Pablo Aimar joins Benfica

[fredbob]

So people are arguing that being in Europe didnt make us a good team?

 

I'm either deleting my account or joining Simon Jordan in Marbella. 

millwall in the uefa cup not so long......were they a good team ?

 

do it 7 times in a decade and you may have a point

 

 

does it mean if you play in europe you're a good team. also out of that 7 was 1 through the intertoto and two after finishing 13th ?

 

it basically means that if you finish 13th or thereabouts, then the powers that be at  a club like Newcastle ought to be showing the basic ambition to do a whole lot better.

 

But that depends on the standards you set

 

On the other hand, we could lower our standards, and wait for the 52000 crowds to continue paying to watch the expected mediocrity.

 

 

what ambition..souness-roeder then allardyce/ it's like me letting my 4 year old daughter do the household finances. rank bad decisions! how many times have i said i'd rather keegan with 20 million than those 3 with 50 million....wouldn't you ?

 

Sorry but I'm talking about qualifying for europe 7 times in a decade. You don't do that if you don't have some sort of ambition. Do you think Ashley is showing this ambition ?

 

 

what ambition was shown by appointing those managers...none and rank bad decsion making if he thought it was.

 

please for fucks sake read on all the posts i've typed on this about what shepherd HAD done...BUT HE WAS TAKING US BACKWARDS

 

oh dear.

 

The board appoint the managers. Not ONE person. The major shareholders simply don't let a single other person make the most important decision on their own.

 

How many times does this need to be said ?

 

The Halls and Shepherd appointed the managers, between 1992 and 2007. That is Keegan, Dalglish, Gullit, Robson, Souness, Roeder and Allardyce.

 

Understand ?

 

And - in my opinion the ex board understood that to reach the champions league positions,  that you need to back their managers, and punch the weight of the club with the 2nd biggest [now 3rd] crowd [and the fanbase to go with it] in the country. They had showed they understood this by actuallly capitalising on it. So why would they not have done it again ?

 

As Chez Given says, all you are spouting is blind optimism that Ashley will match it. He's done nothing or even said anything to give you such optimism, and are using personal dislike to taint your judgement.

 

I've said my piece, and sadly the only thing that will change my mind is Ashley himself, if he starts backing his manager and showing he has the desire to succeed.

 

Is this easy enough to understand ?

 

 

 

I dont understand where you get this view that people on this forum are completely pro Ashley and anti shepherd as though they go hand in hand - from my point of view - i see alot of people  who seem cautiously optimisitic about the unknown, it just seems like there is an antagonistic minority who seem to belive that being cautiously optimisitc about the new board and being correctly pessimistic about tabloid stories infers that you are automatically anti shepherd and pro Ashley.

 

NE5, serious question here, im not going into the reasons why they didnt sign becasue it's a grey area i know we would never agree on, but had we signed Modric and Woodgate (the only 2 targets we 100% certain of approaching) then what would be your view on Ashley's ambition? A rough calculation would put that and approximately £25m, would that not be a good enough indication of his ambitions?

[OzzieMandias]

Nobody in their right mind could argue that we've been anything better than mediocre since Shepherd sacked Bobby.

 

Compared to what?

 

In terms of the level of football at which we are competing, or attempting to compete.

 

Obviously, in terms of the Champions League, we are worse than mediocre. Compared to Blyth Spartans, though, we're pretty good.

 

So not compared to the Premier League then?

 

Au contraire. I said in terms of the level of football at which we are competing -- that certainly includes the Premier League.

 

So competing as an 'average' Premier league side this year and finishing 7th would be a 'mediocre' season?

 

In the period under discussion it was our best finish by some considerable distance -- our only one in the top half of the table -- and it wasn't good enough to qualify for the UEFA.

 

Yep, that's certainly a picture of mediocrity in the post-Bobby years.

 

You said we'd never been better than mediocre and finishing 7th this year would be more than that. You cant have it both ways i'm afraid.

 

My apologies. I read your post too quickly and took it as referring to our 7th place finish under Roeder -- highlight of the last five years.

 

To answer your question properly, I'd say a 7th place finish next season would be good in terms of our recent league placings, but still mediocre in the wider scheme of things. It represents nothing better than the upper end of mid-table.

 

Well here's hoping for mediocrity at the end of this coming season then.

 

For the upper end of mediocrity, anyway.

[Guest Heneage]

Does anyone wonder if Nicko was right?

[Syrette]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v146/deadreflection/not_this_shit_again.jpg

[madras]

So people are arguing that being in Europe didnt make us a good team?

 

I'm either deleting my account or joining Simon Jordan in Marbella. 

millwall in the uefa cup not so long......were they a good team ?

 

do it 7 times in a decade and you may have a point

 

 

does it mean if you play in europe you're a good team. also out of that 7 was 1 through the intertoto and two after finishing 13th ?

 

it basically means that if you finish 13th or thereabouts, then the powers that be at  a club like Newcastle ought to be showing the basic ambition to do a whole lot better.

 

But that depends on the standards you set

 

On the other hand, we could lower our standards, and wait for the 52000 crowds to continue paying to watch the expected mediocrity.

 

 

what ambition..souness-roeder then allardyce/ it's like me letting my 4 year old daughter do the household finances. rank bad decisions! how many times have i said i'd rather keegan with 20 million than those 3 with 50 million....wouldn't you ?

 

Sorry but I'm talking about qualifying for europe 7 times in a decade. You don't do that if you don't have some sort of ambition. Do you think Ashley is showing this ambition ?

 

 

what ambition was shown by appointing those managers...none and rank bad decsion making if he thought it was.

 

please for fucks sake read on all the posts i've typed on this about what shepherd HAD done...BUT HE WAS TAKING US BACKWARDS

 

oh dear.

 

The board appoint the managers. Not ONE person. The major shareholders simply don't let a single other person make the most important decision on their own.

 

How many times does this need to be said ?

 

The Halls and Shepherd appointed the managers, between 1992 and 2007. That is Keegan, Dalglish, Gullit, Robson, Souness, Roeder and Allardyce.

 

Understand ?

 

And - in my opinion the ex board understood that to reach the champions league positions,  that you need to back their managers, and punch the weight of the club with the 2nd biggest [now 3rd] crowd [and the fanbase to go with it] in the country. They had showed they understood this by actuallly capitalising on it. So why would they not have done it again ?

 

As Chez Given says, all you are spouting is blind optimism that Ashley will match it. He's done nothing or even said anything to give you such optimism, and are using personal dislike to taint your judgement.

 

I've said my piece, and sadly the only thing that will change my mind is Ashley himself, if he starts backing his manager and showing he has the desire to succeed.

 

Is this easy enough to understand ?

 

 

the board/shepherd (semantic and pedantic point)..were they taking us backwards from appointing souness till the day they left ?

 

in my opinion the ex-board hit lucky in getting robson and haven't had a clue ever since falling for the idea of if you throw enough cash at any donkey it'll work.

 

as for blind optimism you'll find my view to be cautious,ashley hasn't backed on the pitch with much cash but he got rid of allardyce and brought in amuch better option.

 

as for previous managers 3(keegan,dalglish and robson) were good decisions. the rest weren't. at that level 50-50 when you are throwing money at it isn't good enough.

 

 

 

it's all about the way we were going,not where we'd been. i'm the type who'd think after celebrating a title win...."right how do we improve",ashley has stopped the rot, and yes if we start the season with the squad we have i'll criticise but right now i'd take what we have over what i saw us having under shepherd/the ex board.

[OzzieMandias]

it's all about the way we were going,not where we'd been

 

Precisely.

[UV]

You misunderstood my post in that case, or I didn't make my point as well as I might have. Whatever. I read this thread as I have a few others and was struck by how often discussion on here comes down to comparing the Hall/Shepherd era with Ashley, and it strikes me as pointless. I've been going since the early seventies (not every game, I'm not a Soopafan) but my main interest is in what happens next season, not last, or ten years ago, or thirty-five.

 

How the club was run in the recent past and what it was able to achieve is the best yardstick we have with which to judge how Ashley is doing. If one's opinion is that the Hall & Shepherd regime did a poor job overall, then it should be all the easier for Ashley to better it.

 

 

 

My apologies. I read your post too quickly and took it as referring to our 7th place finish under Roeder -- highlight of the last five years.

 

5 years ago today we'd just finished 3rd. Shockingly poor eh.

 

 

 

I dont understand where you get this view that people on this forum are completely pro Ashley and anti shepherd as though they go hand in hand - from my point of view - i see alot of people  who seem cautiously optimisitic about the unknown, it just seems like there is an antagonistic minority who seem to belive that being cautiously optimisitc about the new board and being correctly pessimistic about tabloid stories infers that you are automatically anti shepherd and pro Ashley.

 

NE5, serious question here, im not going into the reasons why they didnt sign becasue it's a grey area i know we would never agree on, but had we signed Modric and Woodgate (the only 2 targets we 100% certain of approaching) then what would be your view on Ashley's ambition? A rough calculation would put that and approximately £25m, would that not be a good enough indication of his ambitions?

 

You can't address everyone on the forum's opinion in a single post, but I'm sure I haven't been imagining that the vast majority of people on this forum were vociferously anti-shepherd (and still are though some may have mellowed), and certainly most posters in the latter part of this thread have been. Ashley in one season has done a lot of the very same things that Shepherd did and was heavily criticised for (sacking a manager midway though a season without anyone lined up, then appointing an English manager (they're all shit you know), not getting players in early enough, bringing in poor players and paying them high wages, missing out on transfer targets, making crass comments in the press, etc) and yet gets very little criticism, and indeed is praised for a lot of those very same things (got rid of the terrible Allardyce, brought back KK, Smith was Allardyce's fault, not caving in to mercenaries wage demands, sticking one to the press, etc). IMO in some cases the criticisms are valid and I'd agree that both Shepherd and Ashley were wrong, in other cases the criticisms are not valid and that neither Shepherd nor Ashley could be blamed. The hypocrisy from an awful lot of posters is what gets me, even down to the level of credence given to the press - under Shepherd every negative story, every delayed transfer, every high reported wage was jumped on and criticised. Now, nothing the press says is to be believed at all unless it is pro-Ashley. Targets which were demanded of Shepherd are now unrealistic for Ashley to have to achieve.

 

Noone that I can see is being anti-Ashley at all. People have been critical of certain things at times, yes. What's wrong with that? Also people have debated the merits of certain policies which it has been widely suggested Ashley will follow, that is all. Noone is saying Ashley is/isn't doing so and so, he's shit, we're just saying IF Ashley does/doesn't do so and so, he will be shit. However any criticism of anything which is even attributed to Ashley is being "antagonistic" apparently.

[Guest icemanblue]

Every. Fucking. Thread.

[mrmojorisin75]

Every. Fucking. Thread.

 

[Colos Short and Curlies]

Copied from F365, funnily enough from a blog written about a Toon fans first forray onto the internet

 

"I know what Tony means about message boards and blogs. They do seem to have become a home for a certain sort of person who loves asserting their own fantasies, opinions and lunatic ideas with a conviction so extreme you'd have thought they had come across the Truth Motherlode. You can tell these people because they are ones who write FACT in block caps as though that makes it more true. "

[Guest sicko2ndbest]

Every. f***ing. Thread.

 

 

Dont worry

 

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/1301_ashley.shtml

 

[ChezGiven]

Thanks UV.

 

When Badhead wrote that post about past/present/future, i nearly went into one about this. I didnt as he probably has a point about how often the subject comes up.

 

However, just to repeat the obvious for those who cant get their heads around logic; the past is the benchmark, we do not and can not judge ashley from inside a vacuum of experience or knowledge of the past.

 

Lots of people have different criteria for how the club should be run but one thing is clear, he expects us to still spend our time and cash following the club that HE SAID would be moving forward, that HE SAID would be challenging the top of the table in the near future. He is accountable to us and needs to deliver against his promises. To gain any insight into whether he is taking us forward requires a comparison....

 

Against what?

 

Pointing. Out. The. Fucking. Obvious.

[fredbob]

 

 

I dont understand where you get this view that people on this forum are completely pro Ashley and anti shepherd as though they go hand in hand - from my point of view - i see alot of people  who seem cautiously optimisitic about the unknown, it just seems like there is an antagonistic minority who seem to belive that being cautiously optimisitc about the new board and being correctly pessimistic about tabloid stories infers that you are automatically anti shepherd and pro Ashley.

 

NE5, serious question here, im not going into the reasons why they didnt sign becasue it's a grey area i know we would never agree on, but had we signed Modric and Woodgate (the only 2 targets we 100% certain of approaching) then what would be your view on Ashley's ambition? A rough calculation would put that and approximately £25m, would that not be a good enough indication of his ambitions?

 

You can't address everyone on the forum's opinion in a single post, but I'm sure I haven't been imagining that the vast majority of people on this forum were vociferously anti-shepherd (and still are though some may have mellowed), and certainly most posters in the latter part of this thread have been. Ashley in one season has done a lot of the very same things that Shepherd did and was heavily criticised for (sacking a manager midway though a season without anyone lined up, then appointing an English manager (they're all s*** you know), not getting players in early enough, bringing in poor players and paying them high wages, missing out on transfer targets, making crass comments in the press, etc) and yet gets very little criticism, and indeed is praised for a lot of those very same things (got rid of the terrible Allardyce, brought back KK, Smith was Allardyce's fault, not caving in to mercenaries wage demands, sticking one to the press, etc). IMO in some cases the criticisms are valid and I'd agree that both Shepherd and Ashley were wrong, in other cases the criticisms are not valid and that neither Shepherd nor Ashley could be blamed. The hypocrisy from an awful lot of posters is what gets me, even down to the level of credence given to the press - under Shepherd every negative story, every delayed transfer, every high reported wage was jumped on and criticised. Now, nothing the press says is to be believed at all unless it is pro-Ashley. Targets which were demanded of Shepherd are now unrealistic for Ashley to have to achieve.

 

Noone that I can see is being anti-Ashley at all. People have been critical of certain things at times, yes. What's wrong with that? Also people have debated the merits of certain policies which it has been widely suggested Ashley will follow, that is all. Noone is saying Ashley is/isn't doing so and so, he's s***, we're just saying IF Ashley does/doesn't do so and so, he will be s***. However any criticism of anything which is even attributed to Ashley is being "antagonistic" apparently.

 

You see, i think you are imagining a "majority" anti shepherd element, i genuinely dont think there are alot of people who genuinely believe that he and the last board did a poor job overall.  If i was to pose the question you are implying - i.e did the last board to a bad job overall? Then i am very confident that there would be an extreme minority of brainless people who would affirm that question. I find that its people like you and NE5 who seem to jump on peoples optimism for the new board (which may or may not of contradicted a previous views on the old board) and use it as an "ironic stick" to beat people's opinions implying that by proxy we are anti Shepherd, which is rubbish.

 

When people do criticize the old board they are usually pointing to the last 4 years or so after they sacked SBR, which alot of people will recognise as being the turingin point in the fans and board realationship, without wanting to sound ungrateful but there isnt another club in the top 5 or 6 who would back there board had they done the same thing as we had done - irrepsective of what the board had achived previously. Its just the fact of life, and perfectly justified in my opinion.

 

As for this pro Ahsley element - does the fact that this is his first season in charge mean anything to you? Would you think it was acceptable for SJH and Shepherd to recieve the same criticisms in there first season as you are impying that Ashley should recive, i think youwill be (pleasently) surpirsed at how many people will turn agains the boaord if we dont get the people we want in, or if there is proper inclination that keegan in being undermined, for the time being though,people are being open minded about the present and future, and rightly so.

 

Trust me, ill be one of the first to criticise the new board if they dont get anyone in, just like alot of people will as well.

[alpal78]

How has a thread on Pablo Aimar morphed into one on the old board v new board? This is so misleading, can someone at least fucking change the title! 

[Colos Short and Curlies]

How has a thread on Pablo Aimar morphed into one on the old board v new board? This is so misleading, can someone at least fucking change the title! 

 

If a thread is over 30 pages its a safe bet the board has come into it somewhere along the line

[nobby_solano]

How has a thread on Pablo Aimar morphed into one on the old board v new board? This is so misleading, can someone at least f***ing change the title! 

 

or lock the thread, seeing as the aimar business is over with?

[ChezGiven]

Perhaps because the reason we missed out on hiim was because of the terms being offered?

 

Just a guess like.

[OzzieMandias]

Thanks UV.

 

When Badhead wrote that post about past/present/future, i nearly went into one about this. I didnt as he probably has a point about how often the subject comes up.

 

However, just to repeat the obvious for those who cant get their heads around logic; the past is the benchmark, we do not and can not judge ashley from inside a vacuum of experience or knowledge of the past.

 

Lots of people have different criteria for how the club should be run but one thing is clear, he expects us to still spend our time and cash following the club that HE SAID would be moving forward, that HE SAID would be challenging the top of the table in the near future. He is accountable to us and needs to deliver against his promises. To gain any insight into whether he is taking us forward requires a comparison....

 

Against what?

 

Pointing. Out. The. Fucking. Obvious.

 

Question is how far into the past, eh?

 

But of course that's painfully fucking obvious too, isn't it?

 

[ChezGiven]

Thanks UV.

 

When Badhead wrote that post about past/present/future, i nearly went into one about this. I didnt as he probably has a point about how often the subject comes up.

 

However, just to repeat the obvious for those who cant get their heads around logic; the past is the benchmark, we do not and can not judge ashley from inside a vacuum of experience or knowledge of the past.

 

Lots of people have different criteria for how the club should be run but one thing is clear, he expects us to still spend our time and cash following the club that HE SAID would be moving forward, that HE SAID would be challenging the top of the table in the near future. He is accountable to us and needs to deliver against his promises. To gain any insight into whether he is taking us forward requires a comparison....

 

Against what?

 

Pointing. Out. The. Fucking. Obvious.

 

Question is how far into the past, eh?

 

But of course that's painfully fucking obvious too, isn't it?

 

 

I was joking, hence the wink

 

The last 20 years for me.

[OzzieMandias]

Thing is, the context changes. Things are already very different from the time when we last qualified for the CL, as a glance at either the ownership structure of the Premiership or the nature of TV revenues as a proportion of club income would reveal.

[Colos Short and Curlies]

Thing is, the context changes. Things are already very different from the time when we last qualified for the CL, as a glance at either the ownership structure of the Premiership or the nature of TV revenues as a proportion of club income would reveal.

 

Just reading that second quote in your sig (assume its NE5?). SJH wasn't adverse to the odd trip into the Strawberry in his time was he?

[Guest elbee909]

Perhaps because the reason we missed out on hiim was because of the terms being offered?

 

Just a guess like.

 

I think, if I had the money that Aimar's already got, I'd have gone to Portugal as well.  It's really nice there.  Esp. Madeira, looks gorgeous.

[OzzieMandias]

Thing is, the context changes. Things are already very different from the time when we last qualified for the CL, as a glance at either the ownership structure of the Premiership or the nature of TV revenues as a proportion of club income would reveal.

 

Just reading that second quote in your sig (assume its NE5?). SJH wasn't adverse to the odd trip into the Strawberry in his time was he?

 

And fair enough, of course.

[OzzieMandias]

Perhaps because the reason we missed out on hiim was because of the terms being offered?

 

Just a guess like.

 

I think, if I had the money that Aimar's already got, I'd have gone to Portugal as well.  It's really nice there.  Esp. Madeira, looks gorgeous.

 

I lived in Lisbon for a while. Great place. Preferred Sporting to Benfica, though, having watched matches at both places,

[NE5]

 

We'll get whats left, that's what happened last year & we ended up paying good wages for s***. I can't believe that you are saying we ended up buying players at the right price.

 

If we didn't live in a world where people did consider soundly based speculation we'd still be living in caves. You can't compare this with the clown Nicko who seemingly makes up stories for his own personal kudos and vip status on the site.

 

I have just seen Kaboul arrive at Sunderland's training ground, if he does sign then money certainly does talk after what his agent said & shows ambition and money from the Mackems. Given what he said Keane deserves a medal for even getting Kaboul to travel up.

 

I probably didn't word my post very well as I meant somebody within the club thought that the players were the right price.  As for getting what was left, how many of the players would you consider in that way?

 

Press speculation isn't soundly based speculation, most of the time its shite generated so sell the shite newspapers, and they’re in it to make money from sales and advertisements so they come up with names to get as many readers as possible.  Somebody might post a link to where press speculation is watched to see how often they are right, I doubt it’s much better than that of Nico.

 

The Kaboul comment seems to be in desperation, the mackems are ambitious because they are after a player who has played less than 80 first team games, 21 in this country and he hasn't won a full cap for his country.  Yet quite a few on here don't think we are ambitious and we have recently signed a full Argentinean international who has played almost 200 first team games as club level. 

 

 

most of us can see what Tsumami is getting at I would imagine