fredbob

I agree with this. He didn't cost of a penny, was not one of our higher paid players. You can't fault his desire and work ethic but clearly not of the required standard for NUFC. I wish him luck and hope he has a long career, I can see him doing what Brian Tinnion did when he left us, he carved a very successful career for himself at the lower level. Carr is a competely different story, one of Robson poorer decisions IMO. This should free some room in the salary budget which is a good thing. As for Triosi, I think there comes a time when you have to cut a younger player when they haven't progressed, I think this season he should have been pushing harder for a first team place but instead he's seen the likes of Lua Lua move ahead of him. Again cost of us nothing and wish him all the best. To be fair to SBR, he actually wanted Miguel that portugese RB but the chariman thoguth differently. A swap deal with Viana was mentioned wasn't it? During Euro 2004? Aye, that rings a bell, Viana was still highly rated back in Portugal at that ime as well. Think it was just before 2004, cos that was the summer that Chelsea went gung ho with their money...siging Ferraira and Carvahllo...

I agree with this. He didn't cost of a penny, was not one of our higher paid players. You can't fault his desire and work ethic but clearly not of the required standard for NUFC. I wish him luck and hope he has a long career, I can see him doing what Brian Tinnion did when he left us, he carved a very successful career for himself at the lower level. Carr is a competely different story, one of Robson poorer decisions IMO. This should free some room in the salary budget which is a good thing. As for Triosi, I think there comes a time when you have to cut a younger player when they haven't progressed, I think this season he should have been pushing harder for a first team place but instead he's seen the likes of Lua Lua move ahead of him. Again cost of us nothing and wish him all the best. To be fair to SBR, he actually wanted Miguel that portugese RB but the chariman thoguth differently.

I think it would be a travesty. The best youth player to come through in how long? I can't remember the last player who is as competent at this age as he is. We need to stick with him, its cost us nothing and he clearly has something and will only get better in a settled team. I don't want to go through this again but in terms of his education he's been screwed over by this club from day dot, anyone can surly see that and the problems it brings with him. He's only one man, he cannot change a match by himself even though he wants too, he needs the senior players to take responsibility and help him through the early years, shame he's never had that or we'd be seeing a more complete player than what we've got. Id like to see him come through and be the player i thought he would be when he first started, but its come to the point now for me that he hasn't shown any improvement whatsoever from those first few appearences, he's literally hit a plateau, thoses "mistakes that he needed to iron out" as a youngster are still those "mistakes that every top class defender apprently makes". I dont understand this the view that he needs someone with him, surely he should be able to defend whatever comes his way, that is his job after all, it shouldnt hide the many number of individual mistakes he makes. The way i see it is that when we were struggling as a team, and the pressure was on and Faye appeared to be able to put in a good shift and come out looking ok, whereas Taylor didnt, he seemed to struggle and thats a true test of a players ability, its only now when the pressure has been realesed and he hasnt had to defend as much has he started to look a good dfender - isnt that just too much of a coincidence?

See i dont understand this, in your words Taylor is the marginally better defender than Faye yet Faye isnt classified as a 'genuinely good defender' so what does that make Taylor and why after 100 odd games for Newcastle should he be the one who should have the benefit of a 'genuinely good defender' at his side? Surely you are in essence actually saying that both arent good enough and need to be replaced. It looks to me like another example of Taylor getting favourable 'treatment'.

Im surprised at the amount of Faye bashing out there, taking nothing away from Taylor cos he played well today but what specifically has Faye done so wrong? Its almost as though people feel the need to criticise him in order to make Taylor sound better. Why is that?

Thats fair enough but theres 2 things with that, a) i think it'd only take one club who can take advantage of being in the CLfor a season to destabilisie the whole thing, a team such as us or Villa or Spurs, i dont think Everton would be as equppied to make the advantage count respectively speaking and b) he does intimate that whatever we spend the teams above us could spend and get better qwuality, that seems like a bit of a long term view., sort of a vicious circle. Personally happen to thnk the quotes a bit of a bluff, ive said it before that i think the season after next will be the breakthrought season for us and id be ecstatic next season for a top 8 finish which i think is entirely possible. KK is just letting everyone know that we musn't underestimate the challenge. You must learn your enemies song before you can beat him. He seemed pensive rather than down for me anyway. He won't be happy with top 6 it just isn't him.............. Precisely, theres an obvious dose of relaism with what he's said, but i dont for one second beleive that he thinks the top4 is inpentrable and i dont think he'd be happy to be the nearly rans, he stills sees this club as being the 5th biggest and i just genuinely cant belive that he beleives theres that much of a gap between 5th place and liverpoool, if anything i think its tiny.

Thats fair enough but theres 2 things with that, a) i think it'd only take one club who can take advantage of being in the CLfor a season to destabilisie the whole thing, a team such as us or Villa or Spurs, i dont think Everton would be as equppied to make the advantage count respectively speaking and b) he does intimate that whatever we spend the teams above us could spend and get better qwuality, that seems like a bit of a long term view., sort of a vicious circle. Personally happen to thnk the quotes a bit of a bluff, ive said it before that i think the season after next will be the breakthrought season for us and id be ecstatic next season for a top 8 finish which i think is entirely possible.

Yes, you are. Really? So everyone thinks the top4 will stay that way for the forseeable future? No one can see a team getting into the top4 ever? What a load of bollocks. The top 4 can be breached as quickly as next year if you ask me. Well no one has jumped to agree with you Then i must be the only one....

Yes, you are. Really? So everyone thinks the top4 will stay that way for the forseeable future? No one can see a team getting into the top4 ever? What a load of bollocks. The top 4 can be breached as quickly as next year if you ask me. Did KK say that? No, he said it was impossible, talking in the context of next season I WILL ADD. Knackers! Hold on, the clip i saw had some pretty generic comments saying it was impossible to breach the top4 cos the gap is already huge and whatever we spend they'll spend as well and get better players for it. That seems more forthright than just next season....or was his whole post match interview sepcifically about next season???

Yes, you are. Really? So everyone thinks the top4 will stay that way for the forseeable future? No one can see a team getting into the top4 ever? What a load of bollocks. The top 4 can be breached as quickly as next year if you ask me.

Am I the only one who disagrees with Keegan and think a team achieving a top4 finish is entirely viable? It would take one good season from a team such as Villa or Spurs or even us to break the top 4, i think its entirely possible if im honest, Liverpool are by no means dominant in 4th position, with CL on there side players will definitely want to come and that would set the whells in motion if you ask me.

Ok, so i got that he's saying the gap between us and them is near imporssible to breach but i still disagree, i think it's only gonna take one of the clubs to have a great season to knock Liverpool off that perch and the landscape will change massively.

He's gotta be bluffing. Maybe its in response to losing out to Spurs transfer fee wise, i.e our financial strength wont lead us to be extornioed because we have little to spend...

This wont end well.

Fancy elaborating? Wheres this come from? Does he mean that money wont make a great deal of difference this summer or what?

Its the way he plays against poor teams that im more worried about....i wouldnt count my chicken yet but yes he has been good today, fair play to him. We havent lost today to poor defending just lost down to pure quality of the opposition, its been a case of 2 extra bits of quality which have made all the difference. He's been good for several games now. But has that been down to him stepping up his game, or the team not having to defend as much...likei say, he had to defend today and defended well but ill still have reservations about him. Ill wait till he domintates a forward like Faye before i truly pass judgment on his ability.

Its the way he plays against poor teams that im more worried about....i wouldnt count my chicken yet but yes he has been good today, fair play to him. We havent lost today to poor defending just lost down to pure quality of the opposition, its been a case of 2 extra bits of quality which have made all the difference.

Anyone know if that's actually what he wrote? Not quite sure if that's quite the kind of thing I'd want to be advertising, true or not. Why? Whats your views on that bit? Personally id rather that people know we were offering the cash and werent being penny pinchers and that we were doing as much as we could to sign the players. Id rather he said that then either not mention it or leave it open to speculation for the fans the scrutinize in a way they no doubt would of. The reason I don't think it's a very good idea to say things like that is because the next time we're negotiating with a player and they say: "Well Newcastle isn't exactly London, is it and you've not got European football either, so why should I sign for you?", what's he going to say: "Well, yeah, I guess you're right."!?! I know that's not what he's saying there, but by repeating it and telling everyone that players have rejected us in the past because of it, gives it a legitimacy that it shouldn't be getting, least of all from our own chairman. No big deal I here you say, but for me, for the chairman of a football club to be saying that his own club is so unattractive, that players have rejected us despite being offered more money than our rivals were offering them is seriously naive. To do so before the transfer window has even opened and when we are/will be hopefully negotiating with other players who might be concerned about the same things - and will certainly be after more money - smacks of stupidity. Now don't get me wrong, I like Mort and I think he's done a good job, I also appreciate his honest approach, but there's a time and a place for statements like that and this wasn't it. He should have waited until the end of the window, when potential signings would have had until at least January to forget about it and the club would have had the same period to put some of the issues to bed. Yeh, i can see what you're saying, and to a degree it makes sense but i dont think he's offering the air of legitimacy to the fact that Spurs are more attrative than us, the bottom line really is that they are and no matter what kind of spin you put on it they are in a better position than us. By not commenting on the transfer i think he''d be leaving the interpretation to the media and to the cynical fans, which i personally wouldnt recommend, by saying this, to me he's just spelling out exactly what everyone knows. We tried, we played our strongest card but it wasnt quite good enough and there isnt really a great deal we can do about that....its sad but thats the position we are in at the moment.

Happy with that so far, Owen's been quiet and there hasnt been a great deal of width from our midfilders in the final third but we've defended well, Taylor and Faye have been good, Butts defended well but his distribution is worse than poor. Martins has been excellent, a little selfish at times but still very dangerous on the coutner.

Anyone know if that's actually what he wrote? Not quite sure if that's quite the kind of thing I'd want to be advertising, true or not. Why? Whats your views on that bit? Personally id rather that people know we were offering the cash and werent being penny pinchers and that we were doing as much as we could to sign the players. Id rather he said that then either not mention it or leave it open to speculation for the fans the scrutinize in a way they no doubt would of.

So you are saying SBR wouldnt of been able to compete with the other teams in hindsight and we should of taken the initative and appointed a manager who would be able to compete with those, the sad thing with that with hindsight is that shepherd never looked abroad, FULL STOP. Even after SBR sacking he was courting names such as Bruce, Allardyce even O'Leary was bandied around. The point for me, is that SBR didnt need replacing not yet anyway, not for footballing reason, he hadnt given us any major footballing reason to sck him, he had one season where we struggled and we still finsihed 5th , that is the bottom line irrespective of how much we struggled, how many points we got, how many times we had to come from behnd, at the end of the day if we end the season in 'x' position thats the position we deserve, theres no if's or buts about it. Personally i think if he was given the finances that were withdrawn from him he would quite easily of competed with Benitez, Jol etc. If you agree with that, i see no other argument, the only bit i agree with you is that maybe just maybe we should of been looking ahead, however our chairman might not of had the initative to of gone abroad where the managerial talent is streaks ahead. All his appointments would suggest this. My point, therefore is that SBR needed a footballing reason to be sacked and he didnt get one, as far as im concerend if he was in good health and approaching 100 yet still was producing the goods for us i still would of been non plussed if he was around.

We only needed to turn draws in to wins to have made that a very good season and we almost did finish 4th. Only bringing in Bowyer shouldn't be under-estimated, especially after the CL disappointment. As for that terrible season, I'd swap it with any we've had since. Precisely, we played poorly pretty much throughout the entire season and struggled with turning draws into wins, and we only just lost out on 4th places in something like the 35th/36th game at Southampton? Imagine if SBR was given the finance to put in some fresh impetus and some competition for places for the likes of Bellamy or Dyer, would we still of been complaining about discipline if those 2 especially werent our only option? The sad thing, is that our eyes got too big for our stomachs and we we didnt realise that in actual fact we would prbably have started the next season as one of the favourites for the UEFA cup....how times have changed. Too old...... it scares me that some can't see the difference in how we palyed that season and the season before. It scares me that some people still see a 5th place finish as reasonable justification for a sacking. Yet happily accept that if Allardyce achieved the same feat with even worse football he'd be very well recieved. Theres a bit of a contradiction there somewhere.... No one is saying the football was good, but its a measure of how good we were as a team that our football was so poor yet we still comfortably achieved a top 5 finish, Manu U, Liverpool even Arsenal have had poor seasons, Liverpool especially who have been perennial underachievers for a good part of a decade yet have only had 2 mangers in the same time we've had 6. If Villa or Everton or Porstmouth had a season the same standard as our do you think they'd have 5th place comfortably tied up like we did? Agree to disagree i suppose... IIRC, it was only a 93rd minute equaliser in the 37th game of the season that got us 5th spot that season...so I'd hardly say we had it comfortably tied up would you? Fair enough, we got to 5th place on goal difference, but we were fighting with Liverpool only for 4th place for a long time, and had to scrape 5th off the back of some poor performances, but that still doesnt exactly help your argument much. We had a very poor season, does that mean he deserved to go, nope, not in my opinion, he should of been given one more chance, if we fell back more then maybe it was time to start looking, but what if he succeeded and got us back in CL? What if he was given more that £0 to improve on his previous finish, imagine what he could of done with £50m sitting in his pocket?? Are you still actually telling me it was the correct decision to get rid of him because he was old and we had one poor season?

Zarate looks better and better everytime i see him, he's definitely a player that should be on our radar, Birmingham going down and i cant see why we dont have a decent chance with him. Not exactly being heavily linked with the big clubs and wasnt on the radar of big clubs when he first went to Birmingham.

We only needed to turn draws in to wins to have made that a very good season and we almost did finish 4th. Only bringing in Bowyer shouldn't be under-estimated, especially after the CL disappointment. As for that terrible season, I'd swap it with any we've had since. Precisely, we played poorly pretty much throughout the entire season and struggled with turning draws into wins, and we only just lost out on 4th places in something like the 35th/36th game at Southampton? Imagine if SBR was given the finance to put in some fresh impetus and some competition for places for the likes of Bellamy or Dyer, would we still of been complaining about discipline if those 2 especially werent our only option? The sad thing, is that our eyes got too big for our stomachs and we we didnt realise that in actual fact we would prbably have started the next season as one of the favourites for the UEFA cup....how times have changed. Too old...... it scares me that some can't see the difference in how we palyed that season and the season before. It scares me that some people still see a 5th place finish as reasonable justification for a sacking. Yet happily accept that if Allardyce achieved the same feat with even worse football he'd be very well recieved. Theres a bit of a contradiction there somewhere.... No one is saying the football was good, but its a measure of how good we were as a team that our football was so poor yet we still comfortably achieved a top 5 finish, Manu U, Liverpool even Arsenal have had poor seasons, Liverpool especially who have been perennial underachievers for a good part of a decade yet have only had 2 mangers in the same time we've had 6. If Villa or Everton or Porstmouth had a season the same standard as our do you think they'd have 5th place comfortably tied up like we did? Agree to disagree i suppose...

We only needed to turn draws in to wins to have made that a very good season and we almost did finish 4th. Only bringing in Bowyer shouldn't be under-estimated, especially after the CL disappointment. As for that terrible season, I'd swap it with any we've had since. Precisely, we played poorly pretty much throughout the entire season and struggled with turning draws into wins, and we only just lost out on 4th places in something like the 35th/36th game at Southampton? Imagine if SBR was given the finance to put in some fresh impetus and some competition for places for the likes of Bellamy or Dyer, would we still of been complaining about discipline if those 2 especially werent our only option? The sad thing, is that our eyes got too big for our stomachs and we we didnt realise that in actual fact we would prbably have started the next season as one of the favourites for the UEFA cup....how times have changed. Too old......