK DOES have that...

I think you'll find that they'll be getting plenty of action in the months ahead...!!!

This is what I heard, and stress this is ALLEGEDLY what happened(!).... He fell out big-style with Fletcher just before the season when he got sacked ; he had arranged a deal to sell Gillespie to Boro for 3.5m, but when NUFC were taking part in a pre-season tournament AT Boro, Fletcher allegedly let the Press think that Gillespie's ankle injury was going to finish his career - naturally, Boro had little choice to but pull out of the deal in case it rebounded on them, and Dalglish was furious as he had set up a deal to buy another player with the Gillespie fee. The following day(a Monday), Dalglish had a storming confrontation with Fletcher(they are 2 Glaswegians, so you can get the picture)which supposedly got very nasty indeed.... He was a marked man from then on(Fletcher was CEO then)and was fired 2 games into the season ; we hadn't lost EITHER of them, so make up your own mind..!!

Almost makes sense. He's going to get a decent amount of respect from the press & players (fans might be another matter though). And he'd probably be able to work with the whole DoF malarkey we have going on. As a short-term appointment I could see it working. He did that DOF crap at Celtic didn't he? With John Barnes as the manager, around the time that Inver Cally Thistle whacked Celtic in the cup, and we had the best ever back page headline "SUPER CALLY GO BALLISTIC, CELTIC ARE ATROCIOUS!" As I remember Barnes did almost everything (badly) at Celtic whilst Kenny spent his time on the golf course. I seem to remember that there were later rumours that Barnes never (or at least very rarely) asked for advice on the team and ended up running the team in much the same manner that Gullit ran us in that he couldn't really understand why other players weren't as good as he was. Ironically, Dalglish's "5 year plan" for us revolved around us bringing in a lot of youngsters for little money and bringing them through the ranks in much the same way that Ashley wanted/wants to do with us so bringing in Dalglish on a short-term contract to turn things around may work in the long run should he be able to get the team winning again and if Ashley can't find a satisfactory buyer. Yes, but he DID spend big bucks when he could at NUFC - brought in Hamann for 5m(sold for 7m by Gullit), Solano for about 3m I think, Tomasson was about 6m(went on to be a great player for AC Milan), Given too(can't remember the fee)....I am sure he would have done OK if Shearer hadn't got injured at Everton or the club hadn't agreed to sell Ferdinand ; Dalglish was under pressure to agree to the sale because of Sir Les' age and the 6m fee Spurs had agreed to pay...it turned out to be the worst 6m we ever got, because it cost us a whole season of progress. The players apparently liked KD, it was the Press who had it in for him because he was dour with them. The trouble now is that he is getting on a bit & doesn't need the money OR the hassle - however, these are desperate times and desperate times need desperate measures...who knows ? Stranger things have happened..

Doubt if he would take the job with the future of the club so uncertain ; he is doing OK at Wigan and, as has been said already, Whelan would move heaven & earth to stop him working for Ashley. Have to say he has done well at Wigan and he HAS had a fairly extensive, if unspectacular,grounding in management. May be a candidate after a takeover, but would want more control than the current regime wishes to give the manager(but then, so would MOST candidates..!). We need a stop-gap right now(Dalglish DOES think highly of the NUFC job and said so when the S.Press were saying the club was unmanageable after Allardyce was sacked, but again, he wouldn't want all the crap from above OR like the fact that, once again, he would be managing NUFC without a real chance of being able to field a decent side). And stop-gaps are not easy to find if any good - even Venables has turned the job down... Its a really tough call until there is a takeover.