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The Premiership itself, indeed, is quite pointless. Even if NUFC were the best version of itself (i.e., smartly run, spending 30m a year in transfer fees, good manager, collection of best players outside of the Champions League), we'd still only be able to hope for 5th-7th most years with maybe a miracle season once every decade or so where we finished fourth. There's no point trying to compete unless you're Man United, Arsenal, or a club with an owner to whom money is no object. For a club like NUFC, your best case scenario if every single thing goes perfectly right for an entire year is maybe fourth and probably not even that. This is not sport. There's no point.

I'm not from Newcastle and I voted yes. I'm miles beyond giving a fuck about somebody thinking I'm a "bad fan" at this point. Honestly, that statement would only be inaccurate because I'm probably no longer a fan of this club at all.

I'd actually find this rather entertaining under normal circumstances because we would at least get to see what Darlow is all about, given that Krul is well established as mediocre at this point. But of course Darlow is injured too. Probably forever. Fuck this club, put it down and turn off the lights.

Yes. In fact, I would rather the club go out of business and a new phoenix club to take its place. Something revolutionary would be necessary for me to give a s*** about NUFC at this point.

that's the same korean with a track record of massive embezzlement or fraud or something, is it not? EDIT: sorry his bro, sure he's clean tho http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/17/football/south-korea-chung-mong-joon-fifa/ Not a particularly nice guy either, but we're meant to believe that whatever he's done within FIFA is 24x worse than Blatter? Really?

Blatter, Platini and Valcke all get 90 days. Then, in the same report, they go and hit some Korean dude with 6 years. Given what Blatter has done, I'm just going to go ahead and assume the Korean dude committed genocide or something.

Maybe he's just homesick or has personal issues. It's not necessarily a referendum on how players perceive us as a club. We are, of course, a worthless pile of shit - but most others seem to be happy to continue earning a wage here regardless.

I agree that assists are pretty useless as a stat. As other have mentioned, there are plenty of ways you can creatively influence play without getting an assist. There's also a ridiculous amount of noise involved in the statistic because it's entirely reliant on how much your teammates convert the chances you give them (and in football, conversion rates are extremely high-variance).

I've said this multiple times in the past, but having "good contacts which allows us to occasionally sign players for relatively low fees" is pretty much the primary role of the modern scout. Given how much information is freely available now it's going to be very rare that you have a scout actually discover a complete unknown and bring them straight into a club of Newcastle's stature. Almost every signing by a Premier League club these days plays for a major European team already. Everyone knows about them. What someone like Carr allows us to do is to be the first team on the phone when somebody is unhappy and wants a move/is available for a low fee. That's a very valuable asset, or at least it would be in a theoretical world in which we were trying to operate as a competitive football club.

My only issue is that of the defenders we've had the past few seasons, not one is really dominant in the air in the John Terry mould. I've not seen Mbemba or Lascelles yet, I can only hope they are going to provide that, because we already have plenty of cb's who will win 80% of the aerial tussles, but lose the crucial one which costs a goal. They both look like big units, so we can hope.

Relative to what past versions of NUFC and other mid-lower table premier league teams have had to work with in defense, I would be content with a starting pair of Colo-Mbemba or Dummett-Mbemba backed up by Taylor with occasional appearances from Lascelles. Content is about as good as it gets with this team.

Starting with Fabio Zambalera, we have not failed to ruin a single youngster we've purchased from another club over the past decade. Still getting around to finishing the job with Aarons, but that's a pretty strong indicator of what will happen with this guy.

With Mbemba, Colo, Lascelles, Dummett, and Taylor all available; I don't think we actually need another CB unless we're buying one with serious quality. The depth is there. Can't see us spending 10m+ on another defender, so this is not at all unexpected.

Gouffran was a decent player pre-Pardew. Maybe it's not too late for him. Obertan, on the other hand, has never been good at football in his life.

Was convinced he was the third-best LB in the Prem behind Ashley Cole and Patrice Evra when he was here. Wonder when somebody's going to notice that when you buy a big-money player from Newcastle, they usually end up being damaged goods. Wouldn't be surprised if the club had some info on his medical condition and that's why they lowballed him in new contract talks.

Probably our best academy product in the last decade

I feel like he's gotta be about 35 or so by now

Wouldn't expect him to take a big pay cut to leave. Having said that he earns more in 1 year than a reasonably well paid normal worker in this area will earn in their life time. In the time he's been here already he's likely been made a millionaire 4 or 5 times over, and that's if we assume he was bankrupt when we brought him in. Shouldn't be difficult to "eke out" enough to live on for the rest of his life from that lot to be honest. There's a big difference between struggling for a living from day one and getting huge checks starting as a teenager which suddenly stop at age 35 though. People should have the foresight to save up this money wisely, but that's difficult for most athletes, who have very little education and receive a lot of bad advice from the opportunists and hanger-ons in their entourage. We should also distinguish between someone who's making $200k a week at Man City and someone like Williamson who's probably making somewhere around 500k~1m a year post tax. That's a lot of money, but it's hardly Scrooge McDuck level.

Is starting a new career at age 35 easy when you've spent your entire life within the bubble of the footballing world, have no formal education, and no marketable skills? There's a reason so many athletes go bankrupt despite the massive amount of money they receive during their youth. I'm not saying that they have a hard life relative to other people who have to struggle for any sort of job from day one, but it's not a situation where they have so much money that they can afford to make mistakes and do whatever the fuck they want like a lot of fans imagine.

At age 35~40? It's possible, but not easy. You've actually reminded me that this problem is even worse in the UK since footballers don't really have a college degree or any sort of education to fall back on.

I also find it silly that people lambast players sometimes for "sitting on the bench and picking up a check." Footballers - especially marginal ones like Williamson - more or less have a ten-year window in which to eke out every cent from their skills that they possibly can and then feed their family for the remainder of their lives off that money. If I was in his position, I would never give up a significantly higher wage to go to the Championship just so I could (maybe) start more games. 10~20k a week seems like a lot, but it's really much less than that when you consider that after retirement, the best job this guy is likely to get for the remaining 50~60 years of his life is probably a lower-league manager position.

I completely agree with this. If I was completely useless at my job my personal pride would make me walk regardless of the wage. Lies. Especially when the wage is 5 digits every week. I'd cling on to that job for dear life and milk every cent out of it for as long as I possibly could.

The even more tragic thing is that 9/10 he'll only last a year or two at those clubs, get benched so often that he completely forgets how to play football, and end up sold to Crystal Palace for peanuts or something.

It takes us six months to appoint a manger so a month or two for coaching staff seems roughly appropriate.