mrmojorisin75

without a shadow of doubt the best analysis so far with the addendum that we're headed towards taking the place of the aforementioned clubs and punching below our weight, we'd better be careful 'cause look how long it took them to drag themselves back Spurs, Everton and Villa ? ALL THREE of those clubs have had genuine real trophy winning success in the last 40 years since we did anything at all, and ALL THREE of those clubs were above us for the vast majority of this time. Its only recent history which has seen us get above those clubs for most of the time. I like some of your posts mate, but you have this the wrong way round I'm afraid. i presume the OP is referring to our time in the EPL NE5, and not the preceding 40 years as during that time we were puching well below our weight obviously so looking at the EPL time period i tend to agree with Opt Nuts analysis - we were puching our weight when we challenged for the title, got to the FA cup/Champs League etc... but not above it during that time the clubs you mention were puching well below their weight, all three being involved in relegation battles at some point more than once...now they're puching their weight in the EPL which ONpt Nut even refers to in his post i'm not sure what you're disagreeing with here mate, under the hall/shepherd tenures we dragged ourselves up to where we should rightfully be and then it started to slip away...it continues to do so under the new owner whilst around us clubs who could claim an equally if not better history than us are finally dragging themselves from the doldrums they were in...

You have to filter in wages, but yes that's exactly right. We're not paupers as a club, even without European football we still have the 6th highest turnover in the league. Noone is asking Ashley for a handout here, just for him to reinvest what the club makes back into the club. I don't agree with this resigned attitude that there necessarily has to be some kind of consolidation or years of mediocrity before we can then push on. That's not to say that if we show some ambition and don't immediately get back into the CL I'll be shouting Ashley out. Trying and failing is acceptable. Not trying to the limit of our ability is not. Man City were in a far far worse state squad wise last year than we are now. Thaksin spent a fair amount, but it wasn't extortionate, and he has still spent nothing more than he will expect to recoup in the future. I keep hearing that it's different now because of all these new Billionaire owners, but apart from Abramovich, none of these new billionaire owners are footballing philanthropists. They're not doing it for the love of the game. They expect to make money at the end of the day, and even without success you can bet that they will not lose any of their own money in the process. Even Abramovich has now got Chelsea in a position where he could conceivably make back the money he's put in within 5 to 10 years if Chelsea stay where they currently are. I'm desperate for us to not spend any money, fail to be successful, and ultimately be proved "right". That's what I really want.

i'll join in with the general back slapping at this post and concur that upward momentum is the goal and it doesn't have to be meteoric, but i'd like to point out the following with regards ashleys spending/paying off the debt and so on: think it's johnnypd who keeps pointing out about TV money and he's right - what is it now, a guaranteed 30-40m a year? maybe even 50m? i'm not sure but i know it's a fucksite more than the 10m net we spent on players last year and the 2-3m so far this year regardless of whatever ashleys done with the debt & buying the club he shouldn't be allowed to get away with not investing this cash (i'll totally ignore the ST sales money or any other cash in this scenario); lets be on the conservative side and say 20m for each of the last two seasons and he's invested a max of 15m so far that is not good enough, and i can't understand why anyone would accept it as good enough for our club...nobody is asking for 100m to be spent on the team tomorrow but some of this cash needs to be invested in the team, simple as that anyone got a comeback to that? 'cause i'd like to hear it as far as i can work out since the end of last season we've spent less than a million net on transfers. there's a question mark over much Emre went for, the BBC say as much as £8m and others as say we recouped what we paid out (£3.8m). if we've received anything more than £5m then we've actually made a profit on transfers since Ashley's arrived. if you consider we were making a £6m profit before player trading and amortisation before Ashley came in, plus the fact we're saving the same amount from not paying back loans, and the fact we're receiving £18m more on Premiership TV money than we did before Ashley, there should be, assuming costs have remained around the same level, somewhere around £30m for transfers before you even talk about Ashley putting his hand in his own billionaire's pocket. the fact we've spent less than a million is poor. tho again, there's still 5 weeks for this to change, so here's hoping. aye right enough johnny, still time indeed and here's hoping!

i'll join in with the general back slapping at this post and concur that upward momentum is the goal and it doesn't have to be meteoric, but i'd like to point out the following with regards ashleys spending/paying off the debt and so on: think it's johnnypd who keeps pointing out about TV money and he's right - what is it now, a guaranteed 30-40m a year? maybe even 50m? i'm not sure but i know it's a fucksite more than the 10m net we spent on players last year and the 2-3m so far this year regardless of whatever ashleys done with the debt & buying the club he shouldn't be allowed to get away with not investing this cash (i'll totally ignore the ST sales money or any other cash in this scenario); lets be on the conservative side and say 20m for each of the last two seasons and he's invested a max of 15m so far that is not good enough, and i can't understand why anyone would accept it as good enough for our club...nobody is asking for 100m to be spent on the team tomorrow but some of this cash needs to be invested in the team, simple as that anyone got a comeback to that? 'cause i'd like to hear it

that a serious opinion or am i missing the sarcasm? either way i'd tend to agree, especially if you consider benfica might have an outside chance of a title challenge too... It is an opinion, but it only applies if we have missed out. If so, it is the fault of the previous chairman for playing in a market that was unsustainable in the long term. james, i'm gonna resist the urge to respond to this with "what the fuck are you on about" and instead say: unless this is an attempt to be witty i'm gonna assume you mean that we could only offer aimar 40k a week (for example) due to the extravagent wages FS and his board laid out on players, if that hadn't been the case we might have offered more wages to aimar and he'd have perhaps come? if i'm right with this interpretation that is so far beyond common sense & logical reasoning there isn't even a word or measurement for it if that's not what you meant or you were being funny then what did you really mean? My point is that the club can't afford to be paying the type of wages Shepherd was handing out, and thus when we offer players a fraction of Owen's wage, they are likely to be offended. in the style of kyle from south park: "reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally?" so shepherd was handing out wages & that was bad, yet if he hadn't done that ashley would be able to offer aimar high wages to tempt him to the club? i was right in the first place, are you kidding me man? you can see that makes no sense right? you've invented your own version of catch 22 Shepherd created a market where any proven player would expect to get at least £50k. Had he not done so, expectations abroad would be lower, and therefore we could compete with Monaco and Benfica. Fact is that he was throwing cash away with only the short term in mind. howay james you can see that bringing shepherd into this discussion was a mistake right? you could argue his wage offers created that expectation from players at the club presently but to suggest it affects players who might or might not join the club a year after he left is to be frank a little on the stupid side it's the old government thing isn't it? blaming the previous regime a decade after taking power...ashley has taken power and he has to deal with it, right now it looks like he's choosing to not deal with it in any way whatsoever this mornings round of owen stories aren't helping either now are they? we've one real marketable asset and top class player and we're facing the prospect of losing him for nothing in a year due to wages - jesus even biting the bullet, giving him the same wages then selling him for 5m on our terms would be preferable to that man anyways everythings fine, we'll get the players, owen will sign, onwards and upwards; if we don't we can lay the blame at freddy eh?

that a serious opinion or am i missing the sarcasm? either way i'd tend to agree, especially if you consider benfica might have an outside chance of a title challenge too... It is an opinion, but it only applies if we have missed out. If so, it is the fault of the previous chairman for playing in a market that was unsustainable in the long term. james, i'm gonna resist the urge to respond to this with "what the fuck are you on about" and instead say: unless this is an attempt to be witty i'm gonna assume you mean that we could only offer aimar 40k a week (for example) due to the extravagent wages FS and his board laid out on players, if that hadn't been the case we might have offered more wages to aimar and he'd have perhaps come? if i'm right with this interpretation that is so far beyond common sense & logical reasoning there isn't even a word or measurement for it if that's not what you meant or you were being funny then what did you really mean? My point is that the club can't afford to be paying the type of wages Shepherd was handing out, and thus when we offer players a fraction of Owen's wage, they are likely to be offended. in the style of kyle from south park: "reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally?" so shepherd was handing out wages & that was bad, yet if he hadn't done that ashley would be able to offer aimar high wages to tempt him to the club? i was right in the first place, are you kidding me man? you can see that makes no sense right? you've invented your own version of catch 22

that a serious opinion or am i missing the sarcasm? either way i'd tend to agree, especially if you consider benfica might have an outside chance of a title challenge too... It is an opinion, but it only applies if we have missed out. If so, it is the fault of the previous chairman for playing in a market that was unsustainable in the long term. james, i'm gonna resist the urge to respond to this with "what the fuck are you on about" and instead say: unless this is an attempt to be witty i'm gonna assume you mean that we could only offer aimar 40k a week (for example) due to the extravagent wages FS and his board laid out on players, if that hadn't been the case we might have offered more wages to aimar and he'd have perhaps come? if i'm right with this interpretation that is so far beyond common sense & logical reasoning there isn't even a word or measurement for it if that's not what you meant or you were being funny then what did you really mean?

without a shadow of doubt the best analysis so far with the addendum that we're headed towards taking the place of the aforementioned clubs and punching below our weight, we'd better be careful 'cause look how long it took them to drag themselves back

can think of worse town centres i've been to but not many city centres...still sunderlands a fucking town when alls said and done ain't it? and yeah, it's horrific

ha! class that's exactly what i was thinking...they'll probably give them a tour of the ground then run them right down northumberland street and tell them it's all the same city or some shite

that a serious opinion or am i missing the sarcasm? either way i'd tend to agree, especially if you consider benfica might have an outside chance of a title challenge too...

a very astute and rational version of events i'd say there... I agree, but do you not think that even if we had the money (which maybe we do... I don't know), we would have gone after people that represent value for money (Bentley at £17m and Santa Cruz at a similar price do not IMO). Also, with regards to Bentley, it was only 3 months ago that he was slagging us off in a national paper. At the minute, we seem to be tight on the purse strings, but it could just be a case of getting value for money. personally i think bentley is about as far away from value for money as darren bent was said it before and i'll say it again - put him in against the best midfields in this country, never mind europe, and he'd not dominate...if he was foreign we'd be outraged at the price being quoted for what he actually produces but yeah i agree about value for money and that's why i don't understand what we're doing...value for money can operate on many levels, i.e. guthrie and spiderman are at the low end of it, modric the high end, dos santos the middle... personally i expected us to be operating around the middle of the range, players under 25 valued between 5-10m but seemingly not

It's got nothing to do with whether you've spent much. It's more to do with whether you've improved your team. You could argue that the only people we've got shot of wouldn't have played anyway, and therefore we've improved our team (not squad). Spot on. We could have quite easily gone out and signed five or six players, but if they're all worse than the players we've already got - what's the point? And think back to this time last season, we got quite a few players in - but how many of those do you now regret the club signing? i trust keegan when it comes to judging new players so i wouldn't have a problem had he brought in 5 or 6 players by this point. in fact it would be far more desirable had this been the case. if anything i'd say the chances of bringing in 2nd or 3rd choices, or making a panic signing INCREASES the longer we go without significant activity, and the closer the deadline draws. In some cases, your first choice players won't be available until later in the window. beye and faye being good examples last summer i guess - assuming they were first choices (don't think faye was, probably 2nd after ben haim) neither of them were first choices (doesnt neccessairly mean they are bad players tho). who was fat sams first choice RB then?

a very astute and rational version of events i'd say there...

It's got nothing to do with whether you've spent much. It's more to do with whether you've improved your team. You could argue that the only people we've got shot of wouldn't have played anyway, and therefore we've improved our team (not squad). Spot on. We could have quite easily gone out and signed five or six players, but if they're all worse than the players we've already got - what's the point? And think back to this time last season, we got quite a few players in - but how many of those do you now regret the club signing? i trust keegan when it comes to judging new players so i wouldn't have a problem had he brought in 5 or 6 players by this point. in fact it would be far more desirable had this been the case. if anything i'd say the chances of bringing in 2nd or 3rd choices, or making a panic signing INCREASES the longer we go without significant activity, and the closer the deadline draws. In some cases, your first choice players won't be available until later in the window. beye and faye being good examples last summer i guess - assuming they were first choices (don't think faye was, probably 2nd after ben haim)

no, no, no, no...just because we don't know anything is going on behind the scenes doesn't mean it isn't, don't you know? we could have two more players like guthrie and spiderman here in a flash

as much as we all get slated for saying it: basically - this You said you want a net total of 8 signings. How many of those need to be in the 6-15 mil bracket in order to demonstrate ambition? i think we NEED them, not want, but its one and the same thing i guess...and the other guy mentioned 6-15m not me anyway when dave i were on about this a while back he said of 8 players 4 need to be quality & ready to play in the first team, the other 4 young and brought in to push i'm fine with that and i would consider spiderman one of the four quality first team, guthrie the other if we can find 3 more spidermen quality signings as cheap as we got him then great, but it's unlikely isn't it? people are fond of pointing out he was "worth" 8m in january, well if we want 3 more of a similar standard then there's your answer...

think i've woke up with sand in my vagina this morning but maybe the apologists could answer me this one: based on the assumption that we do have some money to spend on a key position or two do the "baseless optimists" as i now like to condescendingly think of you (joking) consider it acceptable that a presumably well paid dennis wise, the other one (?) and of course kevin keegan could not identify us ONE PLAYER in world football who was of the right ability, price, age and availability during the last 7 months? personally i find it fucking astounding you can hit me with "it's not that easy" as much as you like but somewhere in the world there's a better player than (insert own favourite squad deficiency here) for 5-7-10m and you all know there is

as much as we all get slated for saying it: basically - this

Where is your evidence? Do you know more than the average fan? Back up your facts please. Just because we don't divulge everything to the media nowadays doesn't mean things aren't happening behind the scenes. to me it currently seems there are two very distinct camps, "baseless optimism" & "baseless pessimism" if you're being objective "baseless pessimism" is the only one that makes sense because the silence is deafening - we started the summer needing 8 players, we've got 2, and it's highly arguable whether you could consider those two up to the standard we expect at the moment i'd personally go far as to say the people expecting anything special on transfers are bordering on the delusional because what "evidence" there is points towards us signing players on the cheap only - that's not to say some big transfers can't or won't happen, but right now if you're one of the people expecting something big i just can't see where you're getting that from NE5's point about the ambition and target of the owner not being divulged is also very pertinent, we haven't a fucking clue what to expect and it makes it worse...if we knew he was waiting for outside investment before spending then we'd all cool our boots but presently some of us see the club stumbling towards the end of it's 3rd transfer window with the new owner and we've only spent about 10m (12m?) net on players what the rest of you are seeing is beyond me, the much mooted modric bid? again though, 8 players minumum needed in may and near the end of july we've got 2...does anyone REALLY expect us to get what we need? on another thread someone mentioned the roeder summer when we started needing 7 and ended up with 4 (inc a loan & a free transfer) or whatever it was, not a million miles away imo

chose my suggestions on the basis that we'll simply not pay for the likes of these players...6.5m rumoured for baptista, i see that as about our level this summer granted i've not a lot to base that on, but then no-one has anything to base the opposite view on either really do they?

to answer the OP question: given how the close season has gone to date i'd be pretty fucken delighted if we pulled off a deal for baptista still think we should prise bent away from spurs assuming they're not asking for stupid money, which they seem to do these days seems ben haim is availbale as well, we could do worse than that as another CB and emergency cover for beye at RB what else? DM really, that's where i lose it as there's no-one springs to mind, maybe appiah? that standard of signing would do me

peoples perceptions of given have changed since harper proved he's probably just as good with a run of games...at one point his sale was unthinkable though eh? there's the general belief that krul is quality back up as well still don't think he's going anywhere personally but if we got a bid of 5m say, in our apparent financially restricted state it might well be good business for us as we seemed stacked with keepers

Also spot on. Owen's ridiculous transfer fee plus obscene wages, coupled to the fact he'll walk for nothing next year (but get maybe a third of what he's on now elsewhere) gives the whole thing an even more bitter taste. Considering half his time here has been on the sick, its substantially more irritating. Owen was the worst example, but there have been others like Parker, Emre, Luque, and to an extent Martins. You wonder whether we'd have got just a good a player for half the price and half the salary, if we'd looked at players who may not have had the same reputations, but who were up and coming. Owen wasn't overpriced at all. Not all up and coming players achieve their potential, yet you can pay as much of a premium for that potential as you do for a ready made player, and of course if they do reach that potential they will demand a larger salary anyway or they'll be off. It's not the obviously better solution you suggest, and without the right people with a good ability to select those up and coming players it may well cost you more in the long run. yes he was real madrid made a 8 million profit in 1 season on him neesy, howay man, think about it a bit - UV's right, for the age and pedigree of owen his price was "right", it was the price real got him for that was a joke carrick = 18m bent = 17m owen = ? owen was only 26 when he signed as well

think you might have made some decent assumtions in there mate, hopefully anyhow