ikri

Fairly sure that Fat Sam spent quite a bit that summer, most of which was under Ashley too. £6m each on Alan Smith and José Enrique (then hardly ever played him), £3m on Rozehnal, £2m each on Fayé & Bèye. He signed Caçapa, Geremi & Viduka on Bosmans but they would have been on very decent wages & signing fees. His shitty, wasteful, irresponsible spending was arguably the reason that Ashley panicked and brought in his mates to oversee transfers that led directly to Keegan leaving. Wasn't there also a rumour at the time that the reason that he got the sack in that January transfers meeting was because he told Mort that he wanted to sell most of the dreck that he'd just persuaded the board to purchase in the summer?

Shockingly poor performance

I think Stoke need a new motto, something like nothing is ever our fault Yes they had two players sent off and had two penalties awarded against them but if they weren't already down to 9 men they could have had a couple more players sent off and we could have had 2-3 more penalties. If anything, Atkinson was pretty fucking lenient towards them in the 2nd half.

Great result, could have had about 6 penalties too

What a goal

Get in!

Pretty poor first half, but with the 2 red cards if we can't score at least 2 in the 2nd half there's something seriously wrong Hopefully Hughes has spontaneously combusted in the dressing room too. Dirty cunt of a players & he sets his teams up in the same manner.

Superb performance

Utter shite from beginning to end

Ludicrous decision for the red card, I can only assume that the referee sees him coming out of the tackle with his studs up & thinks that's how he went into the tackle

Yet another 45 minute performance, decent 1st half & a wtf 2nd. We should have been pushing on to get more goals and keep them pegged back, instead we dropped off & gave them enough chances that they could have won the game if their finishing hadn't been so poor. I've no idea why we're so bloody negative in situations like today.

Bring Ben Arfa on for Sissoko, put them under some real pressure & force them to back off

I'm sure there's some tax avoidance scam going on here, minimising incomes to make it appear that the club's losing money.

Kewers. Never thought of that before. Christ Used to get that at uni, "Heeya. let's go to Spewuns, they do a byewtiful pint of kewers." :| Do they serve a completely different lager instead? That's the only way a pint of fizzy cat pissCoors could be described as "byewtiful".

I actually think Ashley's involvement with NUFC has done very little to add anything to the Sports Direct brand. If anything it has a negative effect, most people you talk to about the club think he's a bit of dick and that what he has done to our stadium is brainless. It seems unlikely that its led to more punters going to his shops. Clearly the advertising space at SJP has some monetary value but its limited imo. Why do you think he bought us then? Or why hasn't he sold us? It can't be keeping the club because it's a gas and he's having loads of fun.... I think the official & rumoured reasons are both probably true. He believed that he had the opportunity to purchase the club & quickly re-sell it for a profit, at the time he believed that he had a midas touch and couldn't possibly fail. Plus what better status symbol for a billionaire is there than to own a football club? Better than a yacht or large mansion, every fucker has those, but a football club? That's real status. Buy it quickly before anyone else can, flip it & reap the rewards. Then reality hits. The club has debts everywhere and the bank has just demanded repayment, suddenly he finds out the reason that every other potential purchaser has run a mile when they've looked at the books. He has to spend a lot of money repaying those debts and even if he can make a 30m profit on his original investment he's still losing money. He'd overpaid for the shares and if he'd done due diligence he'd have known that, the club was probably worth what he paid minus the immediate debts. If he'd paid that he'd have been able to get out quickly, either breaking even or making a small profit. Looking back & knowing what was to come it's obvious that we'd have been better off if Ashley had done due diligence & run a mile with the rest of the potential investors. We'd have still have had some huge financial problems that were likely to come due any time, but the Man City buyers would have turned up & Hall would have likely sold out to them instead (or potentially the other buyers who Ashley thought he could flip to, though with our luck it'd have been the Blackburn chicken brothers). Ashley initially tried to play it off as something he'd always wanted to do but with the finances quickly turning sour and the fans following his proffered enthusiasm turned to apparent dislike and spite. He's an incredibly successful businessman who has made a billion, lost millions and recovered to make even more and yet every time he touches the club it fails. I think there are a couple of positions fit Ashley now: 1) He hates the club because it represents failure and he's not a man who does failure and the only benefits the club now gives him is as a billboard for his shitty brand and a whipping boy for him to take his spite out on. He won't sell up because he hates the club and he enjoys spiting the fans. 2) He genuinely believes that he should be able to make a success of the club as he has managed to do with every other business venture and all his bizarre and stupid decisions are based on that belief. He won't sell up until he's either made a success of the club or he's sold it for a profit. Unless he can make a profit on the club I can't see him selling, no matter what the fans think.

I'll accept responsibility for this one. I had money on us to lose & Man City to win so I pretty much guaranteed a win for us & a loss for City.

Superb result

Fucking brilliant

It was Villa at home for me, I remember watching Barry miss a penalty & was both relieved that he'd missed and pissed off that it would mean Souness keeping his job for a few weeks longer at least.

I don't see excuses, no downers about tiredness, it's all positive stuff about a result at Spurs and performances so far. Can't believe the silver haired c*** is having a dig at our Captain now Planting the seeds for a jan sale IMO I pretty much assumed that he's buying himself out of his contract at the end of this season to return to Argentina & he's already told the club he's doing so. It's the only way that he can return to Argentina as a player without breaking any rules, he's old enough to do it and he'll be far enough into his contract to allow it too.

http://i43.tinypic.com/2lu2ud4.jpg Same source as had us hitting the most long balls last season which everyone latched onto to hammer Pardew. Don't think they would have changed their criteria....that and it's plain to see for anyone watching that we hit much less long balls now. Are they classing a pass as attempts or successes? Is a punt upfield classed as a pass if it goes straight to an opposition player or does it have to be received by a team mate to be classed? Without knowing what they class as a pass those stats are pretty meaningless.

Missed the game live but just watched it all back. That was unexpected. I should put money on us losing more often. Didn't look great in the 1st half but 2nd half we were superb, made Chelsea look like us.

Love it to be true. Ashley's original plan with us was, allegedly, to put £20m per season into the club for transfers, etc. If Rangers were breaking even or even making a profit and that £20m could be used for transfers, it would be more than double what the other clubs in the Scottish top-flight have spent on transfers this season combined. He could spend comparatively little, easily achieve Champion's League qualification with the promise of more TV money & loads of media exposure for his shitty brand and the fans will love him for it.

It's yet another incredibly naive reaction by Ashley et al, they act like some weird bully archetype who tries to make friends by repeatedly punching people in the face. But the fact that the local media might actually now take the gloves off & start criticising the club & piss poor performances of the last 15+ months almost make this worse in my eyes. They've all seen how bad we've been but they've been quite happy to tread softly so they won't lose access. They've been doing a piss poor job of doing anything resembling critical reporting for the last few years and now they've lost access anyway. So now they might actually do the job they should have been doing for years. Great, but they're still a bunch of arse-licking shitehawks who will probably be doing everything possible behind the scenes to regain their access to the club and will be right to their light-touch non-critical approach as soon as the club let them back through the doors.

Today was nothing to do with cowardice or too many foreigners or players lacking drive and desire. Yet again we put a team out, filled with players out of their natural positions, with the usual game plan of keep everything tight at the back and hope that one of Remy, Ben Arfa or Cabaye can conjure up a piece of magic. When the game plan didn't work (and considering the way in which Sunderland approached the game it was never likely to work) we had absolutely no backup plan, no other ideas on how to win the game. We just kept on repeating the same old shit that doesn't work no matter who we play against. We get wide players to run to the byline & they get crosses in that are utterly useless, they're either too high, too close to the keeper or too far away from any of our players (when there are any in the box at all) to be of any use to anyone. When they can't get a cross in they pass the ball to a midfielder to take a long shot, it might work out occasionally and we'll get a goal from long range once every two or three games but it'll rarely be enough to actually win a game. How many times today did any of our players play a diagonal ball through their defence for a forward to run on to? How many times did we even try? No one who has even a most basic passing interest in football could look at the shit that we served up today & think That's how football should be played!. We lost today because yet again we put out a side that was not prepared properly for the game and had no fucking clue how to adapt when the games doesn't go exactly according to plan. There's a quote attributed to a Prussian General Helmuth von Moltke No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy, all our preparation and training for games means fuck all if the players on the pitch can't adapt to the game they're actually playing. It's a failure of one fuckwit and his shite backroom staff.