ikri

I think this is the latest of Ashley's mistakes. Surely no one believes that you can actually make money from the Premiership any more? All the recent purchases have been about raising profiles abroad and merchandising. The only people who are going to be interested in purchasing a profitable club are going to be those who can acquire a sizeable loan and can carry out a leveraged buyout, probably worse for the club in the long run than having Ashley owning the club. If he wants to sell the club then raising our profile abroad is the easiest route to take, but it would probably require that Ashley actually spend some money.

1/10 How much of that £35m was spent? About £3.5m. Even taking into account agents, boreholes and gold-plated running tracks we should still have well over £20m available for transfers and even more available for wages since 3 of the higher wage earners have left the club.

They've probably looked at the decent start we've had to the season and thought we've done alright so far, we don't really need another striker. They simply can't see that with a decent striker we'd have probably finished higher up the league last season, we'd have some cover in case of injuries and suspensions and the thousands of empty seats at St James might not be quite as empty. Stupid, short-term thinking from a couple of gamblers who simply do not understand football.

Absolutely disgusting if true. The fact that they've managed to leave it so late is bad enough, but to simply give up entirely is inexcusable. I'd call them amateurish but there are amateur teams who wouldn't fail so fucking spectacularly when given 8 months to find a striker.

I do wonder if we haven't reached the point where we can just rip up his contract and tell him to fuck off. Whilst he has a contract with us, I'm fairly certain that contract will specify that his job is as a footballer and any sentient being can surely now see he no longer qualifies for that job. He can't run, he can't pass, he can't tackle, he can't read the game or other players, he's not a goalkeeper and I've only seen him take one shot in the last 4 years. If he's a footballer then I'm sure the average traffic cone also qualifies as a footballer (the traffic cone would probably be more effective in the midfield).

THE SUN Wonder whose voicemail they heard that rumour from.

It must be galling for players like Cabaye and Tiote to have Smith in the team. He's close to becoming the physical embodiment of Homer Simpson, he comes on to the field, screws up in unimaginable ways and yet not only does he not get sacked but he gets paid a massive wage, close to double what Cabaye and Tiote are on. I couldn't imagine how I'd react if one of my coworkers came in, tripped over a chair and smashed a computer. Never knowing exactly what they did at work other than causing utter chaos and still earning double what I was getting, even when the guy is apparently sabotaging everything that I'm doing.

As a player, not a lot. As a signing it's an admittance that we're not signing a striker on a long term deal and they've spent the last 8 months dicking around failing to get a deal done for any of the forwards we've been after.

It's similar to the Lost storyline. There's a beginning (Ashley buys the club) and there's an ending (Mike Ashley sells the club for a profit having been given the freedom of the city), the only bit that's missing is everything that goes in between & people might believe that it's all being made up as we go along.

I don't begrudge Barton leaving, he's signed a 4 year contract on a lot of cash and as he has no real attachment to NUFC there's little reason for him to opt for us over any other club. I do begrudge Willie McKay. He's engineered this move to get his 600,000 pounds of flesh that he'd not get if Barton had signed a new contract with us. He backed everyone into a corner where Barton had no choice but to leave the club. Have a look at the man's history with every other player he's represented, he spends all his time peddling his players to all and sundry whilst telling them and the press that a move to a Champion's League team is right around the corner. And fuck the board for being so stupidly naive as to not see what McKay was playing at.

Are they all channelling Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget? Constantly outwitted by their nemesis and left with nothing more to do than shake their fists and claim I'll get you next time

Maybe he can check twitter for the answer.

Is everyone on RTG a wum? Are there actually genuine fans on there? I only ask since some of the posts on there transcend delusion to frolic gaily in the meadows of gibbering insanity. http://www.readytogo.net/smb/showpost.php?p=10608328&postcount=11

Does well when everything is going his team's way, the moment his team aren't in control he's a liability, he's got some real problems with self-control. He has no clue about timing a tackle and throws himself in worse than Smith, he reads the game well enough but he's clumsy and overly aggressive.

Pretty much this. Is Obertan meant to be playing wide right or off Shola's shoulder? Considering his pace it's bizarre that we've not pushed him much further up to pick up those long balls.

Has anyone at the club checked that the fax machine has any paper in it? I have to wonder since we appear to be bidding for players but never following up on them, or telling everyone how much we still want to sign players who have made it very clear they're not interested. Are they just all sitting around a desk wonder why no one is replying to their offers and trying to ignore the annoying flashing light on the fax machine?

I'm all in favour of getting value for money with our signings and not pissing away cash on expensive signings who are on downward spirals but this is getting stupid now. Just pay the fucking money and buy some players.

Pissed me off when they were talking about it on the radio last night, saying that the referee would have gone back and booked Gervinho but the referee was clearly running away and letting the game continue and would not have taken any further action if it hadn't all kicked off.

Nar, I can remember saying it prior to the RECORD 1-9 game though. Question for you Wearside. Would you accept a 9-1 loss to us in the derby game if you knew that you'd go on to win the Premiership? I only ask because you lot seem to be obsessed with the fact that you once won a game 9-1 against us but conveniently forget that we went on to win the league that year.

Both Routledge & Obertan are over 21 so would need to be registered in the 25 man squad for the forthcoming season. We have 23 players on the books at the moment who would be included in the squad, 24 if you reserve a space for a striker, so we need to sell players before we can buy, unless we're going to exclude some older players from the squad (like Smith).

That's about £26k per week at current exchange rates. Sounds like his agent is getting mixed up with 40k Euro's and £40k. It's more like €30k per week though. Sounds like his agent is full of shit.

That's about £26k per week at current exchange rates. It is just possible that his agent is actually a bigger cunt than Ashley

transfermarkt.co.uk lists his agents as International Football Management GmbH who are Wolfgang Vöge, Franco Moretti and Jürg von Matt. So who is this other agent and in what way does he represent Barnetta?

With a wafer thin squad like ours you need decent players. I can see where you're coming from as, we could easily line up with Cabaye and Tiote in the middle and a choice of Gosling, Marveaux and Jonas on the flanks - but two of the three are injury prone and Barton played the majority of the games last season. He's our best provider of goal scoring chances as well. We're not really wafer thin on numbers, but definitely on quality. By my count, at the moment we have 23 players aged over 21 who would need to be registered as the squad for the coming season. Assuming that we're keeping a spot free for a striker and want to leave a spot available for Kuqi-type freebies in case of an emergency then we can't really sign any additional players until we move some on as they won't want to have unregistered players at the club, some of whom are earning massive amounts of cash. We still have too many mediocre players earning too much money, I don't begrudge paying players like Barton or Enrique a decent wage as they've proved their worth on the pitch (though Barton only managed it last season) but players like Smith, Xisco and Raylor are probably being paid 10 times what they deserve based on their performances for us, but thanks to their age and wages they'll almost certainly be registered in the squad if they're at the club come September. We won't take the risk of signing replacements for Barton or Enrique until they've actually left the club just in case they don't leave and need to be registered.

If that's true.............bloody hell. If Willie McKay has said that then I'll simply assume there was an order telling Barton to take all the set pieces, the man's a walking lie. Not sure what to make of all this. Barton has clearly decided that he wants away, or at least McKay has told him that there are loads of other clubs interested in signing him, and he's forced a move. I don't believe for a minute that had Barton been given the 4 year contract he (or McKay) wanted back in January he wouldn't be on Twitter now saying how amazing the new signings are. On the other hand, the club should have secured his contract back in January and never let it get to this point, they clearly have no idea how to deal with players who realise their own worth (or maybe that's the point, they feel they need to get rid of any players willing to speak against the club).