Wallace

Anyone know what was on the big banner that was unfurled at the end of the match in the upper stand? I was behind it but I think it began with "Villa".

Mark Douglas ‏@MsiDouglas 25m Wasn't at the press conference yday but column in today's Journal is about the inconsistencies of #nufc message on state of their finances. Mark Douglas ‏@MsiDouglas 24m Ashley gave green light to three signings after yacht meeting last month so can't have concerns over "overdraft" that stopped players coming.

I am curious to know if Ashley does ever sell the club what he will actually be selling. Everyone says he will want to make a profit but will the club in its current format be worth as much as when he bought it (excluding TV contract) - even if he did overpay. Didn't the club used to own a lot of land and property around the city? Does the club still own that, is it held under another name or has it been sold. Virtually everything is outsourced - potentially tied up in long deals. We used to have an award-winning education centre with loads of high tech equipment that a lot of other clubs supposedly tried to replicate - I guess that is has long since gone. It might be hearsay but I've been told there are many parts of the ground that are no longer used. I obviously have no clue about this but I have thought for some time that NUFC as a whole is a lesser entity than when he purchased it. Maybe this is offset by the ruthless costcutting and the loans that have been paid off but I do wonder if a potential buyer would be getting a shadow of what the club was previously.

http://sport.bt.com/sportfootball/football/englishfootball/barclayspremierleague/barclayspremierleaguenews/pardew-talks-of-tough-newcastle-job-S11363832899660? "We haven't got the finances of a big team and therefore, it makes it difficult and a lot of the time, people cling to bad news when there is a lot of good news. "Hopefully there will be some more good news coming out of it shortly." Wonder what he means by that comment.

Steven Taylor talking about the game in the Chronicle: "My testimonial will be in the next couple of years, then I’ll start thinking about it but it will be hard to top last night. There were a lot of international legends there and it was fantastic for Steve to get that level of support."

So many smiling faces on those pictures - fans and players.

He always says zebra shirt for some reason.

Krul was, posted a picture on twitter. Think Mbabu might have been too. Krul is a good club man. He is the one player you can pretty much guarantee will turn up at these events.

On the way to the game, overheard a young boy ask his Dad if there would be any goals tonight and his Dad said yes because there were always lots of goals in testimonials!!

Harper said last night on Total Sport that 44,000 tickets had been sold. Also asked if people could not boycott food etc in the ground as that money was being shared between the caterers and the charity.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/newcastle-united/10301141/Newcastle-United-is-being-poisoned-by-Mike-Ashleys-toxic-relationship-with-supporters-says-Steve-Harper.html Harper dream Newcastle XI "In the best tradition of Newcastle United I’ve gone for a team that would play with the idea that to win games all you have to do is score more goals than the opposition." GK Shay Given CB Fabricio Coloccini CB Jonathan Woodgate CB Philippe Albert RWB Nolberto Solano LWB David Ginola CM Kevin Nolan CM Rob Lee AM Peter Beardsley ST Andrew Cole ST Alan Shearer Subs: Krul, Enrique, Howey, Clark, Carroll, Asprilla, Ferdinand.

They will probably offer him a new deal with a paycut which he will turn down. They will then say he turned down a lucrative offer which gave them no option but sell him!!! Fans will then be angry at Ben Arfa for turning down said lucrative contract and accuse him of being greedy when he signs for a bigger club. Alternatively, other clubs are sniffing around and we need him on a longer contract to maximise the transfer fee.

I think it would be wonderful to have Keegan involved with the club perhaps in an ambassadorial role. He would certainly get others to understand what Newcastle means to the supporters and how beneficial it is to the club to embrace the city and supporters rather than alienating them.

It was on here but seems to have been removed.

http://blogs.thetimes.co.uk/section/the-game/105123/time-for-explanations-after-newcastles-summer-of-nothing/?shareToken=7440c1d63861b32c5de748459042a818 Caulkins' blog - free till 4pm

Surely Bellamy will be with the Wales squad unless he is injured.

Simon Bird said the following in an article in the Mirror yesterday: Newcastle moan that they can never attract the sponsorship revenues of bigger clubs. But their case is undermined by the dozens of Sports Direct adverts that plaster the stadium and pitch surrounds. No sum is specified in the accounts as to what this global advertising is worth to Sports Direct, but industry analysts say it could be worth millions. Sports Direct get it for free. The club's retail operation appears to be morphing from an division that used to provide revenue, to one being taken over by Sports Direct. More money going out of the club?[/i] http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/newcastle-transfer-window-report-joe-2247216

http://www.thejournal.co.uk/sport/sport-opinion/agenda-what-now-newcastle-united-5838737 By Mark Douglas The Agenda: What now for United after transfer disappointment? 4 Sep 2013 14:53 Joe Kinnear needs to knuckle down and stop playing at being a Director of Football - or stand aside reckons Mark Douglas Another day, another fresh jab in the ribs for Newcastle United’s bruised supporters. Alan Pardew’s 116-word prepared statement was never going to answer the fog of confusion that has settled over St James’ Park. The implied defence of Joe Kinnear was curious and the implication that Newcastle’s “strong squad” is a cause for “optimism” flies in the face of the public messages radiating out of the manager’s office over the close season. But it was an indication of the route forward for Newcastle: cobbled together consensus. At a club where the powerlines are fractured, it is probably the only way. Whatever accusations you want to level at the manager, at least he is constantly subjected to scrutiny. In the search for answers, two men stayed silent yesterday and one – the owner – has more questions than most to answer. Into the inevitable vacuum tumble a set of theories about Mike Ashley’s intentions. The most popular is that he is preparing the club for a sale but a source close to Ashley gave that very short shrift yesterday. The Mag fanzine published an email from a contributor claiming a Ukranian billionaire – Mikhail Fridman – was preparing a bid. It was shot down instantly by someone with knowledge of Ashley’s intentions. Those willing to mount a public defence of the owner were in short supply yesterday, but those same knowledgeable sources have suggested that it was not a lack of intention that prevented Newcastle from buying. Supposedly a green light was offered to the club’s transfer team after their summit aboard Ashley’s yacht with moves sanctioned for at least three senior players. Pardon the sailing pun, but the decks were cleared for a striker arrival and a left winger – as well as two ‘for the future’. None arrived but money was most assuredly available for “real quality”. The evidence proferred for this is that the owner financed bids for Patrick Aubameyang, Bafetimbi Gomis and a sprinkling of younger players. There was also talk of a left-winger coming in as Pardew begins to look at life after Jonas Gutierrez. Kinnear was a major complication and the fault for that is traced back to Ashley because it was his decision. Newcastle insiders, however, talk of an unexpectedly tough trading conditions for their preferred targets that muddied the waters even further. An extra complication, for example, was wages. Newcastle were staggered by the requests of some of their targets and the club did not want to jeopardise the chemistry of the dressing room by offering new arrivals upwards of £20,000-per-week more than the next biggest earner. A source said: “Some of the stick the owner has been getting is not really warranted.” There are promises of January business but Newcastle supporters would be forgiven for pointing out that business was needed now. The other problem is that the club is riven by factions, with the addition of Kinnear creating rather than salving problems. The director of football’s position looked almost untenable after he stumbled through the summer, but we awaken to an even more worrying poser this morning: just what will Kinnear be doing now? Upon his appointment he talked of casting a neutral eye over every aspect of the club, from recruitment right through to the Academy and reserve teams. It must be said, the club probably needs something like that. Too many young professionals at the club have stagnated in recent years and Ashley’s concerns are traced back to the period when Pardew first came in when Newcastle were casting around for a centre-back in the wake of injuries to Fabricio Coloccini and Steven Taylor. When Ashley pointed out that the club had young professionals who could play that position on their books, he was told they weren’t good enough. That point seems to have stuck with him. Kinnear could have done these things but he has spent precious little time in Newcastle. He even cut short a visit last week that was meant to extend through until Monday – catching an early Friday train and skipping the Fulham match. Without knowledge of the first team – or even reserves – how can he proclaim himself an authority on the club? What Kinnear seemed to do throughout the summer was to position himself as a head of recruitment. The problem is Kinnear is not a scout and will never be one, as he found out to his cost when putting players into the management team. There were one or two suggestions yesterday that he himself had been surprised by the way the game had changed since he’d been away. While other scouts and agents knew every player inside out, Kinnear was catching up on the hoof. Recruitment is a complex business these days. The problem was that Ashley never defined the role. Kinnear’s experience in the game bought him time in Ashley’s company and a certain amount of trust that he has not repaid. The only way he can possibly make this work now is through hard work. Painstaking, grinding and meticulous planning and preparation would be a start: running an investigation into the way every single footballing operation is carried out. That means starting from the Academy coaching and working right through to recruitment. Not interfering but just integrating himself so that he has actual authority and knowledge of the football club he is employed by. It will require incredible effort, a toning down of his ego and almost certainly mean a full-time move to the North East. It is the least a club of Newcastle’s stature requires. If he can’t offer those assurances, he should say his goodbyes.

They will know that already but I guess it is about getting those points of view across and maybe (unlikely I know), some of the stuff will start to register with the board.

However, a couple of the goals Gouffran scored last season vs WBA and QPR were vital to us staying up.

The club say they cannot compete financially with other clubs but they are obviously partially responsible for this themselves because of how far our commercial revenue has fallen since Ashley bought the club. It is very poor compared to supposedly lesser clubs. Other than the TV money, we seem to be dependent upon cost-cutting and player sales to create revenue. Cost-cutting can only go on for so long. At the very least, there seems to be a severe lack of nous within the club at how to generate revenue through other means.

The media now seem to now be picking up on the free advertising and other loss of commercial revenue for the benefit of Sports Direct. "Newcastle moan that they can never attract the sponsorship revenues of bigger clubs. But their case is undermined by the dozens of Sports Direct adverts that plaster the stadium and pitch surrounds. No sum is specified in the accounts as to what this global advertising is worth to Sports Direct, but industry analysts say it could be worth millions. Sports Direct get it for free. The club's retail operation appears to be morphing from an division that used to provide revenue, to one being taken over by Sports Direct. More money going out of the club?" http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/newcastle-transfer-window-report-joe-2247216?

Doesn't it 'kick in' in the next close season? The payment probably arrives at the end of this season BUT it is a guaranteed payment hence other clubs spending it I always thought it was paid in stages throughout the season rather than one large payment at the end but I am not sure.

Looks like the relentless criticism from the national and local print and broadcast media has hit a nerve.

http://www.thejournal.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/summer-discontent-newcastle-united-st-5831553 By Mark Douglas A summer of discontent at St James' Park 3 Sep 2013 14:00 Newcastle United's transfer business has been chaotic and ultimately ended in failure. Mark Douglas assesses a summer of discontent at St James' Park It was apparent long before yesterday’s deathly quiet deadline day that Joe Kinnear was adding nothing to Newcastle United. At 11pm last night we got the final, grim confirmation: Kinnear had failed in the task that was given to him in a London pub back on a sunny afternoon in June. All of the bluff and bluster about his extensive contacts and exhaustive knowledge amounted the square root of nothing when applied to the complex game of cat and mouse that is the transfer market in 2013. United added a single (loan) signing and failed to bring in the left midfielder that Alan Pardew had petitioned for. Talk of injecting Premier League experience – voiced by Pardew – amounted to nothing. It ranks as a personal failure and one for the club as a whole, with Mike Ashley’s judgement in bringing back his close friend exposed as seriously flawed. He has taken counsel from those close to him about Kinnear’s work during the summer – now he must decide whether to act on it. It is safe to say that Kinnear has found the world of Premier League football has moved on a fair bit since his last experience of it. Appointed in a blaze of self-publicity, he has struggled in a transfer market now dominated by the coterie of agents who attach themselves to overseas players and chief executives who have a background in business rather than the beautiful game. Kinnear is from a time when managers spoke to managers and he attempted that with Paul Lambert over the Darren Bent deal. Derek Llambias had already been working on the deal at boardroom level, which is how deals are done now. He didn’t help himself with the inaccuracies and boasts that were not backed up by action. What he did propose behind-closed-doors didn’t come to fruition. There was talk of using contacts to bring in Jermain Defoe but it didn’t materialise. Agents put hundreds of names to him but some – like Braga striker Eder – were injured. Those in the game have noted a flurry of Newcastle links to players they are not interested in, like strikers Andre Ayew, Jelle Vossen and Brown Ideye. Perhaps some of those agents who had been chased from the door during Llambias’ time had seen the vacuum at Newcastle and decided that there was an opportunity to use the club’s good name again. That is a worry. On the one deal that should easily have been done, Kinnear stumbled. Ashley was prepared to do a deal for Bent, and Llambias had put in the work to try and broker it. Alan Pardew wanted it too. But when Kinnear entered the negotiations the transfer was thrown into disarray by the director of football’s less-than-impressive work. The problem is that Kinnear does not fit easily into the scouting world. It is a hard-bitten, contacts-driven environment that is dependent on putting in the long, hard hours up and down French, English or Dutch motorways watching players – and Kinnear has been dropped into it after a long time out of the game. Newcastle have got Graham Carr to do that anyway, and he’s damned good at it. What they needed was a mover: someone who could out-Llambias Llambias, and negotiate like Daniel Levy at Tottenham. Kinnear needed to work in the corporate world that Llambias inhabited but from his first moments in the job, he put the club on the back foot with two jaw-dropping interviews. Llambias was brusque and could be difficult, but Kinnear came at it from a completely different, wholly unrecognisable place. He was difficult to control and unreconstructed, which made life difficult. The interviews he has given have not been authorised by the club, and sometimes have created problems. It was interesting that there was a brisk “no comment” from Pardew when Kinnear’s assertion that the manager was in agreement that the squad is strong enough was put to him. To his credit, he’s stayed away from the training ground and hasn’t meddled in first-team affairs at all. But it all rather begs the question of what he has been doing in the three months since he got the job. Someone who paid witness to his work – a person with decades of experience in football who still has a hand in it – summed it up succinctly: “The guy just hasn’t got it.” So where now for Newcastle? They end the summer stronger in the striking department thanks to the acquisition of Loic Remy on a season-long loan. In every other department they have protected their starting XI, which is no great disaster, but it leaves them vulnerable if there are injuries or a player suffers a loss of form. The club said they were learning from the mistakes but 12 months on it feels all too familiar. There has been no new player uplift and some of the existing players are bound to question the club’s ambition. Yohan Cabaye should not have made the decision to make himself unavailable for Newcastle, but his desire to depart might be linked to the club’s apparent unwillingness to move up a level. It says it all that other members of the dressing room sympathise with his stance. Pardew, too, has questions to answer. A summer of speaking about bringing in offensive reinforcements has come to nothing. Does he feel let down? The real question surrounds the direction of Newcastle under Ashley – if, indeed, there is any now. Sports Direct’s (free) perimeter advertising is a reminder of the owner’s priorities but at least there felt like a plan a year ago. Now? Like Kinnear’s appointment, it is deeply confusing. The suspicion is he is fed up and locked in a loveless marriage with a Newcastle support who have made little attempt to hide their contempt. Still, the books should look good this year. The club’s summer spend was £2million, while recouping £700,000 for the unnecessary sale of James Perch. This in the close season when a TV deal worth almost £40million kicked into gear. It just doesn’t add up. Neither do the enforced cuts the club made in the summer. One club employee – photographer Ian Horrocks, with 19 years of experience at Newcastle – was made redundant as Ashley shaved the margins again. It was a sad end to a career underscored by loyalty to his club – just another example of the reality that is Ashley’s Newcastle.