AyeDubbleYoo

The chances are we won't get anyone 'better' than Carroll, they're pretty hard to find. Hopefully we'll find two strikers better than the ones we have and who can get a decent amount of Premier League goals.

Javier Hernandez, however-many goals, not-many million.

Do the supporters' trust own a meaningful number of shares? Fair play if so, they're hardly a bargain at over £10k a pop.

I can't see many players leaving TBH, who were you thinking of?

Enrique will play every game until the end of the season if fit, he has to. Anything else would be pure stupidity.

My ex-girlfriend played football, and she was a hottie.

I would definitely bring Routledge back from loan and keep him as our back-up winger. Otherwise we need to buy at least one midfielder who can play on the right, preferably one that offers something different to Barton.

Gone then. I think this record is broken, somebody change it.

I don't know which totally unsubstantiated tweet to believe!

Bramble was poor, but TBF being a NUFC defender over the last decade has to be one of the most difficult jobs in football.

I quite like watching it TBH, played at a slower pace and more similar to 'real' football that fans can relate to. I would probably watch the odd game if it was televised.

more than anything, for me, it's a general atmosphere and direction of the club and what is the likely outcome of it. imo the general feeling of the ashley era so far has been 'look, we're skint, it's not my fault, you'll have to make do with lovenkrands and i'm selling whoever i want'. In this regard he reminds me a lot of our current government, but thats a different discussion. i just dont think this outlook will change because we get out of such big debt, or improve our income to wages ratio or the sale of carroll for mega money or anything really. i'm desperate to be proved wrong though. I guess my view of the Ashley era is that was it was exciting when he first arrived, then he made loads of errors and it went to shit, now it is cautiously looking up. Without the Carroll sale I bet more people would agree with that (though I don't want to derail the thread). We have made some good signings, much more likeable than the overpaid dross we used to buy, and (say) we finish in the top 10 or 11 and continue in the same way in the summer I'll be pretty satisfied. That would represent steady progress for me. I'm worried about a lot of things as well obviously, like I hope we keep Enrique and can continue to identify the right players to buy. Hopefully a bit more financial clout will help. (Also, I genuinely believe that it's total bollocks that Ashley is doing anything to fund his personal wealth. He will never make back the money he's put into NUFC, except maybe if he gets us into the Champions League).

That's because almost without fail a net profit in a transfer window means we've sold players that other clubs want and value highly and replaced them with players that other clubs don't want or don't value highly. That's if they're replaced at all. I can't see how an almost inevitable weakening of the first team could ever be a good thing. Tiote was a brilliant spot but he's just one player (it's ludicrous to include Ben Arfa in this talk IMO). I can't help but wonder a) whether it can be done regularly and if so b) what our scouting team could do with more financial backing. Yeah, I've got those concerns as well, let's hope we identify enough of the right players to improve the squad. That said, we have a long history of spending a lot of money on players who turned out to be total wasters, so the problem can work both ways.

I know what you mean Dave, I basically agree. I'm not saying that people will be happy if we spend £35m on players who turn out to be terrible - that's the logic working in the other direction. What I meant was that (initially at least) people will hammer the club if they don't spend £35m. I've already seen a lot of criticism based on whether we happen to make a net profit on transfers in any given window. If that's a straw man argument then great, I hope it is.

How could that possibly happen when we have such an amazing scout? Anyway, if we don't spend every penny of the £35m then the club will be ripped to shreds. Loans with options to buy won't satisfy people this summer. Calculators at the ready... for someone who preaches financial restraint you'd do well to get off your highhorse. you're not part of a exclusive club you know, i dont want nufc to go bust either. i just dont like seeing the fans getting taken for mugs by a greedy, stupid individual who has no ties to the club other then the money he invested without thinking about it first. being on the conservative side of the financial discussion doesnt make any of you more astute, it just makes you all more passive imo That was a bit unnecessary :-[ I'm just arguing what I think is right, just like everyone else. i dont mean any offence mate, at all. i actually think you're good crack i just resent the idea that i'm penny counting by demanding that we be competitive to a level that we deserve as a club I want us to spend money, and it's obvious that the squad needs significant investment. I think that at a minimum we should be aiming to invest everything the club earns each season - never to make a profit. But unfortunately that investment includes other things that aren't transfer fees or even player-related, that's all I believe. My calculators comment was a bit petty I suppose, I just get the feeling that we'll be judged more by whether or not we spend this magical number of £35m than whether we make decent progress in improving the squad. We'll see anyway.

How could that possibly happen when we have such an amazing scout? Anyway, if we don't spend every penny of the £35m then the club will be ripped to shreds. Loans with options to buy won't satisfy people this summer. Calculators at the ready... for someone who preaches financial restraint you'd do well to get off your highhorse. you're not part of a exclusive club you know, i dont want nufc to go bust either. i just dont like seeing the fans getting taken for mugs by a greedy, stupid individual who has no ties to the club other then the money he invested without thinking about it first. being on the conservative side of the financial discussion doesnt make any of you more astute, it just makes you all more passive imo That was a bit unnecessary :-[ I'm just arguing what I think is right, just like everyone else.

How could that possibly happen when we have such an amazing scout? Anyway, if we don't spent every penny of the £35m then the club will be ripped to shreds. Loans with options to buy won't satisfy people this summer. Calculators at the ready... wouldn't bother me if the club didn't spend 35mill on transfers in the summer providing we have an appreciably better team and squad come september 1st. It wouldn't bother me either, but I don't often speak for the majority on here! won't satisfy people on this and other similar internet boards, in real life most people will just keep going to the match 9 months is a long time to stay hot and bothered about carroll for most people True, and good to hear.

How could that possibly happen when we have such an amazing scout? Anyway, if we don't spend every penny of the £35m then the club will be ripped to shreds. Loans with options to buy won't satisfy people this summer. Calculators at the ready...

I just don't buy that all our financial dealings are based purely around the £35m we got for Carroll. What if we were planning to spend £10m in the summer before we sold Carroll? Do we now have to spend £45m? The club will be run based on what Mike Ashley decides it can afford this season and for the life of any player's contract. I don't think our activity can just be measured against this magical £35m we got for Carroll.

It's pretty obvious anyway, any money that comes in will contribute to all the club's outgoings. What I mean is that we don't have pay a new player for his entire contract right now out of this season's transfer budget, the sums are much more complicated than that.

the thing is though, we are. unless we spend more than 35m on fees and contracts. Eh? How does that follow?

Nice post. I for one never thought that Barton would turn his life around, but he seems to be well on the way to doing it. Massive respect to him for making such a change. He didn't have a good game against Villa, but he's been playing great football this season.

how do you envisage that working then, in football terms? he'd be another sheva imo totally the wrong type of team for that type of player Wow, I'd forgotten I'd even posted that. I suppose I just thought that Torres needed a fresh start and would recapture his best form pretty quickly. Well done for taking a break from admiring yourself in the mirror to post that bit of self congratulation BTW!

Didn't Pardew say that the Carroll money would contribute to the transfer fees, contracts and signing on fees of any new players? I'm not sure, he might have. Even so, it will never be as simple as that. Why would the club demand that a new player's wages were covered in a lump sum right now? The way Ashley runs the club, it would make much more sense if he signed players whose wages were sustainable on an annual basis for as long as they played for us. Not that everything Ashley does makes sense, I admit!

I'm nopt saying Lukaku is realistic, but wages will be spread over each year's projected income. We're not writing Lukaku a cheque for 4 years's wages in the summer, out of a big bank account called "The Carroll Money".