Interpolic

Do American sports teams generally make a decent profit?

Spurs and Arsenal both look overvalued to me, not that these things mean a great deal.

People seem to forget that there was endless speculation he would leave from pretty much the day he signed, a major annoyance he did nothing to rectify.

Erm, Indirect Free Kick?

Aye, Norwich fan at work is delighted. Says their fans are happy with the job Hughton's doing but they're a bit defensive and have no firepower.

It amazes me when fans of other clubs try to tell me that turboshite Newcastle players were good for Newcastle. If I'm speaking to a fan of another club and deem them to be fairly knowledgeable I'll usually take their word for it when they say one of their lot's shite, despite what I think of them on the basis of MOTD and a few matches on Sky.

Gotta hate those 49-monthers like.

http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/newcastleunited/id/742?cc=5739

We were definitely playing long ball by Eriksson's last tournament, was beyond belief.

They also made their money back on Bent, didn't they? Very wasteful indeed.

Seen a bit of conversation about this idea of fans being involved in the choice of new kit in another thread - not sure how keen I am on it anyway tbh as it seems pretty small-time to me, plus it'd potentially be open to serious macketage.

True, none of us have a clue. Just sounds about right for him imo. Whatever he's on, he's taking up valuable room on the wage bill.

He'll not be on nothing like that tbf. I'd be surprised if he wasn't.

Tbf Shola will be on £25-30k a week which doesn't exactly help matters in terms of getting the squad padded out with better players, as much as some people seem happy to ignore that fact when talking about him potentially getting yet another new contract.

What's the weird little cunt saying now then?

I'd only want him back for the sake of squad depth and a bit of variety, if you're talking about going back to 2 up front regularly or Cisse on the wing more often than now and again then forget it.

Yeah, we simply wouldn't pay him that much. Upto him I suppose.

I wouldn't be that averse to getting him back if it's on the cheap but I'd also want another wide forward, maybe 2. Not sure if that's even vaguely realistic but maybe we'll shift Jonas on or something to increase the likelihood.

I seem to recall that the club said there was a contract offer on the table. However, Owen and the media are rewriting history here. Was anyone really upset that he left at the end of that season? By that time, he had already burned his bridges with the fans. Certainly for the second half of the season from my POV, he stopped putting in any effort as he had already decided that he would leaving on a free. It was all about self-preservation and making sure he did not get injured hence him pulling out of challenges and missing so many one on one chances. It is very telling that Shearer after trumpeting him as a reason why we would escape relegation ended up dropping him. If Owen wasn't going to give his utmost for a supposedly good friend, then he obviously didn't care one bit. As a captain and therefore someone you would expect to set an example to his teammates, he was a disgrace. Surely everyone was glad to see the back of him and even the most deluded fan would have realised that there is no way we could have afforded him in the Championship. The reason why fans resent Michael Owen has absolutely nothing to so with him leaving at the end of the season and not staying to help us win promotion. We managed that quite well without him (infact I think his continued presence would have been resented by the other players and the infamous team spirit may well not have happened). It is all to so with his attitude and performances in that season being one of the main contributions to our relegation. This Not forgetting that his priority over the course of 4 years appeared to be being fit and playing well for England, rather than the club paying him £100k a week. There was apparently the same perception of him at Liverpool, it was the first thing a few Liverpool fans said to me when he signed. Him getting injured at that tournament when he wasn't fully fit was the icing on the cake. Utterly bizarre and I can't think of any other player who carries on like that these days.

Mint, that.

Thought that was the official Wigan website for a minute. Total WUM whoever it is, not worth the time of day.

Aye. wot

Only 4 more careers to catch up with Shearer. Turns out he averages a goal every 270 mins since he started playing for us. 1 in 3, not that bad for a backup. A goal every 321 mins this season. To put that in context, Danny Welbeck (a player who does a similar job on a far better level for the current league leaders) averages a goal every 299 mins in his Man United career to date. As I said earlier for someone to keep around the squad and bring on for 10 mins here and there he is fine. The chances of us buying the 2 or probably 3 strikers we'd need if we got shot off him are low too. The problem with any goalscoring stat for Shola is that if he's on the pitch he often takes (quite rightly) the penalties. Which anyone, even Tim Krul, would expect to score more often than not. Therefore Shola's goals to minutes ration is actually a lot better than it would be were he not so good with spot kicks. Plus he's generally used from the bench (he's the most used sub in Premier League history, and he's being used that way even more so in recent years), which makes this goals per minutes on the pitch thing a bit daft. Say he plays 15-20 minutes for 10 games in a row and he scores 1 goal, you could say he's scoring a goal every 2 games. Do you think he'd score 5 goals if he played 90 minutes in those 10 games? NOOOOOOOOO! Means that these comparisons with players that are doing more than the odd cameo don't make any sense. And that's before you consider his general play FFS.

He has a canny knack for stating heresay as fact.