ikri

So you'll no longer get in by losing a cup final, but losing Champion's League games is fine? I've always seen the losing CL teams entering the UEFA cup as a complete piss-take that exists only to increase TV revenue & prize money of already rich clubs to the detriment of the whole competition. Bring back the old Champion's Cup where you qualified by winning the league, 3-4 teams get to enter the UEFA cup & re-establish the Cup-Winners Cup.

That's because West Ham fans have largely accepted the situation and haven't launched a campaign to remove the owners. That is what has forced Ashley out and led to the current instability. People have a right to form their own view of the situation and act accordingly. But you have to accept the consequences. If Ashley had come out with his statement earlier (minus the bit about wanting to sell the club) he would have avoided the majority of the protests and got on with appointing a decent manager. Plus, with him selling the club any new owners are highly likely to immediately sack Dennis Wise & Derek Llambias to put their own people in charge. If Ashley had simply done that from the start, Keegan may have come back & we'd have had far fewer protests. Ashley probably wouldn't have to sell the club & we wouldn't be scrabbling around for an unemployed manager willing to steady the team.

The problems we're experiencing now are the same problems we've been having since SBR left. The midfield. If the players in midfield can't hold on to the ball, can't pass it 5 yards without it going to the opposition, can't pass it into space ahead of the forwards, can't cross a ball if their lives depended on it, can't tackle, etc. etc. then you're going to see the same thing happening. The opposition is quickly going to get hold of the ball and put our defence under pressure. Sooner or later that pressure will lead to a goal. With Gutiérrez in midfield at the start of the season we had pace & forward movement, someone who offered an outlet in the midfield & could link up with the forwards. Since his injury we've had Damien Duff's ponderous indecisive midfield play & we've looked like crap with the same problems we've had for the last 5 years appearing yet again. As has already been pointed out, we managed to get into the Champion's League with a number of technically very poor defenders, that's mainly because we had a midfield who knew what they were doing. Put the world's greatest ever goalkeeper in this team & it won't make a blind bit of difference until the midfield sorts itself out.

That'll probably be the team that starts and it'll produce nothing. Again. Geremi is great as an impact player coming on for 20 minutes to change a game, but he's incapable of playing 90 minutes without looking like an asthmatic pensioner. Duff offers so little to the team we'd be better off putting a shirt on a plank of wood. We're fucked anyway, may as well take a chance on some youngsters, give them some experience. Try the unexpected.

Probably see the return of Dalglish style management, seeing how Kenny Dalglish is one of Shearer's very good mates. is that serious? Thought that was pretty much common knowledge. Golfing mates & footballing mentor as far as I'm aware. i think you mis-understood me, i was asking if your forecast of shearer taking on dalglish's style because they were very good mates, was serious Well maybe not Dalglish style, perhaps Dalglish influenced

Probably see the return of Dalglish style management, seeing how Kenny Dalglish is one of Shearer's very good mates. is that serious? Thought that was pretty much common knowledge. Golfing mates & footballing mentor as far as I'm aware.

Probably see the return of Dalglish style management, seeing how Kenny Dalglish is one of Shearer's very good mates. In fact, if Shearer ever does become manager I'd expect a role for Dalglish somewhere within the club, Executive Director (Golf) probably.

What like at Boro? where he had a lower win percentage than Roeder, Fat Sam and Souness. Worse than that, his record at Boro was no better than Bryan Robson.

Could each point not have been preceded with "It is a fact..."? Would be worth it just to see the reaction from the club.

Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks) According to his Wiki page he's recently made a $1.3 billion bid for the Chicago Cubs & whilst he's a billionaire he's not any richer than Mike Ashley so it'd be interesting to see how much he'd be willing to invest in the club other than the initial purchase. He does own his own TV station though, but since the Premier League does collective bargaining on TV rights I'd doubt that he'd be able to get the exclusive rights for Newcastle games even for the US market.

£8m wasn't it? He then put in an additional £1m of his (wife's) money for transfers to stop Keegan walking out pretty early on. He did pretty well out of the deal.

Wanna bet? http://img.skysports.com/07/09/218x298/GraemeSouness_566271.jpg

On the one hand, it couldn't have happened to a better club, but if it goes pear shaped big style it will tarnish his reputation and I personally wish him well in his managerial career... In the end though, I can't see the quoted 30 million being paid out - and not for another five years or so, in which time they spend 30m on legal fees trying to get out of it Just been reading the BBC synopsis of the case who include this little section: So by the looks of it they'll not be able to appeal the judgement. Any appeal could be rejected by a civil court since they signed up to a process knowing there would be no appeals, plus they'd open themselves up to further retribution from the FA for breaking FA rules by appealing.

Out of form Spurs players are panicking, admits Gareth Bale By Mike Walters 23/09/2008 Gareth Bale has admitted rock-bottom Tottenham are pressing the panic button after being marooned at the foot of the Premier League. Spurs were booed off, with only two points from their opening five games, following Sunday's 0-0 draw against Wigan at White Hart Lane. Manager Juande Ramos, who spent £70million on new players in the summer, is under pressure for the first time since taking over from Martin Jol 11 months ago. Tomorrow night, holders Spurs face fellow strugglers Newcastle in a Carling Cup third round tie which already has all the hallmarks of Toon and gloom. More at link. An early goal against Spurs tomorrow could kill their confidence, although an early goal against us will probably have the same effect.

Oh and The 2nd part of that makes a mockery of the 1st. If Citeh stick with Hughes (which I doubt they will if they don't get into the top 4 this season) & he has the option to cover for injuries by buying some massively expensive superstar or trying out that young lad from the reserves he's going to go & spend the cash instead. Didn't Abramovic say something similar when he bought Chelsea? The Academy is the future, etc, etc. How many young players have they actually brought through? How many of those academy players have simply been released? Super rich clubs don't need academies, they can just go & buy the best (or greediest) players from other team's academies instead.

No. Time to move on, besides we can't go through all this again if Keegan & the next owner fall out.

I was under the impression that all the selling was due to the massive wage bill they have from signing players like Lucas Neill on insane wages to save them from relegation. Add to that the wages of players like Dyer & Ljungberg (Ljungberg's contract having been payed up to get him off the payroll). The previous chairman was supposed to have been forced out by the owning consortium due to the financial mess that he'd left them in. Perhaps this will be £30m on top of that existing financial mess that will cause them to go into free fall.

Nigeria produces about 2.5% of the world's oil, so they're a little richer than that. Besides, you've not taken into account the vast amounts of cash trapped in the bank accounts of the recently deceased.

Tomasson was 2.5m I think, was a pretty low amount & he was a very highly rated player when we bought him. Hamann may or may not have been bought by Dalglish, I'm certain that there was some talk about him being bought by the board with Dalglish's later OK. Dalglish did start out playing some very nice football, but with the sale of Ferdinand & Shearer's injury he gradually went back to safety first football that was pretty ineffective & crap to watch. That season could have been very different if Shearer hadn't been injured. He was certainly slaughtered by the press who couldn't quite work out why a guy who was with Liverpool for Heysel & Hillsborough might have a problem with the temporary stands at Stevenage. Things went downhill from there. Didn't he call Anal Oliver a fat cunt during a press conference? If he was to take charge again he'd need good a PR person to do his talking, in fact it wouldn't be a bad thing for the club to hire a decent PR person no matter who takes over.

With the Citeh takeover & now this it does almost look like there's a process in place to carve up the Premiership for overseas markets. The US have Man Ure, Villa & Liverpool, Citeh have the Middle East sewn up, Russia have Chelsea. If NVA take us over we'd have the African market. Doesn't leave a lot for others, I'd expect investors from China & Japan to be looking for clubs, possibly India too although very few people there care about football, that would leave the SE Asia & Oceania markets open for a couple of clubs. Richard Scudamore is probably very very happy.

Like Des Hamilton and Carl Serrant? No thanks. not to mention Garry Brady, ,Bjarni Gudjonsson,Robinson,Coppinger and of course Brian Pinas And Shay Given. I didn't say that it worked, but the general idea was pretty similar to what Ashley appears to have wanted.

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.

A couple of years/months/weeks ago, absolutely not. But we need a manager in place sooner rather than later and he's a far better option than O'Dreary.

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.

I didn't read that as a geordie management team, but that they wanted a geordie (or several) to be the public faces of the bid, like hiring Graham Wylie (Sage Software) or someone similar as chairman with Ant & Dec as the PR guys (for example).