Jackie Broon

At which mythical club is that not the case? Every club works to a budget. Every player is available at the right price. What is different at Newcastle is that cup competitions are seen as a dangerous distraction to be exited at the earliest possible opportunity. However, that view seems to me to have been driven by Pardew and his continuous excuses about the Europa League affecting the team's league results (despite the fact that his Europa teams were made up almost entirely of reserve / youth players).

We don't really need to spend in January anyway. Yeah we need another striker but there's enough there to put teams away until the summer under a manager who knows what he's doing. Even this clown got us 26 points. De Jong and Aarons to come back as well, possibly HBA. If good offers come in for Sissoko and Tiote then we should sell. I'd prefer we waiting until the summer for Sissoko but I wouldn't be annoyed to see Tiote go next month. Sissoko's stock will never be as high. If we get £20m for him he'll never reach that price tag wherever he goes. He's effective here as we've no style of football, in a proper team he'll be massively out of place. Spot on. 90% of the time he plays like a headless chicken who just runs into dead ends or passess to nobody. Like Tiote would have if we'd cashed in when we should have, he'll end up rotting on the bench of a top four club once they find out how poor his decision making is.

I'm sick of pundits trotting out the 'players leaving' shite. We're not a Chelsea or Man City, of course our best players are going to move on every so often, just like they do form every other club that's not at the top of the tree. We do exactly the same thing, taking the best players from smaller clubs. As far as I can see, the only players that have left in that way are Carroll (silly money we couldn't turn down), Ba (buyout clause and wanted to go) and Cabaye (we were always going to be a stepping stone and it looks like we sold at the peak of his value). Over four years it's hardly an exodus!

The reality is he's clearly not going anywhere before at least the end of the season unless we slip back into dire trouble and look certainties for relegation. That's probably not going to happen now. There patently has been a turnaround in confidence. Whether that's down to Pardew, certain players or just luck with a couple of results falling our way... fuck knows, but there is clearly a new-found confidence and solidity in the squad now. You may as well just enjoy it, while it lasts. If it does last, it may actually be our best chance of getting rid of Pardew.

An English Premier League franchise for Glasgow Rangers to slot into and the ultimate revenge for calling him fat?

Aye, he said his only link to football was working as a steward at Chelsea and basically accused him of fucking up the Modric deal by telling his agent he didn't think he was good enough for the premier league. But, that takes on a different light when taking into account he may have had an interest in the club having a lower sale price.

I was aware of this at the time - Ashley went to a casino in Dubai instead of keeping the appointment with the Emiratis...they bought Man C instead....... No surprise that he has doubled his stake in Rangers - all he needs is them to be back in the SPL and it will all be going to his plan... The stuff about Ashley's trip to Dubai was widely reported at the time (btw, the Man City owners are from Abu Dhabi and bought Man City two weeks before Ashley went to Dubai). What I didn't know is that Jiminez may have been the Dubai group's man rather than Ashley's. Which, if that was the case, seems like a bit of a potential conflict of interests given that the Dubai group would have obviously wanted to get the club for as little as possible.

Putting two and two together, Wise came in at the same time as Jimenez and has worked with him since, so he might have been a part of the deal as well. So they might not have been any better as owners than Ashley... Unless there's a more machiavellian reason for the stuff that went on before Keegan left!

Very old news, but I noticed that Tony Jimenez now occasionally writes for the Huffington Post. In his bio it says: "His strong relationships within the UAE - built up over the past 22 years - have been responsible for a number of leading Arab investors making significant investments in Europe. As Vice Chairman of Newcastle United Football Club, Tony was instrumental in negotiations to sell the club to the Dubai government. While the deal was not finalised due to the club owner changing his mind, Tony was nonetheless indispensable when it came to introducing potential buyers and leading negotiations." So it seems like Jimenez was actually working with, or maybe for, DIC to oversee the sale to them, which Ashley eventually backed out of. Not really relevant to anything now but it's not something I've seen talked about on here before and it's an interesting insight into what was going on behind the scenes when Keegan quit.

Nah, how many times have we seen this situation under Pardew? We look dead and buried, pull one back, then get caught on the break every time. It'll be 3-1.

The atmosphere will change if we lose and Pardew won't have any excuse about the players being distracted by the protest. As disappointing as this is, it may actually play out better... if we lose.

Not this s*** again. Ashley is a crap owner but he doesn't pick the team, dictate tactics or run training sessions. Ashley hasn't consistently picked inferior players (Smith, Perch, Gosling, Ameobi) when other options have been available to the detriment of the team and club as a whole. Ashley isn't the one who has shoehorned players into the team out of their natural positions, destroying their confidence and nullifying any threat they might have once offered. Ashley and Pardew are a good match for each other, they each cover the other's inadequacies but it has gone beyond the point now where Pardew is only holding back the club with his own shitness. Pardew is now the root cause of most of the team's issues and has to go. You ask why he should simply walk away since he has a contract? Because it's got the point where the crowd detest him, the players no longer give a f*** and even the media have started to wake up to his inabilities. If he walks away now he might still get another job in the Premiership or top end of the Championship, the longer he allows it to continue the more questions will be raised about his skills and fewer clubs will think him a potential asset. Walk away now and let the media run with the stories that it was Ashley's way of running the club that harmed the team, or carry on and let everyone know it was Pardew himself who couldn't organise a gangbang in a brothel. Mark Hughes or David O'Leary, pick a career path. I'm not saying that Pardew is innocent either, I just feel that Ashley is more to blame. Yes Pardew picks the team, but how much of a say does he have in the players at his disposal? He has shown in the past that he can get results when he has the right players. He is no scout, I doubt he even knows who half of the players we signed this summer actually are but we finished 5th with Pardew as a manager and a very average side tbh. But when Ashley decides he wants to sell our best player (by far) because he is far more interested in lining his own pockets than the fortunes of the football club. That is why, imo, Ashley is more to blame. So sick of this 'we finished 5th once so he must be good' sh*te. I really am. Ipswich have finished 5th with George Burley. Allardyce finished 6th with Bolton. Do you want either of them as manager (again in Fat Sam's case)? Is it qualification enough? Numpty fluked it, it can happen. He'll never manage it again and don't kid yourself or any one else gullible enough to listen that he can. I remember coming away from a lot of games that season thinking either it was a very evenly balanced game we were lucky to win, or that we have downright robbed the other team! The following season I don't think we were significantly worse, I don't think European football really affected us (we played the kids and reserves after all), we just didn't have fortune on our side the way we did in 11/12. That season was a pure fluke.

I don't want him. I'm just saying he would be a lot better than Pardew.

Pulis is just as crap as Pardew man Pulis is a proper manager, who can devise a game plan to make the most out of the players he has. Unlike Pardew he can actually organise a team and make them better than the sum of their parts. Although we don't have the players to play that way now, and so I don't think that would be his game plan at first, in the log term we would probably become a (effective) hoofball team under him. Which is not what I'd want to see but he would be a massive step-up from Pardew who has no plan or ability to organise and inspire players.

Exactly this. I don't believe for a second that Pardew has no say in who comes in. He obviously has no say when Ashley decides to cash in on our best players, that's what he signed up for, he was brought in as a yes man. But, he was clearly involved in bringing in the players we did this summer.

Exactly. £350m, spend £50m on the first team and bring in a new manager, we'd be around Spurs in the league with a 50k stadium already operational. Our merchandise is artificially low due to people not wanting to spend money that goes direct in to SDs pockets. Everything would shoot up, no doubt in my mind we'd be a more profitable club without Ashley here. There is absolutely huge potential at a third of the price of spurs, with a stadium already in place. Very easy for an owner. Wouldn't have to spend anywhere near a billion to do it I just can't see it being anything other than a figure plucked out of a reporter's arse. Spurs are stuck in a no man’s land below a top 4-5 that, other than the occasional blip, will be sewn-up for the next decade, minimum. There’s an expectation that they should be pushing on into the top four, but It would take a massive investment and a big slice of luck to move them up to that level. There clearly aren't any more abramo-sours out there willing to spunk that sort of money without any hope of a financial return and there's no real money to be made from Spurs.

Well the mortgage or whatever it was came to that. There was also about £20m outstanding on transfers i think, sure they were complaining about that early on. Edit: That may have been part of the £67m though I think you're right about some of the extra debt being owed from transfers, which was leaked just before the first January transfer window and used as the excuse why we brought nobody in then. The fact that this is how just about every club bought players and paid the fees in stages over the player's contract (and still do) and he is just about the only club owner that pays 100% up front eluded him. Definitely remember them whinging about something to do with fees owed. Like you say its standard footballing practice, one of the many things he didnt understand buying when us on a whim with no knowledgable person alongside him. The main whinge was about the Owen deal, which was apparently paid for with up-front sponsorship money from Northern Rock. Meaning we basically had no main sponsor income until the deal ran out, but it wasn't debt as such.

Carroll was infinitely more than just a battering ram, when he played for us. Many people, including myself, were gutted that we accepted that £35m. In hindsight it was the right decision, but in the intervening years a lot of people seem to have forgotten just how good he was back then.

How about 91pts with Messi, Zabaleta and Romero still to play and Perez, Macheranoand and Garay on the bench. Howay the Argies!

In

The average cloggers won't put £20m in Ashley's back pocket when they leave.

He is just like any other ruthless businessman. Why does he need to acquire the adorations of hundreds of thousands when that is not even a prerequisite to gain him any £££. He can treat the fans like filth over and over yet 50 thousands spectators will still turn up week after week £££. He's loving it. But Ashley is a risk taker in business, this isn't anything to do with business, it's about revenge for the way the fans turned against him over Keegan's departure. He's keeping the club ticking along, siphoning off any profit and adding any loss to the 'interest free loan' which he'll get back when a buyer eventually comes along. Until then he's taking his spiteful revenge by keeping us in limbo.

We really didn't like. That's so wrong it's unbelievable like SanToon. We had an untested manager buying unproven players at market prices. We broke the transfer record for a proven player but we built towards that and loaned the money to do so. We built and built. Times have changed IMO. It's impossible to win a title through "gradual building" now If they can do it in Spain, why not here? One reason may be that in Spain they have an endless supply talent from South America who can be picked up cheap before they are established in national teams. Work permit restrictions mean English clubs don't have access to that huge pool of talent, unless they can afford to pay what it costs for established internationals.

Hall barely put penny into the club, and cashed in tens of millions when he left. Benefactor my arse! What we did in the mid 90s was driven by the resources the club could generate rather than a bottomless pit of oil money. There is no comparison with Man City, Chelsea and the like.

God I f***ing hate football. It is their team I suppose At least they recognize that their success has been bought. They'd be a nothing club otherwise. They clearly weren't Mancunian, they looked like they were probably from the UAE. I'm sure most of proper Man City fans fully recognise that though.