Jonas

Both the points are right. 6 years ago he was perfectly good enough and now he's a liability at this level and just turned in an awful season

Villa have spent money but like Leicester its hardly accurate to call it 'financial doping' which is what this was initially purported to be about not the over-reach of outlawing ambition and disadvantaging everybody but the elite of the day it has become. Nobody would have been bent out of shape about either's spend before these rules and now its a punishable offence.

De Bilde, SIbon and Van Gobbel were tragic at Sheffield Wed and Southampton

At least 32 sides from England have played more European football than them. I wonder who the equivalents of that are in various European countries for an idea of their standing in them.

Really like him. Only knew him contemporarily as a pundit and he'd be on the perfect panel for that. Didn't get wrapped up in hype and narratives. He'd be in the perfect defence too people that saw him play say. Had a trial with us I believe before Liverpool. If so could have had Hansen, Waddle, Beardsley, Gascoigne in the same team....then sold them all.

Christ, that made me check it out. 5pages of seething hate filled deranged and disgusting posting because the team up the road put on a light show Following on from probably similar a few days ago about the new shirts. I don't know how they do it.

A James Bond title sequence with Newcastle iconography, I'm placated. Toonraker if you will

That's the most extreme potenital outcome and an unreasonbly sure prediction considering all the other possibilities.

Part of the factor in signing these players will be the revenue of selling them on which has done well for Chelsea. Some will come back to haunt and some wont. The feeder club factor caused by ffp/psr is in effect. Read that Villa may have to sell £60m worth of players this summer - even if untrue, just being plausible is a farce. Its not like the club or any club can just pick who they want to off-load first, its no gage on a player or their understanding of relative players if we sell one player before another, its never been that way and especially now with these f*cking rules. Its not 'madness' if we sell Minteh before Murphy/Miggy.

Someone said it more concisely on here somewhere iirc but they get worked up or find weird things like the affinity with the Tyne Bridge, Keegan (and many others), a famous shirt number, Geordie identity, attention because they don't have their own equivalents. They're really bothered by people wearing Newcastle tops at any time these days so this will be discombobulating them, PTSD from their dreaded "90's"

Look like, and in a manner of speaking are, Da Management

The TV adaptation would be an inversion of the original and have statto's hosting it, in the audience and watching and some boring weirdo interjecting with football related banter, jokes and updates.

They're using every potential rule change to further carve out more for themselves. A spending cap would still theoretically allow anybody to spend as much as them and though it solves what they claim to be the problem and keeps the top spenders at least within their reach it doesn't limit competition which is most likely what they really desire. The arguement is to build something like Liverpool did, but that was in the 60s/70s when is was possible without especial money to do that not in the commercial environment that the likes of Liverpool were more than happy to create (probably pulling up drawbridges even then). Its never happened without money since and wont happen in an ffp world.

We werent. In the mid 90s Manchester United struggled to compete with Blackburn, who signed Shearer and Sutton over Manchester United and Blackburn couldn't sustain that for long with their fanbase where we were second only to Manchester United commercially (and I think Rangers too UK wide) even sold more shirts than them. They had to sell players (Ince, Kanchelskis) in the mid90s too. The global thing didn't really come into it until the late 90s and the commercialisation was rampant. They've always had global fanbase and Liverpool and Arsenal to a less extent but it didn't reflect in their gates or anything at that time either. I don't think we could have sustained that position but we weren't way behind.

I just find it twilight zoney to think of Man City as having cheated but not the elite clubs that have at every turn used every opportunity to literally rewrite the rules nevermind break them on each occasion to further advantage them and disadvantage would-be competitors. No conflation was needed with limiting spending, protecting the smaller clubs to hobbling competition and ring-fencing themselves and their trough.

Just looked that up, was there all morning too, didnt notice anything. Miss all the action me. Blokes on roof tops in stand offs with police, full kit families that apparently plague the area

I was at the RVI yesterday, lovely sunny day, perfect for shorts and shirts. Saw two or three times as many Bosnian shirts (about twenty) as Newcastle one's. What rotten luck. Must have been the one day or the one time of day there wasn't families of people in full Newcastle kits loitering around. I think their rattledness about people in our shirts is because they take it like gloating, which is telling.

Nut-megged Nick Pickering. Scored for our unofficial youth team against Stoke. Got put in with the big lads from my own age group at Benwell. Know I did things that impressed people hearing them mention it amongst themselves because in our culture you wouldn't compliment the person directly. And I'll take that, not having the guts to find out or play against anybody better (small pond obviously) I've achieved what I set out to, to never know. In our group of about ten that played regularly probably the 6th best ended up playing in the very early qualifiying rounds of the FA Cup years after everybody else had stopped playing. Get more confidence vicariously from that or trials you hear whispers about people having than anything at my end. Didn't feel performing was in my hands and very form related as I never learned, I could just do things.

They did a thread the other day about the four most iconic and memorable players. Kevin Ball was straight in there. Its just a given he's in the greatest XI but is iconic and memorablely elite now too. Debatable whether he could have got a game for a big club. An actual one-off game, not holding down a place which isn't debatable.

Every rule thats come in since all th talk about 'fairness' and 'sustainability' and the bogus compassion for the smaller clubs has benefitted the already massively advantaged. How did that happen? They're shameless. Its daylight robbery.

Wish all the released players all the best. There were no bad attitudes I gather, they tried. Were not talking any Michael Owen's here. Some would either have been released long ago or never here at all were we a remotely professionally ran organisation under the previous ownership so I don't blame them for anything.

Food for thought for the bed wetters when RTG is laughing at them, even if they're effectively laughing at our not re-achieving something they'll never achieve. Definitely in the Peter Reid fan club. Victim of a really funny and catchy chant and line of jokes but definitely nothing personal personally nor detected. Especially considering he's by far the most succesful manager they've had in living memory.

Its also just ignoring how cups work. Its a bit of a pet-hate when people say they fancy a team to win a cup or a manager should deliver one. And if this team gets Man City away in the 3rd round?

Most Premier League winning keepers have been 30 or older, most champions league winning keepers have been 30 or older

Chelsea qualified the same way after losing in 94 and finishing mid-table. It was initially specifically just the Champions League qualifying cup finalist because naturally you wouldn't want to to drop out of that to go in the CWC. *edit guessing they changed it so that a cup final place against a team already qualified for the UEFA Cup got a place around about the time the cup was losing its appeal after Man United sat it out and the CWC was disbanded