mrmojorisin75

We'll never really know, the Martins transfer only kicked in once Milan brought two new forwards in and Martins started to say that he wanted away because of a lack of first team opportunities. true, we'll never know only thing with him is he was maybe considered less a gamble than kuyt due to playing in a more competitive league and scoring goals in the CL prior to leaving...might have been on the radar since we played them, when i seem to recall he had a decent game in the away leg....

what you mean is you didn't READ about us scouting martins 'til you did and you read about us scouting kuyt when you did neither of the above 2 versions of events necessarily correspond with what happened in reality - if roeder only had a look at martins when it started to come out in the press then it's at odds with everything else he's done before and after, and ultimately qualifies as a panic buy that came good i don't believe that for a second woodgates a mystery - i openly admit to not reading everything about the story but my assumption would be that he might have come to SJP and talked to the fat man, who wanted him back, whilst maybe he never actually spoke to roedebot?

on the woodgate thing there's actually another post on here about it where roeder admits to not actually talking to woodgate at all...but not to do with the injuries but "because he wanted to play for his hometown club" - not saying that makes it any better as it happens the viduka one i can't fathom - i heard it came down to 'boro not letting him go (couldn't agree a fee) but viduka wanting to and the same i believe for zat knight - they were the two players he went for but when he couldn't get them (financially) he turned milner around....that's not indecision on his part, it comes down to finances doesn't it? as for waiting 'til the last day that's not up to roeder either - the fat man was into that negotiating tactical masterstroke ("make 'em sweat and we'll get 'em cheap") long before roeder came along, again not his doing... do you honestly think he wasn't decided about kuyt after watching him for so long? i don't personally...for once i believe him when he says martins was his first choice but i see kuyt as his backup if he couldn't get martins...i just think he's shit at trying to throw people off the scent (i'm sure he actually said there was no interest at all in onyewu during the last window only to go and sign him) furthermore i feel the kuyt example actually backs up my point, that that level of detailed scouting and evaluation is excellent if you're not constrained by first team issues and deadlines, which a director of football wouldn't be anyhow i'm not saying there aren't better out there, of course there are and i'd love to see us get one, but i just don't think we have the pulling power either status-wise or finance-wise anymore....

onyewu STARTED shakily and got it together, i was impressed with him by the end of the game as he started to look composed on the ball once he got it...in the beginning there was a little panic in there bramble had the better game overall as indi says, some poor distribution but movement and options in front of him were limited - 'boro had a large say in that too the way they set up for the game

So you thought Zog was better than Parker?? Whilst i dont always agree with my fellow Gallowgate ender NSG, today i agree that Parker was fecking tripe. As per. Blimey! Agreed. I think Parker is probably the biggest single problem in the team. He's absolutely gash, whenever he plays there is just no creativity at all. It's been obvious for ages he can't combine well with Emre, a creative player. People are now also seeing he can't combine well with Butt, a defensive player. Who the hell can Parker combine well with? People are now suggesting Dyer. What I can't get my head around is why on earth are people intent on suggesting option after option to combine with Parker? Just get shot of the usesless t***. would you agree that parker started very, very well at SJP but has fallen away from the standard he set himself? remember his first season when he was played in a PURELY defensive midfield role and he was immense - a large, large part of keeping us up that season and pushing us up to 7th....he played like hargreaves when he's at his best...kept it simple, sat deep, chopped people up, ran himself into the ground (everton game!!), won tackles, moved the ball to someone else and didn't worry about getting forward or being creative now something has changed - be it from his side or the coaching side telling him to do something different, but it's changed suppose the argument is can we get him back to doing what i consider him to be good at? or more to the point, do we want to?

onyewu started very shakily indeed but improved a hell of a lot through the game, in the end he was in control of their striker(s) bramble was defending fine but as noted his distribution was appalling throughout 7's would have been fine for both in the match, if you take 7 as solid but not spectacular

Roeder was only working at the Academy for 6 months before taking over the first team, he hardly transformed the place in that time, I have no idea who he brought in but I don't think it was any of the kids that came through this year. I remember his when he first became caretaker, he said something along the lines of the kids not being good enough to come through, I can't remember if he was referring to them and this season or them not being good enough at all. As for his transfers, I don't think he knows what he's doing, his transfer activity is like his team selection, he hasn't got the balls to make a decision so seems to lose players. He's either losing out on players or he was chasing Sibierski, Rossi and Bernard for a long time which I doubt. Personally, I don't want Roeder having anything to do with structuring the club, his experience as Gillingham, Watford and West Ham hardly qualify him for that. 6 months! fair enough then i suppose, i honestly thought it was between a year and two years, stand corrected... incidentally who are the players you feel he's missed out on through lack of decision? and do you not attribute a large portion of that "indecision" to lack of money? i for one don't believe there was any money to spend at all in january by all accounts roeder is a meticulous and thorough person with his targets and indeed his general approach to things (from reading various interviews/reports) and i feel that he would be suited to the role - as i said before we just ain't gonna get no ajax academy genius...i think roeder knows the difference between a good player and a shit one, what else is there?

agree with pretty much everything that's been said here at the final whistle yesterday my comment was simply "i just want this season to end", and i do... problem is the next one is gonna be the same!!

"I never spoke to him in the summer because as he said at the time, he always wanted to play for his home-town club and he's fulfilled that this year." agreed - lucky keegan didn't do that with rob lee in case he thought he didn't want to move so far north isn't it?

What makes Roeder a good candidate for director of football? Was wondering the same thing. He certainly hasn't proved himself to be any kind of operator in the transfer market, and that's a crucial part of the job. And would he be any good at holding his corner against interference from Fat Fred? I'm doubtful. he was academy director to begin with and has been involved in signing and developing some if not all of the young players we all currently laud as our future - if none of it was to do with him then tell me who it was and make THEM director of football his record in the transfer market is debatable in my opinion - i think there's a strong argument to suggest he can spot a good player but isn't necessarily the best at getting them to play well in a team...he was the ONLY person that saw anything in sibierski, pushed for martins when many people wanted kuyt (i happen to think we did better out of those 2 deals) and the duff/rossi signings should have succeeded but didn't due to a number of circumstances, some roeders fault some not you have to factor in the limitations on fundings he's fighting against as well - for example he obviously see's a problem at LB and with no money to spend brought in bernard to see if he could regain his former pomp, he couldn't....i imagine if he'd had 5m to spend it'd have been used? if a director of football has the remit of finding players for the club and overseeing the overall structure of training/development of youth/reserves like to hear a decent argument against roeder because his shortcomings as a manager don't actually bear a great deal of relevance to the subject suppose it's like saying all great scouts should be great football team managers 'cause they can spot a player, they're not.... and by the way when i say argument against roeder i don't mean "he's not as good as the bloke at ajax" type pish 'cause no-one with any semblance of continental/international reputation in that field would touch NUFC with a shitty stick due to our chairman, fact discuss

pointless argument, we've got him for another season minimum can't anyone see the parallells with robson when he came...he'll stabilise things for a few seasons before anything changes, only difference is robson had it within him to take the next step and get us challenging for europe - i don't believe roedebot has this quality to do that i also hope we don't just dispense with roedebot in the manner we did with robson - the club is crying out for a director of football to oversee things at the club, and for me he's be a good candidate

think we'll do the usual - go 1-0 down then wake up and realise the game has started, get an equaliser and struggle for the winner 1-1, no good to nobody hope i'm wrong but i don't think roeder has a clue how to pick a team to attack & dominate a home game

never seen him play due to living abroad but reports are that this kid is superb - what worries me is our continued dalliance on transfer matters we (in the past admittedly) think nothing of spaffing 10m on a player from the continent but a season ago could have snapped this lad up for what? 2-3m? now, assuming glenn is actually "convinced" by barnes we'll have to go in and compete with the likes of spurs and in order to get the would be paying 5m+ easy as much as i dislike spurs you can't deny their board have been clever since ENIC (think that's right right) took over - they've gambled at an early stage on promising talent like lennon (1m ish) and have won some/lost some; but the likelihood is that even with average players like calum davenport you're gonna get someone to take them back off you (west ham 3m) 'cause they're at a good age, maybe for more than you paid, if the gamble doesn't pay off look at us with jenas...we gambled 5m but 'cause he was young, english, athletic and still had potential we made profit on him, incredibly a lesson for both our board and manager there perhaps?

also bear in mind that owen himself will have a strong say in things, if not the strongest - my guess is he'll be champing at the bit for games once he gets confidence in training after all there's surely some england games he can declare himself fit for coming up between now and the start of next season, the returning hero to save mclaren and all that - never underestimate what this lad will do to get an england game...i certainly see pushing himself to play games for us as one of those things

to answer the original question, no never - this is not having a go but it's that kind of idea on a smaller scale that's left us with the imbalanced and underperforming squad we have now of those players we should ship all of them who have proven themselves to be out of their depth or just plain rubbish(bramble, ramage, babayaro, luque, moore, carr, maybe pattison, maybe o'brien and keep the rest) for whatever we can get then we need to look to use our usual summer 10-15m in a targetted fashion to fill the gaps we have with the quality of player we need, i.e. bare minimum a good LB/RB and hopefully a new long-term quality CB....all the kids you mentioned would then supplement the squad as and when needed rather than be relied upon as regulars the other thing is that the 3 world class players you talk about for crazy money would almost certainly be from abroad and therefore an even bigger gamble as they'd have to adapt to a new game/culture AND lead a bunch of untried bairns result = suicide

none of it means anything unless they don't perform - ashley cole is a (slighty older and thus slighty less exaggerated) version of this yet he's the best left back around john terry is obviously a scumbag but somewhere along the line he had professionalism drummed into him, that's all you need the micah richards example is a good one, as is the performance of reo-coker at SJP this season when he ran past our midfield continually like it wasn't there; suspect defensively mind i'd have to say on the evidence of the second half of that game

this is a great point - when was the last time we either (a) ripped another team up to shreds? (b) clearly outplayed someone else on the pitch? © were entertaining in the keegan/robson sense of the word? admittedly i live out of the UK now and don't see all the games but what i do see is a team largely restrained by fear of defeat and set out to not lose games rather than win them as much as i like roeder i feel a better manager could do more with the attacking options we have available from midfield in order to mask the lack of depth up front and quality in defence - it's basically what keegan and robson did their whole time in charge look at the wigan game and the options we had there - for me roedebot just chose the wrong ones as witnessed when it looked like martins might have to come off he warmed up milner which can only suggest he was gonna play duff/sibierski up front instead of playing the lad carroll who is, although young, an actually striker duff would have naturally dropped back in search of the ball leaving sib up on his own and thus the team conceding ground and attacking momentum to the home side - naive at best, some would say foolish

Note* Not one defender in that list. sums it all up in a nutshell, nowt else needs saying

anybody else reckon it'd be a good idea for us to have a season of playing in domestic competitions only, concentrate on them and see how we do? might have a bearing on alleviating the worst injury crisis ever known to man

looks good on paper, a proven goalmouth sniffer and a fast, strong, skillfull all rounder... just gotta hope owens lego legs don't snap again eh? with any luck there'll be no england games pre-season for him to make a glorious comeback in!!

Panic time isn't really the issue - if we sign nobody I'd be fairly confident that we'd limp to May without relegation worries. The fact is that by the admission of Chairman/Manager we are short of players and still could win 2 cups if we strengthen now and in the right areas - but if we go into an extended FA Cup campaign on the back of a UEFA cup campiagn playing 19 year-old CB's at LB then the wheels might really come off.... Suppose it depends how ambitious we are for the rest of the season?

September 1st 2006 - widespread acknowledgement that we'd made an utter mess of recruitment during the window, subsequently backed up by injuries that have hit us in all the wrong places throughout the squad. Now if it was me in Shepherd/Roeders position I'd have had our staff spending 18 hour days scouting the whole of Europe looking for players with the right ability/age etc... for the right price. Anyone who doesn't think that these players exist are dreaming. I'd have also made moves to agree the deals so that on 1st January 2007 we had players arriving into the club and getting settled, and perhaps more importantly not getting cup tied before this weekends game. Now maybe it's me just being cynical given the way we've run our club recently, and maybe there are deals ongoing now that we don't know about and will all be pleased with, but I doubt it. I think the likelihood is that the people within the club have focused their attentions on our immediate problems and have been distracted by takeover talk rather than taking care of what needed to be done. What price an exact mirror of the summer when we should have been finding players from May-August and simply didn't do that? I'd see the situation dragging on through January with pressure piling on top of Roeder throughout the month then him signing a late loan deal and maybe a short-term deal to the summer. Anyone confident that this won't happen? I'm not.

Get Real - Ferguson/Wenger teams ARE Winners... That's ALL that counts mate - Second is nowhere, and that is what being a successful club is about. If all NUFC fans think the same way as you do , I am sorry I wasted much of my free time in trying to get change at SJP with the Magpie Group. Not everyone can be a winner, but that is what we ALL should try to be . READ what i've written pal - no issues with winning or success but once you become defined by it and it becomes all consuming then it's a step too far; circa man u with keane, current Chel$ki, early Arsene Wenger Arsenal teams.... When was the last time a team of nice guys won the title? Doesn't happen does it. If you want to be that team, then you have to be prepared to accept your place with the losers. You're talking a whole heap of idealistic shit imo. maybe you're right...but i've never been the one to mention anything about winning titles have i? we are mired in mediocrity and have been for decades bar a short period under keegan and arguably robson more recently we've dipped a little below mediocrity into the absurd and have done so whilst being run in all the ways discussed in this thread; so where exactly has being a selfish, one-track mind club got us then? 4th bottom in November for a return of i don't know how many millions of pounds debt is where excuse my idealism if you will

Get Real - Ferguson/Wenger teams ARE Winners... That's ALL that counts mate - Second is nowhere, and that is what being a successful club is about. If all NUFC fans think the same way as you do , I am sorry I wasted much of my free time in trying to get change at SJP with the Magpie Group. Not everyone can be a winner, but that is what we ALL should try to be . READ what i've written pal - no issues with winning or success but once you become defined by it and it becomes all consuming then it's a step too far; circa man u with keane, current Chel$ki, early Arsene Wenger Arsenal teams....

personally i'd rather not be a team grinding one-nils for the sake of "everything" (i.e. to win) personally i'd rather be see a keegan/wenger/ferguson team than a mourinho one personally i'd rather not see players wearing our shirt to harass referees, cheat or do anything else underhand to secure the all important win about covers it - a club can play the game in the right way, be run in the right way without compromising their soul which takes me back to Chel$ki and the original post...