oldtype

I'm not stirring at all here and I'm certainly not trying to stir up any of the usual dull Keegan debate, but I was reading True Faith on the way to work this morning and couldn't help but be struck by Keegan's comments at the beginning of May: “It is not going to be reinvested is it, I think that’s obvious,” he said. “As a Newcastle fan, if Carroll is the only one you are going to lose you have to be pretty thankful. "There may well be other players going as we speak. I think they’ll sell two more players and then he’ll sell the club. And that’ll be the best day Newcastle fans have, when he sells the club. “I’d love to be able to give Newcastle fans some encouragement but I can’t see it getting any better in the short term.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/liverpool/8485428/Liverpool-will-not-win-the-Premier-League-for-at-least-five-years-says-former-Anfield-great-Kevin-Keegan.html I personally don't believe for a minute that he'll sell the club soon, but it does make you think slightly. We've shown intent to reinvest at least a significant portion of the money though, so that quote doesn't really hold a lot of water. It's the outgoings that are more concerning.

We don't even know if this is a starter yet, Douglas + Wraith = Sun article It just seems to be such a random story that's not exciting enough to fabricate unless there was some actual truth behind it.

Perhaps there's something going on behind the scenes that we're not privy to? i.e. the board has fallen out with key members of the squad and has decided to just ship out anyone who they don't like?

I don't get it. It doesn't make ANY sense. At all. Why sell a player doing a decent job who probably isn't even on much wages and would probably be happy not being a guaranteed starter? Is it just that Mike Ashley is allergic to stability?

It's getting around to being just utter stupidity at this point.

According to the local press Sunderland are very close to losing out to PSV for Ji Dong-Won. Ji wants to go to the Mackems but his club seem to be trying to force him to PSV because they've made a higher bid. It's like their version of Gameiro, only in reverse and involving a (probably) crappier player.

Don't know about Hodgson at Liverpool, Big Sam at Newcastle was hardly this bad. A lot of us were very happy with the appointment, myself included.

I never said Kevin Nolan not playing was correlated 1:1 with us not winning, and never claimed to be doing so. I just got annoyed because people seemed readily straw man me into that in order to respond with the usual platitudes about "statistics, LOL" And I don't have a career in statistics. Thank God

Here's a broader rant: it pisses me off to no end how people think "statistics aren't perfect" = "statistics are useless" As a tool of analysis statistics are never going to give you the 100% perfect picture and if you rely solely on them you are going to come to some pretty screwed up conclusions, but too many take some snippets they've learned about how statistics are flawed and expand it to this really annoying "I'm cleverer than the numbers" attitude. Nobody intelligent relies entirely on statistics, but nobody intelligent tries to make it out like they're some kind of voodoo either.

I think it's a fairly robust indicator that there's a strong chance that the presence of Kevin Nolan within our team has a significant influence on our probability of getting a positive result from our matches. That's the fully qualified version, but thanks for setting up something like four straw mans for me without even asking.

See, I expected this. You English football fans and your pathological dislike of anything statistical. "Stats don't mean anything, my baseless conjecture is much more reliable."

We won 0 of 8 games without Nolan last season.

Granted, It's probably worth 15m over five years if he scores 20 goals and takes them up next season. Absolutely shocking contract in the abstract though. This deal sucks for us and sucks for them.

Wait, so Ronaldo was actually being sincere? Have I just whooshed myself massively here?

Have WHU actually given him 5 years? So much for learning from the mistakes of relegation.

A short, cunt-ish reply from Ronaldo. Wow. Never seen that one before.

Jonas has been the only "flair" player in our squad for a good two and a half years now without actually being a "flair" player. You have to sympathize. We'd be mad to sell him

Would he have been happy to have been a squad player though? For what it's worth he's quoted as saying yes.

I liked where Barton was at the beginning of the season. Then he went and had a great spell for a few months and went back to the self-aggrandizing idiot we all know and love.

Why does everyone always feel the need to take the most extreme position? Why does every player have to be either godlike or not worthy of the shirt?

Weird isn't it, you'd think he'd scored 30 goals for us from centre midfield in the last 2 seasons or something. Jesus, the way people drool all over Kevin Nolan you'd think he'd scored a hat trick against Sunderland or somehting.

http://www.whufc.com/articles/20110615/two-new-signings_2236884_2376810 Dear God, please let the other one be Smith.

Didn't Brummie disappear for something like a month after the 6-0? This might be good for about a year and a half I think

It's funny how people have emotions about football. Let's get rid of all football fans and replace them with androids.

Good to see Aston Villa doing their best to fill the void we left. (or have we?)