AyeDubbleYoo

I think a lot of people underestimated this league, mainly because they'd never watched it.

I really hope you're right mate.

I never was unhappy. We've basically got no reason to think he'd be any good, and his short spell here wasn't exactly brilliant. I worry that his dour personality might make him a bit of a negative manager. No evidence for that of course!

What were the other ones?

The number nine shirt is still vacant!

Got to agree, but it must be pretty hard to turn down the payday of a lifetime. You never know when you might get a cruciate injury and never be the same again. If I was a footballer I'd be a proper mercenary!

Don't think it's on TV, I usually use livesportontv.com, and it's not listed there.

Well to be fair it's me who keeps bringing it up repeatedly, it must get tiresome but still Ha ha, well I don't hold personal grudges so I hadn't noticed!

Not really, spunking the club's money on overpaid wasters is also a big part of the reason. Not spending hasn't been the reason for NUFC's decline, mismanagement has been.

Gibson would be immense, he's a class act.

I wish people would stop bringing up this Arsenal blueprint thing FFS. It's just a phrase, it doesn't mean we suddenly are Arsenal.

Only made his debut in May 2009 or something.

Barton was dogshit and hardly contributed before he even got injured anyway, I dont even see him as the answer to our problems. Just a fitter, non-goal scoring less defensive version of Nolan and Smith combined, he can be creative and could quite easily be this leagues best midfielder by a mile if he wanted to tho. So he's not good but he is good, I see what you mean.

Obviously the policy is to spend within tight limits, what are debating? Don't think Man Utd, Chelsea and QPR are in that much financial difficulty BTW.

They will sell him in 18 months for £7-10million + . Great move Ashley. I really don't think that we've missed out on him because of money. Even if we have then it's understandable, we've just started to reduce costs/wages... wouldn't make sense to start breaking the rules now.

We couldn't have got Beckford or Moses, it wasn't about the money... we can't compete with the definite offer of Premiership football. We need to face that fact that we aren't the club we were, it will take some slow rebuilding to get back there. Are you telling me we can't compete with the likes of Wigan? At this point in time, we can't. I don't find it easy to accept either, but those are the facts.

We couldn't have got Beckford or Moses, it wasn't about the money... we can't compete with the definite offer of Premiership football. We need to face that fact that we aren't the club we were, it will take some slow rebuilding to get back there.

Nail on the head. Typical NUFC signing these days. Seems we're getting ourselves geared up for a relegations scrap next year. No offence, but this is ridiculous point of view on a number of levels. We aren't a Premiership club, we don't have much money, so we need to make signings of cheap players who have potential to do better than they have before. Obviously when we're in the Championship we can't prepare a team for a top half challenge in the Premiership, for one thing we can't afford to take the risk with the wage bill.

We don't really know if it is much of a drop though, do we? Beckford and Moses might both fail to make it in the top flight.

Interesting post, hopefully he will be boosted by the move. If he's strong and pacy then he's ahead of all of our existing strikers.

Great post. As I said I don't know anything about him, but not going to write him off before he's kicked a ball.

I've literally never seen him play so I can't comment really, not blown away obviously but I'll give him a chance. Does he offer anything different from what we have, what type of striker is he?

Every team needs it.

I'm not sure about Hughton stepping down, in a lot of ways I'd rather give him a chance in the Prem than jump back onto the endless depressing managerial rollercoaster of previous years.

Totally, the thing I'm finding hardest is accepting that the Championship isn't anywhere near as hard as we were led to believe, and a team that includes Nolan, Butt, Smith, Ameobi and Carroll is good enough to do well. I guess we can't avoid the big question - what happens when we go up - but we can't deny this season has been much better than expected.