Lloydie

Yup, and that gives us a little bit of insurance, because if someone bids for Owen they'll have to match his wage demands, which given his recent lack of matches makes signing him a massive gamble. The only reason to put release clauses in is to stop players leaving. You see this in Spain where Torres had a 90 million euro clause, which was basically a way of saying he was off the market. When they decided to sell him they dropped it to 40 million euro, which ended up being almost what they accepted. Our problem is the clauses have been there to give players a route out if things go badly, and the only reason you'd do that is to convince them to sign when you're desperate. Oh.

Think of him as a January signing. While it looks odd there are a lot of ways to take the risk out of this. If I was doing this I'd want a pre-contract agreement or some such which says if he can't pass a medical in x months time we won't be keeping him on, and puts him on some sort of pay per appearance deal - at least for the first season. It is a risk though, not many players make it through three serious injuries in three seasons and get back to where they were.

No mention of how many millions then?

Yup, they've both been thoroughly underwhelming and I suspect were a cause of a lot of the problems in the dressing room.

Very solid player, great athlete and a very good signing. I think his best season in England was at the Riverside, he earned that move to Chelsea. I don´t think he´s gone backwards though, just not had the games he´d have wanted under Mourinho. Always thought of him as a better midfielder than a defender mind, but still, none of us know how Allardyce wants things to be set up yet, apart from one comment about having one plan for home and another for away. One thing you can say is that with him, viduka and barton we´re not going to be lacking muscle and aggression next season. Since I didn´t want Barton on the grounds that he´s a nutter and I know nothing about Rosenhaal I´d say this is probably up with Viduka as the best of the four deals so far.

This is nice to see, although I´m not convinced this guy is going to be our next chairman. It´s more that he´s a trusted lieutenant who´s been sent in to work out exactly what they´ve got and perform some drastic surgery. Remember Ashley didn´t do any due dilligence on this take over, so things like the release clause in Martins´ contract and the exact terms of the one in Owen´s might have been unpleasant news for him. I suppose he´ll even get to find out what the Gibraltar operation actually does. It wouldn´t be unusual in this situation for someone like this to come in, make a lot of change, fire a bunch of people and then leave. From the outside NUFC looks to have been run as a cosy little boys club with a lot of ambition, a lot of cash floating about and very little discipline. When you´re writing off millions every year on another failed signing it´s hard to worry about whether you´re making the right margins on the catering - I´d hope this guy will do what we´ve been told is planned, a top to bottom review of the club, probably followed by a purge of the management, some long term planning and a bit of restructuring. I´d also expect the board to get quite a bit bigger as well. At least one new board member with a football background is going to be neeed.

Here's their league game results. All in the Premier, Smith with Leeds and Man Utd, Ameobi with us Shola 93 starts, 69 sub, 28 goals Smith 191 starts, 42 sub, 45 goals I think Ameobi is edging that one, although you have Smith spending some of his time in midfield at Man Utd, but then you also have Shola spending some of his time in bloody awful sides.

Oh I think he could do a good job, and Allardyce would certainly like him - it's a credible rumour I think. I just think Shola deserves first crack at this. If we sell him I'm sure we'll end up regretting it. Should one of Owen or Martins go the Viduka, Smith, Ameobi, Owen/Martins remainder looks OK to me. Would mean we'd only have one front player with real pace, but we would have a lot of muscle.

I agree that the mirror sound awfully sure about this. Still, I'd much rather see Shola stay in the side. Now he's finally fit he deserves a decent crack at things, and I reckon a lot of people will be pleasantly surprised. Smith's a decent player, but he's on his way back and has gone a long time without regular football.

I think it would have worked like this. The manager goes to the Chairman with a list of targets and if he make s a good enough case the chairman goes off to get them. So far so normal. But in our case the chairman also has a list of targets and if he thinks the manager needs a new striker he buys him Patrick Kluivert. Then you get this alleged situation where Shepherd handles all the finances himself so the manager only finds out about buyout clauses or whatever later on.

Drenthe is a decent player, but everything went wrong for him at the end of last season. He was played at left back and scored own goals in the cup final and the play off for the champions league qualifying spot.

And thus Ashley will be able to get rid of Shepherd, despite the deal to keep him on after buying the club. "Sorry Fred, when I offered you the job I didn't realise you couldn't tell when you were being ripped off..."

Don't know much about Jagielka, but I'm sure Milner should be ahead of him, Downing, Jenas and Dyer on the basis of this season... Goalkeepers: Paul Robinson (Tottenham), Ben Foster (Manchester United, on loan at Watford) Defenders: Phil Neville (Everton), Joleon Lescott (Everton), Michael Dawson (Tottenham), Ledley King (Tottenham), Gareth Barry (Aston Villa), Nicky Shorey (Reading) (and now Taylor presumably) Midfielders: Owen Hargreaves (Bayern Munich), Phil Jagielka (Sheffield United), Aaron Lennon (Tottenham), Kieron Dyer (Newcastle), Scott Parker (Newcastle), Jermaine Jenas (Tottenham), Stewart Downing (Middlesbrough), David Bentley (Blackburn) Forwards: Michael Owen (Newcastle), Jermain Defoe (Tottenham), Alan Smith (Manchester United), David Nugent (Preston)

I may get this a bit mixed up but... 1) There is a threshold at which once you've bought a given percentage of a company you have to make the same offer to the rest of the shareholders. I think it's 30%. 2) Yes, they'd have to offer the same. It's a law to do with protecting minority shareholders 3) Nothing, but you'd have to offer everyone else what you offered S&H, which will almost certainly be 20-30% more than the shares are worth since they'll expect a premium for relinquishing control 4) Any such agreement would be sorely tested if anyone put real money on the table For the last part, should they want to sell the only problem is agreeing a price. They can always reduce their shareholding to the point where they're not the largest shareholder. 50.1% is what you need for control, but you can exercise practical control with much less if other shareholders are happy to let you appoint the board etc. It's how most companies actually operate and helps keep the executives honest.

What this does do is open up a pile of money for wages. Bramble and Moore were probably on decent money, Bernard, Srnicek and Gooch (I'm not going to learn how to spell his last name now) much less. However I don't think this is the actual clear out, this is getting rid of players who's contracts were up. The real clear out will be selling players he doesn't want or who don't want to be here, hopefully for decent money and I can't think of a single player who I can't imagine him selling. Some (Given, Parker, Owen, Martins) might be sold because they'd bring in really good money and cut the wages, others might be sold because we just want shot of them. Actually, that's not quite true. I reckon Nicky Butt is probably safe as houses and quite possibly our next captain.

All this 'oh it's a breath of fresh air' stuff. Anyone seriously think at least 4 of those wouldn't have gone under Roeder? Srnicek, Bramble and Moore were already out of the door, and I doubt both of Titus and Gooch would have made the cut, and quite possibly neither. Still, it is a good sign. Wonder what he makes of Ramage?

Extended piece in the Guardian with some nice quotes http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/05/16/allardyce_plots_cultural_revol.html "I am sure if they start working with me they will start enjoying what they do. They will get up in the morning, look forward to training. I don't want a miserable environment. I want a happy environment with smiley faces."

It seems there's a group of Players who have accounted for two managers now, and if Allardyce has any sense he'll sell them the moment he arrives. Otherwise as soon as they start to feel criticism from the fans, or don't like the training they're being asked to do they'll try and get shot of him as well.

Interesting thread. One thing to think about, out of his 21 staff at Bolton he must have had a decent scouting network, so if he's got any sense he'll have walked out with a big long list of well researched targets. At least that way if we do have a big clear out (or just do a lot of shopping) there's a good chance we'll buy well.

Suddenly this is alll looking sickeningly familar. Remember Souness' Blackburn before he signed up with us. They were diabolical.

Surely what we can infer from the numbers is that with a fantastic strike force he'll have even more balls hoiked into the box because Owen / Martins are more likely than Davies/Anelka to knock one in. I'm not envisaging the beautiful game taking hold at St James under Allardyce that's for sure.

Ah, the Guardian have an article on just this. Bolton had 21! backroom staff. Not a bad thing in itself, but it makes you think there's a lot of recruitment to be done in the next few days. http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,2074357,00.html Worrying bit here where training gives way to marketing. Be interesting to see if Allardyce gets his way in pre-season, I assume he'd be against such branding led jaunts. "Roeder, an admirer of Arsène Wenger, had been planning a European summer training camp akin to Arsenal's and Pearson had been to Germany to view facilities there, but it is believed that plan has been shelved and Newcastle will be involved in a foreign tour plus possibly a summer tournament. Presumably discussions with Allardyce will cover such topics."

Keep him. He's been injured on and off for the last five years, we finally get him fit and hopefully past his long term problems and now it's time to sell? I'd want him to demonstrate some good attitude at the start of next season, starting with things like playing where he's told, but he should definately get half a season to prove himself at least.

It's a fair point. There's definately a lack of infrastructure at this club for that kind of thing. I think Gullit tried to take a run at this problem as well, and wanted our youth setup to be more like that at Ajax, but he was moved on before he could finish the job.