mrmojorisin75

what financial stability like? he owns the club, has paid the debt off and spent little of the oodles of cash every club gets by virtue of being in the PL these days lets say we spent 20m in jan and went down, i doubt it'd make ashley walk away therefore all we'd have done would be to give it a shot...as it is we've left oourselves open to accusations of inactivity in the face of the inevitable, which is far worse the fact is 20m on the right players would have virtually guaranteed us staying up christs sake Your damn right "christs sake". Did you not see Keegan chasing players? Did you not read about Woodgate rejecting us? f****** hell, maybe you think he should have paid £10M apiece for Bernard and Srnicek just so he could say he spent something on someone. f****** spoilt brats man. aye righto...the fact our manager can't identify players WE NEED makes me a spoilt brat does it? you're about the only one here who doesn't accept we desperately, desperately needed new players in...haven't results bourne that out? he's been in narnia (as someone amusingly said earlier) for so long how was he gonna identify good players or the weaknesses in our squad? he wasn't was he so he went for woodgate who was still good 4 years ago when keegan was in touch, fucknose who told him about barnes, probably found a copy of shoot at the train station or something when keegan was appointed the only thing that went through my head was "well at least he'll sign some players"...there were simply no other reason we'd appoint him i could think of...we didn't sign anyone and now we are where we are he was appointed 14 days or something before the end of the window....give me funds and 14 days i guaran-fucking-tee you i'd have found 3-4 players that would have had a positive effect on our performances

what financial stability like? he owns the club, has paid the debt off and spent little of the oodles of cash every club gets by virtue of being in the PL these days lets say we spent 20m in jan and went down, i doubt it'd make ashley walk away therefore all we'd have done would be to give it a shot...as it is we've left oourselves open to accusations of inactivity in the face of the inevitable, which is far worse the fact is 20m on the right players would have virtually guaranteed us staying up christs sake

Did I? Touché. Why else are you arguing about him then? I'm not arguing about anything. Just putting peoples stupid ideas about him in to touch. Knocking a young lad for scoring only one goal in the league, when £60m+ worth of Manu talent can't do any better is fuking thick imo. Barnes getting NUFC grief and he hasn't even become a toon player, its just amazing, it really is. People aren't knocking him for being a young lad, they're knocking him because he's been brought up in this thread as someone we should have signed. i think he was actually brought up as one of the two players we know we bid for, therefore it's safe to assume we wanted to sign him there are obviously better midfielders throughout europe and the world, he's just the one we know keegan asked for Which is a fair point. KK thought he saw something in him, but for some reason we offered daft money, and guess what, its was greeted with a big KO. Some defended the club by saying we were going for him on the cheap and would go back, but we didn't. I just do not get what's going on with that one, which makes the Barnes situation even more bitter for myself. He should have and could have been ours for relatively cheap money. It cost twice as much to sack SA FFS. i've not seen that much of barnes but the parrells with dyer work on almost every level...when we paid 6m for dyer all those years ago he'd only played in the first division but excelled there, same as barnes, and there's nothing to suggest he'd not have struggled with ipswich when they were promoted a la barnes we thought 6m on a fast, young player with potential was worth it then, why not now? They only wanted £4m IIRC. We bid £2m He's worth £4m anyday, its not a risk, he's 19 and would easily full fill £4m worth of potential. I still cannot get my head around it. Billionaire owner being a cheap c*** in times of desperation. Crazy. amazes me that in the time of the PL being the richest it's EVER been, us being taken over by a billionaire who fancies a laugh that we've spent less (NET) than when we were a limited sodding company we spent net 10m in the summer, if we'd matched man city this season we'd have another 40m to add to that...we'd be talking about two very different seasons in my opinion i'm hoping it's a calculated gamble by ashley, get to this summer having spent little but got the internal stuff all set up then go for it this summer...the other side to that doesn't bear thinking about

Did I? Touché. Why else are you arguing about him then? I'm not arguing about anything. Just putting peoples stupid ideas about him in to touch. Knocking a young lad for scoring only one goal in the league, when £60m+ worth of Manu talent can't do any better is fuking thick imo. Barnes getting NUFC grief and he hasn't even become a toon player, its just amazing, it really is. People aren't knocking him for being a young lad, they're knocking him because he's been brought up in this thread as someone we should have signed. i think he was actually brought up as one of the two players we know we bid for, therefore it's safe to assume we wanted to sign him there are obviously better midfielders throughout europe and the world, he's just the one we know keegan asked for Which is a fair point. KK thought he saw something in him, but for some reason we offered daft money, and guess what, its was greeted with a big KO. Some defended the club by saying we were going for him on the cheap and would go back, but we didn't. I just do not get what's going on with that one, which makes the Barnes situation even more bitter for myself. He should have and could have been ours for relatively cheap money. It cost twice as much to sack SA FFS. i've not seen that much of barnes but the parrells with dyer work on almost every level...when we paid 6m for dyer all those years ago he'd only played in the first division but excelled there, same as barnes, and there's nothing to suggest he'd not have struggled with ipswich when they were promoted a la barnes we thought 6m on a fast, young player with potential was worth it then, why not now?

As I said earlier, it's far too simplistic imo to say that. We probably wouldn't be in this scrap had Keegan been in charge for the two Derby games, for example. You could be right, but in times of dire need of help, we got no one in. Only a man who'd been out of the game for far too long to make any judgement on players. That's having an effect, if we had signed 2 or 3 players we'd be lifted, morale of the players, the fans, the management, and we'd have more points. All imo of course, but sometimes it is just that simple, bringing in players would have turned this season around, not in dramatic style, but enough to put decent daylight between us and relegation. this is precisely what i think...forget barnes, but if we'd signed ONLY midfielders in the mould of pompey's (diarra, muntari, diop etc...) we'd be a different team, a couple of athletic, strong, fit players who can compete and take the load off everyone else we've had worse defences and attacks than this in the PL, we've just never been so poor in the middle it really wouldn't have been that hard to do would it?

Did I? Touché. Why else are you arguing about him then? I'm not arguing about anything. Just putting peoples stupid ideas about him in to touch. Knocking a young lad for scoring only one goal in the league, when £60m+ worth of Manu talent can't do any better is fuking thick imo. Barnes getting NUFC grief and he hasn't even become a toon player, its just amazing, it really is. People aren't knocking him for being a young lad, they're knocking him because he's been brought up in this thread as someone we should have signed. i think he was actually brought up as one of the two players we know we bid for, therefore it's safe to assume we wanted to sign him there are obviously better midfielders throughout europe and the world, he's just the one we know keegan asked for

Better than Smith and in the worst team in the league? Oh, and same amount of goals in the same-ish amount of games as Hargreaves, Scholes and Carrick and one more than Anderson! smith playing as a sriker for a fair chunk of that mind you!

and he's 19, playing for fucken derby...don't think anyone suggests he's a world beater right now question, would you play him ahead of butt or barton? i would, regardless of his stats for derby

why don't you tell us what we can talk about then, save us having to think for ourselves

you can prove anything with real statistics

They dont even rate him enough to play him every week either. point made earlier that they're also shit and score no goals, perhaps barnes SHOULDN'T be on the bench? just perhaps?

do we have any solutions? keegan is perhaps the most one dimensional manager there is...if plan a keeps failing we're relying on other teams being worse i also think we'll stay up as it happens, but i'm terrified what will take place if we do If we stay up? I'm just praying we will be in this league next year and i have no doubts we will be a very good side the year after. In all seriousness after watching the Blackburn game, we will score goals and we will win games. in this event, given A LOT of money keegan will make us able to beat the shit teams again and compete against the upper mid table ones, agreed...which in fairness is all you need to compete for a european place really what bothers me is the moment he's here he's talking up the players we all know aren't up to it for whatever reason - duff, barton, butt, owen, viduka, SMITH, SHOLA!!!!! to name a few i have no faith he'll get rid of any of them, and that's what needs to happen for this club to progress, seeing as we're talking about solutions for the future... his faith has been very publicly placed in duff/owen/smith/butt/barton and it's failed, horribly do you honestly think he'll ship them? any of them?

What kind of thing is that to say? How the f*** could anyone have known back then that we would still not have won a game and would be 3 points off the bottom? Cos we're s****? I knew as soon as we didn't sign anyone in Jan we were f*****! Should have paid the going rate for Barnes! Also should have tried for Defoe plus a defender. All the muppets that said we shouldn't panic buy! I hardly think those targets were panic buys, just Mort f***** around for to long we ended up with nothing. If we do go down this season, how f****** stupid will we look for not trying to strengthen? Spend 10m in Jan or go down? I know which would cost us more. Can you give me Saturday's Lotto numbers please, smartarse. You 'knew' eh? Yeah, right. As the person who started this thread I think it is only right that I interrupt this argument and point out that in my opinion it wasn't "rocket science" to see that we were heading for freefall even back in January. You only had to look at the performances against the poorer sides to know we would struggle against the better sides when we played them. After that it was simple, we lose to top and middle table sides, struggle to pick up anything at home and away against the bottom sides and it doesn't take a genius to work out that we would be near the bottom of the table come May. I call it detached realism, I don't allow my love for the club to colour my football judgement, unlike some, who seem to think by going into denial it won't happen. oh, this....

do we have any solutions? keegan is perhaps the most one dimensional manager there is...if plan a keeps failing we're relying on other teams being worse i also think we'll stay up as it happens, but i'm terrified what will take place if we do

it's a fucken discussion board mate, wouldn't be much kop if all anyone posted was "howay the lads" would it? "WERE GOING TO GET RELEGATED!!!!!11111111" "Told you this would happen" "were s***, our board is s*** and our fans are s*** blah blah" That's not discussion, that's ranting and points scoring by some of our fans. The same bunch who believe negativity is the road to superfanism. i.e the more negative you are about everything to do with NUFC, the more a fan and knowledgeable football supporter in general they must be. BTW, this aint directed towards you mate, it just grinds my gears thats all. conversely that's what boils my blood about the "howay the lads" brigade, you can't discuss our problems 'cause it means you're not a real supporter (not directed at you i might add too) suppose me opening this up is utterly pointless in hindsight but i've been away since january and was reminded of the shite being spouted back then about our current predicament being impossible (even by spurs fans for christs sake!) relegation battles follow the same pattern EVERY year, for anyone think that derby/fulham/reading/brum etc...would not improve significantly on their points totals in january must be drinking something i wouldn't mind getting my hands on right now...our fixtures told their own story the whole thing reminds me of us blowing the 12 point lead under keegan...only at the other end of the table obviously, fixtures were weighted against us that season too but noone chose to see it til it was all over

I'll discuss it if we go down. Until then it's a moot point. Whether we go down or not from this point on will have very little to do with what Ashley & Mort do now. That is in the hands of the manager, the players, and the other teams in the scrap. It is the decisions they have already made which have put us in the position where relegation is a distinct possibility. It's like saying it's okay to drink drive if you don't kill anyone. The decisions at the start of the season were cautious, which was understandable if frustrating for us as supporters. The decisions in January were high risk, showed a lack of understanding of the seriousness of the situation, and are deserving of criticism whatever the outcome. Keegan had 9 days to try and sign players in the transfer window. importantly, players that he wanted. At that point relegation was not on the radar and the decision was made to wait till the summer to get genuine targets which was sensible what we are seeing now is people coming out of the woodwork armed with a shitload of hindsight, now that we have failed to pick up points. pish...we were headed for shit street, it was obvious to some people back in january, read some of the threads from back then keegan had 9 days (plus they were in talks right from when allardyce was sacked) and that should be enough for a manager of his supposed calibre to identify weaknesses in his squad and target players to resolve it nobody can tell me there wasn't a player out there we could have bought to improve on barton and butt, 'cause it's fucken rubbish...the fact (presumably) our manager didn't know of one is a different matter entirely if it was a money thing we'll find out in time

it's a fucken discussion board mate, wouldn't be much kop if all anyone posted was "howay the lads" would it?

it's what i said earlier dave - by his own admission he chose to stick with owen and smith, he chose it defoe scored again at the weekend (3 now?) and hindsight is easy in that respect...defoe probably wouldn't have come anyway and might have been a classic bad signing for us, but to stick with owen given the injury problems he's had was tantamount to standing on the chair and putting the noose around your neck i only mention barnes as he was bid for, but he's fast/athletic/energetic/can shoot and so on...combine him with a big imposing athletic defensive mid we might have had something...as it is we're being over run in midfield 'cause barton and butt aren't good enough derby wanted 5-6m i think? since when did we care about fees that size? a manager should be able to see all of this, why didn't ours?

With us playing Spurs, Hammers, Toffees and Pompey and Liverpool away and then Chelsea at home, I think it's fair to say we have 6 nailed on defeats to.. West Ham are woeful at the minute. It's not beyond the realms we could go there and win. this is the problem - you're not supposed to be able to predict results in relegation battles, there are always supposed to be surprises; problem is we're the only ones right now not providing them (derby excepted) with the ex mags in their squad i'd fully expect them to beat us...hopefully we'll surprise everyone?

Fulham at home as well yeah keep forgetting them, perhaps 36 then, gumna be tight!

If anyone nonchalantly assumed we were 'too good to go down' they need to give their heads a shake anyway. I just thought it was a little simplistic to directly link the lack of signings to eventual relegation. We do have a better bunch of individuals than the results suggest (the Derby games ffs?), and without overhauling the entire first team (impossible in the last two weeks of January iyam) I can't see how the lack of signings is wholly responsible for our demise. overhauling? a stiker (say defoe) plus two midfielders (ay barnes plus one defensive for sake of argument) was not beyond the realms of possibility yet we didn't do anything...the original argument wasn't "not signing an entire team = relegation" was it? those three signings, asuming they weren't shit, would have made a massive difference nor is it wholely responsible, you're right; signing an out of touch, one dimensional manager is another factor i'd attribute

top four, who mentioned that? a midfielder with pace, energy and goals might have made a difference to our embarrassment of a mifield though? no, OK, right i see, butt and barton it is then as for "barnes hasn't been brilliant this season" correct me but he was injured early on in the season and since jewell came in has hardly played (except to score past us, AT HOME) while derby have been shit?

fuck all to do with told you so really, i think we'll stay up by default as it happens and nobody WANTS us to go down for fucks sake i get aggravated by the blind faith merchants who ridicule anyone that doesn't just think we'll win 'cause we're who we are...people were looking at the terrible, terrible mess we were in back in january and making predictions about what would happen based on reality not bullshit they were looked down upon, sort of, as not real supporters 'cause they were asking questions and saying "this isn't right" or "that isn't right" instead of "there's no way we'll go down, there are worse teams than us" or some other trite shit about keegan that ignored everything in his managerial career since he left SJP the first time as i said i think we'll stay up but it will have nothing to do with the actions of the board or manager since january onwards...

someone pointed out boltons fixtures, they've got 6 nailed on defeats left plus a couple of near certainties in there i think it'll be them taking the last spot with derby and fulham

What kind of thing is that to say? How the f*** could anyone have known back then that we would still not have won a game and would be 3 points off the bottom? Cos we're s****? I knew as soon as we didn't sign anyone in Jan we were f*****! Should have paid the going rate for Barnes! Also should have tried for Defoe plus a defender. All the muppets that said we shouldn't panic buy! I hardly think those targets were panic buys, just Mort f***** around for to long we ended up with nothing. If we do go down this season, how f****** stupid will we look for not trying to strengthen? Spend 10m in Jan or go down? I know which would cost us more. didn't the messiah say it was his choice not to strengthen? the mort argument doesn't hold up in that case; our manager couldn't see that defoe scores goals, has pace, stays fit and was available for a decent price...he gambled on michael owen and alan smith that criticism ignores the fact he also couldn't see our midfield is a fucken disgrace, of course Not really when Paul Jewell said we were no way near the valuation for barnes. If Keegan was so happy why did he try and Hijack the woodgate deal in the last minute? Keegan just came out with that statement because we'd failed on all accounts! That I put down to the chairman. i took his comments to mean HE chose not to push the deals, i.e. the amounts we'd need to pay to get the players we asked about kev stated money was available for players and we made moves for at least 2; in the case of barnes we were about the only team bidding right? are you trying to tell me ashley wouldn't let kev spend say 6m on the lad? doesn't add up...he took responsibility on his shoulders for the lack of players and will have to deal with that should the unthinkable happen, the difference barnes could make to us in the middle of the park would be scary, he's got everything our players lack