Wallace

Reports today said Liverpool had only £2m to spend so if that is true, it is unlikely. Think Everton would be a better option because Moyes has a history of developing defenders whereas Rafa doesn't seem to have so much success. I still desperately want him to stay and I just hope that he is hanging on to see what happens with the takeover.

I heard on Radio Newcastle on Friday that they temporarily closed the book on him that day as there were a lot of big bets coming in for him in London.

I would have thought that if Moat is likely to succeed in the takeover that he would be advising Ashley not to sell Taylor or to at least hold back for a few days. At this rate, the new owners are going to be left with a threadbare squad and little time to bring players in. Surely, we can hold on to some players until the January window at least.

Can't imagine why Wenger would wants to loan his kids to this sorry mess of a club unless JFK is telling the truth and Wenger is his bessie mate.

He may well just wait for the outcome of the takeover talks and if they fail he will be off but I am sure he would stay if Shearer comes in. At least it looks like we will know for sure in the next few days. I just cannot believe the club is selling all the centre halves and leaving us with Colo. I am sure I heard the other day that there are a few Championship clubs struggling to find decent centrre halves as there are so few about so goodness knows how they expect to find replacements.

I will be gutted if he leaves as he is the one player I wanted to stay.

Radio Newcastle are reporting that talks with O'Leary have broken down!!!

I think also that some players that might have been happy to stay because they thought Ashley was going and Shearer was coming in might rethink things. The way Ashley has behaved in the last 2 years, I would imagine it would be quite demoralising for some players to hear that he was staying on.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/120064/O-Leary-gets-Toon-s-call- “If the team can be seen to be making progress, then the fans will be happier and Newcastle will be far more viable as a selling proposition.” I find that line from the article incredibly patronising.

U21s finished 0-0.

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11695_5485067,00.html Heap of s*** really. The only team he might walk straight into out of them lot is Hull maybe imo. Some might argue why he wouldn't move on to one of them clubs to be second choice if he's gonna be second choice here, but after having a taste of the action of Saturday I think he'll realise he has a hell of a chance here. Portsmouth can't afford him and we won't sell to Sunderland. We wouldn't sell to Sunderland if the people doing the selling cared about NUFC - these lot don't.

Where City are concerned and with some other clubs (eg. Bassong to Spurs), I don't understand why players are so reluctant to put in a transfer request. They are going to get a huge payrise and signing on fee which surely must negate whatever their loyalty bonuses are.

I seriously doubt Taylor will be going anywhere and I have a feeling Smith might stay, not sure about Jonas. Hopefully we can sell Coloccini and I'd be delighted to see Butt leave the club, also it has to be a priority to remove Geremi from the wage bill. We would then be in a position to more then cover the loss in revenue from being relegated (£25-£30m drop in wages plus 25m-30m in transfer fee's) Thing is them wanting to stay and being able to stay is the problem, if Everton do sell Lesscott hen I reckon Moyes will bid for Taylor, if we get a half decent bid for Smith Ashley will take it. Jonas, Colo and Jose will all jump at the chance to leave if one comes up, all this will happen if Ashley keeps the club he gets money in and lowers the wage bill, ideal for him. If he keeps the club his only aim will to go back up, that's the only way he can get his money back. If we're still in the Championship next year we'll be worth even less then we are now. He's not going to spend big money obviously but I don't believe he'll sell anyone we get a decent offer for either. We were going to get into the top 6 by sticking with Kinnear, selling Given & N'Zogbia and bringing in Nolan & Taylor Aye. The bloke is completely delusional. I wonder if anyone is telling him this kind of thing or whether he's just surrounded himself with yes men. No doubt what Kinnear was telling him. I can't see O'bleary telling him he can sell everyone and still get promotion. He might be a crappyish manager but he's not insane. He'll fail the interview then wont he. I can only assume O'Bleary has agreed to the job under any condition (being a desperate useless t***) otherwise Curbishley would be a much better choice. Curbishley won't come here as things stand. I know that for a fact. Can believe that. I would be surprised if any manager with any integrity would be interested in the job. Apart from JFK (and even he seemed to be getting frustrated in the transfer window), Ashley has not treated his managers well. Whatever promises he seemingly makes, he sooner or later breaks so you would have to get everything written into a contract. Surely the only people who would be interested, would either be the desperate or those who care about the club. David Craig said on SSN, that a new manager would want guarantees that the club would not be sold but Ashley reacts so irrationally at times, even if he agrees to that, it would only be a matter of time before he would throw his toys out when something does not suit.

The Mail says that a deal was almost done with Everton last week for Steven Taylor but they are concentrating on Senderos first. Personally, I would find that hard to believe because that would just leave us with Colo and Kadar and surely Colo would be out the door first. I can understand selling some players if we have others in those positions but as we have already got rid of 3 centre halves plus Beye who could cover that position, it would be ridiculous to leave us with the kids in that position.

I think it is inevitable that we will lose him at some point because if he does realise his potential, there is no way we will be able to keep him. All of the top clubs in Europe are aware of him (didn't the Juventus goalkeeping coach predict that he would be the next Buffon a few years ago) but he has many years ahead of him so I hope we get to see the first few here. Not sure about first choice at this stage but I would like to see him get more chances eg. being played in the cup games. He certainly needs to be playing more often at a higher level than the reserves for his development. And if Harper was to get injured, I wouldn't be worried about him stepping up.

I think that's unfair tbh. It's my understanding that the players do loads of work in the community that goes completely unpublished in papers like the Mirror (unless one of them does something wrong while doing it of course). Boro have community work written into their contracts.

I would prefer to take Brummie's opinion on O'Leary rather than anyone else. We should know from experience that the fans who see every game have a more realistic appraisal of a manager than others who see the occasional game and form an opinion from the media. Our opinion of most of our managers differs greatly to those who have not seen Newcastle play that much.

It will never happen but I would like to Ashley to outline the reasons why he considers Shearer to be unsuitable for the job when they said they wanted him 110%. He should just have had the courage to say back in May that he would not appoint Shearer as manager if he was to remain as owner. I think Shearer has been treated badly. I can't stand O'Leary and it would be yet another seriously underwhelming and uninspiring appointment. As a mate of Llambias, I expect the main attraction for them would be that he will stay "on message".

Talksport are reporting this now.

I wasn't sure what to expect yesterday but I enjoyed the game. As said already, yesterday was not really an opportunity to gauge how we will do in the Championship because it was WBA. However, I was pleased that the players put the effort in which was something largley missing last season. Until the transfer windows closes and we know what players we have to work with and with which manager, it is impossible to predict how we will do. Some of those players will almost certainly be gone and going by what has happened in previous transfer windows, we don't know if (a) we will replace them, (b) the quality of the player that might be bought and © whether players will be bought for the positions needed. Some players might up their performances in the hope it will get them a transfer and maybe demoralised if they are still here in September. But today, we have a reason to look forward to next Saturday's game with a little more optimism and if we can get positive results in the next 2 home games, then that will give us a platform to build on.

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11678_5478831,00.html From an outsiders' perspective looking in it's difficult to perceive Newcastle as being anything but a club in crisis. What would you say the overall mood is like at St James' Park? I think the main thing is stability and the club hasn't had that since the Bobby Robson era really. As a group of players, a small group of players, we've had to stick together. We know no-one upstairs is going to help us, that's for sure, so we've got to help ourselves. We've had to do it our way and overall, I think we've had a decent pre-season. We had one little blip, which was well documented, and now we're ready for the first game against West Brom.

Variations of the interview are in most of the newspapers - some with a little more detail. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1205097/Steven-Taylor-This-club-joke-players-dont-know-whats-going-Newcastle.html

What I meant is that they should demand to meet him and talk to him face to face..... unless you two fuckers are just happy with everything as it is. I'm sure MA will be happy to come up and have a chinwag with the players, because he really cares how they feel doesn't he. This fucker isn't happy, but I'm not going to recap my last 100 posts for you. The players requested meetings with the hierarchy throughout last season and they were refused.

The barcode stub on my ticket says "remove this stub for concessions".