oldtype

Given the ridiculously good luck we've had despite a couple of years of Mike Ashley doing everything humanly possible to fuck up this club, I half expect us to make 35m worth of brilliant signings in the summer and come out of this smelling like roses.

Even if the 35m is re-invested into the squad this summer, it is kind of hard to get excited about the remaining matches given that the club have essentially written off 2010/2011 as a season.

Jayson, 35m is a ridiculous offer. Look at Carroll's record. 34 career goals so far. Start to be prolific just 6 months ago (he is not prolific last year), is "optimistically expected" to be a regular international player, has some personal problems, is far from a complete product. He is fxxking valuable for us, I know, but 35m is too much for a player who has relatively high risk not fulfilling his potential. The key point is whether 35m is a ridiculous offer. If you honestly think Carroll is not for sale at any price, then ok, you can continue to bash Ashley. My stand is if Ashley did give Carroll a choice, then he is doing "what a normal person should do". That's exactly it. If we were offered 80M for Carroll surely noone would be complaining, but 35M is just too much in the grey area of a ridiculous offer, its a lot sure, but small enough that we might never see it reinvested, if we got 80M then even if he pocked 50% we'd have loads. Sadly i think Carroll wanted to go, but i have no idea as to why, liverpool aren't a whole lot better than us at the moment and don't have a clear path back to the CL. 35m is not in the "grey area." 35m is obliterates the grey area to pieces. Andy Carroll is now the 8th most highly valued footballer in the history of the world. He joins the ranks of Christiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Zinedine Zidane, and Louis Figo. Yes, he has the potential to be one of the best strikers in the world. But 35m is a fee you pay for somebody who already is one of the best strikers in the world. Not for someone who may or may not be. Basically the media hype machine and John Henry's desperation to not get stoned by half of Merseyside has landed us a ridiculous deal. Emotionally, it's devastating of course. But if we had assurances that this would be re-invested into the squad then we should be laughing. Ah... that last bit though.

Hey, as long as we're inventing conspiracy theories and dirty lies... What if this has actually been in the pipeline for ages? What if all this talk coming from club leadership about "not being for sale at any price" was bullshit to begin with? What if Carroll has been demanding a transfer for a while and his mysteriously extending "injury" was a ploy to force a move?

We could very easily do what Everton did with the Rooney money/Tottenham did with the Berbatov money. If we had a good manager.

Such a shame. I know. After the relegation I managed to persuade her to keep going, now she says she is sick. She is 11 and when I told her Carroll had more than likely gone tonight she just looked at me and said, "I don't want to go to Newcastle anymore". It's £100 cheaper for me to renew the bairns ticket whether she uses it or not (she hasn't been much this season at all). I've renewed every year since 1982 so i'm not going to stop now. The bairns ticket is over £200 cos she is in the Leazes corner with me. That story makes me sad. Can't imagine what it must be like to experience all of this through a child's eyes.

You know the really shocking thing is that most of the joke list of Korean signings would probably improve our team.

It's like somebody insulting your mother. You have to fight back even if you know they're fishing

You're right, Nagatomo is going to Inter, Kagawa has been linked to Man U and Honda is going somewhere. We'd probably be better off with the Korean players who are more our level. f*** that man, we have a player who's already at Man U, and Honda is the world's worst link-whore. Our most famous former player is one of the Bundesliga's all-time best. Their most famous former player had a couple of good seasons in Europe at most. 74 matches, 40 wins, 23 Draws, 11 losses. That's all you need to know.

http://www.yourkidsed.com.au/info/files/shared/iStock_000006695786XSmall_shock_disbelief.jpg

Truth. I don't agree at all with any ideas that Ashley lies to protect his image. He quite clearly doesn't give a shit what we think.

I think my list is more realistic than Kaizero's. Krul/Forster Cha Du-ri/Simpson Lee Jung-Su/Willo Colo/Taylor Enrique/Hong Chul Ben Arfa/Barton Koo Ja-Chul/Nolan Tiote/Lee Yong-Rae Lee Chung-Yong/Jonas Park Chu-Young/Ji Dong-Won Son Heung-Min (loan)/Ameobi (like he's ever leaving)

Man is our strike force right now actually Ameobi, Best, Lovenkrands, and Ranger? Surely we have a fifteen-goal-a-season striker that I just can't remember? Surely? Please?

He's going to tidy us up till the end of the season, but surely if he comes anywhere near fulfilling his potential Villa will just want him back?

Blanco doing that jump thing to skin one of our defenders in 98 still gets mentioned by the commentators every time Mexico show up on TV. It's like a scar on our national psyche.

True if he's getting anywhere near the full amount to spend. I doubt he is, but if he is I'll happily take all this back. Don't know if that's what will actually happen or not but it's probably what he's been promised. I hope you're right. If it is then Ashley would have to stick to it, otherwise he'd have another resigning manager on his hands. I hope I'm right. if we reinvested most of the fee in the squad and if Pardew spends it wisely, I daresay selling Carroll would actually be good business. Blind hope is all I have anymore.

True if he's getting anywhere near the full amount to spend. I doubt he is, but if he is I'll happily take all this back. Don't know if that's what will actually happen or not but it's probably what he's been promised.

I don't see why people think Pardew would be disappointed. If I was in his position I would be excited about getting some large sum of money next season to make my mark on the squad.

So, with Martins and now Carroll, how long before talk starts circulating that the No.9 is cursed?

I think we can also safely assume at this point that we'll probably have to replace Enrique.

I'm anticipating we'll have a reasonable-sized spending spree. Couldn't even begin to suggest what sort of players we should be looking at though. (Other than Koreans, and all of you really don't need another "these Korean players are awesome we should sign them" brief from me.) We were lucky for the past few months because we had a relatively decent squad pretty much dumped on our laps despite those in charge making every imaginable effort to f*** things up. Now we're back in a position where Pardew and Ashley will actually have to show that they can identify and secure decent players without f***ing things up to ensure that we remain competitive. I wish I could say I don't trust them, but what other option do we have but blind hope?

Blackburn buying the title was before the modern media revolution and therefore independent from this discussion. What does Blackpool have to do with any of this other than they've moved up from lower league club to being part of the "Premiership rabble" like us? The difference between Chelsea and Man City should actually show you the power of "brand value" that I'm talking about. Chelsea spent their money at the right time and bought a spot in the "big club culture." Man City are struggling despite the fact that they have enough money to make Roman look like a pauper because they're trying to break into an established market. It would be like opening a new fast food franchise and trying to beat McDonalds and Burger King.

We shouldn't be, that's the point. Our ambition should match our size, income and fanbase. We're a team that should always be aiming to be the very best that it can be. We're no different to any other team, except that our income, fanbase and size should put us near the top 1/3rd of the league. Obviously it's not an ideal world, and Abramovich has changed all of that, but we should be looking to be a progressive, aspiring and ambitious club. Anyone getting their hands on us would have an absolute goldmine of potential success, adulation, undying loyalty, income and undoubted fun. We get called deluded, but f*** it, I've lived elsewhere, in this country and abroad, and I have never come across anywhere remotely like Newcastle when it comes to just how much football means to a city and it's people. Don't tell me not to over-dramatise it, we're Newcastle United, we're not f***ing Blackburn. Thanks. Like I said, brand value. There is a cultural glass ceiling at the top of the Premiership that is far more resilient than any gap in financial capabilities. Due to the fact that we acted like f***ing idiots precisely at the moment when it was being defined, we're firmly on the wrong side of it. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. You're basically saying that nothing will ever change, despite Spurs and Man City changing that, albeit in Man City's case, artificially. Both now have brand value, there's no reason why we couldn't bring the advancement needed to bring brand value. In Sky's eyes, we're still classed as being a big club, because they built us up to be that way. Aspiring to, and getting into the CL for example would bring that back just as quickly as it did for us when we were there, just as quickly as it left both us and Leeds. I'm not saying that's realistic in the foreseeable future, I'm just saying that there is so much potential for that type of situation coming about quite quickly with the right investment, but the point being that there is more potential than probably the entire league bar the top 5, which coincidentally is exactly where we should be aiming to reside in, in the long-term, no matter how ridiculous it seems right now. fwiw I obviously don't think for a second that Alan Pardew or Mike f***ing Ashley would be involved in this type of scenario. If anything Man City is the perfect example. They have spent arbitrarily large sums of money and courted the world's best players, yet they STILL probably have less pulling power than Liverpool who probably won't be in the Champions League for at least a couple of years. As for Spurs, they won't make the Champions League next year, sell some of their best players, and end up right back where they started. Theirs is just a slightly extended version of the "jammy European run" I mentioned.

Like most things, the truth is probably somewhere in between. Ashley probably did make an "executive decision" that the offer was too good to refuse. But I highly doubt that Carroll had to be dragged kicking and screaming to Merseyside once he saw the figures on his shiny new contract.

They are literally spending infinite money and in a way, they're still not there. They won't win the title this season, and I bet most players STILL wouldn't choose them over Liverpool.