Paully

Was going to go up but there is no ticket sales tomorrow for the away end - bollocks

Is Christie Elliott playing? Cracking lad

This would not surprise me at all!!!! http://www.toontastic.net/board/topic/30013-kinnear-appointed-director-of-football/page-48 http://www.toontastic.net/board/topic/30013-kinnear-appointed-director-of-football/page-48 The End is Kinnear I have it on very good authority that Ashley is about to remove him. Last week there was a meeting scheduled in the evening with Pardew and others to discuss the clubs PR. Kinnear got p*ssed up on the way up on the train. He was then mortal in the meeting. Next morning he then telephoned Pardew to ask when the meeting was. He couldn't remember being at it. Then later in the day he sat down with Pardew and Carr to discuss transfer targets, he went into a drunken rant about foreign strikers, and claimed we should sign Carlton Cole who he reckons scored 17 times last season, when in fact it was twice. He has met Darren Bent, drunk again. Bent and his people walked out of the room. KM far from impressed and has talked about removing him.

What a prick that Mackem DJ is; http://www.readytogo.net/smb/showthread.php?t=793958

I had 3 days in Lisbon, 2 in Cardiff then a day trip to Norwich a few days later - 3 defeats and an enjoyable week following NUFC on the road! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

Some superb signings! Fer will be the pick of them IMO; Arrivals Player/Position Age Nat. from Transfer fee Leroy Fer Central Midfield 23 FC Twente Enschede Eredivisie 4.840.000 £ Martin Olsson Left-Back 25 Blackburn Rovers Championship 2.552.000 £ Carlo Nash Keeper 39 Stoke City Premier League free transfer Nathan Redmond Left Midfield 19 Birmingham City Championship 2.024.000 £ Ricky van Wolfswinkel Centre Forward 24 Sporting Lisbon Primeira Liga 8.800.000 £ Javier Garrido Left-Back 28 SS Lazio Serie A 1.320.000 £ Semi Ajayi Centre Back 19 Charlton Athletic Championship ? Gary Hooper Centre Forward 25 Celtic FC Premier League 5.000.000 £ Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

At least we’re covered in case we don’t get anyone over that 100000000 foot line! “Shola’s a player that’s under contract here and certainly, with my striker situation at the moment, I need as many as I can get.” “Centre forward is a very important role for this team. Gouff has shown that he can give us quality and depending on our business, he could get a good start there” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

His come back is The Wonga Derby! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

Apologies to Pip in advance! Time to release the tension at Newcastle, Joe George Caulkin July 25 2013 10:07AM There are twin narratives at St James’ Park this summer; one we can see (mostly) and one we cannot (which is probably just as well). On one side are the players of Newcastle United, the coaching staff, the administrators, the people who work in the ticket office and the club shop, who are doing their jobs in a manner which is more or less visual. On the other, there is Joe Kinnear and, behind him, Mike Ashley. There are two clubs, either getting on with business as usual, or which is still to provide evidence it is doing anything very useful. Some players have left Tyneside – Steve Harper, Danny Simpson, James Perch – but Kinnear’s involvement here was minimal and until or unless the new director of football gives his blessing for a transfer in the opposite direction, Newcastle will be dysfunctional. There is tension at the club, within and without. A concern, based on enough conversations to give it substance, is that the potential is there for a swift unravelling – in those circumstances, my life savings would go on Kinnear returning to the dug-out – and yet positivity could ease matters. A signing would not only provide Alan Pardew with help, it would allow people to exhale, to understand that wheels are still turning. The same applies to something like Papiss Demba Cisse’s dispute with the club over their Wonga sponsorship. The two parties are talking, the Professional Footballers’ Association has expressed optimism that a compromise is at hand and while nobody will persuade me that Kinnear can be intrinsically involved in an issue which involves the complexity of ethics, contracts, religion, money and so on, resolution would be evidence of normality. That is important. Really important. I’m directly aware of one transfer which is good to go in just about every sense but which is being held up because “the people above (Pardew) are the problem.” Deals are horrifically complicated these days, but it is heightened by a sense of limbo at Newcastle. Getting something “over the line,” to use Pardew’s parlance, would (could) release the logjam. So, to the supporters who naturally want to know whether signings are imminent, the answer is yes, no and maybe. It cannot be anything else because, ultimately, they are the preserve of one man. Pardew is right when he says he is “pushing hard to get things done,” and right when he says “it is important now that the message we give out is strong.” That message is: get on with it, Joe. Hence the tension. Anyway, this wasn’t supposed to be a column about Kinnear, but more of a reflection of a club in two parts. Until the season starts we cannot judge whether it is a mirage or not, but the feeling I had from four days in Portugal at their pre-season training base was that the playing part of Newcastle is focussing right down. Any bombast from last year is gone. They are stripped back to the sinew. Steven Taylor stood by Braga’s training pitch, sweat streaming from him. In the past, the centre-half has been prone to the odd bit of bluster, but there was none of it here. “Listen, the feeling everybody has got is that we just have to look at Manchester City and then take it from there,” he said. “That’s how we did it a couple of years ago, we looked at it from game to game. We let everyone say what they wanted and focused only on ourselves. “Manchester City on that first Monday night is all we’re looking at, all we’re thinking about. That was one of our biggest problems last year; everyone was saying we need to be back in the top ten, we need to be back in Europe, we need to do this and that. We set ourselves high goals and it just didn’t happen. Even within the team, we were saying we were going to do this or that, but it doesn’t always work like that. “This time, we’re making a conscious effort to narrow things down, concentrate on our work and let everything else take care of itself. Last season was a dent to our egos, there’s no getting away from it. Europe was a big factor in that. You’ve got to realise that we had a small squad for it, we had players playing and traveling and fatigue does come into it. I don’t think we were quite ready for it as a club. I don’t think we were as fit as we could have been for Europe if I’m being perfectly honest with you. “It’s a whole new season now, the lads have come back in really good shape and we have to make sure we’re strong for the games in the Premier League, no matter who we play. The perfect example is a team like Bayern Munich – they’re right at the top of the pecking order for everything. They’re not only brilliant players, but they out-run everybody for the entirety of games. They look like machines. For 90 odd minutes they have players flying forward instead of just holding on to a 1-0 win and being a bit sluggish. Our main aim is to do the same in terms of trying to kill teams off.” Footballers can find excuses, but they are closing their eyes to them. For now, at least. “It wouldn’t be Newcastle if there wasn’t something going on around the club,” Taylor said. “Every year we get the same thing. I’m sure outsiders love it because they can get amongst it, but we can only do what we’re here to do. “If you allow yourself to get distracted by other stuff it can become an excuse for failure, so players have to put themselves in a bubble and concentrate on the things they can control and that’s fitness, hard work, training, matches. Nobody has complained once. Everyone gets on with their jobs and whatever happens upstairs doesn’t matter, because we’re the ones that have to do the talking on the pitch.” A signing or two would not go amiss, but that was a bear trap which Taylor side-stepped. “That’s up to the people upstairs,” he said. “I’m just a player and I need to make sure I do my job, that I’m fit and ready for selection. That’s all I can do. Whatever happens, happens.” One half of Newcastle is stained by effort. The other? The wait continues.

Bad form? Jesus wept!

Mud, sweat and no beers as lean Newcastle prepare to right a few wrongs George CaulkinJuly 19 2013 17:07PM fef_433477d You forget sometimes how many people – how many decent and dedicated and talented people – are involved with a football team. Or, rather, subtleties like that become lost amid the sport’s fripperies, the ceaseless focus on personalities, the manager, the owner, the star player, the daft quotes, the transfer rumours, the bull. When the lid is lifted, detail comes teeming out. If yesterday’s piece in this space dealt with the fretting which has accompanied Newcastle United’s pre-season trip to Portugal – the lack of new signings, the perplexing arrival of Joe Kinnear – then today’s offers balance. While those issues remain vital and have done much to calcify a mood around the club, it is important to acknowledge that it is not the only story. There is good at Newcastle and much of it. Kinnear, Alan Pardew, Mike Ashley, Papiss Demba Cisse; these are the names which have dominated Newcastle’s summer, but for all that the club have been obliged to check their stride as they come to terms with a new structure, a season is approaching and there is work to be done. And by gum, they are doing it; drenched in sweat, prodded to the precise point before aching limbs become damaged limbs. “Pushing boundaries,” Pardew calls it. As they seek to regroup and go again after a challenging, disjointed campaign, Pardew has promised his players the toughest pre-season they will have ever encountered. For a layman, that is a claim which is difficult to quantify, but others have corroborated it and if you could sense anything from an hour or two’s observation at their training base this morning it was seriousness. Newcastle are staying in a good hotel in Braga, which is higher and to the east of Porto, but they are not drenched in luxury. The rooms are comfortable and spacious, with flatscreen televisions and nippy wifi, there is an indoor spa and a small outdoor swimming pool, but there are roads around them and distractions are few. It is a working, businesslike environment. The same applies to their training base, which is a grandiose term for two spartan pitches in the shadow of Braga’s eye-catching AXA Stadium, which is hewn from hillside rock. The weather today was grey and muggy, but it was fiercely hot yesterday and there is little respite from the conditions. In any case, those seeking it would quickly be exposed because of the GPS heart monitors which each player sports. The session began with freshness. Faye Downey, the strength and conditioning coach previously associated with the British Lions, Olympic athletes and cyclists (amongst others), has been brought in by Pardew on a consultancy basis to work on intensity and speed, with injury prevention (there were too many last season) a guiding principle. Pardew is a relentless improver and other sports offer perspective. One small detail: Downey has been working with the squad for a few days, but Pardew’s desire to keep them on their toes, to make things different and keep the players guessing, meant it was only now that she introduced herself properly, explaining who she was and her history. While Downey’s involvement has been revelatory to all, suddenly, they got it. “It’s very, very intense,” Steven Taylor, Newcastle’s long-serving centre-half, said. “It’s different to the pre-seasons I’ve done over the last ten years; normally it’s been longer distances we’ve run and this is more short and sharp with higher intensity. Faye has been looking over that and it’s worked the lads. The fatigue we feel in our bodies now is to stop us feeling it in the last ten minutes of games. It’s all about little edges and percentages. “Faye is looking at injury prevention, so that’s what we’re doing before training proper, looking after certain parts of the body we’ve got to work on. It’s basically overloading and getting ready for the games. There will be some games where we’re under the cosh, when we’re not playing well and we need to make sure that we’re able to outrun our opposition and battle away. “At times last season in the last 15 minutes there were moments when the lads were looking tired. We had Europe to contend with and it was difference for us, but that’s just fitness. We’re changing that completely. The high intensity is a massive thing; shorter, sharper drills, less rest, fatiguing yourself and overworking your body in order that we’ll be able to handle it on match day.” From there, it was ball work. While Andy Woodman, the goalkeeping coach, drilled Rob Elliot and Jak Alnwick (Tim Krul, the established No 1, has been recuperating from a shoulder injury and stretched and saved under the separate gaze of Derek Wright, the head physio), the outfield players broke into two groups. John Carver took one, Steve Stone the other. Pardew stood beside a plexiglass dugout and explained what we were watching. It was a forum for honing different techniques and today’s was to look at an area where Newcastle’s statistics have been poor, specifically winning the ball and then retaining it. Within small squares of grass, there had to be an emphasis on solidity and speed; there was no slacking off. pho_433482d After a break for drinks, Newcastle moved to 11-a-side and now Pardew came to the fore, taking the whistle and overseeing a match (one of the two teams will start the friendly match against Rio Ave tomorrow). The play was quick and fluent, but again there was a specific purpose and focus, getting from box to box and getting out of their own box with more speed. It felt exhausting just to watch but this was actually an easing off from the day before, when they trained for almost three hours and then had staggered gym sessions during the afternoon. They returned to the hotel for a communal lunch on the first floor – pasta, chicken and salads (the meatballs were delicious) – and then table tennis, cards, rest in their rooms. Wright cherry-picked players for treatment or monitoring. Twenty-three players have traveled to Portugal (they will be joined tomorrow by Massadio Haidara, who has had a minor knock), as well as 20 members of staff, whether coaching, medical, administrative, video technicians or PR. On Thursday evening, the entire staff wandered for ten minutes to an outside café, sat in a huge circle and chatted. At one point, everybody stood up and swapped seats; no cliques, no comfort zone. Tonight, the whole group – players and officials – will leave the hotel together, breaking out of an environment which can easily become stultifying, learning more about each other, bonding. Because of the game tomorrow, it will be soft drinks only, but Pardew will permit them and almost encourage one night of indulgence. Just as, on a professional level, fitness must be built, so tension must be released. The atmosphere has been open but also single-minded and, to return to the beginning, while my presence here has been fleeting, the reminder it has prompted is welcome. Because of decisions taken at the top of the club, it can feel like Newcastle is a haven for crisis, yet the reality is different. So many experts, so much professionalism, people getting on with it. Fine people, too. What comes next is the unknown – we all know the context – but there is a leanness and focus about Newcastle. “That’s because of last year, if I’m being honest,” Taylor said. “Everybody knows the criticism we got and we deserved it because, as a team and everybody involved, we weren’t right. For whatever reasons we weren’t right last year, we have to put right now. “Everybody is going to be targeting Newcastle, so we know we’re under pressure, but I think that’s why everybody has come back in great shape this summer and so far it’s been a completely different pre-season to what we’re used to. Everybody is raring to go; everybody is buzzing like a bee out there.” George Caulkin is with the Newcastle United squad on their pre-season camp in Portugal

Ronaldo back to Man Utd for £75 million!

Ha ha! It's Paddy Forster's Barber Shop in Town! He gets them all in!

I didn't recognise either of them!

Ha ha! http://hasjoesignedanyoneyet.co.uk/

The Mail reckon the opening live fixtures are; SKY Swansea v Man Utd Chelsea v Hull BT Liverpool v Stoke

“Colo made it very clear in the summer that he is coming back to play this season. “He really has the bit between his teeth. “He wants to play in the World Cup in Brazil not to mention Newcastle United’s season. “Me and him have had a lot of discussions about last year and they were very constructive I have to say. "He wants to come back, and he wants to lead us. He showed at the back end of last year how important he is to us. “When he played we looked a different team. “I was a little bit disappointed with some of the Press about that" (Colo's private problems). “It was a personal situation. It is difficult for that to play out in the Press as it did. “It was uncomfortable for him and for me. I still won’t talk about it because it is not fair on Colo. “I have spoken to him two or three times. “He’s due back a little bit later as I gave him a couple of extra days off. “He will be back on July 18. “He finished so late with Argentina this summer.”

No problem

Just been on BBC1

Benteke has put a transfer request in - they may keep Bent now

@nufcfans: On transfers, AP and Carr comes up with suggestions, Joe gets them, Joe presents it to MA. Joe also needs to persuade MA financially. #NUFC @lee_ryder: AP on transfers: "GC comes up with suggestions, I come up with suggestions, we present it to Joe and he presents it up for the owner" #nufc @lee_ryder: AP on JK: "I've had good experiences and bad experiences of DoF. I'm open minded." #nufc @lee_ryder: AP on players: "Some of things Joe said he has apologised for. There is a certain respect needed." #nufc @lee_ryder: AP on JK: "We hope to get some transfers over the line." #nufc

Signed for them? Several reporting he is going to aye

Not good enough for Joe but good enough for Inter Milan! Unbelievable!