StevieRoss

Sorry to get back on topic like, but this explains why there was no permanent deal for Routledge I guess.

We won't miss his goals because he doesn't score any...and we won't miss his piss-weak attitude to training and his oafish, immature behaviour away from the club. No, I really don't think we'll miss him at all....

What a debacle. What a joke this club has become. Can't even pull a trick negotiating for a minor player with bumpkins like the jacks.

That's hilarious. Top 10. As we sit, we are looking at bottom six, and assuming that other teams around that bottom third strengthen their squads before the season starts its more like bottom three. Mark my words, the squad we started the season with in 08/09 was better than we have now. And as for Pardew - (Mike's Marionette, Del-boy's Bitch) - he is an emasculated cockney nobody who will give us nothing and is capable only to learn his lines and move his lips. Stevie that is probably the most needless negative post i have ever seen on this forum. Please advise me who of the teams that finished below us has strengthened more than us so far in the transfer window? Assuming thet are all going to strengthen is absolutely ludicrous. Its like saying I assume they are all gonna spend £50m and we are fucked when the reality is it aint gonna happen. Also, our squad is stronger with our signings to date than the end of last season with 4 incomings and one out going plus Ben Arfa returning from injury. I am not saying we should be over the moon but predicting we are fucked when we have already done more than most if not all who finished below us last season is a pretty ludicrous point of view Negative yes, needless possibly. But the facts...we've signed one player with PL experience and that is a handful of games - and he couldn't pass a medical elsewhere. Cabaye and Marveaux are extremely speculative. Rozenahl came with a good pedigree from the French league for fuck's sake...gone are Carroll, Nolan and probably Enrique, 3 of our best half dozen. Who knows if Ben Arfa will be any good? or Gosling? Shola, Xisco, Best etc etc - mediocrity at every turn! This is a squad with feet of sand, owned and run by the despicable Mike and Del-boy and managed by a man with no compelling credentials and already exposed as a lying toadie. Yeah, I guess I'm a bit negative...

That sounds about right. A lot of noise about how he wanted the boy to be an integral part of the jacks rise to glory but it was all about the money really.

Heads up on if we bring him in seeing as we were interested 6 months ago and now he is on a free? LM...i get what your saying but the PL is ever becoming more and more "european" and so long as they speak english and can communicate and mix in then i dont really see it as a problem. I'd still like to see a english/foreign ratio at the club and across the PL of about 3:2 but i dont think thats gonna happen anytime soon unless FIFA extend the european compition regulations into domestic too. I can see the first few games of the season, where we may have a leaner, fitter, more mobile sort of forward player etc, but after the first month or two when the novelty wears off, we will miss the leadership, spirit, never say die, desire etc provided by Nolan in particular, which you need for a long season in the premiership, played in every sort of conditions imagineable, at different times, where every game is a real cutthroat knife edge competitive game etc. This isn't old hat thinking, it's how the game is in this country, you finish after 38 games where you deserve to be having adapted the most or the least successfully to all these conditions and demands. Its no fluke. Bollocks (IMO)! Great club captain off the pitch, a great scoring record, and a nuisance at set-pieces for opposition goalies but very capable of doing an invisible man act the rest of the time. Some/most of that will be down to lack of pace/fitness but when he had a sniff of goal he had enough in the tank left to keep going that wasn't seen when we were backs to the wall. That's acceptable when he was playing virtually as an out and out striker but not with 1 other in centre midfield. Beyond a couple of high-profile performances, its difficult to think of a game where nolan was a genuine MOTM contender. Its difficult to criticise his net contribution to newcastle last year, but I didn't see much (on pitch) of those attributes on the pitch, which is where it really counts. now if you'd said barton over the last season I'd have nowt to complain about I agree with this 100%.

I'm coming from a pro-Cardiff perspective admittedly, but I think it's true that Swansea and their chairman have a reputation for being a rather low form of life. Certainly true of the managers that seem to gravitate there.

That's hilarious. Top 10. As we sit, we are looking at bottom six, and assuming that other teams around that bottom third strengthen their squads before the season starts its more like bottom three. Mark my words, the squad we started the season with in 08/09 was better than we have now. And as for Pardew - (Mike's Marionette, Del-boy's Bitch) - he is an emasculated cockney nobody who will give us nothing and is capable only to learn his lines and move his lips.

Simpson and Taylor aren't that bad. Cabaye is hardly an untried bargain basement Frenchman. Ba obviously passed a medical at West Ham and you know full well that Marveaux didn't join Liverpool because of a contractual dispute as opposed to a medical one. Judge the club on September the 1st. I did say "so far". And so far I'm completely underwhelmed. But I shouldn't be surprised, on-field success is clearly not on the agenda these days. That costs money. Mike's in this to make some money now, not to spend it. I think he went there, and he didn't like it...

Another point to consider is that Ashley, as much as we hate him is no fool when it comes to money. It's quite likely that the Carroll dosh has been sneaked out the back door through some accounting jiggery pokey to a private account in the name of one M.Ashley. Who would know? At the end of the day it's his money, and does anybody really think that when push comes to shove he'd put Newcastle United ahead of Mike Ashley? All the baloney about interest free loans etc. to prop up the club is just as likely accounting smoke and mirrors for all we know. Bottom line - he's not splashing the cash to build a better team and even a mug like me can pick that out.

mackems signings looking better than ours so far. Brown and O'Shea will give good service. Who would you pick in a team to play for your life tomorrow - them two or useless fucking Simpson and Steven Taylor? Gardner and Larsson not superstars but proven in the PL. Wickham, who knows, but potentially better than anything we have up front. Untried bargain basement Frenchmen and blokes who can't pass a medical anywhere else our stunning signings...let the good times roll..

Or put another way, slightly more than last years loss. Do you mean last season or our year in the championship? Last reported financial year (which was the championship year), financial year is all that matters. as I said, NUFC are not a small club with limited potential that needs to run on a small cost basis, like the Boltons and Blackburns of this world, although we are now being run like this and you and others appear to be advocating it. We have one of the biggest fanbases in europe, results on the pitch drive the finance. Mostly I agree with your views Leazes, but I vary with you on this. Getting 50,000 to home games doesn't make you a big club. If that was the case, Bundesliga teams like Hertha Berlin and Kaiserslautern (as well as a couple of others there) would be considered big clubs, which they are not. Big clubs develop a winning culture which becomes a critical mass, a self-fulfilling prophesy, if you like. Success breeds success. The major London clubs have a head-start as do the northern "super-clubs". For Newcastle to become this "big" club will require some cashed-up benefactor, a lunatic fan really, to put decent money in to it to attract and retain good quality players and staff. (and then have a bit of luck) Ashley is clearly not this person. He is just another greedy arsehole. I don't really see one of these middle east/Asian mega-billionaires buying us out, so I think our best chance is a Barry Moat-type who might run the club on the smell of an oily rag (like a Bolton or a Blackburn) but at least be doing it with some passion and the right intensions. But don't hold your breath...

If he played like them, he would hardly ever be on the pitch anyway in this day and age True that. Remember the signs the Leeds fans used to put up..."Norman bites yer legs"

He'll probably get a new perm like, before the season starts now he's captain...

He'll have to toughen up if he's going to lead by example. Someone needs to show him some old videos of John McNamee and Norman Hunter playing CB. The forwards were scared of them, not the other way round...

You didn't scroll down far enough.. Hart (Man.City) 4,000,000/1 Cech (Chelsea) 4,000,000/1 Reina (Liverpool) 4,000,000/1 Ameobi (Newcastle) 5,000,000/1 Foster (Birmingham) 5,000,000/1 etc.

What really sticks in my craw is being treated like an idiot. Del-boy and Pardew the puppet spout this stream of bilge which we are apparently expected to swallow without question. Do me a favour. I may be just a mug punter fan but I'm not an imbecile. If Ashley/Del-boy/Puppet have a strategy in place which revolves around reducing costs and making money at the expense of on-field performance (clearly the case) I'd rather be given it straight than the double-talk bullshit we are getting. Pardew the the puppet, the sycophant, the slimy spin doctor, is now my most despised toon manager, no mean feat in that rogues gallery..

Yeah, that, or he's just not good enough...

1 Man Utd 2 Man City 3 Liverpool 4 Chelsea 5 Tottenham 6 Arsenal 7 Aston Villa 8 Everton 9 Stoke 10 Sunderland 11 Fulham 12 WBA 13 Bolton 14 QPR 15 Newcastle 16 Blackburn 17 Swansea 18 Norwich 19 Wolves 20 Wigan FA Cup: Liverpool League Cup: Aston Villa CL: Man Utd EC: Germany

The optimism I see here is so misguided it's staggering. Everybody concedes we are going to struggle to get goals, but with Enrique gone a dodgy defence will be worse - and not a hint of strengthening mentioned by Pardew-the-puppet. I can just hear Del-boy.."don't mention the defence is crap...the mugs haven't noticed, they think we just need strikers" Enrique - as good as gone. Simpson - barely good enough at his best, often a liability. Taylor - see above. Williamson - Good Championship player, squad player in any decent PL team but first choice for us. Coloccini - looks classy till he's up against a forward who puts it about a bit and he's jelly. None of the young players remotely ready for regular first team action. Goals against were in the bottom half (or close to) last year and yet no need to strengthen that despite losing our best defender?...They are taking the piss lads.. I

Despite Pardew's assertions about playing a more attractive style of football, the bottom line is we will have a mediocre squad including a number of players completely untried in English conditions and missing most of our best performers of recent times. Ashley and co. will be hoping for mid-table, my feeling is that bottom six is more realistic, and at some point we'll find ourselves in the relegation scrap I would imagine.

"A DoF wants to control and shape the team, so has a vested interest in players. Llambias interest imo stops at will they have a resale value." A valid point. Llambias will have a brief to minimize costs and make money where he can while keeping the team moderately competitive in the PL. (It amazes me btw that anybody believed that the Carroll money would really be spent on transfer fees) As I've said before, Pardew is the plausible, puppet-like figure who is charged with spouting the positive football spin, intended to satisfy the fans. It obviously works to some degree, he has people like Christmas Tree hoodwinked it appears.... This is a cynical regime predicated on Ashley's philosophy of treating Newcastle fans in the same way he has treated his customers, a "one born every minute" sort of contempt.

Good post, it sums up in a nutshell exactly what is going on and exactly where Ashley is taking the club Going to sound like a broken record here but perhaps the time to judge our window is at the end of it, not right at the start. Yeah the regime don't have a great pedigree when it comes to transfers but I'll moan about them when and if they prove the doubters (myself included) to be right. I was all for giving it till the end of the window until pardew said "2 more signings". Fuck all of that 35m is getting reinvested. I have no hope left. The hope is this. Ashley will sell the club. It may be a while yet, but all of his machinations (I believe) are directed towards making it a saleable asset. i.e. relatively debt-free and stable in the PL. Hence no big money signings, no big wages and cashing in (e.g. Carroll) when he can. But he'll put enough in to stay afloat in the PL for obvious financial reasons. I'm getting to be an old man and I may not see the club have any success in my lifetime but I hope my son or grandson will. That's the hope I have left in me.

Wherever they go it amounts to nowt if they are just not good enough. Most of our young players have not been, are not, and probably will not be good enough. I think our "talent scouts" must sit in the pub and pull names out of a hat. It's the only way to explain our dismal success rate bringing on young players.

Why are people on here wasting their time talking about Sturridge? We're as likely to get Messi. If Chelsea let him go - and I don't think they will tbh - there is absolutely no chance of him signing for us. If he moves it will be for a big fee, a big wage, and to a club with demonstrated ambition and probably CL football. That's 0 from 4 for us, as I see it...