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.

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?

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......

That didn't apply to Mike Hooper did it ? Chance after chance after.... Missed the whole point didn't you ? Great manager that lost it in the end, due to age, nothing else. Should have been moved upstairs though And considering what that pillock Shepherd brought in, we should have persevered with him even then ! How come ages wasnt an issue when he got us to 3rd places? We drop 2 places having not been backed and admittedly have a few discplinary problems and all of a sudden he's too old and has "lost it" i dont get that view. Obviosuly we should of been planning ahead and looking for life after SBR but there is no way people should be justifying his sacking with tripe like "he lost it" , he should of been kept on for one more year at least.

Yep, i agree we shouldnt of been struggling as much as we did, but isnt that the whole beauty of the game, if it was as easy as an equation as that,football wouldnt be as entertaining as it is. Its difficult to make a good comparison from today and then, because during our 2 year stint in the CL we prevented our rival ie liverpool from getting the money to make the advancements they have now, ie 4 years of solid CL qualification. Look at Liverpool now, despite having all the finance from there recent run in the CL competitio, if they spent nothing this summer do you they would still find it easy to attain 4th? Was it only the 32nd game of the season when 4th place looked to be tied up, that isnt dominance to me. I dont deny that it was a poor season, but you have to look at the facts and despite the fact we had such a shitty season (with a good UEFA cup run) we still came 5th. The likes of Villa and Everton would never be able to have a season like ours then and still have 5th places tied up like we did. The crux of my point is that i still believe SBR should of had another season and that we as a club are sufffering from sacking SBR rather than the genreally excepted consensus that we're suffering because of Souness. It was the manner and circumstances of the sacking that lead the job to be unteneable in my opinion.

Cant contemplate KK failing,,,,,, it dosent compute,,, its never happend,, EVER I like your optimism, personally i dont think it will be a failureif we get a 7-9th place finish providing the football is good and theres a marked improvement, it took SBR 2 seasons to get us moving! Hopefully though we dont get a rejection riddled summer and we take off as a club, i can see us taking a lot of points off the big 4 next season.

What will your feelings be if we achieve a mid table finish out of interest?

Spurs have a 2-3 year head start on us and a more reknowned manager and a very good squad, in a better position to attract a better claibre of player than us and i think theteam in the best situation to take advantage of the politics and turmoil in the liverpool boardroom. Benitiez is an excellent manager but is is he good enough to motivate his players through another season of turmoil and still cemenet that 4th place? Im not sure, they say the top 4 places are cemented but is was something like the 32nd game until it was set in stone.

4th Spurs 5th Liverpool 6th Villa 7th Everton 8th Man City 9th Newcastle 10th Portsmouth 11th Blackburn Think spurs and villa are really the only 2 teams outiside the top 4 who are completely set up for an assault on the top 4 with Spurs dislodging Liverpool in my opinion. Villa wont quite make it into the top 4 because i think they wont have the mentality to maintain it throughout the entire season, in my opinion anyway. Porstmouth and Blackburn wont have the means to take advantage of the advantage they have over us currently but the other teams who are in a position of strength. Think next season will be a good season with some good results but i dont think it'll be until after next season when the new set up will start working perfectly and our reputation gets raised hopefully attracting the player we truly need to suceed.

No - are you really a Gimp ? Those who continue to live in the past about SBR are welcome to their dreamworld fantasies ; As for Ferguson, you can bet that he WON'T be at OT when he is 70 - the Man U Board will ensure that the succession is done WHEN IT SHOULD BE, which is something NUFC are not reknowned for .. Ferguson himself won't want to do that, although I DO expect him to move upstairs at OT. Too many sacred cows held by some fans on this board - just because SBR was from the NE, people think he is above criticism - wrong, and although I am quite prepared to give him credit for a job well done, I am also prepared to acknowledge his faults ; and he DID have them. As I said before, no room for sentiment in Football - I think you'll find that under Ashley & Mort, this will happen less & less at NUFC so you had better get used to it... It's thefact that he was 70 years old that seems to be the sticking point here, i can understand that if he was struggling with the team but he wasnt, he was having a few problems discipline wise, i just cant believe that someone would put so much empthasis on the fact that he's 70 year old. I dont understand where you think theres sentiment in this when he was doing well for us. Sentiment gets thrown right out the window when the person its aimed at has valid reasons for it to be discarded. I dont disgaree with you when you say that we needed to plan for SBR eventual retirement, sacking, resignation but at that point at time there was absolutely no footballing reason to sack him, if the board were worried about his age then why werent they looking for a top class manager a) when he was 69 or b) when they decided to announce to the world before SBR that he wasnt to stay on.

To be honest, id have him as my number one, pretty ridiculous that he's only the 3rd.

So whether i like it or not, it all comes down to his age? Irrespective of the quality of the manager, or the success of his career or even the success of his career at his current club, he was too old to turn things around and that is a fact for you? So there isnt a single part of you that thinks that maybe, just maybe he would of turned it around the next season and he didnt deserve the chance to do so? He was destined to fail because he was old? I dont buy that im afraid, he was 69 when he got us to 3rd. Look at Ferguson, how old is he now? Im not comparing the 2 as managers but im just saying that in this case age doesnt even become to be an issue. Maybe that was a poor example. I also dont think it was all about ego, he knew that he had a poor season, despite finihsing 5th, in hindsight he never directly blamed the chairman of no backing after the 3rd place finish if it was all about ego then i cant see why he'd take responsibility, in my opinion, it was all having the poor season and not been given the oppurtunity (which he deserved in my opinion) to turn it around, who's to say that he wouldnt of shipped some of the problem players? Its a moot point but i think that his dismay doesnt come from the fact that he was sacked when he in his eyes and ego had done a great job, but because he was sacked without being given an oppurtunity to turn it around. It seemed we got to a point where people thought that SBR was lucky to have Nufc rather than Nufc being lucky to have SBR. Look at where he found us and where he left us, there is absolutley no way that that point of view is valid when you look at the successful clubs around us.

Hate Chelsea way more than Man U, Chelsea are a fucking huge club and they woldnt be if it wasnt because of Abramovich, hate the fact they've come so far so quickly and i hate all these Chelsea fans that have come out the woodwork like maggots. At least Man U have built it from the bottom to the top.