fredbob

Truely poetic. Lets not have a debate about the managers, lets just all get along and make sure no ones toes get trampled on. Has anyone else noticed how Keegan fans take similar stances on Keegan "criticisms" (if you can call it that) as NE5 does to Shepherd's... In fact its the same sort of argument, if you dislike Shepherd it means you love Ashley, if you rate SBR much higher than Keegan it means to think Keegan was a s*** manager. (What a hypocrite you are by the way, you can spend weeks and months talking absolute unsubtantiated s*** about the club [you claim to love] and people take it but when someone slights Keegans character based on facts we get this crap) This isnt me defending Ashley incidentally, this is purely an example of your hypocrisy, f*** off man, you're the one that belittles his achievements to point score and are forever the cynic. I suspect you are not a Geordie and weren't around when KK was first manager. Unlike you and others I can separate KK from the current and Ashley and co and see him for what he is, a NUFC legend who this club owes a big debt of gratitude and respect to, same with Sir Bobby. As for facts? And that little spoiler thing, that's f***ing girly If i moved away from the area at a young age, does that make me a Geordie? Please say it does kind sir, i hope i get your approval, and yes i was around his first stint, although admittedly not in the area. My only argument in this whole thread was that he's not a great manager and the uproar over his leaving this summer was compleltey over the top, its something which i believe has left us with Kinnear in charge. Its embarressing that you should think he or anyone should be untouchable. As for the spoiler thing, I didnt want to hurt your feelings, you're just so precious. How old are you bytheway? If you dont mind me asking.

Truely poetic. Lets not have a debate about the managers, lets just all get along and make sure no ones toes get trampled on. Has anyone else noticed how Keegan fans take similar stances on Keegan "criticisms" (if you can call it that) as NE5 does to Shepherd's... In fact its the same sort of argument, if you dislike Shepherd it means you love Ashley, if you rate SBR much higher than Keegan it means to think Keegan was a shit manager. (What a hypocrite you are by the way, you can spend weeks and months talking absolute unsubtantiated shit about the club [you claim to love] and people take it but when someone slights Keegans character based on facts we get this crap) This isnt me defending Ashley incidentally, this is purely an example of your hypocrisy,

We made a brilliant appointment too in Bobby Robson, and any opinion you have other than that, is also a heap of shite. And expecting the club to make such brilliant appointments every time, is also unrealistic shit. For people like you who spout such garbage, we will see who Villa appoint when he goes, and who Arsenal appoint when Wenger goes, and who ManU appoint when Ferguson goes. I think you're losing it here, its perfectly relasitic to expect the board to make good appointments, its unrealisitc to expect them to work out everytime. Prime example being Dlaglish (where only the moinority will criticise his appointment), his record stood up, he was a good appointment. Are you saying that its unrealsiitc to pick a good manager from the entire world? How come Liverpool managed it? The way you see it, is that when people say its easy to make a good appointment (which it is), you think we mean its easy to make an appointment who will do great for the club, its not what we mean. Look at Spurs - Ramos was a fanstastic appointment, but i imaigine you see it as a shit appointment becasue it didnt work out, which isnt how you should judge a persons decison making process. It can only be done on the merit of the appoimtnet. your last paragraph shows you are actually starting to grasp something, now adopt that principle to the fortunes of NUFC, not that I would say qualifying for europe more than any club bar 4 over a period of a decade is a disaster or anything ......... Absolutley, pretty much everything up to 2004 was great, aside from the intefereing and undermining of SBR (and not backing him at THE most crucuial time) the sacking was a terrible mistake in my opinion (but a canvas of opinion at the time would firmly put me in the miority), the appointment of Souness was possibly one of the worst decisions Ive ever seen made at a club of this stature at the time, the decision to back him with so much money was the second worst decision. This is what a lot of people are trying to tell you, they had the foresight at the time to say this was a shit appointment, there can be no argument here, it wasnt a good appointment by any stretch of the imagination. And it happens to be a decision we're still paying for now. The scope to make a good appointment was definitely there, unlike Liverpool we were unwilling to see what the foreign shores had to offer, what happened to ambition then? It was possilby the best time in NUFC history to make a world class appointment and we failed miserably. Shepherd et al were pretty much untouchable up to that point. Its a sad state of affiars but once a mistake is made the past is largely forgotten, what good is a past if you have a grim future? I'll always be immensely grateful for some of the best times ive ever seen at nufc, but i wont excuse any bad decision which has cost the club so much. It just doesnt work like that. You say you have this winning attitude, so what happened to this winning attitude once things went tits up with Souness? Id argue that the ones who criticise Shepherd for the Souness/Roeder/Allardyce appointments are really the ones with the winning atitude.

For us? There's no comparison who was better for us though. No comparison at all. And if you are referring to their spells in charge of us, then I really don't know what to say. "For us?" What kind of 'objective' measure is that? I get the feeling the groups are arguing 2 different things here, 1 groups is arguing who's the better managers and the other are couteracting that argument with who's been the better manager for us. I dont know anywhere in the world where people would choose the inferiro manager on the basis of a managerial achievment, achieved over 15 years ago. Frustrating logic. I've already stated my stance, Robson of course has dwarfed Keegan's acheivements for us as a manager throughout his career, and I absolutely love the man. But when comparing both for us, Keegan as a manager during his first stint achieved more. There records for us isnt a million miles away - both turned us into title challengers. Its just one achieved it from a more precarious situation, the other did it with better teams around though. Id choose SBR 10 times out of 10, i dont know why but i have genuine affection for the bloke, possilby the sort that you have for Keegan.

Which is what most of us have been saying for a long long time. It was bad judgment, although id disagree with you when you say no money was available, i think there was money available, didnt we buy Colocinni before Milner? How did that get funded becasue no matter what you say, if you cant afford it you wouldnt risk a £10m investment on another clubs word to buy your player. There was also the bid for Modric, its up to you to decide if tht was a PR stunt or not, i'd say it wasnt, and id also suggest that if money wasnt available, contrary to what Keegan had been promised, why didnt he walk straight away like he did the 1st time round. It doesnt all quite add up.

We made a brilliant appointment too in Bobby Robson, and any opinion you have other than that, is also a heap of shite. And expecting the club to make such brilliant appointments every time, is also unrealistic shit. For people like you who spout such garbage, we will see who Villa appoint when he goes, and who Arsenal appoint when Wenger goes, and who ManU appoint when Ferguson goes. I think you're losing it here, its perfectly relasitic to expect the board to make good appointments, its unrealisitc to expect them to work out everytime. Prime example being Dlaglish (where only the moinority will criticise his appointment), his record stood up, he was a good appointment. Are you saying that its unrealsiitc to pick a good manager from the entire world? How come Liverpool managed it? The way you see it, is that when people say its easy to make a good appointment (which it is), you think we mean its easy to make an appointment who will do great for the club, its not what we mean. Look at Spurs - Ramos was a fanstastic appointment, but i imaigine you see it as a shit appointment becasue it didnt work out, which isnt how you should judge a persons decison making process. It can only be done on the merit of the appoimtnet.

For us? There's no comparison who was better for us though. No comparison at all. And if you are referring to their spells in charge of us, then I really don't know what to say. "For us?" What kind of 'objective' measure is that? I get the feeling the groups are arguing 2 different things here, 1 groups is arguing who's the better managers and the other are couteracting that argument with who's been the better manager for us. I dont know anywhere in the world where people would choose the inferiro manager on the basis of a managerial achievment, achieved over 15 years ago. Frustrating logic.

thers a 4th group..... those who are very happy and thankful for what he done as a player and first time round as a manager but were wary about his 2nd stint. (can 1 person be a group ?) Make that 2, and you have yourself bonafide group.

Comparing Keegan with SBr is like comparing Nobby Solano with Beckham, one has had a great spell here and has developed a cult status the other is a genuine class player who's done it every where even at thehighest level. Theres no comparison, I'd imagine that those who;d say they'd rather have Keegan back are the same ones who rate Solano higher than Keegan, the logic is pretty identical.

Enlighten me, why haven?t we splashed the cash? There isn't any cash. Yes there is, Ashley is a billionaire. That's no longer true. Most recent investment of net worth was £800 million. More than a quarter of that amount has already been sunk into NUFC. so what? So there isn't any cash. Yes there is. According to you Ashley still has £600m in the bank. f***ing hell, do you actually think about what you write or do you just go blind and let God do his thing? I clearly think about it more than idiots like you who can’t see the wood for the trees. Enlighten me. Is it a simple case of him having £600m in his account so he should spend it on NUFC? How much should he spend? On what timescale? Should he expect to get hismoney back? Answers on a postcard - preferably with ink not s***. (Will accept pencil) If NUFC can survive relegation they can’t be in that much financial trouble. If they can’t survive relegation what the hell is Ashley doing. Why is he risking everything on the managerial brilliance of JFK when he’s got £600m in the bank. £30m last summer would have ensured our PL status long enough for the new and improved youth development to bear fruit. All through this thread you and others have been making the same mistake Ashley is making. Can you guess what it is?

£7m for Bergkamp, £3.5m for Viera, £11m for Henry, £500k for Anelka. Thats the model we're after now. And what did they get for them when they moved on? Anelka aside, not as much as they could of done. Possibly Wengers only weakness, soldboth Henry and Viera a year too late and probably lost out on about £30m.

£7m for Bergkamp, £3.5m for Viera, £11m for Henry, £500k for Anelka. Thats the model we're after now.

Enlighten me, why haven?t we splashed the cash? There isn't any cash. Yes there is, Ashley is a billionaire. That's no longer true. Most recent investment of net worth was £800 million. More than a quarter of that amount has already been sunk into NUFC. so what? So there isn't any cash. Yes there is. According to you Ashley still has £600m in the bank. f***ing hell, do you actually think about what you write or do you just go blind and let God do his thing? I clearly think about it more than idiots like you who can’t see the wood for the trees. Enlighten me. Is it a simple case of him having £600m in his account so he should spend it on NUFC? How much should he spend? On what timescale? Should he expect to get hismoney back? Answers on a postcard - preferably with ink not shit. (Will accept pencil)

Arsenal's team aren't exactly North Londoners are they so all they've done is recruit earlier - I don't see what the difference is overall. I can't think of any successful team that you could argue was truly "home made" - either in terms of locals or even in youth team players. Man U had an extraordinary crop with Giggs etc but that was a one-off. To be honest I was on about turning the club from moderate teams to european giants like Liverpool , Arsenal and Man U have done, the way they have achieved success IS similiar to what Chelsea have done but on no way near the same scale. Id prefer to be an Arsenal over a Chelsea. If that makes sense at all.

Enlighten me, why haven?t we splashed the cash? There isn't any cash. Yes there is, Ashley is a billionaire. That's no longer true. Most recent investment of net worth was £800 million. More than a quarter of that amount has already been sunk into NUFC. so what? So there isn't any cash. Yes there is. According to you Ashley still has £600m in the bank. Fucking hell, do you actually think about what you write or do you just go blind and let God do his thing?

Enlighten me, why haven?t we splashed the cash? There isn't any cash. Yes there is, Ashley is a billionaire.

Think small, you ARE small. If clubs with smaller attendances can do it, a LOT less money coming in, then we should be able to. Simple solution to a simple problem.

would love him here. Me too, would be amazing. Was the first person we should have turned to when keegan left. we would be in a completely different situation right now if he had been brought in. Owen would more than likely have re-signed, more players would be interested in joining us and might well have already done that. Given our current situation he would be a great choice to take over in the summer, there will be few better options available. He'd of been my 3rd choice behind Deschamps and Zico. Deschamps becasue he's young talented knows Wise and will have a good grasp of the market, and Zico becasue he's used to working in this type of set up, has a decent coaching record and is a huge name in the game both like playing attacking football.

A few years? How long has it taken Wenger to be able to do that? But Tooj, if you imagine Wenger built that from the ground up, he built there academy, worked on their methods, what was best, what worked, what didn't. We learn from his mistakes. A good academy takes 3-5 years to apply I would say. When you consider we already have some talent in the shape of Baheng, Kadar, Soderberg, Zamblera, as well as Vukic. We are not at the bottom of the ladder. He also had quite a good first team as well btw. Then it's not just that, it's building a culture as well, having good coaches, players not being afraid to make the step up. As well as all this, we go through the same thing each year with how amazing the Arsenal youth set up is, has been occurring for a good few years now, but lets actually look at their current first team (if fit), off the top of my head: Almunia (bought), Sagna (bought), Gallas (bought), Toure (bought) / Silvestre (bought), Clichy (youth), Fabregas (youth), Nasri (bought), Rosicky (bought), Walcott (bought), Van Persie (bought), Adebayor (bought). Whilst Fabregas and Clichy are fucking class, they came through 3 years ago... Despite the current crop being showered with praise, as the teams in previous years were, loads of these players are not making the step up. The likes of Diaby, Senderos, Song, Denilson, Eboue and Bendtner have all looked far from world beaters when they have been used. This is the top current academy that has been operating its policy since Wenger came in over ten years ago. We are a club in crisis, where (from the outside) we appear to have no idea who is running what at the club, a manager who most of us assumed dead prior to his appointment and an owner / chairman / director of football despised by the majority, with a very precarious league position. Us signing a load of promising young players will more than likely end just the same way as when we signed the star players, with their careers being pretty fucked as a result, it will just be cheaper. The club needs to be fixed from the top down, with a structure that is clear and a first team squad the priority, then we can start building on the youth side of things extensively. What we are doing is ass about face. The double winning Arsenal side in 1998 wasn't exactly full of local / youth players brought in by Wenger, it was a quality team full of fucking great players, this gave them the platform to attract the best youth in the world and build the academy they have. We have very little chance of competing whilst the first team is a shambles. They may not be world beaters but they are excellent finacial supplemnts should the club need it, lookinga those 6 players its fair to say that should they not make it at Arsenal, they'd make it somewhere else, they'd also cost a fair bit my guess would be £30-40m for that lot. Theres the real value in youth, its win win. But that was my point, they were the players produced at the best academy in the Prem, which has been set up for years and had the backing of a premiership winning first team... We do not have the draw they do and i would say it was very naive to say, after a year and a bit of the Ashley regime (and less than a year of wise and co) that we have a better scouting network, our coaching is not of the same standard and we are generally inferior in so many other aspects it's untrue... It stands to reason that what we produce will be far less talented than what they do, unless we put ourselves in the position, through our management, structure, ownership and league position, to do so. We have to fix the immediate problems before providing a long term solution.

Not relative to turnover. The debt to turnover ratios look about the same to me. You're right yes about the same, but slightly worse. I should revise what I said to "more gloomy" rather than "much more gloomy". The point is though if you advocate the prudent approach now, you must surely also say we should have taken the prudent approach back then too, and hence are happy to almost certainly have given up the achievements of 01-04 for the sake of more assured financial security. Does it not occur to you that this "prudent" approach is a reaction to the mismanagement of the past? Its a solution to a very real problem which wasnt the case back then when we did have source of finance.

1997, pre stadium extension. I'm talking about 2000-1 What does that matter? It was used to subsidise the business in the future, since Mcbeth predicted all of our money troubles a few years back perhaps we should look up some of his old posts as he always claimed the club was ran well up until 2003. EDIT - Funnily enough he seems to think that the club had money in the bank back in 2003 compared to a £20 million overdraft 4 years later, strange that would be the case if we were much worse off back in 2001 than we are now. http://www.newcastle-online.org/nufcforum/index.php/topic,45529.msg1028490.html#msg1028490 Out of interest UV, if Ashley wasn't here and Shepherd and Hall was which one of them do you think would guarantee on financing us so that we could carry on without slipping into administration which is what the accountants on here claim Ashley has done? To be fair, if Shepherd and Hall were still here the the buyout clause wouldnt be triggered and they wouldnt have to pay off some of the debt straight away, we'd still be losing lots in interest but i imaginethe general consensu would be that Sheherd would find some finance from somewhere and gamble one more time with Allardyce. Not sure how viable that would be but either way he'd be driving the club into more debt shoudl Allardyce not get to the CL straight away...

A few years? How long has it taken Wenger to be able to do that? But Tooj, if you imagine Wenger built that from the ground up, he built there academy, worked on their methods, what was best, what worked, what didn't. We learn from his mistakes. A good academy takes 3-5 years to apply I would say. When you consider we already have some talent in the shape of Baheng, Kadar, Soderberg, Zamblera, as well as Vukic. We are not at the bottom of the ladder. He also had quite a good first team as well btw. Then it's not just that, it's building a culture as well, having good coaches, players not being afraid to make the step up. As well as all this, we go through the same thing each year with how amazing the Arsenal youth set up is, has been occurring for a good few years now, but lets actually look at their current first team (if fit), off the top of my head: Almunia (bought), Sagna (bought), Gallas (bought), Toure (bought) / Silvestre (bought), Clichy (youth), Fabregas (youth), Nasri (bought), Rosicky (bought), Walcott (bought), Van Persie (bought), Adebayor (bought). Whilst Fabregas and Clichy are fucking class, they came through 3 years ago... Despite the current crop being showered with praise, as the teams in previous years were, loads of these players are not making the step up. The likes of Diaby, Senderos, Song, Denilson, Eboue and Bendtner have all looked far from world beaters when they have been used. This is the top current academy that has been operating its policy since Wenger came in over ten years ago. We are a club in crisis, where (from the outside) we appear to have no idea who is running what at the club, a manager who most of us assumed dead prior to his appointment and an owner / chairman / director of football despised by the majority, with a very precarious league position. Us signing a load of promising young players will more than likely end just the same way as when we signed the star players, with their careers being pretty fucked as a result, it will just be cheaper. The club needs to be fixed from the top down, with a structure that is clear and a first team squad the priority, then we can start building on the youth side of things extensively. What we are doing is ass about face. The double winning Arsenal side in 1998 wasn't exactly full of local / youth players brought in by Wenger, it was a quality team full of fucking great players, this gave them the platform to attract the best youth in the world and build the academy they have. We have very little chance of competing whilst the first team is a shambles. They may not be world beaters but they are excellent finacial supplemnts should the club need it, lookinga those 6 players its fair to say that should they not make it at Arsenal, they'd make it somewhere else, they'd also cost a fair bit my guess would be £30-40m for that lot. Theres the real value in youth, its win win.

Part of me would love to be taken over by stupidly rich billionaires who;d will us to get at the top in one season, but otherpart says that id love to see us being built up from the bottom to the top over a period of years. I wonder if its more satifying to win being an Arsenal fan or more satifying winning being a Chelsea fan? Been pointed out many times before, but football is no longer about the football, its about money.

It's quite obvious what they (as in people who aren't you or NE5, that said your posts seem to mesh together anyway) are getting at, and it's completely fair and doesn't take much or anything away from their criticism of Ashley. Hindsight. Almost on a par with mandiarse.....but not quite. You show me one poster who said at the time we were playing in the san siro etc that we shouldn't have bought those players that took us there rather than run a solvent business ? You will also find the same posters, for the most part, frothing over at the fat b****** for not buying more players and "splashing the cash" whenever we lost a game or two. i'll show you plenty who said it when we bought luque etc. as i've already posted the position we were in then is vastly different to the position fred left us in......i'll spell it out for you. borrowing money when you have small debts and a sustaining business plan is ok, in some circumstances it is even preferable to raising cash in other ways. borrowing year on year whan you have very high debt to turnover and have no business plan excepet to hope you become succesful is mindless. why do you constantly cherry pick the highpoints and ignore the position we were left in ? I'm not talking about Luque, you are cherry picking a bad signing as being indicative of the clubs whole philisophy. In actual fact, most people said that Luque was a good player/should have a chance. Not too many people agreed with me when I said that he was s**** the first time I saw him. You have to accept that some players don;t work , or are poor buys, but you can't accept this in the same way as you also completely unrealistically can't accept that we don't appoint the right manager every time. In fact, in the last 4 years ie since Bobby Robson, only 5 clubs have had trophy winning managers. Do you still think everybody apart from us has appointed good managers in the last 4 years ? Why do you ignore the previous 12 years before that ? Fact is, as I've told you, they have been held accountable, they have gone, are you happy with the outcome or not ? no. what i was pointing out was the timing, it came at a time when we weren't doing well and as many pointed out was vastly overpriced. i do not ignore the previous 12 years.you know this,i've said they done well but they stopped doing well and didn't seem to me and others as if they were going to turn it round. now again...i've asked you a few times and am yet to receive an answer......if you keep building debts year on year while being unsuccesful on the field and off...do you keep on going with that tactic until the banks call a halt ? am i happy with the outcome.....could've been better but i'd rather what we have than what i envisage would have happened had it not changed. you wanted rid of a board who backed their managers and had ambition, and they have been replaced by someone who won't back his managers. A good manager, backed by his board, will turn the club around, a good manager not backed by his board will move on and so you have no hope. It isn't "tactic", its having someone with the outlook to succeed, getting rid of them for someone who doesn't back their managers is like getting rid of a good goalscorer just because he has a bad run and replacing him with someone who will never be as prolific. No sense. As you have said, the change has been made, and thats what we have got. Maybe next time, people will appreciate when we have a good board of directors, but I doubt it. We wouldn't have gone into administration, but we certainly could if we are relegated and the crowds dive to what they did for years before 1992. As they nearly did. But nobody above the hard core 15-20000 supporters really cared. As I said to fredbob, what is the way forward ? Do you think its cost cutting, relegation, and half the crowds as a result ? No, i asked you what the way forward is - all i got was "back my manager" and not much else.

Don't think the comparison is quite fair tbh. I'm certain our wages were less than 50% of turnover until near the end of SBRs reign, would have been down around 45% then, rather than the 65%ish that seems to have been mentioned in this thread. I think our financial situation is worse than it was back then, and whilst the need for investment in the first team is abundently clear, I think it will be slightly harder to turn around than it was last time (and it took a couple of years then, too). Another huge dissimilarity is that then we had a world class manager, who knew the game inside out, had contacts in most major football playing nations in the world and was someone you could trust with money, even if he did get the odd one wrong. He was also afforded a fair amount of time before he did get it right. He also spent his first couple of seasons selling and buying to get the wage bill down and balance the books. We also had assets to borrow money against.