LoveItIfWeBeatU

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/football/30765836

Makes you wonder what offers he got last Summer. Championship clubs or a second division Turkish side and Shola choose Turkey? Did he fancy some sun? Were the Premiership clubs who weren't interested in Shola during the Summer impressed by his time in the Turkish second division? They must have been to be interested now. It's bizarre.

As I mentioned in the "The Squad, Fringe Players and Transfers" thread, it's not like NUFC will have much choice regarding a Summer recruitment drive. There are 7 players out of contract at the end of this season, a further 12 will be entering the last year of their contracts and a few others have made noises about wanting to leave. Not doing business in January is all well and good if you do enough business in the Summer but NUFC never do. This season we've been relying on players who probably weren't expected to be in or around the first team on a regular basis (Ayoze Perez, Paul Dummett, Sammy Ameobi, Rolando Aarons, Mehdi Abeid, Haris Vučkić, Gabriel Obertan, Adam Armstrong and Jak Alnwick). That Chronicle article assumes NUFC won't be relegated. http://www.newcastle-online.org/nufcforum/index.php/topic,94932.50.html

If Premiership clubs are really in for him it adds to the mystery of why he went to a second division Turkish club.

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/mike-ashley-wields-his-iron-fist-once-more-at-usc/ar-AA8s6bX

Our 25 man squad list submitted in September includes Facundo Ferreyra and Steven Taylor. I presume as Steven Taylor is out injured for the rest of the season there's no point including him on the squad list for the rest of the season. http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/newcastle-united-25man-premier-league-squad-list-9711678.html

The people who run NUFC these days could certainly never be accused of over-promising.

And play in the Eredivisie.

Nufc.com don't have details. I think it has been said his contract runs until June 2016.

Here we are again then. January and out the cups. We've got players in and around the first team who are coming to the end of their contracts this Summer and more than likely won't be getting a new contract. The contracts of Ryan Taylor, Jonas Gutierrez, Sammy Ameobi, Jak Alnwick, Remie Streete, Adam Campbell and Lubomir Satka all expire in June 2015. Will any of them get offered a new contract? Sammy is the most likely but it's far from certain. Now as we know, where possible, Mike Ashley prefers to sell players before they enter the last year of their contracts. The contracts of Fabricio Coloccini, Davide Santon, Mike Williamson, Rob Elliot, Haris Vučkić, Gabriel Obertan, Steven Taylor, Mehdi Abeid, Shane Ferguson, Sylvain Marveaux, Kevin Mbabu and Alex Gilliead all expire in June 2016. Out of all those players I could only see the club wanting to offer Abeid a new contract (depending on how he plays for the rest of the season). Santon and S.Taylor could get new contracts but their injury records aren't good. Contract end dates taken from: - http://www.nufc.com/2014-15html/squad.html There's also the players there have been stories about in the media saying they want to leave - Tiote, Sissoko and Cissé. If we manage to stay in the Premiership it should be a busy Summer of player recruitment.

I wouldn't say no to NUFC selling Anita and Tiote as long as they were replaced. Tiote is a danger to the team and Anita doesn't impact the game.

Anita cost NUFC around £6.27M. We wouldn't get anywhere near that fee for him now. Even at the time we bought him we didn't really need him (unless Tiote was sold and Anita is hardly a like for like replacement). He was also the only player we bought in that transfer window. His transfer never really made any sense. If we could sell Anita and put that money toward a creative, attacking midfielder I'd do that now. For some bizarre reason NUFC play two defensive midfielders. Tiote, Anita, Colback, Abeid and Bigirimana can play that role. We can afford to sell at least one of them as long as the money is spent elsewhere on the team.

We were abysmal. No urgency in attack even when we are losing. Start two defensive midfielders at home and still can't stop conceding goals. Do not commit players to attacks so the few attackers we do have are vastly outnumbered. Colo was awful. He kept wandering about in midfield and lost the headers which lead to their goals. Sissoko had a poor game. He certainly didn't look like he was playing for a move elsewhere. Hardly anyone played well. If that's the players playing for Carver I wouldn't want to see them not playing for him. I'm so pleased I cancelled my season ticket.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/football/30713259 After two game (including Dover). Where are these people when Newcastle are on an appalling run under Pardew? Will these people be back posting when Pardew's new manager bounce is over?

One reason for this is our squad has very little quality outside of the first 11. When the team is rotated it is massively weakened.

Hopefully he'll play well at the ACN and impress a club enough to buy him off us.

Fingers crossed Côte d’Ivoire/Ivory Coast get to the African Cup of Nations final. Keep Cheik Tioté out of the NUFC team for as long as possible.

Send all the youngsters like Armstrong and the like out on loan. They'll never get a game for the rest of the season now we are out of the cups (unless we have more injuries and we buy no one in the transfer window).

One positive I'm taking from this game is that it's Tiote's last NUFC game for a month or so. He has been awful again by the sounds of it.

It sounds like Cabella is the only one having a half decent game. Armstrong and Riviere have barely been mentioned. It is annoying that our fringe players rarely seem to stake a claim for a first 11 start when they get the chance.

Carver was saying we had 3 or 4 players with "knocks". I guess he said that to cover Perez, Colo, Janmaat and Sissoko not playing.

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/paul-dummett-could-long-term-future-8375991 One more 'performance' from Tiote before he goes to the ACN?

We could really do with loaning (I don't expect Mike Ashley to sanction the purchase of a new CB as Jamaal Lascelles will be available after this season) an experienced CB. A creative, attacking central midfield to cover Sissoko would be more than useful too (that's if Mike Ashley doesn't view De Jong for that role). A striker wouldn't go amiss either.

We'd play like that if we had Warwick Davis up front We sort of did. Adam Armstrong isn't much taller than Warwick Davis. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Armstrong_%28footballer%29 Armstrong is 1.72 m (5 ft 7 1⁄2 in) tall. He really doesn't look it.

Do Crystal Palace have a big striker who can win the ball in the air and hold it up? If not, that's the sort of player he'll try to bring in. He often had NUFC playing as if we had Peter Crouch up front.