merlin

20 years ago, we were paying almost 600 pounds for an E Stand ST....in addition, many of us coughed up 500 for the 'Bond', supposedly to enable you to retain your place for 10 years...Platinum Club STs were - wait for it - 3000 quid... Ashley has piled high and sold cheap with all his ventures...he knows discerning people won't accept second-best tat, but there are plenty who will buy something just because they see it as 'cheap' - and that applies to NUFC STs now. As you say, there are many fans who would pay more if they felt the club had ambition and would re-invest money made into the playing staff but that won't happen under this regime. Chicken and Egg....

Sometimes you just need to allow good players to play, it might sound trite but the likes of Pardew doesn't get it. It reminds me of a comment from Bill Shankly, Keegan's old manager at Liverpool of course. "Football is a simple game, made complicated by fools" Brilliant ! A classic Shankly quote and like most of them, straight to the point and correct..!

Sissoko will go, either in this window or in summer - he will prove to be a class player in a good side with better players than at NUFC and especially, under a better manager. He is one of the most saleable assets the club has, so will fetch a good fee which Ashley will probably pocket as part of his 'loan repayment'. We have seen flashes of what Sissoko can do, but he will show much more at a better club.

He'd love to have SD plastered all over the newspapers. He would - but not if it was being associated with our crowds falling to 25,000.....

Yep - and Pardew was really successful against giants like Brighton, wasn't he..!?

McNally is a mackem and I don't usually like his stuff, but he's spot-on with this - the result was predictable just as those at Brighton etc were in the past, a low-scoring defeat by poor opposition in order to maintain the club's record of staying out of unnecessary distractions such as the FA Cup. Those running the club have even admitted this, so anyone who either travels expecting anything else or lives in expectation of a Cup run is living in dreamland. I had a feeling that the result would be on these lines and that Carver hasn't the ability to be a PL manager, let alone the manager of NUFC, but he has faithfully followed Ashley's blueprint for making money out of NUFC and that alone could see him installed permanently if he gets one or two decent results before the end of Jan. Hope I'm wrong, but still can't see a decent end to all this - we actually get money for Pardew then think of appointing a stop-gap which could see us relegated and then the owner departs, leaving any purchaser a mammoth task .

There is something very very strange about the way the MSM are bigging up Pardew...anyone with his record at 4 different clubs would not have merited more than a couple of lines if he was going to a club like Palace but as has been said, anyone would think we were losing someone like Ferguson. It HAS to be with the aim of belittling NUFC and undoubtedly some of this has come from News International ; they were the ones who set up DSH and FF for the NOTW scam in 1998 and strangely enough, this was just after Sky had bought shares in MUFC and - yes - SAFC. Our reputation was trashed after that and the media have been on our case ever since Ashley took over, probably because they feared he would spend and make the club a force again - exactly why they need to do it now is beyond imagining.....

The self-styled 'stars' you mentioned are just ignorant...they probably think people in the NE still all keep pigeons and whippets as well as wearing cloth caps. Those type of people still think that here in Australia, we all either go surfing or wear hats with bobbing corks attached to the brims, but we are quite happy for them to keep thinking that Oz is a backwater....that way, we keep them away..!! Collymore is hardly in a position to criticize anybody, what with his highly-chequered career and personal life...a certain Swedish former weather girl would testify to that....

Your problem is that Ashley and Pardew didn't agree with you......

What the 'fans' want - to answer the JJ hypothetical question - is a PROVEN manager who is up to the job of managing one of Britain's best supported clubs....Carver is not that, period. It is perfectly natural for fans to be sceptical about Carver because he was and is, part of the Ashley establishment - he proved that when he turned on the fans at Southampton because he feared that if Pardew was sacked, a new manager would bring in another assistant. I had an open mind about Carver until that day - he had been assistant to SBR and I thought he MUST have learned something about coaching and management from him but you cannot, in a million years, imagining SBR offering to have a scrap with one of our fans ; he had far more class than that and he knew better than most, that if you lose the SJP crowd, you are dead. For the club's - and the fans'- sake, I hope he keeps the team in a respectable position but it would be hard to imagine him as permanent manager of NUFC....the club should have better than that but whilst Ashley is at the helm, we are quite likely to end up with Carver if the side finishes top 10.

IF this club had any ambition, they would go to Southampton at the end of the season and offer them the necessary comp to get Koeman - this is about as likely to happen as I am to win the lottery(I don't usually buy a ticket) so the next best thing which the club can even think about is his fellow Dutchman de Boer. However, Ashley is likely to see how the side performs under Carver and if they get moderate results, to give him the job on a permanent basis because 2016 is probably when Ashley will bail out..he may even be tempted to go before that and Carver is a cheap option for him. Don't expect a permanent appointment until the end of the season in any case....if we start to struggle, Ashley is likely to fall back on Hoddle or someone similar temporarily in the same way he gave Shearer the poisoned chalice for the last 8 games of 2008-9.

Absolutely no offence, but your stadium wasn't even that good 30 years ago. You must have got some people who knew their s*** in charge in that period to get what you have now. You are quite right on both counts Brummie - both ends of SJP were completely uncovered and so were the corners ; the East Stand - now the oldest part of the stadium - was the 'new' stand and the Milburn had yet to be built...the old board sold Beardsley to Liverpool in 1987 to pay for it. When Sir John Hall took over the club, he used his experience of development and especially the MetroCentre construction, to rebuild SJP, firstly into a 47,000 capacity and eventually into the 52,000 seater that it now is ; had he had his way and the idiot Prescott not stopped it, he would have built a new stadium on Leazes Park with 75,000 capacity and a sliding roof. People moan about SJH, but he did as he said and gave us a stadium to be proud of instead of a crumbling wreck.

"If" doesn't come into it, he's gone. In that case Mick, I'm delighted to say the least...I was hedging because you can never underestimate Pardew or Ashley's ability to do the totally unexpected, just as Ashley decided not to meet the Sheiks in Dubai and played the tables instead when KK walked. What frightens me now is the nonentity that will be the likely replacement when we need someone to re-vitalise the whole club.

There is no doubt that SackPardew.com have been a major force in unsettling the complacency that both manager and owner had settled into. They thought that unorganized protests would show the supporters in a poor light and make them look ignorant - this has actually worked to the degree that the MSM have bought the club's propaganda and have failed totally to highlight Pardew's failings - and those of the whole club structure apart from the profit angle - and by keeping the pressure off the club. Had the results Pardew oversaw in the early part of the season been from a club like Spurs - who have never had NUFC's potential - the London media would have been crucifying him and the directors, but we are seen as nonentities and Ashley's running of the club plays into that theory very well. SP.com have shaken the scales from the eyes of many fans and highlighted what poor results and performances have been turned out for the majority of Pardew's tenure at the club and they have done it in a reasoned and logical way which cannot be glossed over by the club no matter how they try. SP.com may not have been as high-profile as the Magpie Group were(mainly because they didn't have the concerted support of the local media)but they were - and are - a necessary consequence of the way NUFC have been taken down...in the same way that the Magpie Group sprung up. Well done to them - at least they did something and didn't just accept mediocrity as the norm...lets hope we don't get another stool pigeon like Beardo to replace Pardew...if he finally leaves.

Anyone who wants to run the club by choosing his own players and when to buy and sell them is a non-starter. The most likely successor to Pardew(if and when he goes and I am far from convinced he will go now, much as we all want him to)is a stooge like Beardsley or someone desperate for a job like Curbishley. Cannot believe a top manager like Benitez would touch NUFC with a barge pole and Ashley will not pay Napoli to get him either. People shouldn't get their hopes up because it only leads to disappointment.

A great post - you are 100% correct and I agree with you totally - the club IS dead.

There has undoubtedly been a concerted effort by both the MSM and the football 'fraternity' to keep Pardew in a job and the propaganda has clearly worked on that mass of brain-deads who call themselves 'supporters'. True fans, like family, stick with you when you are going through a sticky patch, but when you consistently abuse their support and waste their financial contributions, they give you the bum's rush until you sort yourselves out. The club's record over the past 5 years(apart from one)is that of a struggling non-entity who will always simply be grateful to be among the also-rans in the PL - clearly a majority of unthinking idiots are prepared to put up with the club taking their money and rubbing their noses in the dirt, so good luck with that.... Many on here are not and I am no exception ....I live overseas now but had I still been in the UK there is NO WAY I would ever cross the doors of SJP until this regime has gone - which is probably another way of saying I would never be back. 4 Derby losses in a row, thumped by Liverpool 6-0(worst home defeat in 80 years), etc etc. Yes, Pardew has a fine record - there is no doubt in my mind that the media and football's authorities are determined to keep him there...exactly why is another question.....

Pardew is the perfect illustration of the proof of the Chinese saying ' If a man be thought a fool, it is better for him to keep his mouth closed than to open it and prove the matter beyond all doubt'....as if we needed any further proof.

Law of averages says that NUFC should get something out of this game....a draw is most likely, but a defeat, esp a heavy one, would get the sheeple roused from their pro-Pardew reverie. This one could be interesting......!

Same old, same old.....as predictable as the sun rising in the East, NUFC get hammered by one of the N London teams and knocked out of a cup competition. And so it goes on - it'll be fun at the w/e..!

Can't say I agree. Plenty of scope for well run clubs to break into that top four imho. Are you including NUFC in the 'well-run' category...seriously..? No. How have you come to that conclusion? Glad to hear it...you had me worried for a minute..

Midds' post sums up why I have put the fortunes of NUFC firmly in the 'back-burner' bracket now and for the foreseeable future. The dumbing down of supporters, many of whom witnessed our successful period under KK(under SBR we were never realistically in with a chance of the title)has been the one outstanding success of the Ashley/Pardew regime and that is not going away any time soon. However, I believe that the NE generally suffers from this syndrome these days and that is why it was easy for these shysters to get the fans thinking that the club are second-rate...which is how they run it. Since the last major shipbuilder Swan Hunter closed in 1993, there has been a remorseless lowering of the areas economic prospects, and it is no longer a major industrial complex as it once was. The types of world-class companies like Swans, Vickers etc etc have been gradually moving away or closing down, leaving the area dependent on Public Sector government jobs or call centres/Retail etc. None of this requires people who have demanding standards related to their demanding jobs and although this is true of the UK generally to a certain degree, areas like London/SE and Manchester still have either large financial service industries or smaller high-quality pockets of tech industries. Money is more prevalent in these areas so the football clubs can charge higher ST prices as well as attracting top sponsors. This doesn't mean that NUFC IS a second-rate club but when fans see decent jobs becoming fewer and far between, they lower their general expectations all round which has played nicely into Ashley's hands.....he made his money on piling high and selling cheap and that runs through his whole thinking about the club. NUFC could and should still be a realistic challenger for Top 6 every year because there are still enough fans who would pay more if they had confidence in the future, but as we have seen on this site, many more thoughtful fans have deserted the club because they see no real future under this regime. Results like that yesterday will always be the norm under Ashley and Pardew....Arsenal must LOVE playing NUFC when they have been through a sticky patch as they know Wenger has Pardew's number every time. 'Onwards and Upwards' indeed.....I don't think I shall ever see the club win a trophy or compete in the CL again but at least I was there when we won the FC in 69.

Can't say I agree. Plenty of scope for well run clubs to break into that top four imho. Are you including NUFC in the 'well-run' category...seriously..?

We thought the same thing when Supermac was sold to Arsenal and it wasn't until Shearer was signed in 1996 - 20 years later - that we bought a striker with as much excitement around him. They were different in many respects but both had made a reputation by then although Macdonald made his mainly with NUFC whereas Shearer did it with Blackburn. Strangely, Macdonald was the same age as Shearer was(almost)when he was sold as Shearer was when he joined NUFC..26, and Macdonald had had 5 years with us by then. It could well be a long, long time - if ever - before we either produce or sign a striker of similar stature to these 2 because NUFC is a selling club, will never pay top dollar for players(and strikers are ALWAYS top dollar if proven)and will never be a real draw to top players whilst Ashley and Pardew are running the club. Also, unless someone with Arab-type resources buys us, we will never be able to compete with the likes of Chelsea and Man C for players they also want.

Colback was one of the most effective players against Chelsea - that doesn't mean he was the best ability-wise(he never will be)but he covered acres of ground and was instrumental in breaking up their rhythm and attacks. He is one-paced, but seems to have good anticipation of what is going on around him so that tends to make up for it. Every side needs this type of player in the squad but the jury is still out as to whether he or Abeid is better in that position...I suspect Abeid has more goal potential and although Rob Lee is being compared to Colback, he was a better player technically and would always score more goals. In some ways Colback reminds me of John McGovern, the unsung midfielder that Brian Clough took with him to almost every club after signing him for Hartlepool...Clough was once asked by Doug Weatherall of the Daily Mail why, and Clough answered by saying ' that is why I am a manager and you are a journalist, Doug..!'