Problem Child

What did that total Welsh mug say? “The only reason we get 52,000 at SJP is because there’s nothing else to do in Newcastle”. Just another ignorant media cunt talking shite.

More likely he’ll be confident Pardew won’t complain when he’s told to put Mike Ashley’s interests ahead of those of NUFC.

We’ve been fucked since the day Ashley bought the club. Whether we go down this season or not it is only a matter of time before we hit a seriously downward cycle unless this goon fucks off. As for this season - I can see the team spirit crumbling as the players become disillusioned with the farce that is NUFC and us ending up rock bottom.

I would have said no however at end of the infamous Llambias meets NUST meeting he virtually begged them to stop our boycott even though by that stage we were fairly resigned to the fact that most people were back to buying a pie n pint at half time. This is like the post KK dismal situation all over again. Supporters are united in their anger but lack the leadership to mount an effective demonstration. Only this time there isn’t the option to wrongly blame the ex-manager’s temperament. If ever there was time for NUST to stop playing it safe and try to organise something like a half time walk out on live TV, this is it. It might not see him sell up this week but it would draw huge attention to what he’s doing, see his tenure subjected to some serious media scrutiny, put him under real pressure. It would also show the watching world NUFC supporters aren’t a bunch thick northerners who are too stupid to realise when they are having the piss taken out of them. NUSC’s resolve to stand up and be counted crumbled in the wake of a few politically correct gimps getting a strop on about using the word cockney. Two years on playing it safe has proved to be the wrong decision. Ashley hasn’t learnt from his mistakes, the question is have we?

Because he frequents Lambias’ casino and is mates with both him and Ashley, understands the BBC. I know many will disagree but if it comes out that Pardew was party to the sacking of Hughton we should give him dog’s abuse. I don’t care if it upsets the team and we end up getting relegated again. We are being made to look like the stupidest mugs in the country and the sooner we stop being a bunch of patsies the sooner both we and the club will get back our self respect. Our commitment to NUFC is being used against us. High time we realised short term pain will result in long term gain and stopped being so weak.

Aye.... Phil Brown / Dave Bassett dream team.

He cares. He might make a show of not caring for the cameras, but the fact he has to make show proves he hates it when we give him some stick at SJP. Its bravado and it’s about time we called his bluff. Not for one or two matches, but from now until he leaves.

Still not a good enough reason for doing nothing while he shits on us and our club. I'm not saying do nothing. I think it would be great if something happened. But sadly it is unlikely to make a difference. He'll just stop coming to the games again, claim his family's life is in danger, and spend no money in the transfer window. Then in the summer the club will go up for sale, no transfer funds will be released, etc. We've seen it before. He won't budge on price. Apart from him not coming to home games that’s pretty much what will happen anyway.

Still not a good enough reason for doing nothing while he shits on us and our club.

Five and a half years! What’s that all about? Fair enough if you’ve paid £30m for a proven top level performer and are trying to make sure he doesn’t bugger off for free in couple of years. However for a mediocre centre half with half season’s PL experience and kid who still has it all to prove what’s the point? Could it be a strategy/gamble to secure players on cheap salaries while all the high earners leave as their contracts expire over the next two or three seasons?

I don’t recall anything being said, but my membership was rolling.

Taylor’s first team development has been hindered by managerial upheaval. He had about a season under SBR, before Souness, Gideon and Fat Sam guided his career. Followed by the Keegan/JFK/Shearer turmoil. Say what you like about his chest thumping but during out relegation season he was one a very small number of players at the club who didn’t throw in the towel at Christmas, the same can't be said of Colo. Marcel Desailly he is not, but he’s decent enough top flight centre half. Can’t see him staying after the club essentially condoned Carroll busting his jaw / lots of supporters slagged him off / being transfer listed. I think the issue isn't about how much we rate him as he's been offered £40k a week, but wants £60k. I would say he's worth 30k top, which is what a "decent enough top flight centre half" would be paid. The issue for me is he think he's in Marcel Desailly wage bracket. What wage would you say he's worth? No idea. He’s probably looking for parity with other experienced pros at the club like Barton, Smith and Colo. Whether any of them are worth what they get is highly debatable. NUFC no longer compete with a lot of PL clubs on the wages front, it’s inevitable we will lose our better players in the long run if this continues. The club has proved it will mislead supporters in the name of PR and the figures being bandied around have to be taken with a pinch of salt. However, I think the deal breaker will be whether or not Taylor’s has had enough of being undermined by the club and its supporters. My hunch is that he has had enough and will be off in January, with Spurs, Liverpool and Everton likely suitors. The first two will easily match any wage NUFC will offer.

Taylor’s first team development has been hindered by managerial upheaval. He had about a season under SBR, before Souness, Gideon and Fat Sam guided his career. Followed by the Keegan/JFK/Shearer turmoil. Say what you like about his chest thumping but during out relegation season he was one a very small number of players at the club who didn’t throw in the towel at Christmas, the same can't be said of Colo. Marcel Desailly he is not, but he’s decent enough top flight centre half. Can’t see him staying after the club essentially condoned Carroll busting his jaw / lots of supporters slagged him off / being transfer listed.

@nufctrust theres also the chairman @liverpoolfanrunningnufctrust Is it true that MP lass has jumped ship?

NUST’s constitution is a farce and in hindsight the move to trust status was always likely to be a bad move. Organisations like the FSA are nodding dogs and are really only concerned with perpetuating their own existence. It’s no surprise NUST has followed their example. The most annoying thing is yet to come, for when NUST folds the people who have somehow managed to turn a great opportunity into waste of time will no doubt try to pin the blame on supporter apathy. Right now the only reason I’d renew would be to voice my concerns at the AGM. However, at the last members meeting I attended there was some lad at the back of the room hurling abuse at anyone who was too critical of the way the supporters group was being run. I don’t know if he was the committees ‘enforcer’ but I do know they did nothing about what basically boiled down to the suppression of dissent. Sod it. I’ve got better things to spend my money on. I hope the people who have fucked this up are proud of themselves.

We’ve shown enough so far to be confident of avoiding the drop, but confidence is the thing. Lose it and football becomes a very difficult game. The team will obviously be hell bent on putting the Bolton result behind them against Chelsea, if they then get stuffed the belief they gained by coasting through the CCC may well be seriously damaged. Our aim has to be clear of the relegation fight before the run in. If we’re not all it takes a bit of bad luck or a crap refereeing decision and you can be in deep shit. Can we do it? As long as Carrol doesn’t get injured, sold or imprisoned we should be ok.

Relegation cost the club something like £50m in lost revenue. It’s a very expensive way of starting a rebuilding process and as far as I can tell we could still have still spent the summer messing Shearer about before making Hughton temporary manager if we’d stayed up, and getting shot of Martins, Owen and Duff etc wasn’t dependent on getting relegated either. We might even have been able to hang on to Bassong and spend £20m on squad strengthening. On the other hand relegation did end up creating some upward momentum. Bred confidence in a squad that might never have recovered mentally if they hadn’t had 12 months playing inferior opposition. On balance it’s a tough call, but if relegation is such a good way of turning things around there would be half a dozen PL clubs desperate to get relegated every season. We’ve just been very, very lucky.

You may well be correct but it’s hard to say, since they don’t talk to us.

They met the council at a hearing and got no joy apparently. Did they not present the petition to the council and lodge their protest or something? I believe they did although it was pointless. This was/is a battle that was/is never going to be won by jumping through official hoops. We can either follow the lead of the Scousers and get ourselves organised and active, or we can meekly roll over and do nothing except write letters to people who don’t care. It’s not for me to say which is the right option, but I do believe NUST should be talking to its membership about this kind of thing. About whether or not the trust should offer the wider support an organised plan of action they can get behind. I fancy they don’t consult the membership because their afraid they’ll back action and the committee is afraid of being branded a protest group. The problem is without action supporters remain powerless. Forever doomed to have their loyalty exploited, they’re love of their club thrown back in their faces. Without action NUST is toothless, and almost certainly pointless.

I won’t be renewing. Since the membership voted for trust status the committee have made no effort to communicate with the rank and file. They locked themselves in a metaphorical cupboard only to reappear with the absurdly ambitious YWC campaign, which all too predictably fell flat on its face. Voting for trust status and its objective to buy a stake in the club was one thing, not consulting with the membership about how this objective might be achieved something different altogether. It stinks of the committee thinking they know better than everybody else. You’d have thought that after the embarrassing failure of YWC they might have gone back to the membership so we could decide (as a collective) what direction the Trust should take, but no, they've carried on ignoring the people who backed the supporters group with cash. As has been said, they’re increasingly behaving like the club itself. My personal view is that the supporters group should be about helping supporters respond in a structured and coherent way to events. This was the basic principle on which NUSC was formed. Keegan was shoved out the door and supporters were by and large outraged, but we didn’t act as one. Some turned up with bed sheets. Some didn’t turn up at all. Others turned up and protested in the ground and many emailed the fanzines demanding they organise a protest. We were united in our opposition to what had happened but responded in haphazard and ineffective way. NUSC was about changing this. It’s hard to work out what NUST is about. The Keegan issue is long gone but the next time the shit hits the fan can we rely on NUST to show some leadership? The answer I’m afraid is not a cat in hells chance. We only need to look at the renaming of the ground last year. NUST started an online petition and... and nothing. The supporters protest was the usual miss mash of ineffectual spontaneous nonsense and a year on the ground is being turned into an advertising hoarding for SportsDirect. The bottom line is to date NUST has been a failure. I’d stick with it if I thought things might change, but the attitude of the committee over the last year has been nothing short of a disgrace and the most effective message I can send them is not to renew.

The number of times he’s chosen to shoot when he should have passed in this tournament is a disgrace.

LM is right, the whole ‘golden generation’ thing has been based on media hype not ability. Gerrard, Lampard and Rooney are good players but the standard of the domestic teams they play against week in week out has been in decline for years. It’s all become too easy for them, too easy to shine in a league full of poor quality teams that lack the ability to compete with the top three. The real problem for the national side is the PL. The money involved has forced the majority of teams to adopt a survival at all costs approach. They’ve stopped trying to play football and do little more that shut up shop and try not to get beat. Things like ball retention and tactical innovation simply don’t enter into the equation. West Brom is just about the only team who have tried to stay up playing a game based on possession/pass/move. There is no scope for developing the English game in an uncompetitive league that discourages risk taking.

Saw this a few days back, a blatant and disgusting abuse of power. What kind of two faced scumbag is Clegg? All this hot air about open accountable government and at the first sniff of power he turns into a wannabe despot. What the rest of the political reforms will bring doesn’t bear thinking about.

What sacrifice are you making CT?

Utter shite. The Tory's have agreed to phase in the 10k tax band, levying it against non-business caital gains tax. They have also backed out of raising inheritance tax to 1m. The 6 billion pound cuts will initially be made in capital expenditure as apposed to jobs - this is to avoid the NI rise. What does that mean, and how long is initially?