geordiesteve710

bit of an odd thing for the Journal to publish. Thought it was supposed to be a reasonably 'neutral' / pro-all north east teams paper?

Lovely stuff said without a hint of irony. in the same vein: That's us he's on about by the way. In their shadow. One leygue cup final and an FA Cup quarter and these lot think they're the Real Madrid of the north or summat...

Egypo. they're just being silly now aren't they :lol: :lol:

That's sad. I hope if Newcastle ever get to a final we have a little more class than that. Anyway, I'm off to the pub today, I've got tomorrow off work, the sun is shining, and I'm going to have a party. I'll be back tomorrow, win or lose, and hopefully my hangover won't be too bad To the fans on here who have wished us the best, I salute your honesty. To the ones who want us to get hammered......Well, I understand that emotion too, as I know some Sunderland fans can be right arseholes. To be fair in the 90s we did and no the vast majority of you didnt. Hope you enjoy your afternoon stray win or lose.

blue ballons?? Really?!? That the corner house in Heaton I'm assuming? the worst thing about these cup runs is what its brought out in some of our fans. Behaving like, well, mackems.

Did anyone else see the very old outrageously gay man dressed in a monkey onesie outside a chippy on the way back to the town from the KC. kept asking the chippy staff if they were out the night when they understandably said no he countered with 'you poor dear you cant afford it can you you work in a chip shop' would love to think he does the same thing every week winding them up more and more every time

Could go either way Imo. Difference is if we win we will scrape it by the odd goal in potentially 1. If they win it'll be 4-0

Looked yesterday - think some of their threadstarters are bragging they have tickets tbh, asking the dumbest questions "So, erm, are we allowed to wear trainers inside the ground?" load of pink and white plastics at the station today, all wearing suspiciously new-looking scarves. Gawping at the big metal snake they get on to take them to the mystical city of London. Imagine what the ones flying down will feel like stepping onto a big metal bird.

looks like pyjamas you'd get in the official club shop someone actually made that?? Surely there must be better things to do in sunder... Ah, fair enough.

How does that work? Was referring to the theory that Ashley wants his money back (ie purchase price and loan) then he'll disappear. Probably fanciful, but if he's not prepared to even run his ambitionless club at a profit, even that scenario is just a pipe dream. Yeah so in short, I probably meant to write 'pay back' rather than 'pay off.'

So, if I understand this right, the club is being held back from fulfilling its potential commercially so that SD can have shitloads of undiluted advertising space all to itself. The owner is awarding himself this space for free, in lieu of interest on a loan that used to cost £8million a year to service. Whilst this is going on we are just about breaking even (player amortisation doesn't count) and are no closer to paying off the fat bastard and ergo getting rid of him. Frankly I'd rather we pay him £8m and operate properly commercially as this would more than cover the 8 mill. On top of everything he still holds the loan over us and reading between the lines could threaten to pull the loan at any time. So basically we are his bitch until he chokes on a half time pie or one jellied eel too many. Even then the likelihood is his children or whoever inherits everything will just pull this loan anyway. Frankly I'd rather be shot of him and do a Leeds. We're selling our best players without replacing them anyway (which is what Leeds had to do once they were fucked) and at least they appear to be bouncing back, on the up and have a light at the end of the tunnel.

5/1 with Betvictor

If only this last bit was true, and it would make the slightest bit of difference to how our club was run, I'd say pass me a red and white scarf for Sunday. As it is a sunderland win would make no difference to how Ashley operates, and would just be something they would taunt us with at every single derby for a very very long time. For many, I imagine the pleasure involved in a trophy win would be derived purely from the sense of one-upmanship over NUFC. For that reason, it's Man City as the better of two evils for me, but if they win it'll be relief more than anything. Even if the game ends 14-0 I don't understand how anyone could get genuine whole-hearted pleasure from laughing at sunderland in our position. We'd love to be going to Wembley, we won't be going for a long time and that is just depressing as fuck.

This. Had to have an argument with one of them a few weeks ago because he actually thought our stadium was called the Wongadome. Wouldn't accept that it was a joke name that they had heelariously made up.

Sounded a lot like sour grapes after he was banned to me. He then went on to say Pardew was a good coach doing well with his hands tied. It does make me wonder if these journalists even watch us play. He said Ashley is running the club well even though the manager's hands are tied?!? I think we can safely file any future articles from him under the category 'clueless jibberish halfwittery'

exactly this, although if the blip doesn't happen, that constitutes SOME ambition A club with ambition maximises its revenues and re-invests in its team. Disagree? I'd go as far as saying that even Leeds and Portsmouth are capable of that. Thank God we're not a Leeds or Portsmouth eh!!

Not sure most fans are unhappy with our scouting at present or our transfer philosophy, we were 3-4 signings away from fighting for the top 4 in my opinion without the big money signings. The issue is there is now no transfer plan other then to sell for profit and the club in generally has no direction or actual ambition - this is shown clearly by the appointment and sticking with a sub standard manager and back room team. In the most part we have a team of internationals yet a coaching setup sub League 1, we have no identity on the pitch and we are slowly loosing out identity off also. Personally don't agree that its about returning to the boom and bust era of Shepard but atleast showing some controlled ambition on all fronts, starting with a new manager who can mould a team that actually knows what they are doing once they cross that line. I don’t think the club lacks ambition but they are cautious and pragmatic in their approach. In contrast, the fans of every football club are energised by dreams of glory, and what the club have said does cut against that. No-one dreams of finishing 10th. The trouble with putting a dreamer like Fernandez or Ridsdale in charge is that it will eventually go belly-up, unless you’re something of a bottomless pit of money , like Abramovich. So every club, bar the exceptional, has to have some kind of financial discipline. The problem with Shepherd was that he spent all the club could possibly afford in terms of debt, we got a break and made the CL, but then there was nothing left to push on with. The second season we made the CL places, all we could buy was Bowyer on a free. Then there was the inevitable slip backwards. The aim has to be that if we get that bit of luck and make the top four in the future, we’re in a sufficiently healthy position financially that we can take advantage, and not come to a full stop. Youth development, hitherto neglected, is another part of being in a good financial state when opportunity arises. So in the absence of a Mansour, I’m not yet convinced that Ashley’s general strategy is wrong. He’s made some poor decisions, the latest being Kinnear, but overall I’m prepared to give things a bit longer. I wouldn’t say Pardew is sub-standard incidentally, but that’s another debate. ok, I'll bite. Seeing as the club's official position, that it has gone on record with, is that the Europa league is too expensive as you have to invest in a proper squad, so qualifying for that is too risky, and they can't be done with the cups. We're not even gonna have that freakish season where we fluke loads of games and end up in the champions league because to do that we'd have to be knocking about the EL place to start with (and don't forget we're scared of that and go out of our way to avoid it.) I haven't even touched on the whole not developing the commercial side because other sponsors will dilute Sd's exposure thing yet, which looking at the club long term is potentially the biggest tragedy of the lot. So taking all the above into account where on Gods green earth do you see anything resembling ambition? I'm genuinely curious.

I find it absolutely baffling tbf, you're getting so many for the league games which (aside from the odd Pardew-related aberration) have been pretty miserable on the whole. Yet when the cup games come around, where you've had a lot of excitement, some good results and in the FA cup at least knew in advance there was a good chance of seeing a win and going through to the next round, nobody seems to fancy it. Sad sign of the times I suppose where we are told the Premier League is the bestest competition ever, ever, ever to the detriment of the cups and fans seem to be buying into this way of thinking.

We got double that for a game we knew the club didn't want to win And they ripped the shit out of us for it!!! A whole lot of macktracking going on now I'd imagine.

DAT DECOR. Them cups in the backgrond. You don't suppose they would be the fabled, mystic NETD trophies that have only been contested/existed 4 times in the last 15 years?!?

That's a hobby in sunderland, not a name.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/26115540 The mind boggles. The FA man, cannot even spell consistency let alone action it (although in fairness they do seem more than happy to sell it off to the highest bidder.) allegedly, your honour

As bad as they are, they p*ssed all over us 7 days ago in what was probably the worst derby display I've ever seen. aye. puts our performance into perspective watching this lot limp to defeat against bloody hull. We couldn't even compete with them ffs

Absolutely. Probably some self important little hitler on a power trip. Fucking hate jobsworths like that. Probably the same sort of person who will broadcast anyone elses mistake around the office in an email with all top brass cc'ed in or drop it into a conference call with senior management going all 'LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME!' Even worse that no-one with an ounce of common sense has looked to jump in and de-fuse the situation before it got this far. Typical of the club's lack of judgement at the minute.

We already know they do.