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NUFC transfer rumours in the press

JH

by JH
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Dokko

Dokko

Posted
Posted

Well that's that cleared up. Where's Carrolls replacement again?

 

That was Ba, or did you expect us to sign a player within 6 hours?

 

Or is Ba not a good enough replacement? Who would you rather have back here for £10m, Ba or Carroll?

 

So we didn't replace him then? WE also needed a striker anyway that Jan. We went into the last six months with Best and the followong season with only Ba, great stuff.

 

35m in the pocket though.

 

So you did expect us to sign a player in 6 hours.  :lol:

 

£35m wasn't enough money for you  :lol:

 

Answer the questions please: Is Ba not a good enough replacement? Who would you rather have back here for £10m, Ba or Carroll?

 

 

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loki679

loki679

Posted
Posted

At least we won't have to pay royalties to Billy Ray Cyrus any more.

 

Please sell Cabaye

Yohan Cabaye

To Paris St Germain or Monaco

Cos if you sell Cabaye

Yohan Cabaye

We can get someone more suited to Alan Pardews preferred hoofball style.

 

Went a bit wrong at the end.

 

Pretty good :lol:

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STM

STM

Posted
Posted

Well that's that cleared up. Where's Carrolls replacement again?

I

That was Ba, or did you expect us to sign a player within 6 hours?

 

Or is Ba not a good enough replacement? Who would you rather have back here for £10m, Ba or Carroll?

 

So we didn't replace him then? WE also needed a striker anyway that Jan. We went into the last six months with Best and the followong season with only Ba, great stuff.

 

35m in the pocket though.

 

So you did expect us to sign a player in 6 hours.  :lol:

 

£35m wasn't enough money for you  :lol:

 

Answer the questions please: Is Ba not a good enough replacement? Who would you rather have back here for £10m, Ba or Carroll?

 

 

 

You think Ba was Carrolls replacement? Well where was the other striker we needed?

 

35m or 35 pence makes no difference if he doesnt use it.

 

The point is, in the last 4 years we have gone 1 year having adequate strikers and you think im thick for being sceptical?

 

Ba is better striker than Carroll but he wasn't a replacement for him anyway.

 

You live in dreamland.

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NewJerseyMag

NewJerseyMag

Posted
Posted

People are thick if they think we'd sell an important player for great money and we wouldn't replace him.

 

:) Like Carroll you mean? Hang on, do you have a time limitation? Replace within 1 year or 2 years?

 

Everyone is replaced eventually, but with the gamblers in town the replacement is not generally lined up right away.

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Dokko

Dokko

Posted
Posted

Well that's that cleared up. Where's Carrolls replacement again?

I

That was Ba, or did you expect us to sign a player within 6 hours?

 

Or is Ba not a good enough replacement? Who would you rather have back here for £10m, Ba or Carroll?

 

So we didn't replace him then? WE also needed a striker anyway that Jan. We went into the last six months with Best and the followong season with only Ba, great stuff.

 

35m in the pocket though.

 

So you did expect us to sign a player in 6 hours.  :lol:

 

£35m wasn't enough money for you  :lol:

 

Answer the questions please: Is Ba not a good enough replacement? Who would you rather have back here for £10m, Ba or Carroll?

 

 

 

You think Ba was Carrolls replacement? Well where was the other striker we needed?

 

35m or 35 pence makes no difference if he doesnt use it.

 

The point is, in the last 4 years we have gone 1 year having adequate strikers and you think im thick for being sceptical?

 

Ba is better striker than Carroll but he wasn't a replacement for him anyway.

 

You live in dreamland.

 

You think Ba wasn't Carroll's replacement? He wasn't a replacement for him in any way?  :lol: :lol:

 

The other striker is irrelevant as we are talking about a player leaving and him being replaced, not adding to the squad, and any road he came in the form of Cisse, which makes the point even more stupid tbh.

 

The money didn't matter, yeah right. Jesus man, so much tragedy in that post it's hard to know where to begin. Probably best not to reply at all, let you continue being thick and oblivious to it.  :lol:

 

End of the day if Carroll wasn't sold Ba wouldn't have been signed, neither would Cisse, a couple of contracts wouldn't have been given and a couple more players come in. Just because it wasn't spent on two strikers within 6 hours on the 31st of Jan doesnt mean he wasn't replaced or we didn't benefit from the sale.

 

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Guest icemanblue

Guest icemanblue

Posted
Posted

Here it is:

 

The first five words on the page of my notebook read as follows: market dead, bulls**t, b****cks, nonsense. Bulls***t was underlined. They were written to jog the memory, taken down from an off-record chat with a club executive – you might recognise the name – and the degree of exasperation could be measured by the number of barked ‘bulls***s’ on the other end of the line.

 

If, as T S Eliot wrote, April is the cruelest month – in another guise, The Waste Land could be a handy, catch-all title for North East football – then June is the bulls***test, a time when everyone, more or less, is away and convalescing, but when the ceaseless, churning football machine continues to churn ceaselessly. Away but waiting, away but plotting and fretting, fingers on the iPhone.

 

Which is not to say that things are wholly dormant. When the top-three clubs in last season’s Barclays Premier League change managers, with Everton and Stoke City behind them, there can only be a spike of activity (Sunderland, as another example, have been busy, too, overhauling their scouting department, lining up free transfers), but until the window formally opens we’re all locked in this bulls***t dance, pirouetting over cow-pats.

 

Clubs know they need to sign players. They also know they have to sell. Agents know they have to move their clients on or want to. Or get a better deal. Journalists have to make calls and generate words, even in the down time, and while players may be itchy to know what happens next, this is the moment they’re returning from lads’ holidays in Vegas or Dubai and heading off with the family. Getting married, going on honeymoon. Meanwhile, Twitter simmers.

 

Here is a story. It is much better with the real names, which cannot be provided for obvious reasons, but it comes from one of the protagonists. Allstar Athletic have reached an agreement with London Raiders to sell their star player, who we’ll call Johnny Goaltank. When Goaltank joined Allstar, a clause was agreed with his previous club, Soccerball United, who are now owed some money.

 

Out of courtesy, Allstar make contact with Soccerball: just to let you know, we’re selling Goaltank and there’s some cash coming your way. Okay, thanks, that’s brilliant, Soccerball say. A little while later, Allstar get a call from London Raiders. This is weird, Raiders say. That bloke from Soccerball has been on the phone, warning us that Goaltank is a bad apple, a disruptive influence, and that we should sign their own Billy Netblaster instead.

 

With a weary ‘bulls***t’, the executive related a more routine tale. There had been vague discussions with another club about one of their players, the inkling of a deal. Both parties agreed not to talk about it, nor brief in private, because discretion was the best course. Sure enough, it leaked. At first, the executive was furious. With the papers, the agent, a blabby player. But It transpired his counterpart had done the leaking. What can you do?

 

Newcastle United found themselves caught in the bulls***t dance in January, when months of scouting, checking for alternatives, looking at budgets, examining character, doing all the groundwork that is possible while staying on the right side of regulations led them to Marseille’s Loic Remy. They were losing Demba Ba, whose own get-out clause had spouted a bulls**t torrent of its own, and needed a replacement. Remy was the man.

 

Reports appeared that Newcastle had reached an agreement with Marseille, the player. The interest was there and substantive but things were not quite that far advanced and suddenly the news was out and Newcastle were exposed and up popped Queens Park Rangers with more money and better wages and Remy, in whom all that work had been invested and then wasted, was gone and Newcastle were scrabbling.

 

Who do you blame for instances such as that? Journalists for finding out actual stuff? Agents for seeking the best financial settlement for their players? Players for choosing one city, one bigger paypacket, over another? Clubs for agreeing to the ludicrous just because they’re desperate? Other clubs for not having realisable alternative arrangements? Fans for wanting their teams to improve? We’re all in it together, all dancing.

 

The more people you talk to in football, the less clear things are. A tip from an agent: Raiders want to sign Billy Netblaster. Call Raiders: we’ve talked about him, but nah, that’s bulls**it. Call Soccerball; Billy’s fine, he just wants more money. Call the agent: what the f***? Agent: it’s true! Call my boss: ummm, you know that hole in the paper? Well, what’s going on at the cricket?

 

So you make contacts and build relationships and hope that they’re strong enough to endure the rocky patches which always come when results are poor and the ground is shaking and you treat them with honesty and trust that honesty is what comes in return. There is always that balance and dilemma; at some point you have to write something and, when you do, it has to be right. I’d always prefer last and right to first and wrong.

 

Avoiding the bluff and the bulls**t, working out the angles and agendas is not straightforward and this is the worst month (or best, depending on where you’re standing) for it. Everybody is talking and very few people are doing, either because they can’t or because the transfer which kicks off their own business is dragging on and so the bulls**t quotient is potent enough to make your eyes water.

 

To keep my North East hat on – it’s really more of a black cap, the type judges used to wear when passing a death sentence – Newcastle have, in recent times, made life easier. They have gone about it in a way which is sometimes far removed from easiness, sending out legal letters to papers they deem guilty of writing ‘fliers’, but their transfer policy is now so entrenched in the public psyche that the bulls**t detector kicks in early.

 

Their policy since promotion back to the Premier League has been to target young players (under 27, typically), of value (relatively small fees, or close to the end of their contracts), which has meant that the English market is a difficult one for them. They have looked to France, exploiting the contacts of Graham Carr, their influential chief scout, and now that is being spread elsewhere.

 

So when you hear or read – most often on Twitter these days – that Newcastle are chasing Johnny Goaltank or Billy Netblaster, the reaction is generally not ‘ooooohhhh, wow, our transfer record is toast!’ or ‘he’ll be great alongside Cisse!’ or ‘I’VE JUST SEEN BILLY NETBLASTER IN A WALLSEND CHIPPY!’ but the more prosaic ‘I think you’ll find our desire for self-sufficiency rule us out. Pierre le Butfut is more in our price range’.

 

However, there is a but. Or, but, there is a however. It would be well not to get fixated on this, or any other, model. By and large it holds firm – there will be no bid for Wayne Rooney, whatever the Sports Direct website might claim – but football is about nothing if it is not about compromise and Newcastle have always (always) added the caveat that if a deal is there to be done then they will do it.

 

In January, they had no substantive interest in Darren Bent, for instance. Alan Pardew might have, but he has known the England striker since their time together at Charlton Athletic, and the combination above (wages, age, fee), Aston Villa’s tussle with relegation and the pursuit of Remy, meant that it was something that could be ruled out pretty quickly (I still checked it out).

 

On the face of it, not much has changed. Darren is 29 and still gets paid the same amount. But he has now been told he can leave and Villa are prepared to take a whopping hit on the £18m they received from Sunderland in January 2011. Available for around £6m, he is a player most clubs would consider because, when fit, he comes with an absolute guarantee of the sport’s most precious, expensive commodity: goals.

 

Newcastle need goals. Since losing Ba, Cisse is their only regular goalscorer and if anything happened to the Senegal international, who is both in dispute with the club over their Wonga sponsorship and wants a better contract (go figure), they would be in peril. On the one hand, Bent makes absolutely no sense, but on the other, with a little movement on wages, he would be a deal. Newcastle like their deals.

 

This, of course, is hypothetical – well, you can call it informed hypothetical with a winky face afterwards, like this – and because it is hypothetical, even informed hypothetical , I am adding to the towering, steaming bulls**t mountain which June and football conspire to create. Sorry. One day, just for fun, we should all clamber to the top of bulls**t mountain and check out the view. I can make a decent guess: bulls**t, as far as the eye can see.

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Guest icemanblue

Guest icemanblue

Posted
Posted

Is that the one he's posted at least three links to on Twitter today? All with slightly different wording. :lol:

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Disco

Disco

Posted
Posted

Especially when they undervalue a few of our lot. Their numbers are just guesswork arent they?

 

Yup, pie in the sky or they do it off made up quoted press figures.

 

Either way, it's not fucking journalism. The daft cunt must be struggling to fill the columns.

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