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As much as i vehemently hate the scousers (second only to the mackems), i just can't even get interested in the title race any more, things are way too serious at our end. 1-1 WBA v Bolton, get in

Would honestly jump at that right now, if stoke and blackburn pull out wins things look far far worse

Looks like a matter of time til Blackburn score...

Really not sure whether I want Bolton to win to put West Brom out of contention or whether I want WBA to win just to keep Bolton in touching distance... Probably maybe want a draw... Can hear Fulham v Mancs from where i am, nosiest i've heard Craven Cottage since living down the road

For fucks sake, 1-1 blackburn

Genuinely think we're fucked. Likely we're going to be more than one win adrift after Arse and Chelsea matches. Great.

I hope i'm wrong but can't see Everton equalising here, they've got fuck all up front, Jo is worse than Ameobi and Saha isn't fit enough.

Same even if it's a draw isn't it?

It's also one of those teams that once it got used to each other and if it had a good manager could be incredibly fluid. All of Barton, Guthrie / Nolan, Jonas track back, Beye and Enrique were decent going forward and could get better, especially enrique. Sadly, we're never going to find out as those guys and a good manager will never be at the club all at the same time. By the time we get someone decent in charge at least Viduka and Owen will be gone, possibly more.

As above, with formation as per Keegan, with Owen playing at the front of midfield. Maybe drop Guthrie for Nolan.

I totally agree, my post related to Baggio's comment that no other owners funded their club to £10m a year out of their own pocket. I think that's bollocks. I personally dont know how debts are structured at other clubs. Boro are over 70m in debt, wonder how much Gibson 'gave' the club? (just deleted another post, apologies if quoted, realised i was actually incorrect). I'm not about to start sifting through other clubs accounts. If someone can prove my statements incorrect, then fine. I fully admit they are speculation based on logical economics. Someone must be servicing that debt at Boro as it certainly isn't going to be covering itself and they won't be getting many more loans from the bank. It's a tit for tat argument, my basic point is that I would bet money Ashley, on an ongoing basis, is not putting in a great deal (or in fact any) more in than the majority of owners in our league. What that means can be argued all night.

I totally agree, my post related to Baggio's comment that no other owners funded their club to £10m a year out of their own pocket. I think that's bollocks.

Hmmm... Other clubs with owners prepared to fund them, lets just run through the league: ManYoo - Glazer's bought them to profit, led to massive fan revolts, don't even sell out season tickets any more and resorted to advertising games locally to ensure sell out when a matter of years ago they were selling out every game no problem with massive waiting lists. And they are winning EVERYTHING at the minute and still the fans are only marginally satisfied. Liverpool - see above, but without the winning stuff. Interesting to see that despite their legendary fans, relatively decent side, worldwide appeal and good season they are still rarely selling games out with a capacity almost 10,000 below us. Seems like their fans ain't too happy with their owners either, with multiple protests... http://itv.stats.football365.com/dom/ENG/PR/attend.html Chelsea - (formerly) richest club in the world. Owner spunks loads on them Villa - Lerner has progressively spent more and more, whilst squad depth is low they have spent a hell of a lot on their current first team, definitely funded by owner. Arsenal - one of the truly self-sustaining teams, thanks mainly to Wenger. Fair play. Everton - Kenwright essentially trying to give the club away as fans hate him, pretty sure he has lost a fuckload of his own cash pumping into running of the club, can't be sure. Net spend in transfers way higher than ours of recent, although would imagine wage bill incomparable. Another very well managed club, but i still would hazard a guess not self sustaining so relying on Kenwright / board cash. Wigan - Costing Whelan a fuckload, no support, good transfer turnover but with attendances as they are he is obviously pumping in a load of cash. Must be paying ridiculous wages to keep players there. Fulham - Al Fayed, spunked loads of cash. West Ham - owners went bankrupt but were previously spunking loads of cash, have managed to keep all their stars (bar angryman) and get a bright young manager in to run the club. Man City - fucking minted Sunderland - we all know how much money Niall and co have pumped in. Bolton - pretty sure Gartside is funding a lot, transfer dealings nowhere near enough to cover costs. Hull - reckon they are now overstretching and pumping cash in, wage bill will be high following some of their free / high profile signings, owner will be funding Tottenham - high attendances, net transfer turnover pretty reasonable, probably surprisingly well run, although wage bill must be caning our old mate at ENIC. Owner will be funding Portsmouth - Gaydamek funded loads, up shits creek, desperate to sell. Stoke - reckon they may be around breakeven, no 'superstar' wages or signings. Blackburn - funded for years by Walker, now still require money as attendances diabolical. Boro - Gibson spunked loads. West Brom - going down. So, out of those i reckon the only 'self sustaining' clubs are ManYoo, Liverpool, Arsenal and possibly Stoke. When i say 'self sustaining' we are all aware of the PIK situation at United and the massive debt at Liverpool and Arsenal so it's not exactly debt free, rather able to meet it's commitments with it's ordinary income, although this could very quickly change should they drop out of Euro competition (maybe not Arse) and attendances drop, then investment would be required. Of the remainder, owners all put money in to varying degrees, most probably a damn sight more than £10m between them and the rest of the board. None, other than Chelsea and Tottenham, have anything like the revenue prospects that Newcastle has. So to suggest Ashley is in some way massively benevolent relative to the rest or even most of the premier league is total bollocks.

Pivotal how though? Seen us change from a relegation threatened and woefully managed shambles into an...err...

Not a single assist or goal in there. Next Charles N'Zogbia.

That's my optimistic assessment as well, otherwise Kinnear not signing the contract doesn't make sense. I am still nervous about the appointment they actually do make though. Hopefully we will be "pleasantly surprised". Yep, because all of their 'cunning ploys' so far have turned out so well... How many times have we thought 'they must have a plan', 'they wouldn't be so stupid as to do what they seem to be doing, it must be part of some elaborate behind the scenes motive'... It's not, there's no plan, no decoy, they are stupid fucking idiots who risk destroying the club by making THE WORST managerial appointment in our club's history.

Don't particularly rate the lad, Lee "yellow card" Cattermole perhaps. No fucking way i want Cattermole at the club, enough of our players pick up training ground injuries without that freak adding to it

Megson sounds pretty fucked off there... fingers crossed this has been a decision made over his head that he's not happy about

somebody on there has said david craig has confirmed those 2 are also on tyneside today. anybody watching SSN? Which two? Nolan and Ebondo?

Cashwise, if we get £8m for Given and a few million for Zog (and Taylor as part of it), then £10m for someone like this and £4m for Nolan (plus maybe £3m for Ebonda) would still leave an outlay of less than £10m with the wages of Zog and Given likely to be far higher than that of the two or three new players. All in all, wouldn't be too outlandish, still don't see it happening though.

I actually thought he was a left back, obviously got that wrong but the journal seem to think so too... Reminds me of Leighton Baines, but that might be just because he looks a bit rat-like.

Perhaps if fans hadn't decided to protest and make the managers job unappealing then he would have appointed someone better, a few people did try and point this out at the time. West Ham were in a similar position to us with the manager leaving for similar reasons, yet they seem to be doing so much better than we are and the only thing I can see that's different is their fans let the club get on with appointing a new manager and got behind him. Equally, he could have still went on and appointed decent manager and win the fans back? I think he knew the shit was hitting the fan finalcially an used the fans backlash as an excuse to sell up. Now the fat cunt is stuck with NUFC and us with him. He knew from his own experience of buying the club that you don't want to walk into a club where a new manager you may not want has been handed a long term deal. A far as he was concerned the club would be sold and Kinnear would do a job for 8 weeks until it went through. I'm not sure how anyone can argue that if the fans didn't protest and Ashley putting the club up for sale that we would have got a better manager than Kinnear in through the door, as I've said that's the only difference between us this season and West Ham. what you mean is any good manager would be put off by working for an owner like Ashley because he had been exposed as someone without the desire to capitalise on the size of the club. Terim and Deuchamps were both interested at the time of Keegan walking so that doesn't quite back up your opinion. Interested until they talked to Ashley. I don't remember hearing about either speaking with Ashley as he was waiting to speak to keegan the night before the Hull match. By 'waiting' i assume you mean getting fucked up in a tacky nightclub in the states with a bunch of low rent rent-a-whores quaffing all the booze he could fill them with... That type of 'waiting' yeah? Whilst Keegan was obviously unavailable Ashley was on business through Sports Direct I thought? Unless he shouldn't be going out at night while out there. When he came back it was reported that Keegan was out in Spain. There was me thinking that the majority of reports pointed at him being in LA to try and break into the film industry... An industry he knew nothing about and probably decided he wanted involvement in on some kind of whim... But then again, what sort of savvy businessman would do that, eh?! It's not like he had previous... Also, whatever reason he was there, obviously wasn't something that couldn't hold off for a MASSIVE lash up (we saw the bill, after all), so one would have thought priority would lie in returning to one of his biggest single assets which was on the brink of implosion and certainly not appearing in public making a twat of himself when he would have known it would have made the situation a whole lot worse. So... Keegan 'resigned', he fucked off to the states, got fucked with his mates and didn't deal with the situation, had his mates release one of the most petty and juvenile statements to ever come out of a football club, came back and failed to reach a compromise with Keegan and then threw a massive fucking hissy fit and put the club up for sale when the crowd dared to question his intentions towards the club? pretty sure he was out there for something to do with Sports Direct, the whole film thing was because he met someone while out there who put the idea to him iirc. Still he employs people to run NUFC for him and can't drop everything at the drop everything from his main business because Keegan's throwing his toys out of the pram again, I can understand why you can't see that he's done any wrong though. Ha, how hypocritical, you spend an entire thread with your Hear No Ashley, See No Ashley, Speak No Ashley hat on then bring it back to how I view Keegan! I am not arguing for / against Kevin Keegan and whether his decision was right or wrong, i'm arguing against what Ashley has done to the club, how he has handled events since the Keegan incident and what he should do to fix it. You're so intent on placing blame on anyone's shoulders other than Ashley that the whole topic has once again descended. You are turning into another agenda-driven poster intent on arguing the same point into the ground repeatedly... I understand that you disagreed with the masses when the whole thing kicked off with Keegan and that in time a lot of people have come round at least to partially seeing and agreeing with your point of view and i totally respect that, but to carry on in the way you are is utterly tiresome, if you see no fault in the way that ashley has run the club in the last few months then you are more myopic than any other poster on here, which takes some doing. Why not just accept that whilst others (myself included) admit that Keegan was not faultless, neither was Ashley and ever since the incident he's done the square root of fuck all in solving the problem

Perhaps if fans hadn't decided to protest and make the managers job unappealing then he would have appointed someone better, a few people did try and point this out at the time. West Ham were in a similar position to us with the manager leaving for similar reasons, yet they seem to be doing so much better than we are and the only thing I can see that's different is their fans let the club get on with appointing a new manager and got behind him. Equally, he could have still went on and appointed decent manager and win the fans back? I think he knew the shit was hitting the fan finalcially an used the fans backlash as an excuse to sell up. Now the fat cunt is stuck with NUFC and us with him. He knew from his own experience of buying the club that you don't want to walk into a club where a new manager you may not want has been handed a long term deal. A far as he was concerned the club would be sold and Kinnear would do a job for 8 weeks until it went through. I'm not sure how anyone can argue that if the fans didn't protest and Ashley putting the club up for sale that we would have got a better manager than Kinnear in through the door, as I've said that's the only difference between us this season and West Ham. what you mean is any good manager would be put off by working for an owner like Ashley because he had been exposed as someone without the desire to capitalise on the size of the club. Terim and Deuchamps were both interested at the time of Keegan walking so that doesn't quite back up your opinion. Interested until they talked to Ashley. I don't remember hearing about either speaking with Ashley as he was waiting to speak to keegan the night before the Hull match. By 'waiting' i assume you mean getting fucked up in a tacky nightclub in the states with a bunch of low rent rent-a-whores quaffing all the booze he could fill them with... That type of 'waiting' yeah? Whilst Keegan was obviously unavailable Ashley was on business through Sports Direct I thought? Unless he shouldn't be going out at night while out there. When he came back it was reported that Keegan was out in Spain. There was me thinking that the majority of reports pointed at him being in LA to try and break into the film industry... An industry he knew nothing about and probably decided he wanted involvement in on some kind of whim... But then again, what sort of savvy businessman would do that, eh?! It's not like he had previous... Also, whatever reason he was there, obviously wasn't something that couldn't hold off for a MASSIVE lash up (we saw the bill, after all), so one would have thought priority would lie in returning to one of his biggest single assets which was on the brink of implosion and certainly not appearing in public making a twat of himself when he would have known it would have made the situation a whole lot worse. So... Keegan 'resigned', he fucked off to the states, got fucked with his mates and didn't deal with the situation, had his mates release one of the most petty and juvenile statements to ever come out of a football club, came back and failed to reach a compromise with Keegan and then threw a massive fucking hissy fit and put the club up for sale when the crowd dared to question his intentions towards the club?

Perhaps if fans hadn't decided to protest and make the managers job unappealing then he would have appointed someone better, a few people did try and point this out at the time. West Ham were in a similar position to us with the manager leaving for similar reasons, yet they seem to be doing so much better than we are and the only thing I can see that's different is their fans let the club get on with appointing a new manager and got behind him. Equally, he could have still went on and appointed decent manager and win the fans back? I think he knew the shit was hitting the fan finalcially an used the fans backlash as an excuse to sell up. Now the fat cunt is stuck with NUFC and us with him. He knew from his own experience of buying the club that you don't want to walk into a club where a new manager you may not want has been handed a long term deal. A far as he was concerned the club would be sold and Kinnear would do a job for 8 weeks until it went through. I'm not sure how anyone can argue that if the fans didn't protest and Ashley putting the club up for sale that we would have got a better manager than Kinnear in through the door, as I've said that's the only difference between us this season and West Ham. what you mean is any good manager would be put off by working for an owner like Ashley because he had been exposed as someone without the desire to capitalise on the size of the club. Terim and Deuchamps were both interested at the time of Keegan walking so that doesn't quite back up your opinion. Interested until they talked to Ashley. I don't remember hearing about either speaking with Ashley as he was waiting to speak to keegan the night before the Hull match. By 'waiting' i assume you mean getting fucked up in a tacky nightclub in the states with a bunch of low rent rent-a-whores quaffing all the booze he could fill them with... That type of 'waiting' yeah? Whilst Keegan was obviously unavailable

Again, the West Ham situation is a shit comparison, most of their fans wanted Curbishley out or were, at very best, ambivalent to his tenure... I don't recall there being anyone on here being anything but happy with Keegan being in charge, so totally different situation, but don't let that stop you, it's almost like you're on the Ashley staff, Baggio. The thing that made the manager's position at St James' untenable had nothing to do with a fucking banner and 10 year olds stood outside the ground, it was seeing the most popular and successful manager the club has had in recent times being forced to resign when it became clear he didn't have control of transfers and had been lied to when recruited. Even then, people like Fatih Terim and Van Gaal would still, seemingly, have been achievable targets who would have fitted in around the system, but did Ashley go for them? No, he went to some fucking football graveyard and dug up , achieving what seemed impossible, in adding an even bigger fucking moron than the rest of them to our management / executive team. Try and blame the fans / players / media all you like, the buck stops at the door of Ashley and Ashley alone. He has fucked up royally, doesn't have the balls to fix it and i hope he ends up penniless because of it - the only good thing to come of this would be finding Ashley selling pirate dvds on a market stall in Tottenham - back where he fucking belongs.