geordieglory

Both started off at a cracking pace/closing-down rate, like.

Aye, probably "Shola Signs For Norwich!" "Why the hell weren't we in for him? English player with plenty of PL-experience for under £4m!

One example where it's definitely not true: Alan Smith. He was a footballing corpse long before we got him, Man Utd just pulled a Monty Python's dead parrot sketch on us...

I definitely would. Yes, he's an arse, but he'd be an upgrade on Beye and for that price he'd be one worth getting. Can't see Spurs letting him go for £2m though, probably double that, so it's probably a non-starter.

The Mackems have a bigger and better support than Villa and Spuds? I'm genuinely a bit lost. Are you being sarcastic or for real? Mmmmm how so do they have a bigger and better support? NE5 thinks that a bigger stadium = more supporters nation-/world-wide, regardless of the fact that some bigger/better supported teams merely have smaller (but always full) stadia than teams who are definitely 'smaller' clubs. Hence he thinks that NUFC are a bigger club than Liverpool ("only Man Utd are bigger than us", or some such bunk), and that the M*ck*ms have a bigger support than Spurs and Villa. No, they just have a big stadium (of s****), you nit! and you, son, are talking absolute garbage. If your view of things is restricted to the last 10 or even 20 years, its your problem. Give the mackems a sniff of success and they would piss all over the likes of Villa, Spurs and Leeds. Just like we did, which we didn't for years, just like them. Come back when you learn the difference between "bigger" and "more successful" Leaving aside the debate concerning what concerns a big club (success, fanbase, history etc) [btw, a debate I never brought up and am not interested in discussing], in PURELY FANBASE TERMS (I've put it in caps so you don't think I'm talking about trophies/other stuff), if you think that there are more Sunderland (or even *potential* Sunderland) fans in the UK (or the world, for that matter) than there are Tottenham/Villa/Leeds fans/potential fans, then you're out of your tree. The fact that they can get more in through the doors does not mean they have a bigger fanbase than any of those clubs; it just means that the other club have many thousands more fans OUTSIDE the stadium on matchdays than Sunderland. Likewise, suggesting that Newcastle has a bigger fanbase than, say, Liverpool is ridiculous. Yes, we have a great fanbase and get great attendances at SJP, but if Liverpool had a bigger stadium than us they would get more fans through the turnstiles every week, and still have more 'in reserve' than we do.

The Mackems have a bigger and better support than Villa and Spuds? I'm genuinely a bit lost. Are you being sarcastic or for real? Mmmmm how so do they have a bigger and better support? NE5 thinks that a bigger stadium = more supporters nation-/world-wide, regardless of the fact that some bigger/better supported teams merely have smaller (but always full) stadia than teams who are definitely 'smaller' clubs. Hence he thinks that NUFC are a bigger club than Liverpool ("only Man Utd are bigger than us", or some such bunk), and that the M*ck*ms have a bigger support than Spurs and Villa. No, they just have a big stadium (of shite), you nit!

Fantastic post, and a point I hadn't really considered before.

yeah. Replace the Italians with the French.

How long before he somehow manages to crowbar a "one magical night in Barcelona" reference in, despite there being absolutely no relevance here whatsoever?

No - if someone (be it a man or a woman) isn't into football, that doesn't make me feel differently about them on its own. What I really DO hate though is those people who really aren't into football 99% of the time, but then pretend they are on 'fashionable' occasions e.g. World/Euro Champs, if there is an English club in the CL final etc. F*** OFF! YOU DON'T WATCH FOOTBALL THE OTHER 364 DAYS OF THE YEAR SO STOP PRETENDING YOU DO NOW! (Also, these people *always* voice their worthless opinions about the 1 game a year they do watch, screaming at the telly for the manager to sub Shearer cos he hit the bar from 35 yards or summat - drives me up the wall! )

There is a sell on clause of 10%, but that is totally independent of the 20% financial rights which mean that Barca part own dos Santos for the next two years and therefore have some say over the dealings for that playerin a manner which is not likely to be made public. Same with Modric. I'm sorry, but I don't buy that - 3rd party influence over transfers is not allowed under Premiership rules (as with the West Ham case), and I can't see even Spurs being stupid enough to sign a deal which breaks these rules after the West Ham affair. The bolded Barca statement reads to me as a 20% sell-on clause in his first 2 years, going down to a 10% clause after that. (Btw, that's also how the BBC sees it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/t/tottenham_hotspur/7440216.stm) I think your opinions on these two deals are both based on the hope that one of our main current Premiership rivals haven't done two good deals rather than whatever the underlying truth might be.

They tend to do it as soon as they think they can't cut it before anyone else realises so they get a few bob. EDIT: Barca do not sell good players unless they have no choice. Quaresma? Was gash at Barca. And is doing really well at Porto - hence my point that just cos Barca are willing to sell GdS does not mean he'll fail at Spurs necessarily. They tend to do it as soon as they think they can't cut it before anyone else realises so they get a few bob. EDIT: Barca do not sell good players unless they have no choice. Quaresma? from wiki 'During the Euro 2004, he announced his refusal to play for Barça as long as Frank Rijkaard was in charge' They had no choice. They tend to do it as soon as they think they can't cut it before anyone else realises so they get a few bob. EDIT: Barca do not sell good players unless they have no choice. Quaresma? Part of the deal that took Deco to Barca wasn't he? Different circumstances really. Both fair points.

sorry to bring this up again but i can se this being something that put Spurs in a better position than us to sign modric. Aye, my understanding was that there was a sell on clause, and if a bid of so much was made within the first few seasons, Spurs have to accept it with Dinamo/Barcelona keeping a larger percentage of the profits. For example: Modric, Spurs sign for £16m. Club X bid £20m. Spurs have to accept. Spurs recoup £16m, Dinamo get £4m. Therefore Dinamo get £20m which is more than our £18m bid. dos Santos,Spurs sign for £6m. Club X bid £10m. Spurs have to accept. Spurs recoup £8m, Barcelona get £2m. Except you seem to have pulled the bit where Spurs have to accept a bid of a certain amount out of thin air. The sell-on clauses with the Barca deal are documented on their site, but there's no mention of a minimum clause in his Spurs contract. Exact clauses will be kept confidential, but fact is that the pargraph in bold points out that Spurs do not fully own dos Santos, and bears similarities to the Modric deal where there is very strong suggestion that Dinamo retained control of future transfer dealings. "Spurs do not fully own dos Santos" - yeah, it's called a sell-on clause, and it's not like Spurs are the first team in England (or the Premiership, or anywhere else for that matter) to have one of those in their players' contracts. I'd bet that a few of our squad have them from their previous clubs. And I bet some people we sell (Shola perhaps?) have sell-on clauses that will benefit NUFC. It's not uncommon, and it's not worth stating it in a melodramatic fashion that Spurs don't own his full transfer rights - that's correct, but it's just a common sell-on clause. The point I was making is that you suggested that Barca would put a minimum fee release clause into GdS's Spurs contract: now while contract clauses are often kept confidential and we don't know if there is or there isn't one, to say that it's your "understanding" that he does have a minimum fee release clause is just pulling it out of thin air... unlesss you are privy to some inside info, how the hell do you get to that conclusion?

sorry to bring this up again but i can se this being something that put Spurs in a better position than us to sign modric. Aye, my understanding was that there was a sell on clause, and if a bid of so much was made within the first few seasons, Spurs have to accept it with Dinamo/Barcelona keeping a larger percentage of the profits. For example: Modric, Spurs sign for £16m. Club X bid £20m. Spurs have to accept. Spurs recoup £16m, Dinamo get £4m. Therefore Dinamo get £20m which is more than our £18m bid. dos Santos,Spurs sign for £6m. Club X bid £10m. Spurs have to accept. Spurs recoup £8m, Barcelona get £2m. Except you seem to have pulled the bit where Spurs have to accept a bid of a certain amount out of thin air. The sell-on clauses with the Barca deal are documented on their site, but there's no mention of a minimum clause in his Spurs contract.

They tend to do it as soon as they think they can't cut it before anyone else realises so they get a few bob. EDIT: Barca do not sell good players unless they have no choice. Quaresma?

Think there is a bit of double standards starting up in this thread now. While it's nearly certain that there is more to his going to Spurs than just Modric choosing them over us (dodgy goings on with the Mamic brothers etc), I get the impression that people think it would've been different if he'd come to us. Just smacks a bit of unreasonable black-and-white specs on to me: if Modric had come here it just would've meant that WE were the ones who did the dodgy deal rather than Modric wanting to come here because he thought Newcastle was the best option/biggest club etc.

Yeah, I'm positive you're right, but it's the brazen cheek of saying such a thing so publicly and in such strong terms that annoys me even from a neutrals POV in this case. It's not just an off-the-cuff remark about how he'd like Barry to join, it's a long diatribe on the subject, and having the cheek to say that he's not disrespecting Villa by saying such things within his comments - he could hardly show less respect to Villa if he tried with those remarks!

Gerrard sh*t-stirring to get Barry to join Liverpool. http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11095_3630182,00.html I don't really care about the Scousers or the Villans one way or the other, but if Gerrard (or anyone else for that matter) tried to do that to one of our best players I would be fuming. It has to be considered tapping up, surely? But because one of the top 4 is doing it, it's fine...

Can't doubt his skill as a player, and I don't know what he's like away from the pitch, but during a game he is one ****ing despicable character/personality in my book. Same goes for Terry.

I'm sorry, but end of discussion. Don't care what you have to say to reply to this post, it's not a valid answer for me. If you think that NUFC are a bigger club than [most League Championships] Liverpool just for starters (note, that's NOT a measure of whether one likes Liverpool any more than one does Newcastle), then you clearly have no idea what a big club is and there is no point in further discussion with you. But we've got a bigger stadium than them.

It always surprises me that so many people feel so vitriolic towards them - I get the impression some people hate them more than the Smoggies or even the Mackems, and that is completely beyond me. I know that a fair proportion of their lot don't have a lot of time for NUFC either, but I get the feeling that we're below West Ham and Chelsea etc (not to mention the obvious choice of Arsenal) in their 'hate list' - what I'm saying is I think that we have a disproportionate interest/dislike of a club that we shouldn't by any means like, but we shouldn't really get our knickers in a twist over either.

Didn't refer to any of those things when I called you a broken record, you've brought them up yourself. I was referring to your oft-repeated sentiments that other football clubs should only be compared in terms of size/worthiness to achieve things to the Newcastle side of the late 90s - as fun as they were, we're not there any more and I don't think you're ready to accept the situation of the club as it is. No one is saying that means we can't want the best for NUFC as soon as possible, but to believe we're more of a pull than Spurs at the moment is just sheer refusal to look facts in the face, IMO. I was going to say, well you can believe that we're bigger than Spurs in general if you want to (though I guess most true neutrals wouldn't really put either club ahead of the other), but then I saw: I'm sorry, but end of discussion. Don't care what you have to say to reply to this post, it's not a valid answer for me. If you think that NUFC are a bigger club than [most League Championships] Liverpool just for starters (note, that's NOT a measure of whether one likes Liverpool any more than one does Newcastle), then you clearly have no idea what a big club is and there is no point in further discussion with you.

ok, you don't believe in the club, and you're happy with mediocrity and 2nd rate standards. Hope you put on record you agreed with Jimmy Greaves the other week, and all the other London journos who agree with him. ****'s sake, give it up NE5 - you're a broken record, but more importantly, you don't have any perspective on things: do you still think we're in 95/96? NUFC and THFC are pretty similar in terms of 'who is the bigger club'? In post-war times, we have the bigger stadium/fanbase etc, they have the better trophy record. Yes, we were bigger than them from the early/mid 90s up to a few seasons ago. They were bigger than us in the 80s - by your logic of believing that clubs are only as big as their last 10 years, why weren't all the Spuds moaning about how they weren't beating us to players in the mid 90s? The fact is, we had a great period in the mid-to-late 90s, but within the last 3 or 4 years the pendulum has swung slightly back in their favour again - that's not to say that it won't come back round to us in future (or that we shouldn't do everything we can to get that swing happening asap), but if you think that 1) we're a more attractive proposition than Spurs at the minute, or 2) we're a lot bigger than them overall, your black-and-white specs have been welded to your face. There's nothing to say that having ambition to get back to the top has to be mutually exclusive with realistically realising that we're slightly below them in the pecking order at the moment, or indeed that either NUFC or THFC can definitively claim to be a bigger club (in general, not at a specific point in time) in the modern era.

Hmmmm? http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42271000/jpg/_42271730_krul_getty.jpg = http://www.firstfoot.com/geneolagy/images/fulton_mackay.jpg

I was thinking exactly the same thing. If Motson was a horse, he'd have been sent to the glue factory years ago. Same with David Pleat, another so-called expert on the game who can't even pronounce simple players' names correctly. Gold watch and a painting of a spitfire for both of them.