quayside

Pardew is benefitting from the team Hughton has put together. Personally think Hughton is a mediocre manager at best with his overly cautious approach, and that he sort of stumbled into a good thing with the midfield of Jonas/Nolan/Tiote/Barton somehow gelling into a quality unit for a newly promoted side, but even so we shouldn't overlook how fortunate we've been to again start the season on paper looking like we'd struggle immensely for goals/creativity/etc with limited transfers in, but finding things to be alot better than anticipated - all thanks to Hughton. He also had the balls to stick with something that worked after temporarily stumbling upon it, which in the past previous managers have failed to do. E.g. one time when we had Zog, Emre and Solano playing directly behind a lone striker (Martins?) with two midfielders in behind holding, we looked a pretty slick team because they kept the ball well and the team was forced to pass it on the deck - it only lasted 2 games because whoever our manager was at the time (Roeder?) decided to change things as soon as a second striker was fit again and we went back to pumping long balls and bypassing the midfield. Similarly, don't think Kinnear ever tried the system that Keegan found some joy with (Owen in midifled). At least with Hughton this didn't seem to be a problem, and once he did make a change for the better he usually stuck with it. Would Pardew have put this team together if it wasn't already in place? Would he have thought about trying Barton out wide, or stuck with him there if he hadn't already established himself as an excellent deep-winger of sorts? Would he have signed Tiote, or would he have gone for a reject from his West Ham days? What will Pardew do if we have to sell a few players and he has to rebuild the team? On the one hand, I don't think there's much to criticise about Pardew at present, given our lack of squad depth. On the other, I don't think there's much to praise him for either as he's just putting a team that Hughton built/discovered out on the pitch. But given his track record, I'm certainly a bit worried that when he starts shaping this team into his own we're going to be worse off for it. That is a good post. Any discussion on results that Hughton got v Pardew's results will inevitably turn unto a pissing contest. As I've said before it is a judgement call at this stage. The comeback against the Arse was cool but so was beating them at The Emirates etc etc etc. For my money the most impressive thing AP has done was think on his feet and set the side up the way he did when we went down to 10 men against Bolton. I don't have a problem with AP working in the market when the time comes. I think the sheer ethic of getting value for money that our owner lives by will provide a check on anything daft being done And I have some faith in our ability to pick up players that will improve the squad even if not much money changes hands. If AP was going to be a step up from Hughton it was in getting results when key players are missing. He's done ok at that (we got good results without Carroll before he left and we picked up some points without Tiote) but I have to say I am slightly more concerned about where we are now and the fact that we have A LOT of key players missing. Early doors I put us down as finishing 15th, obviously if you reckon thats the end result you are going to expect some nervous moments - but lets get 42 points and think ahead then.

Obviously he 's not stupid he knew how to build a chain of downmarket sports shops and float it at a gross overvaluation, and trouser a billion in cash in the process. But his expertise in sports retail and selling his business to the City didn't stop him buying a football club without understanding anything about what he was getting into. Plenty of successful people have been arrogant enough to think they can transfer their skills into another industry only to find they were out of their depth.

Wish I could just dismiss the rumours about Barton. Conspiracy theories or not there's a large element of his personality and past behaviour that leaves me with a horrible doubt somehow.

Well I remember all that - and based on what we know about the way PR works in football (even pre Ashley) you consider all that to be 100% evidence that he was a Souness signing? Sorry but I don't.

Yup - he said that.

Corners that go out of play before they reach the pelanty area ffs.

didnt souness accuse shepherd of signing players he chose, rather than the players souness wanted himself? remember, we were linked with boumsong before souness arrived, and we signed him after souness became boss. graeme souness also told the story himself on tv that he lined up anelka and boa morte for a combined 11m, only to be told by fat fred that owen and luque were coming instead. this isnt altogether in defence of souness, but the guy was sacked a few months later because the team were s****. his answer to being sacked was that he didnt get the players he wanted. anyone take anelka over owen, in hindsight? I also remember Souness coming out (while our manager) and telling everyone how he went to Shepherd and told him to pull out all of the stops to buy Michael Owen. He did say that - but he may have been lying, he'd have looked a bit of a tit if he said he hadn't wanted Owen signed. Purely my view (i.e. no real concrete evidence) but I never thought Souness had much to do with Owen coming here.

His wealth on paper will increase without doubt. But even with the recent sharp rises the share price is still way below £3.00 flotation price. So the "whingers" who invested in the flotation (and put almost £1 billion of cash into the Ashley coffers) are still well short on their investment.

Most football club managers are puppets. Unless you are talking about the likes of Ferguson, Mourinho or Wenger not many of the others have much clout because it isn't their money is it. At our club most of the recent managers were puppets tbh - Souness, Roeder, Hughton etc. And that's just the ones who stayed longer than a few months.

He's barking isn't he? Obviously he's going to give it the "glad to be here with a manager who wants me" speech. Actually I think he'll do well for us if he gets on the pitch but the trouble with someone like that is you just don't know when they are going to go off on one.

Priceless

Did they manipulate the media over Taylor? Have you got some insider knowledge on that. The media are always out for a story, I doubt they needed Mike Ashley's secret spin doctors to get the Taylor negotiations in print. Well yes, I don't think Taylor's people (his father mainly) have ever been slow to play the PR game themselves.

All of that is possible. He's got pressure on him, he's young and not on his home patch etc. He's got balls though and my money is on him to get it done even if not at first. £35 million really?

Credit to the bloke for sticking his neck out so bravely. Carroll isn't a £35m player, but that price was closely linked to the amount that Chelsea were prepared to pay to land Torres. Liverpool wouldn't have let Torres go without bringing in Carroll as a replacement. We were able to drive a very hard bargain, and effectively Chelsea financed the deal. Sounds like we had a chat with Chelsea to decide the optimum bids. Which makes the failure to loan Daniel Sturridge even more infuriating..... Unfortunately the basis of the Sturridge deal had probably been sorted several days earlier. Torres' exit was clearly on the cards for some time so Bolton got in early with some sort of agreement "If you get Torres can we have Sturridge on loan?" Everyone on here will have an opinion on when Carroll came into the whole equation and when it became obvious he was away but I reckon Sturridge was not an option for us.

Blatant admission of tapping up by Warnock.

Never going to happen. Riise doesn't fit our bill. Not saying it's true at all, but how does he not fit our bill? If he's a free agent, I'd say he fits our bill exactly. Please include an explanation of how Lovenkrands does fit our bill in your answer. FFS! Are you trying to provoke an argument or what? Loven was bought right after we were relegated. We needed him, because he was cheap, and out of contract, and we were broke. With the already stated proviso that we are only talking about speculative rumour here - as I understand it the model the club is working to is that they won't pay big money for any player over 25. So if Riise is knocking about on a free and on a manageable wage then there is no obvious reason why he wouldn't be a target from that perspective.

So Keegan has clearly got a better football brain than Ashley, he is probably a better human being as well. But Ashley owns the club and Keegan is an ex manager. One of them can influence the club's future the other can't. It's a pisser but it is sort of where we are really.

i'm certainly not one of those two and i'd like to think i'm not the other. keegan gave me the best football i've ever seen at SJP but can't help thinking he left because he was told we'd be having to belt tighten for a bit. on another note it's supposed to be very strange for someone on a fixed term contract to win a constructive dismissal case and not have at least the remainder of the contract paid up. R u saying both camps were in the wrong but only Cashley looked the bad guy ,i hate what Ashley has done to our previous managers and im not defending him in the least just interested in your view tbh . i'd like to know who keegan was actually after, there was the( much derided on here) NotW piece about who he was after and not a sniff of denial from the keegan camp, he's known throughout football for throwing ultimatums about, did he really think he'd have the final say on all players, he'd be the only manager around today to have that, i've always thougth that the tribunal found in his favour as a technically correct decision as per his contract but he never even got his contract paid up as everyone knows that those are things are said but not real (ie has alex ferguson the final say if he goes to his board and says he wants 100mill to buy messi and they say "no"). all managers have to know the confines in which they are working and i'm not sure if keegan did. Not alot wrong with that its a pity we will never find out tbh i was hoping it would all come out at the tribunal. The thing about the tribunal was that it was an action initiated by lawyers who simply had one motive and that was to get a legal victory (it is the way of the world). Which is why a no mark like Nacho Gonzalez became the focal point of the whole action. Keegan's legal team were able to build their case on what happened with Gonzalez because there was clearly evidence (emails etc) that showed that Gonzalez was not a KK signing. So they hung their whole case on that transaction. I think the real trigger for Keegan was what happened with Milner but there wasn't enough legal evidence for his lawyers to launch a sustainable case based on the Milner sale. IMO

The loan, the last time it was reported, was about £138 million. It has been interest free to date, and it is up to Ashley what he wants to do about getting it back. The larger number that sometimes gets quoted includes what he paid for the club and that would be another £138 million or thereabouts, making his total investment stand at about £276 million.

Very interesting,I presume Villa are now close to administration as some posters on here claimed Sunderland were a few weeks ago? An 88% wages to turnover ratio aswell and that's before you account for them signing Bent and Makoun and I don't think many have left Villa. Presumably Ellis Short is able to carry on funding any losses you lot incur, in the same way Lerner does at Villa. So there is no danger for either of you then.

I haven't looked at their latest accounts but according to that article Lerner has put in £90 million of loans. If they owed all of that debt to a bank and were in a position where they couldn't pay wages, taxes, player transfer fees etc they would be at least as much at risk as Portsmouth were.

Played for Twente this season?

He never walked out though. He was constructively dismissed. You have to walk out or you can't be constructively dismissed

KK's opinions on what we will spend don't really count for much. For me the key is that we get in players that strengthen the squad in the areas where its needed, and I am not bothered whether we spend the Carroll money to do that or not.

Also lost to Blackpool and Stoke at St James. What a daft post. Er how? The theme of the post I was responding to was about points we've dropped in games we might have expected more from. Why is it our devine right to 'expect' anything? Stoke are an established Premier League side and we probably dropped points against Blackpool because we had a similar attitude to the above. On that logic we should of beaten half the Premier League. No divine right (or even devine right) is implied, just identifying games we might have gone into expecting something, and ended up getting nothing. It's no big deal. And we have very nearly beaten half the Premiership btw - and the season isn't over yet.