Lloydie

Just saw that myself. No idea if he's any good. I see a bit of the Dutch league on TV here and it's really not good stuff, Twente aren't exactly a top side either. That he played for the Holland U21s means very little. They're a good side, but they're very heavy on technique and light on physique. Indeed I'd guess that any defender coming to the Premiership from Holland is in for a bit of a shock in their first few games. So for me at least an unknown quantity. But my prediction of loan signings and people we've never heard of is looking good...

I agree with most of that. We've probably got no real cash, we're not going down this season and Europe is going to be a hell of a stretch regardless of signings. So yup, keep it simple, hunt for value and look to build on what we've got. Three or four new players through the academy is a great positive from this season - even if only one or two cut it that's pretty much par for the course for our signings. Add the progress of Milner and Martins, plus the return of Dyer and the squad has probably come quite a long way this season, regardless of spending. Just a shame Owen is crocked...

Have to check, but I don't think Blackburn have been pennypinching...

Spending significant money is going to require serious financial jiggery pokery I'd imagine. The reason we're flush in the summer is because you get the new season's TV money and the previous season's prize money paid out then. Next season will see all clubs get a stack more TV money because of the new Sky deal, but I can see that leading to wage and transfer fee inflation rather than an influx of good players. Last year we operated at a loss, and despite the European run I imagine we'll do so again this year. Fail to qualify for Europe and the prospects of big spending look even worse. Had we not got the insurance money for Owen to cover some wages we couldn't have signed Martins. Indeed I'd bet the 5 and a bit million that brought in Duff, Sibierski and Bernard would have been more or less it. Maybe plus 2-3 million for a centre back / left back (Huth/Bridge?). Our wages are currently way over 50% of our turnover, which is generally seen as the 'sane' level of wages for a club to be paying (although when we were Champions league it was about right). So I'd imagine that wages are another block to new signings - hence mooted swap deals and attempts to get Luque off the payroll. Next summer I wouldn't be surprised to see one of Martins / Owen leave. The response to having no money is not to go and borrow lots and 'spend big' though. Every year a bunch of clubs try that in an attempt to get into the Champions League, and every year a bunch of clubs end up with bigger debts and the prospect of spending the next few seasons either selling their best players or signing no-one till the debts go back down to reasonable levels again. The presence of the new sugar daddies around the league (Villa, West Ham, Portsmouth, Chelsea, Reading, Wigan) is disguising the fact that these clubs are mortgaging their futures, but that's not a luxury we have. The model for us is Arsenal, where an extraordinarily astute manager and some very good investments in youth have produced a viable champions league club on quite a low investment. Wenger is still handicapped by the costs of the new stadium but his transfer budgets are well under those of his rivals (Man U, Chelsea, Liverpool) and he consistently manages to sell players for good prices. So no, we probably don't have much spending power, and we need to be very careful with it indeed.

With the rumour becoming so much bigger and stronger all the time maybe we could give it a shirt and play it at centreback instead. I mean it's a young rumour but look how well all the other kids have done this season. Should be able to mark Juan Pablo Angel at least...

Guardian reckon it's a Man U bid. At least that's <a href="http://football.guardian.co.uk/Fiver/0,,1996283,00.html">hint in this</a>. (rumour mill section)

It's amazing how what people say gets twisted. Take a look at this. He Said "I have targeted four or five players I would like to buy who would help us become a better squad and a better team but we are finding it hard to prise them from their clubs in January. He Meant There are four or five players I'd like to sign. Some folks heard We are going to sign four or five players Faced with that kind of thing it's amazing managers ever say anything at all...

That word 'May' that's newspaper speak for "we're making it up"

Just to be clear, if you want to buy a club you want 50% plus, which unfortunately probably means buying out both Hall and Shepherd. Even if you could get John Halls' shares plus enough to get over 50% you don't want a 28% shareholder and disgruntled ex chairman hanging around demanding seats on the board. Especially if you're good at running a business and would rather not deal with someone who thought a four man board of himself, his sister, his accountant and his mate was going to deliver on all that transparency and accountability stuff. So it takes both the Halls and Shepherd to want out to get shot of both of them. My personal suspicions are that Hall wants to sell, but not to Shepherd, and Shepherd wants to buy. (anyone know where Shepherd would raise the needed 50m + btw?). The consortium deals probably fell through because either Hall or Shepherd or both were asking too much. I wouldn't be surprised if in their minds they're selling a top four club that was 'this close' to winning the title and should be challenging for top honours, while on the other side of the table is someone wondering whether we're mid table or lower mid table...

Curtis Davies from West Brom or Lucas Neil from Blackburn or Someone we've never heard of. but my money's on Curtis Davies, about whom I know very little. Soccerbase tells me he's 21/22, and cost them 3 million from Luton. Can't remember how well he played when he was in the Premiership but he did play what looks like the entire season for them.

Ah yes, but they've got money and I don't think we have. I reckon we need to shift Luque just to free up the cash to sign anyone decent. Swap deals, loans and the bargain basement loom I reckon. If only we'd thought of Larsson before Man U did. (can he play at left back?) 9 days in and no solid rumours. On the plus side - 9 days closer to the end of the injury crisis...

He's got hips better than Bernard and his right foot is better than Baba's left. But what about his ankles and elbows?

Friends of mine who watched him regularly at Southampton and who's judgement I trust rated him very highly. He's always done OK for Chelsea as well, just ended up in the same part of the squad as Parker since Mourinho doesn't seem to like rotation much. But we haven't got 7 million. If we can get him for 2-3 I can see us finding that much but that'd be it for the window I reckon. (and yes, on the day we land 10 million worth of signings in a sensational swoop I will be looking very silly indeed)

Well, now they're the only bidders to the price will be lower... Still be nice if we knew who was behind them. Finance groups don't go round buying football clubs because they think there's money in it. They go round buying them because someone is paying them to...

If there's very little profit in football clubs - but if I was doing this for cash (as opposed to fulfilling the ambition of owning the Toon) I'd buy overseas clubs - Australia has a sports mad population and football is catching on - Try and run the only non-corrupt club in Latin America (massive opportunity there) - Eastern Europe? Anyway. On current stock market valuations Newcastle are <a href="http://mwprices.ft.com/custom/ft2-com/html-quotechartnews.asp?subtab=&FTSite=FTCOM&q=NCU&searchtype=&expanded=&countrycode=UK&s2=uk&symb=NCU&sid=122111&site=&company=NEW&selected=Newcastle+United">worth 97m GPB (Market Cap)</a> So control (51%) should cost about 50m, but buying out the current board inflates the price. Shouldn't quadruple it though. If we are bought I think Shepherd and Hall will regret not selling sooner. I think we'll finish the season mid table, out of Europe (unless we win a cup) and surrounded by well funded competitors for next season. The eventual selling price could easily be less than 100m, because it's profits that drive value, and we don't make a lot of those. Only Man U make what would be considered a decent return on investment in other businesses.

Konchesky could be worth a look Also hear Charlton are willing to let Hasslebaink go. I'd take him on a six month contract to the end of the season. Not the player he used to be but still big, strong and able to finish.

Planning (as I'd see it) would work like this. We've got Robbie Elliot at left back, no natural left back in the academy. So we buy Babayaro. We know Robbie's not going to last long, so we need to either buy a left back to cover for Babayaro or someone who can turn him into cover for them. So the moment we signed Babayaro we should have been looking to build up a list of available left backs, scouting potential targets etc. So come now Freddy and Glenn should be sitting down with a list of 20 left backs from around the world who we'd believe to be of a suitable standard and realistically priced (even if not available). The investment required to identify and keep tabs on say 250 potential targets from outside the Premiership wouldn't be that high. Maybe .5 million a season for 2-3 scouts, a lot of travel expenses and subscriptions to every satellite TV channel going. You'd pay it off the first time you bought a good player cheaply. I'd see it as the job of the manager and his assistants to know the division / league we're actually in. Here's a piece on Recreativo in Spain who picked up 17 signings *for free* are are now doing well in La Liga. The players are out there if you look, and if you look all the time - well you'll find them more often. "Mendoza got a plastic toy, two Pepsi glasses, a collection of fridge magnets and almost an entire new squad. All for free. He bought Florent Sinama Pongolle on loan from Liverpool with a €4m option to buy, Mario from Valladolid, Javi Guerrero from Racing, Beto from Bordeaux, Javier López Vallejo from Osasuna, and César Arzo and Santi Cazorla from Villarreal, while withstanding a €6m offer for Nigerian striker Ikechukwu Uche. In total 17 new players arrived and, under coach Marcelino García, the results have been spectacular. " Whole piece at http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2006/12/21/recreativo_rip_up_the_form_boo.html

Hurrah! On Bale, we probably don't have the cash for a bidding war, and he's now in the nice position that once some bids are accepted he'll be able to negotiate the personal terms up by playing the clubs off against each other. So however good he is it looks like he'll be be a) overpriced and b) overpaid.

Don't believe we've got £10m, or at any rate don't believe we can afford it. Will probably also have to offload players to cut the wage bill before we can take on any expensive players. Would spend whatever peanuts we've got on a left back. I Expect to see some more cut price last minute buys of the kind that brought in Sibierski, Bernard and Rossi. So I guess that makes me a doom monger then...

Doh!

Being a manager you have two kinds of work to do. There's the day in, day out business of doing whatever it is you do. That might be running an office, winning football games or making sure the bar opens on time every day. Then there's the other kind, the putting stuff in place, making changes kind. So you're Glen Roeder and you know there are a few things you need to do. You've got to win some games, buy a left back and all the rest. But what else do you need to be getting on with? Here's my list. Sort out the scouting Finding good players cheap isn't something we seem able to do. During the world cup Shearer was despatched to scout Kuyt and on the basis of three games for Holland decided he wasn't what we wanted.The whole thing didn't strike me as terribly professional, especially since Kuyt is a class player but had a poor world cup. When Man U signed van Nistelrooy they had something like 18 scouting reports on him going back years. That's the sign of a system that's working well and takes the risk out of signings. The last really good signing (little money, great player) we made was N'Zogbia, more of that please. Build up the Academy This looks to be going alright, but it needs to keep improving. If I was an academy player now I'd be looking at Taylor, Huntington and the rest and believing that I could make it too. That's a good thing, so we should aim to build on the recent success. Get some succession planning in place I once saw a piece on (I think) the Australian rugby team. For every position they knew who was the #1 choice, who was cover for them, who was #1 in the under 21's and who was cover for them and so on, right down to the youth system. It'd be great to think we were looking at our squad over the same timespan, or at least 3-5 years out. (that's two managers right?) For example Butt's likely to retire or move on in another two or three years, so we need to start scouting and working on replacements now or see if there's someone in the academy who can become that kind of player, rather than getting all surprised when it happens. Those are my three things I'd think about. What would yours be?

Why is everyone interested in silly money? What the hells wrong with the regular sensible kind? re Beattie - don't rate him. His goals come in short runs, he has long periods without scoring, he's not cracked the England squad, the Everton Squad or managed to attract a bid from a top four side. That should tell us something... His price might be low but his wages won't be and as noted, he'll be well down the pecking order next season.

I'd be stunned if he went for that little (unless his contract is up) , and I wouldn't want to see him play at centreback, he really is a full back. More generally Defenders like Jaap Stam are not common in Holland, I'd be a little unsure about how he'd cope with a league full of big strapping centre forwards....

Got to start by acknowledging that we've probably got very little money to spend, I'll be surprised if our winter spending tops 5 million, and not at all surprised if its all loans, freebies and undisclosed fees. At this point it might be good to ask 'what would Harry Redknapp do' in which case we'll be signing defenders from Eastern Europe, Portugal and Africa who none of us have ever heard of. An alternative question might be 'what would Sam Allardyce do', the answer to which is loot the left overs of the big clubs. Real Madrid's defence currently includes * 2- Michel Salgado * 3- Roberto Carlos * 4- Sergio Ramos * 5- Cannavaro * 11- Cicinho * 15- Raúl Bravo * 21- Iván Helguera * 22- Paco Pavón * 24- Álvaro Mejía So the horrifying prospect of an end of contract overpaid Roberto Carlos turning up for a lucrative six month spell rears it's head. Milan are having a shocker (12th in Serie A), so a clear out might be on the way there. They've got Cafu Maldini Kaladze Costacurta Nesta Simic Marek Jankulovski Giuseppe Favalli Daniele Bonera Giving us the option of signing two left backs even older than Roberto Carlos. And at 41 years of Age CostaCurta's got all the experiece we could want...