KrulsCurtains

Mine was funnier.

General low-mood, prone to odd hissy-fits over grammar and spelling and stuff

Agree with that, mate.

Is that you Skidders? lol no, don't associate me with that jerk-off cheers I wouldn't say he's a proper moaner, but comes across as a bit whingey!

Yeh cool photographs dude wooooo

Linked with Nancy I heard. Not sure if there's any clubs interested in him though.

Craig.

Tiote wants to be playing, I've got £30 worth of bets with Mackems on who'll finish higher, the club should consider this. What's the worst that can happen? 3 game ban at the start of next season? Great news, that way, his return to the first team will coincide with the transfer window closing and they can say "having him back is like having a new signing".

Without wanting a slanging match a bit of friendly advice. Unfortunately this is the point where the debate usually declines into tedium, when a perfectly valid question is asked and isn't answered with anything relevant. If you're going to be opinionated on the subject and take it into every thread, try to give sensible answers to sensible questions instead of trying to 'ridicule' anything that you can't answer, because it just makes yourself look ridiculous, not the person asking the question.

Were you bothered when Hamann left? If you were, what did you do to target those responsible for him seeing Liverpool as a more attractive proposition?

Notice how he says "I" would have done the same, not "we"

“Selling Carroll has left the club weaker but, on that decision, I would have done the same. " Doesn't sound like he'd have given the manager the choice to me. Just saying like.

That time he was shipped out on loan to Portsmouth and we didn't bother to put in the clause that meant he couldn't play against us...nailed on to score and he did. Still grates to this day thinking about it. Celebrated like a cunt too.

Sorry Stevie but that's shite - the only way to increase turnover that much would have been by success on the pitch and ground expansion - how likely was that in 2007? We still had a degree of self esteem in 2007. Our turnover with the additional masses of Sky money since then, it would be £120m+ that is a fact, we're ran like a corner shop, and it'll still be £90m for this season. 07/08 season ticket sell out and we didn't need 6500 cheap family tickets to do it, because the fans still believed we were going somewhere, and at least had a strategy and a target of a minimum of European football every year. Well done for missing my whole point entirely anyway. Lets put it like this, if the Queen and Prince Phillip turned out in Camden Market on Sunday wearing a hoody and a pair of hi tec trainers, and they were photographed in all the papers. The whole world would think what are these bamps playing at, and we thought they were regal. Well that's what Ashley has systematically done to this club, we have nothing no core, we have no self esteem, no one talking us up with any degree of sincerity we're a fuckin disaster, it's a miracle we have more than 30,000 wanting to go. They always miss the point Stevie, they insist "Shepherd was a cunt therefore he was a shit owner" bollocks. I'm fucked off with these people talking down the club, and accepting these declined standards under Ashley, NUFC competing at the levels of Bolton and Blackburn, and becoming a selling club again ? The one thing I thought and hoped would forever remain from what the last regime did, despite any ups and downs which we all have to accept are part of football, is the demands and realisations of the club and never again would people accept such lows as before. It fuckin, absolutely beggars belief, that only 4 years since the club was sold to this man, they have swallowed such shite hook, line and sinker, that we are no better than these clubs, have no chance of ever qualifying for the Champions league and are content to lose our best players to clubs like Liverpool and Spurs again and replace them with cheaper, inferior goods. The bit in bold isn't the case at all. They've simply aligned their expectations with where we realistically are in comparison to other wealthier clubs. It's also a hypocritical statement, seeing as you accepted low standards when the club was one of the top spending clubs around, believing that only "qualifying for europe" was acceptable for a club capable of breaking the world transfer record.

Huge gamble buying him and expecting him to produce week in week out for us next season. We need a proven experienced striker and he needs to be protected at that age from the weight of expectation. Love him to come here but if we buy him - we still need 2 strikers.

Of our numerous 'flops' over the past 2 decades - which one were you most disappointed to see fail here? For me it's Mark Viduka. I loved seeing the guy play. On his day he was a master of his trade. Capable of touches good enough and switched on enough to be called Bergkampesque at times, and should have been as good. Sometimes I'd watch him and think if you weren't such a fat lazy knacker you could easily be one of the best strikers on the planet. One big fat waste of talent.

Again you have to align your expectations to the resources available. We can't compete financially with Chelsea, Man City, Man Utd or Arsenal. That means Champions League football is a long shot. Whilst Champions League football is a long shot, we can't gamble the money to try and get there because the chance of a return (i.e Champions League revenue) is too small. The last board spent that money knowing that they could recoup it through Champions League revenue, because at the time other clubs didn't have the resources and a top 4 finish was more attainable. The only way we can do it now is to try and extract value for money in the transfer market and build that way. That's how Spurs did it. They sold their best players, Carrick and Berbatov respectively, for huge amounts and were astute and it paid off. Whether we're as successful in this approach I don't know, but to completely ignore the fact that the Champions League spots are held by richer clubs and think that we should be up there just because the last board were is naive, because the dynamics of football have changed.

Do you believe that you have over-simplified that in an attempt to make your point may valid? What about appointing the right manager? Is that not just as important as 'backing' him? The sheer number of managers they appointing during their tenure suggests that they struggled with this, despite all of the other big spending clubs (and other smaller spending clubs) being able to appoint at least one that was able to build a side to win something. I'm certainly not going to lay into Keegan or Sir Bobby, for sentimental reasons more than anything. But the fact is that they both had significant backing and won nothing. You claim that posters on here are accepting lowered expectations now. If that's the case, then is accepting winning nothing when we were one of the biggest spending clubs in the country also accepting standards below what they should have been given the circumstances? Look at Chelsea, as one of the biggest spenders, if they go a season without winning something they aren't happy. When we were one of the biggest spenders and went a season without winning something, you were content with the european qualification. You have to align your expectations with your resources available at the time, something I think you struggle with. You were content with not winning anything when we had the resources to do be able to realistically do so and when others with lesser means were able to do so, yet point the finger at others for accepting mid-table mediocrity for accepting lower standards even though that's all that's probably realistic given our (and other club's) finances now. A tad hypocritical I think mate. 10 years out of the 15 under their ownership were managed by Keegan and Robson. Dalglish had a managerial record only bettered by Alex Ferguson, arguably, as he is one of only a few managers who had won the title with 2 different clubs, and Gullit won the FA Cup and left his team in the Champions league and 3rd in the league. So it is difficult to see where you think they can appoint a succession of managers better qualified than this. That altogether makes 12 out of 15 years, and one of the years under Roeder we finished 7th and qualified for europe. You think that is appointing the "wrong" managers ? As well as that, the crucial element [and you touch on it] is that if we didn't qualify for europe we looked at what was wrong with a view to correcting it. Of course Chelsea have higher ambitions, once you have won a trophy it raises your expectation. Ditto the last board, expectations were raised to a point where qualifying for europe was expected. We now have an owner who is happy with survival and a small profit for himself [as it appears] and a lot of supporters have fell into this same view and expectation. You can't blame a board of directors if a group of players fail to perform in a Cup Final, when they are clearly good enough to have performed well and won those matches. The buck has to stop with the players, their preparation, team selections, motivation or whatever. Edit. I'm not content at all with losing those Cup Finals and losing out in the title race, but when do you think it will happen again ? When will we have a group of players good enough to perform consistently at these levels ? This is the perspective. Sometimes you have to look past a managers 'qualifications' when appointing them and be more astute. Look at Arsenal with Wenger or ManU with Fergie. Having the ability to gauge the man and not the C.V is imperative. You can't just reel off stats about the appointments without looking at the circumstances either. Modestly backing Robson/Heavily backing Souness for example. "The buck has to stop with the players, their preparation, team selections, motivation or whatever." - surely the board appoint a man who prepares, selects and motivates the team. If the man they appoint fails at the last hurdle then he hasn't been a success. The comment re: the owner taking a small profit for himself has no substance either, especially when you consider that the men you ferociously defend are the ones proven to have taken a profit, not Mike Ashley. That's the truth, you might not like the truth, but that is the truth maybe, but one of the points I've made for a long time now, in perspective, is that over the 15 years, how many teams were "successful" then, if winning trophies is your one and only guideline ? Are you saying every team that doesn't win a trophy is "unsuccessful" and have therefore "failed". Do you consider Keegan and Robson, especially Keegan to be a "failure" ? At the end of the day, if you think we were failures [and I hate to say this, people say its a wind up when I do and I've said it hundreds of times, but it isn't a wind up, its perspective] only 4 teams did better than we did during their time, the same 4 teams are the only teams with a higher average league position, the same 4 teams are the only ones who qualified more for europe. So if we "failed", then what do you consider the other 87 league teams in the country ? The fact is, all those clubs supporters, the vast majority of football supporters in this country, would have swapped positions with us, faster than you can say "we are a selling club again". That's perspective, and is also the truth too. Mike Ashley will NEVER match it, we won't finish 5th or get anywhere near challenging the top 4 even once, for as long as he has a hole in his arse. It could be a long time until we do it again. Thats also the truth, and its also putting it into perspective. Far better to go close and give it your best shot than not to attempt it at all. Yes ? As a supporter with genuine emotion towards Keegan and Bobby it's difficult to use the word failure to describe them. But looking at it logically, we were one of the biggest spending clubs around and they still won nothing. Nowadays, when a big spending club fails to win anything, the axe falls on the manager. Perhaps the low expectations of only qualifying for europe being acceptable despite being a top spending club is what makes us look at those 2 managers as being better than the reality, or perhaps it's merely those managers being remembered more fondly than they would at another club because of the dross like Kenny D/Souness etc that we had for comparison. It comes down to your targets as to whether you 'failed'. We spent the most money so that we could win things and didn't. As I said in a previous post, you have to align expectations with the resources available to ourselves and other clubs. You say 4 teams bettered us, but how many of them spent more than us? Less than half of them. Bringing the other 87 clubs league teams up is a bit of a daft point to make, by that logic Mike Ashley is doing a sterling job because the vast majority of those league clubs are still below us.

Do you believe that you have over-simplified that in an attempt to make your point may valid? What about appointing the right manager? Is that not just as important as 'backing' him? The sheer number of managers they appointing during their tenure suggests that they struggled with this, despite all of the other big spending clubs (and other smaller spending clubs) being able to appoint at least one that was able to build a side to win something. I'm certainly not going to lay into Keegan or Sir Bobby, for sentimental reasons more than anything. But the fact is that they both had significant backing and won nothing. You claim that posters on here are accepting lowered expectations now. If that's the case, then is accepting winning nothing when we were one of the biggest spending clubs in the country also accepting standards below what they should have been given the circumstances? Look at Chelsea, as one of the biggest spenders, if they go a season without winning something they aren't happy. When we were one of the biggest spenders and went a season without winning something, you were content with the european qualification. You have to align your expectations with your resources available at the time, something I think you struggle with. You were content with not winning anything when we had the resources to do be able to realistically do so and when others with lesser means were able to do so, yet point the finger at others for accepting mid-table mediocrity for accepting lower standards even though that's all that's probably realistic given our (and other club's) finances now. A tad hypocritical I think mate. 10 years out of the 15 under their ownership were managed by Keegan and Robson. Dalglish had a managerial record only bettered by Alex Ferguson, arguably, as he is one of only a few managers who had won the title with 2 different clubs, and Gullit won the FA Cup and left his team in the Champions league and 3rd in the league. So it is difficult to see where you think they can appoint a succession of managers better qualified than this. That altogether makes 12 out of 15 years, and one of the years under Roeder we finished 7th and qualified for europe. You think that is appointing the "wrong" managers ? As well as that, the crucial element [and you touch on it] is that if we didn't qualify for europe we looked at what was wrong with a view to correcting it. Of course Chelsea have higher ambitions, once you have won a trophy it raises your expectation. Ditto the last board, expectations were raised to a point where qualifying for europe was expected. We now have an owner who is happy with survival and a small profit for himself [as it appears] and a lot of supporters have fell into this same view and expectation. You can't blame a board of directors if a group of players fail to perform in a Cup Final, when they are clearly good enough to have performed well and won those matches. The buck has to stop with the players, their preparation, team selections, motivation or whatever. Edit. I'm not content at all with losing those Cup Finals and losing out in the title race, but when do you think it will happen again ? When will we have a group of players good enough to perform consistently at these levels ? This is the perspective. Sometimes you have to look past a managers 'qualifications' when appointing them and be more astute. Look at Arsenal with Wenger or ManU with Fergie. Having the ability to gauge the man and not the C.V is imperative. You can't just reel off stats about the appointments without looking at the circumstances either. Modestly backing Robson/Heavily backing Souness for example. "The buck has to stop with the players, their preparation, team selections, motivation or whatever." - surely the board appoint a man who prepares, selects and motivates the team. If the man they appoint fails at the last hurdle then he hasn't been a success. The comment re: the owner taking a small profit for himself has no substance either, especially when you consider that the men you ferociously defend are the ones proven to have taken a profit, not Mike Ashley. That's the truth, you might not like the truth, but that is the truth

Do you believe that you have over-simplified that in an attempt to make your point may valid? What about appointing the right manager? Is that not just as important as 'backing' him? The sheer number of managers they appointing during their tenure suggests that they struggled with this, despite all of the other big spending clubs (and other smaller spending clubs) being able to appoint at least one that was able to build a side to win something. I'm certainly not going to lay into Keegan or Sir Bobby, for sentimental reasons more than anything. But the fact is that they both had significant backing and won nothing. You claim that posters on here are accepting lowered expectations now. If that's the case, then is accepting winning nothing when we were one of the biggest spending clubs in the country also accepting standards below what they should have been given the circumstances? Look at Chelsea, as one of the biggest spenders, if they go a season without winning something they aren't happy. When we were one of the biggest spenders and went a season without winning something, you were content with the european qualification. You have to align your expectations with your resources available at the time, something I think you struggle with. You were content with not winning anything when we had the resources to do be able to realistically do so and when others with lesser means were able to do so, yet point the finger at others for accepting mid-table mediocrity for accepting lower standards even though that's all that's probably realistic given our (and other club's) finances now. A tad hypocritical I think mate.

that is like saying Jackie Milburn wouldn't be such a great player now as he was in the 50's because all the current players would be more athletically toned and fitter. You can only do what you achieve in your era alongside your competitors at the time. In any case, nobody knows how they would have fared, only Chelsea and Man City have sugar daddies. Against that, we have the 3rd biggest stadium and arguably untapped fanbase in the country. Is correct, and the last board have the legacy of being the biggest spending club to have won nothing during their era. This is a fact, and citing qualifying for "europe" doesn't mask over that. As has been said, the simple fact is that people don't like the truth, but this is the truth. is it ? If so, they still totally transformed the club in a short space of time, they weren't an established top team or anything when they took over, unlike Ashley. Anyway, you can't blame the board for players not performing in Cup Finals or not holding to a lead at the top of the premiership. Can you ? Lots of clubs will spend a lot less, proportionally, and get nowhere near even 2nd place in the premiership .... I accept your point, but that's my point, it's not really that simple, and financially, the Champions League has became the place to be ever since they started letting in runners-up [of which we were the first to ever qualify from that route]. I bet you blame them for the team being relegated? Obviously they sold Milner, Given and Insomnia, but is it acceptable that even without those players that a team full of 60k+ p/w players can be relegated? That isn't an Ashley defense the point I'm making is that the man at the top ultimately takes responsibility, whether that be for not quite having enough to get past the finishing post or whether that be the club failing the avoid relegation.

He's a right hermit this lad, fucks off home every time he breaks a nail. Hope he isn't the homesick type once he's fit.

This isn't a huge loss really with us already being safe and all. Be good to see Taylor get a couple of games under his belt. Anyone else think he's looked a reet fat bastard (not Wyn style, just a bit of a porker) coming off the bench lately?

that is like saying Jackie Milburn wouldn't be such a great player now as he was in the 50's because all the current players would be more athletically toned and fitter. You can only do what you achieve in your era alongside your competitors at the time. In any case, nobody knows how they would have fared, only Chelsea and Man City have sugar daddies. Against that, we have the 3rd biggest stadium and arguably untapped fanbase in the country. Is correct, and the last board have the legacy of being the biggest spending club to have won nothing during their era. This is a fact, and citing qualifying for "europe" doesn't mask over that. As has been said, the simple fact is that people don't like the truth, but this is the truth.

If he's still here The opportunity to sell Tiote and get Reo Coker for free... Fat Mike won't miss that boat!