Jackie Broon

My wife, who is half Italian and also speaks French, says the Italian pronunciation would be Caa-bella (emphasis on the first a), the French would be Cabell-ah, (emphasis on the last a).

I think it should be Cah-bell-ah, so he probably wasn't far off. But in general they're all stupid t***s when it comes to pronunciation. For example, Fellaini should be pronounced Fel-a-eenee not fel-lane-e as every single commentator pronounces it, Davide Santon is called Da-vid-day not Daveed... and probably thousands of other examples of how lazy and s**** most commentators are at their job.

14/15 Cisse banned, tiote injured and midfielders in defence 13/14 had Remy, cisse, tiote and a semi defence (and ben arfa) 12/13 had Cabaye, cisse, tiote, ben arfa and a defence Not sure Pardew would have done much better than Carver, he is still the better manager. He did in the first half of the season no? If fluking a run of wins as a result of every touch of his strikers ending up in the back of the net no matter how shite the rest of the team was is being a better manager then, yes, he did do better.

Looking at that makes me feel f**kin' old. It doesn't seem 'that' long ago since they won the league!

I was thinking yesterday, are there any more longstanding central defensive 'units' in the premier league, or the English league as a whole for that matter, than Coloccini & Williamson / Taylor? ... or any that look more like strangers on the pitch?

Why even sell at all? If he can keep making a profit and he has successfully lowered expectations to the extent where people think we should be privileged just to be playing in the Premiership As long as 50,000 turn up and barely kick up a fuss I can't see him selling up He clearly wants out, he has since he looked at the accounts and realised he'd been screwed over by Hall & Shepherd, he was actively trying to sell the club just a few months after he bought it. But, his ego won't let him lose money on the deal. If/when the loan is paid off he'll be off as soon as he finds a buyer who'll offer him a bit more than he paid for the club.

I suppose it fits in with the stuff about him looking to sell in 2016, which is when the 'loan' should be paid off at the current profit level.

Death threat or not that is not important. What's important is that something led Mike Ashley to put the club up for sale, publicly. Those who like conspiracy theories might say this was just a publicity from the club stunt to make the Geordie fans look fickle, and really backfire the "Cockney Mafia Out" campaign. Whatever has been gained from that has certainly been able to manifest itself. Llambias: “Mike (Ashley) was selling to the Arabs and they ­wanted Kevin Keegan." From Tony Jimenez's bio: 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. The club was for sale while Ashley was still getting his tits out in the stands with the away fans and going on pub crawls around Newcastle.

Being excellent in Ashley's eyes would probably consist of making the most of young, predominantly foreign, players with potential for much higher resale value. A model which I think is a sensible way to run a club in our position. Pardew constantly resisted that model, clearly briefing his mates in the media about players being bought behind his back, then blaming poor form on the loss of them when it suited him and freezing out talented players brought in as part of that model (while giving chance after chance to underperforming players who don't fall into that model). I doubt Ashley was really happy with Pardew, because as much as a yes man as he might have seemed in some respects, he was clearly unwilling to fully play ball with how Ashley wants the club to be run. With the right manger, who buys into that way of running the club, it could be very successful. At least in terms of producing attractive football.

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.