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Carroll would have been due a 'loyalty bonus' if he was transferred without officially requesting it. So, It seems like NUFC have said we will sell you for £35 million net. Either Liverpool can offer that + your bonus -something like 40 million- or you can put in a transfer request and forgo it. Given that he increases his wages and gets various other benefits from the deal, Carroll agrees to submit an official request. Both parties 'win'.

I can understand this viewpoint but when Sunderland sold Bent I can remember saying that a cold hard look at it would suggest that Sunderland had sold him at his optimum value and personally I felt he was on a downward spiral at Sunderland anyway. While Carroll is a different case there was always a part of me that wondered if he didn't continue in this vein next season we would never get this sort of money for him again. Unfortunately to keep players when the big clubs come calling will mean smashing our wage structure which we obviously aren't prepared to do yet. This round of transfer activity is driven by Chelsea's willingness to spend big before the impact of the finical fair play rules. There's no guarantee that once the roundabout stops spinning now, anyone will be driving it with such big investments in the future.

If football means more than money or entertainment, what aspect of this excess was Andy Carroll the avatar of? Good times in Bambu?

Like the dispute with Barton when we got him http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/newcastle-pay-barton-loyalty-fee-to-complete-deal-453152.html

from danwalkerbbc So why was a £35m bid rejected then.. It wasnt. They released that we rejected their 2nd offer & gave no details on what that was, we may well have accepted a 3rd by that point & been calming a backlash. Its common sense. Common sense?, really? Its common sense to say that we hadn't rejected a bid, because we probably, maybe, perhaps had accepted a third bid, so Carroll then asked to leave instead of just leaving and picking up his part of the transfer? That's common sense now? You've tangled up your own thoughts there. Im purely saying that we simply released that we'd turned down a 2nd offer. The idea that this meant a deal was off the table or hadnt already been agreed since that point is all assumptions. David craig was making a point of saying Ashley was resisting selling as much as he could, as if he was "trying his best" & a further way to back this up would be to leak that we'd turned down 2 offers in a row. This purely suggests that we were trying hard to keep him, which is what you're being lead to think. The fact that we made no attempt to take any deal off the table & were quiet all day suggests the opposite. Still no explanation as to why he handed in a transfer request. Does it not maker more sense that we actually DID reject the bids, Caroll decides he wants a payrise - hands in a transfer request, leaving little option but to accept bid? Without an official transfer request Carroll would get a cut of the transfer fee. If he wanted to go, NUFC will have only sanctioned it if he put in a request and relinquished this cut. It's pretty simple.

Putting in a transfer request is fairly usual in deals like this, Carroll's contract probably states that if he was sold without requesting it a sizable portion of the fee would go to him. As he will be certainly looking at a wage increase with this new deal anyway, his putting in a transfer request would be a formality to smooth over any objections from NUFC to him getting a cut of sale money and to help the deal go through. £35 million is a lot of money even now, but after the financial fair play rules come in a a couple of years it could look like a huge sum. If there is going to be a deflation in fees, the size of this could well be something people look back on with wonder. Or, of course, his potential might be not be fulfilled, and he is regarded as F. Jeffers Mk2 anyway.

WBA - Blackpool 0-2, 1-2, 1-3 St Pauli - Freiburg 0-1, 1-3, 2-3 And a bit more hopeless 0-0 fun: Wolfsburg - Bayern, Wigan - Fulham, Man City - Wolves, Hull - Barnsley @ 20,000 - 1

Almeria 1 - 2 Deportivo and 0 - 0 in the Real - Athletico game. Dont think the latter is likely, but 30-1 is good value for any game to be goalless, never mind a first leg cup tie.

Blackpool to win, 2-0, 2-1, and 3-1 scorelines covered. Torres had better not come good tonight.

West Ham - Brimingham: Draw and also correct score bets on 1-1, 1-2 and 2-2

Favourite footballers: 5 Maurizio Ganz 4 Sinisa Mihajlovic 3 Capi (Jesus Capitan) 2 Mehmet Scholl (with additional respect for his radio show) 1 Temuri Ketsbaia Honourable mentions: Igor Dobrovolski, Alessandro Melli, Stephane Chapuisat.

Just to waste many man hours, here's The Spoiler's x-mas quiz. Questions ■1. Four players have scored hat-tricks for three different Premier League clubs - name them ■2. Who was the first non-British manager to win the FA Cup? ■3. Which player has played in a Manchester derby, Merseyside derby, North East derby and North London derby? ■4. Which pundit was sacked after giving his world cup tickets to a bunch of scantily clad, beer swigging Dutch women? ■5. Who was sacked as Leicester City boss in October after less than three months in charge? ■6. Who was the first Premier League manager to be sacked this season? ■7. Who was forced to resign as leader of Englands flawless 2018 bid after being stung by the Mail on Sunday? ■8. What nationality was the referee who didnt give Frank Lampards goal against Germany that definitely would have lead to England winning? ■9. How many goals were scored in FA Cup finals at the Millennium stadium? (90 minutes only) ■10. Who is the only player to have scored in a Manchester, Merseyside and Glasgow Derby? ■11. Name five teams beginning with C that have won the FA Cup. ■12. Which is the only English football league ground to have a pub on every corner? ■13. Name the Premier League manager credited with the fastest goal in an FA Cup final and after how many seconds was it scored? ■14. Who is the ex-Barcelona player who has appeared on Top of the Pops twice on the same night? ■15. Who is the footballer once brought on in an international to replace his dad? ■16. Which club held the National Football Museum before it transferred to Manchester this year? ■17. Arsenal have played under four different names, name the other three. ■18. Who was the only English-born player in Liverpools 1986 FA Cup winning team? ■19. Of which country are Bate Borisov the reigning league champions? ■20. Who are currently top of the Bundesliga? ■21. Who is currently the top scorer in League One this season? ■22. Who were the only League Two team to reach the third round of this seasons Carling Cup? ■23. In which season were West Ham, West Brom and Sunderland relegated from the Premier League? ■24. How many goals did Barcelona scored in their first 16 league games this season? Match the football-star-turned-pop-star to the song: ■25. Outstanding ■26. Head over Heels in Love ■27. Do the Right Thing Back to normal questions ■28. Which footballer rates Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone as his favourite book? ■29. Which team features in the documentary Once in a Lifetime? ■30. Which famous footballer starred alongside Robert Duvall in A Shot at Glory?

Good points. I agree with your analysis if Ashley has an absolute ambition for the club. What worries me is that it is relative. I think that what he wants is to perform better than he is expected to do, and this level downsizes if the club does. Losing a few of the big wage players if fewer people attend games just lowers his objectives. In his tenure here he has said very little about his goals for the club. Most of the information about future objectives has been about models that they want to emulate (variously Arsenal, Villa and now, laughably, Barcelona) rather than fixed ambitions for the club (Europe, a cup, whatever). The danger is that the dynamic we are in now doesn't have any criterion for success beyond his success despite conventional wisdom. As this level is subject to revision based on the status of the club, so long as any deflation happens slowly – and I don't think the fans have the cohesion to ensure a big bang – there is no lower limit to it.

Agreed about his business instincts. And the due diligence, which blew up any chance of doing a Lonsdale / Slazenger / Karrimor on an undervalued brand. But the even if that was the plan it has changed now; I don't think that a sale is any kind of priority. I think you underestimate the sea change in his personality since he took over the club. Remember, he went from being a recluse of whom there was not a single photograph, to milking the adoration of a 50,000 crowd in about a week. If it was purely a case of buy to sell, why the big introduction of himself in the set-up? Appoint a chairman and stay quiet. It is only in that kind of context that the souring of his relations with the fans here make sense. His early statements about the club are full of words like 'enjoyment', 'fun', stuff you wouldn't expect from a man whose interest in the business was purely mechanical. No, this was an investment of pure Ego. The fans, who were the object of this investment, have shifted position from being this object of adoration whose demands he thought he understood and could meet (have you ever seen a more naked appeal to 'love me' than that pint in the stands?) to a position in his old dualistic world-view of a lazy establishment when compared to his savvy. I still maintain that money is a very short lever for driving him out. If the value of the club was ever going to appreciate, it would only do so marginally through business acumen and understanding the customer base, in the North East at least. The core of the business is in broadcast deals. You don't need 50,000 fans to be a Blackburn or Stoke. We can see his fixation on this income in one of the latest revelations, his getting rid of Hughton to be more 'Hollywood' and get TV matches... this is where the money is now, more so into the future. And if our club doesn't become the Hollywood club, the ones who do inevitably drag the league's TV windfall up. Worst of all, I believe he genuinely thinks he can run the club from a football rather than a business perspective: these revelations about fantasy football, this cult of the outsider he has in his appointments, the refusal to go in the boxes with other chairmen, his alienation from other professionals in the industry. The dark hints from ex-staff. You can see it in the sackings. I'm sure he expected Keegan was somewhere between the Lone Ranger and Stanley Kowalski from his reputation, another rebel for his cause, and was dismayed to find that he was as much a part of the football old-boys network as Allardyce. He is an ex-England manager after all. Hughton went the same way, his crime seems to have been siding with tradition against Ashley's imagined insurrection. I'm all for a boycott, but I think its usefulness derives more from the disengagement of fans from any relationship which involves Ashley than cutting income. You're right about him being a dangerous competitor in the sportswear market, but remember when he was most dangerous: when he would charge himself up by making it personal (see Wheelan, Dave). I am sure it is now personal for him against whoever he imagines we, the fans, to be. Our response should not escalation, which fits perfectly into his world-view. I'm reminded of line in Seinfeld: “The best revenge is to live well”. How do we achieve that?

I don't think Ashley is acting out of spite, I think he's so arrogant that he thinks he can do no wrong and that will not be helped by having yes men around him, he's a prick either way. Picking through the fragments of his statements about the club, I still think Ashley's original plan was to run the club 'the fan's way': the man on the street and Mike working for good common sense against football's establishment. As we know, this fantasy went askew, cumulating in the Keegan departure. The only thing you can liken this trauma to is a break-up. A life changing, never gotten over, full on, Britney and Justin-type game changer. Until last week, I honestly thought that his goal would be, in the long term, to try and engineer a rapprochement and to get back onside with the fan-base. To try and heal the split and reconstitute his original fantasy. I can see now – after the events of last week - that something has gone horribly, twistedly wrong. The vicissitudes of his desire have turned in upon themselves, and his fantasy has morphed into a narcissistic complex where he will avenge himself on those who spurned him and those who doubted him. The fans have switched position and now it is him versus the establishment and the fans. For him to succeed despite them, in spite of them. If the other will not love him, they will be made to respect him – and, in his childish fantasy, how does he think he can do this? Through his possession of and manipulation of things. Make no mistake about it, this is the story of a love triangle between Ashley-Fans-Club. And when he bought into it, he didn't want to steal the club from the fans, but the fans from the club. Once Ashley lost the fans, he took the spiteful option of getting between them and the club. I'm still trying to figure this out, but what I'm starting to think the only way we have of fighting back is not to try and ruin Ashley's enjoyment of the club – which, despite what a lot of people say, does not seem to be financial. It is tied up to the relationship between Mike's-way-of-doing-things and the establishment's (or at least what he perceives as being 'The Establishment's' (and to this extent, deflating the club – through relegation of whatever else - doesn't change anything. It just means the bar will be lowered for whatever is considered success)) - but to reaffirm our enjoyment of the club without him. To leave him out of the game. Ideas of protests are all part of his new fantasy; what gets him hard is the idea of him and his little ideas about how things should be done being right, despite all of the naysayers. Every 'no' just adds to pleasure he thinks he will achieve when he is finally right. The guy is like a vampire of enjoyment. He sees it in us, in our relationship with the club, and he wants it for himself or he wants to destroy it. So taking our money out of the club is useful insofar as it introduces the real to his fantasy, working to destabilise it. But the real solution is to love Newcastle in ways which exclude him. Entirely. To leave him on the outside, looking in at the thing he will never possess. Whether that takes the form of groups of ex-season ticket holders colonising pubs on matchdays to watch the game on their own terms, or production of un-offical merchandise, or proliferation of supporters clubs and other community groups, whatever else, that might be the way to get rid of him. I'm not sure where the solution lies. But the problem isn't that we're confronted by some kind of Scrooge McDuck, a monster of capital. No, this man is Pepe Le Pew, Miss Piggy; an angry, deluded loser. We need to treat him as such.

No chance, But I'd like Rene Girard: currently of Montpellier HSC, formerly of French youth teams. 1)Can get some good performances from shit players 2)Tactically sound 3)Great coach, especially for younger players (seeing as we have no coaches left). 4)I think we need to try a foreign manager. Alterity!

The plan for avoiding relegation this year will have been something like: 30 points from the bottom 1/3 of the table, 15 from the middle third and anything from the top clubs is a bonus. At this stage, it is obvious that Hughton is unable to deliver performances against the clubs we should be beating. If he can't deliver the results which he planned to, why should the board have faith in him? Because we've won against teams that were absolutely terrible in those games (Villa, Sunderland, West Ham). Hughton's contract was set for review in January, the transfer window is coming up, and the two immediate fixtures in the new year could well be must-wins by then. Would it be better, if the broad have doubts, to get rid of him mid-window and just before the derby? If, if, they have a plan about their next step, this has to be a positive move, putting something into operation rather than reacting to events.

Luke Varney. I'm sure we can offer him better terms than Blackpool.

Jose Enrique http://img541.imageshack.us/img541/9758/je201.jpg Chap advertising the AIDS awareness game 'cockout.de' http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/1256/je1n.jpg

Arsenal. I thought they'd have a go in the second leg last year, but they didn't. Inter stayed deep, which can work, but you have to be lucky. The one thing that doesn't work is trying to pass through them in a compressed formation. If they want to get into a football match against them, managers will have to put trust in their players rather than their plans.

Well, yes, I had a bet on Real. So there is a lot of post-mortem justification needed. Stil, I'd love to see a decent team go 1 for 1* with Barcelona, just to see how good they are. I always get the feeling they out-think the opposition more than out-play them. *Well, not literally 1 to 1, but to have a Tevez-like striker or two pressuring the back line, freeing up a spare player to be a sweeper / libero.

Very, very disappointing, Mourinho apparently thinks he knows how to beat Barca, I think he looked clueless. As soon as the Real players lost the ball they would look around and check where they were in relation to the position Mourinho had obviously told them to be in, and this meant the first three seconds in transition were wasted thinking, while the Barca player were running past them. The combination of a high back line and an emphasis on positional rigidity seems like a foolish approach, if they want to push up they should be looking to go man for man at the back, and to get into position quickly. If they wanted to remain in shape they should have been willing to drop deep and force Barca to play through both midfield and defensive lines. The back 4 were exposed in the first phase far too often. They let Barcelona play though way too easily. The gamble on having Ronaldo let Alves go failed as well. It seemed like the Real attacking plan was to overload certain areas of the pitch and play the ball into them - they did that in the right full back area on a number occasions when they had three men around Alves - but most of the time the Real defenders didn't have the time to pick a pass due to the 5-5 style of defence Barca play. The overload situation was too far down the pitch for that kind of approach, it should have been played up 'blind', or they should have tried to overload some point in the pitch not so far away. Another terrible compromise between two conflicting strategies. I'd have rather seen Madrid switch the ball quickly across the pitch. The way Barca defend cannot be sustained for 90 minutes, they rely on getting ahead and being able to control possession for a large period of the game otherwise they tire. I remember the game against Arsenal in the CL, Arsenal were not even that ruthless about switching the ball around, and Barca looked absolutely punch drunk for the last fifteen minutes. Real should have been looking to get around Barca's intense pressure when the ball is lost by popping the ball 40-50 yards away into the space those players chasing it have vacated, rather than being caught in possession by them so frequently. That happened often, along with punting it down the pitch towards the Barca back 5, 4 of whom generally stay flat when defending. (I should have put a picture in here: that is an awfully concise description of a complex process, and an insult to clarity to boot, but I can't be done with it.) I wish referees would start to penalise the cynical Barcelona tackling as well, that move they all do when they lose possession where they just press themselves against the opposition player and start shin kicking, well, it should be a yellow card, it is so pre-meditated.

100%

Some archetypical Souness punditry today, perfectly showing up his limitations as a manger: most noticeably his tendency to reduce complex problems and situations to factors of a single variable – Ameobi not playing well? That can be explained purely in terms of his interaction with the crowd, nothing outside this matters. At least he sees part of the picture, unlike some other pundits. I like Poyet though, at least if he's not saying something technically interesting he says something funny. I can't stand that imaginary blokey-zeitgeisty construct that Jamie Redknapp imagines himself to be surfing. It's like seeing a man who thinks he's trapped in a beer commercial trying to 'win' the game.

Can you do that on any site? Not a clue bud, I'm not a seasoned better by any stretch. Is there a particular reason you can't? Don't see what's wrong with backing 2 or more players to score in one match. You can't normally bet on scorers in in the same game because the bets are related. Once a goal is scored in a a game it is likely that more goals will be scored in the game. You can't do accumulators where if a happens, b or c become more likely to happen.