Hughesy

It was a political move by Liverpool - they could not be seen to give Carroll back to us after they had spent £35 million on him. That is quite clear.

Pardew never said it was a political bid by us. It would help if people read what he actually said and the context.

'You have to pay a lot of respect to Mike, we've had a couple of phone calls during the window and we could have cashed in on a couple of our players but he didn't and I thank him for that and our fans should thank him too.' I'm finished caring what he thinks about anything now. Utterly spineless. Keegan would vomit reading that and so should we. Keegan would have vomited and then resigned. Which would have helped a great deal.

Also not sure why you would schedule a medical for 9pm on the day the transfer window shuts?

Can we ban you please. Oh, here's the alright on the night brigade again. Think someone needs to produce a Venn diagram of the various schools of thought on this forum.

You'd have to assume that is probably the reason. I suppose they don't see the point in spending £5 million plus on their 4th/5th choice player who may not actually be a huge improvement on Simpson. They'd rather wait to see if they can get Debuchy now or in January. Whether we should have just paid the extra £1 million that Lille then decided for ask for is a different matter.

Was there any concrete interest in Clyne or was it a mixture of journalistic conjecture/wishful thinking?

Thought the accounts were quite a pleasant surprise mesel, but then again I'm not arguing against what's in them. I really don't want to continue this debate much further so I think I will limit myself to this last post in direct response to you. The accounts for 2010/11 show a loss of 3.9 million. Due to a profit on sales of 36.7 million, we had a profit before tax of 32.6 million. This was down to the sale of Carroll. So I am not sure what you are arguing, but my point was that our profit and loss shows that the Carroll sale made a massive difference to our financial health. This is set against losses of 12 million in 2006, 34.2 million in 2007, 20.3 million in 2008, 15.2 million in 2009 and 17.1 million in 2010. I am not sure if you are trying to say that our turnover was greater than our expenses if you exclude player amortisation. In which case you are correct. But I don't think you can exclude player amortisation when assessing our financial strength. I also don't know how you can claim that the consecutive losses for 5 seasons totalling c.80 million don't impact on Ashley's business plan. I am not denying that certain bids of 8 figures have been made. What I am suggesting is that Ashley has a figure in mind for each player that he will not go above because he does not see sufficient value. This has been influenced heavily by the losses the club suffered. That is all I want to say - I have more important things to do.

That's just embarrassing.

I've pretty much reached that conclusion.

. What are you trying to defend with your fallacies? What is the point you are trying to make? I am pretty certain that we wouldn't have made a profit without the Carroll sale. I don't have the accounts to hand but I don't seem to remember a 35 million plus profit in the year we sold Carroll. So one would assume that the Carroll money was pretty instrumental in the state of our finances. How do the losses Ashley shored up previously not have a bearing on what we are prepared to spend? Quite clearly Ashley wants to run the club along sensible financial lines, which means that we aren't prepared to pay over our own valuations on players (which is a sensible strategy to be honest). This strategy is a direct result of the losses we were making - it couldn't be any clearer. It has been stated numerous times that we now run the club in a prudent manner and I sincerely hope we continue to do so. No idea what you are getting at in the 3rd 'point'. Completely incoherent. The points I am making are perfectly clear. If you want some help, send me a PM and I'll walk you through it.

Dave has already brought it to the thread that player trading is excluded, pointless, irrelevant, redundant point. Carr & Pardew present the targets and clearly think they're worth the investment, hence him getting regularly p*ssed off when for whatever reason a deal isn't done for their targets. The football people identify the targets, the finance people do the deal, what is the wrong player? Is Debuchy the wrong player? A French International who is 10 times the player Simpson is but won't cost 10 x in £. If you're that intrigued I'm sure google will help you and it'll be able to clarify if it was £7m or £9m if it that much of an issue, there are Pardew quotes. Why is player trading redundant? Regardless of whether someone thinks player trading specifically is redundant, our overall financial situation is not redundant. I am sure one of the resident accountants can highlight the losses we have made over the last 5-10 years. One year of breaking even does not eradicate historic losses. Evidence for Pardew getting pissed off when deals are done for targets? I haven't seen him making any comments in the media - he seems generally to be pretty sensible about our transfer dealings and accepts the financial situation and recruitment strategy as it stands.

Add 15th August 2012 to that, where were we on 15th August 2012? Seriously, somebody mentions a period of years and you want to know where we were for a month. We'd be 8th in the table. What's your point?

Far too many of our fans have a very small time attitude now imo. Happy to exist in mid table financial stability and anything else is a bonus. The club like to perpetuate it too. "Please don't take our players, pretty please?" It isn't a 'small time attitude' to acknowledge that there are at least 5 or 6 teams that can afford to spend substantially more than us. It isn't a 'small time attitude' to acknowledge that in order to compete with these clubs on any level we need to be run on a sensible financial basis. More than that regularly outspend us, we're 19th in net spend in the last 5 years, yet we finished 5th last year. We're ran sensibly and adding a RB, CB cover and Striker could all be done for the same amount of money they've had in failed bids already. This defeatist and apologist attitude is exactly what people are talking about. You've got to add a bit of context to what you are saying. We were in a terrible financial position not very long ago. That seems to have been forgotten. We still can't afford to spend large amounts of money. Personally I would have liked us to have added more players this transfer window so we could have made an extra push towards 4th place, but I would much rather get the right players in at the right price than take gambles on players that aren't right for us. In addition, for someone who is so keen on the net spend issue - could you let me know where we were in the 'NET SPEND TOTALISER' for January 2012? Context is we're not in a terrible financial position, we've returned to profit, we can afford to spend large sums of money (by our standards) as our failed bids are proof of. They've put aside quite a substantial amount of money judging by the failed bids to strengthen, I just hope some of it used to strenghten our weaknesses, I don't care how much it is, we can clearly afford it or they wouldn't have been in for them in the first place. We spent a whopping £7m in January didn't we? Held back from from the Carroll sale some 12 Months prior. A little bit of invention, a little bit of ambition and we might have as good a season as we did last Year. So as soon as we break even (mainly due player sales), you want us to start spending larger amounts again?? You do realise that we were running at a loss for years before that? Do you think those losses don't count or something? Re the failed bids - yes, it looks like we have been prepared to spend money on players. But crucially, it is the right money on the right players. If Carr and Pardew don't think that there is a right back out there worth the money that is being asked for them, what is the point in buying the wrong player just for the sake of it? It doesn't make any sense, business, footballing or otherwise. I think we can assume the Cisse purchase was nearer 9 million to be honest - but I still am intrigued to know who spent more?

To be honest, it's probably the same people who were able to foresee that getting rid of Nolan and Barton and acquiring the likes of Cabaye and Ba was a step in the right direction as opposed to running round prophesying disaster and gloom. So I know who I am more inclined to agree with.

Far too many of our fans have a very small time attitude now imo. Happy to exist in mid table financial stability and anything else is a bonus. The club like to perpetuate it too. "Please don't take our players, pretty please?" It isn't a 'small time attitude' to acknowledge that there are at least 5 or 6 teams that can afford to spend substantially more than us. It isn't a 'small time attitude' to acknowledge that in order to compete with these clubs on any level we need to be run on a sensible financial basis. More than that regularly outspend us, we're 19th in net spend in the last 5 years, yet we finished 5th last year. We're ran sensibly and adding a RB, CB cover and Striker could all be done for the same amount of money they've had in failed bids already. This defeatist and apologist attitude is exactly what people are talking about. You've got to add a bit of context to what you are saying. We were in a terrible financial position not very long ago. That seems to have been forgotten. We still can't afford to spend large amounts of money. Personally I would have liked us to have added more players this transfer window so we could have made an extra push towards 4th place, but I would much rather get the right players in at the right price than take gambles on players that aren't right for us. In addition, for someone who is so keen on the net spend issue - could you let me know where we were in the 'NET SPEND TOTALISER' for January 2012?

Far too many of our fans have a very small time attitude now imo. Happy to exist in mid table financial stability and anything else is a bonus. The club like to perpetuate it too. "Please don't take our players, pretty please?" It isn't a 'small time attitude' to acknowledge that there are at least 5 or 6 teams that can afford to spend substantially more than us. It isn't a 'small time attitude' to acknowledge that in order to compete with these clubs on any level we need to be run on a sensible financial basis.

For all this talk about their front 4, I am not sure I would pick any of them in our starting line up. Decent players by all means, but not players I would fear.

That sentence could be read very differently.

he would be a great signing.. which would make it that much more painful.

I reckon we'd only sell for around £20-25 million and I can't see that being offered.

The floaty cross, like the one Ba scored from last week? His crossing is terrible. One cross that indirectly leads to a goal isn't going to change my mind on that one. It's the inability to actually attack his opposite full back with any kind of pace or guile that more annoys me. Just slows down the attack so much.

If I see Simpson get the ball in the opposition half in acres of space, proceed to shuffle along until both the opposition full back and winger have had time to close him down and then put in one of his floaty crosses...

What is most frustrating is that we are on the cusp of having a very very good squad, but as always seems to be the way with NUFC, we never seem to push on and bolster the squad to take us to that next level (see SBR and the Bowyer season and to a certain extent the selling of Ferdinand). If you bought debuchy, a centre half and a back up striker, we really would have an exceptionally good squad, one that could genuinely push the top 4.

Should have been an indirect freekick and a booking. That rule is ridiculously vague.