Razor

This is exactly what the people who were against selling Carroll feared, it wasn't just the act of exchanging a player for money, it represented much more than that, with Carroll we were a club with potential, moving forward with ambition, with a mixed group of players, some of whom are of a higher calibre than we can reasonably expect to have at the club based on the last 3-4 years, by selling him the club has made a message (intended or not) that goes against all of that, and its knocked the stuffing out of what was at the core of our relative acheivements this season. The worst bit of all is that i dont think Mike and co realised it, at face value it was a reasonable exchange, but in terms of a football exchange

If your problem is with the English skill or lack of it, fair call . But if its with the statement, i think our lack of a quality striker is going to see us drop down the table from where we were. Just how far is the question.

Our slide down the slippery slope has begun. Luckily its a little to late to get us relegated, surely. Cheers Mike and Andy.

Jayson, 35m is a ridiculous offer. Look at Carroll's record. 34 career goals so far. Start to be prolific just 6 months ago (he is not prolific last year), is "optimistically expected" to be a regular international player, has some personal problems, is far from a complete product. He is fxxking valuable for us, I know, but 35m is too much for a player who has relatively high risk not fulfilling his potential. The key point is whether 35m is a ridiculous offer. If you honestly think Carroll is not for sale at any price, then ok, you can continue to bash Ashley. My stand is if Ashley did give Carroll a choice, then he is doing "what a normal person should do". That's exactly it. If we were offered 80M for Carroll surely noone would be complaining, but 35M is just too much in the grey area of a ridiculous offer, its a lot sure, but small enough that we might never see it reinvested, if we got 80M then even if he pocked 50% we'd have loads. Sadly i think Carroll wanted to go, but i have no idea as to why, liverpool aren't a whole lot better than us at the moment and don't have a clear path back to the CL.

This is shit.

Andy Carroll is worth more to Newcastle than any other club, getting 35M as some have said COULD buy some top players, but the transfer market is extremely hit and miss and even if all the money is reinvested (which is very very very very unlikely) 35M only represents maybe 20odd million of true value (or less maybe) as bought assets. The thing with this deal is the two options, sell or hold, lead us down to drastically different paths, and whilst selling provides a great monetary short term gain, it also means a striker crisis lets face it, and a lack of ambition. Not selling has so many positives, you rarely get a situation like this where doing nothing, saying no, leads to such a positive..

The utter shame of all this is that if a 30-40M bid was so publicly rejected the message it would send out as to our ambitions would be key for signing proper prosperous players, not to mention Carroll would never be sold for less than the rejected bid amount in the near future...

With about 15 to go when West Ham were coming close he seemed to be shouting pretty firmly in Nolans direction and vice versa, couldn't tell whether they were arguing or just both giving orders?

No offence intended like, but if this is the justified attitude of our most dedicated fans, then what can we expect from the players?

I think this has to be called the lowest becuase there is noone (or almost noone?) that supports this decision, when souness came in, kinnear etc, there were a couple atleast that did, even in the media everyone is scratching their heads...

I'm starting to beleive this... unless theyve got Mourinho all signed up, or someone such... its just ridiculous

There better be someone, someone good, waiting in the wings, its bad enough as it is but if they dont have someone in by Saturday

What the fuck, seriously, i was just about to go to bed and hit F5, thought someone was having a laugh, checked .com, and there it is

saga avoided

Maybe to the contrary, resurecting a club in decline would be a far greater challenge and acheivement for Mourinho, as opposed to taking on a club thats ontop, anything less than a continuation of the latter, meaning trophies and cup finals, would be regarded as failure. The Special One woudlnt want to just be Fergie's replacement, he'd want to do something Ferguson maybe couldnt; stop the club going into decline.

Should we be able to? yes Do we have the players to make it worthwhile (ie support to Carroll)? no Will it be done? on occasion First point is the problem, we knew we needed someone else upfront coming into the season, Arfa could go a long way to fix this, or someone could step in and improve, unlikely on the latter.

Smith - right from when Allardyce said 'we dont need him but i cant let a player of this quality go unsigned' it was obvious we had no slot for him to go into, and he's never found one or played consistently to a level which was expected when he was signed. Carroll - wrong, thought he was going to be a new Ameobi... Dyer - wrong - i always thought he would lose the injuries and come good. Ditto for Emre (though that late everton goal and mackems strike alleviates much of the pain lol) Throwing in a non NUFC player: Arshavin - right - top class, signing him pre euros would have been genius.

That's why we can stay up

no kneejerk, these are the games uve gotta win

Ah fuck yes

I logged on blearly eyed this morning, scanned the thread list, expecting it to be top in bold, couldnt see it, scrolled down, still couldnt see it, checked again. I'm starting to think "Fuck, must have been locked after WB had their offer accepted..." Eventually found it, and with a better topic title than last time.

Aye we're pretty screwed, theres just been such a lack of talent actually coming through, we've never been brilliant but when you think of Viduka, Kewell, Cahill, Schwarzer, Neill thats alright, but they're all past 30 and some over the hill... there's noone like them coming through thats over 20 really... Playing in all the Asian qualifiers is good, but we werent that brilliant in most of the matches anyway... just aslong as we don't get thrashed.

Premiership Top 4 (in order): Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City Relegation (in order): Burnley, Hull, Bolton Dark horse: Tottenham Primed to epic fail: Blackburn Top Scorer: Torres Championship Promotion: WBA, Reading, Newcastle Europe La Liga: Real Madrid Champions League: Real Madrid Other Who'll be NUFC's top scorer?: Ranger

Apologies for yet another bump... but all this photo needs is a handbag http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football/2575326/Fergie-Owen-will-prove-em-wrong.html