Monroe Transfer

I still find this incredibly antagonising: Not even going to try and hold on to our best players are they? We all know that we're supposedly a selling club, but he doesn't need to publicly admit it. Like I said earlier, I doubt that in the future I will be able to fully get behind new players when I know they'll be off soon enough as long as they do a half-decent job. I want to watch a set of players grow together season after season, with the odd addition. I don't want a rotating door of players in and out. What do they tell the likes of Cabaye when they sign = "do a good job for us, and we'll get you that move to a bigger club next Summer"?

SIckening. I mean we all know it's true anyway, but it's not something you want to hear from your club's MD. Equates to telling the world that we're a selling club and that we will sell you our best players if you want to buy them. Why do they say things like this? What fan is going to be happy with the idea of being a selling club year after year? How can we get attached to our players and the team if we know they'll be off within the year? In the space of about 12 hours they have completely ruined things, at a time when people were slowly starting to hate them less. Their stupidity is unparalleled. Any advice they get is from non-football people. When have they ever consulted fans before doing things? Llambias himself doesn't have a clue and I'd be amazed if he even so much as followed football before Ashley appointed him. He doesn't have a football brain in the slightest. Everything they do is to benefit Ashley and SD. Any supposedly positive move (for example, half-price season tickets) is followed by a cynical negative one, to the point that no-one will trust them any more. If they ever did. Personally I've not been one to vocally praise them. I've always disliked them. But I was willing to ignore that to an extent as at the end of the day its those 11 players in black and white that I care about the most, and they've not done a thing wrong. They seem determined to erode any good feelings the fans have. Once again they've shown a complete and utter lack of respect or even acknowledgement for what the fans might want. If this leads to a mega-money sponsorship deal then I'll begrudgingly put up with it. But I'm sure it won't.

Pressing ctrl-R instead of shift-R when typing something on the internet. Page reloads, words typed lost. Just took losing a mammoth post on here to remind me to delete that shortcut from my browser settings.

Anyone else wake up and a for few wonderful seconds think that this was just some silly dream they had during the night?

"3-0 win away to Chelsea, was immensely proud to be a Sunderland fan then" Their best result in their history, I imagine.

Wait... you're being serious?

Your sig

http://www.nufc.co.uk/articles/20111110/club-announce-stadium-name-plans_2281670_2511479 Why no consultation with fans?

Meltdowns going on on Toon forums across the board tonight. Ashley Out banners and chants and an overall poisonous atmosphere at the next home match, leading to a loss of form and an eventual 11th place finish. In other words, things are returning back to normal for Newcastle United.

What's this 'St James' you speak of?

One for HF's blog, that.

Stevie and Leazes are fucking visionaries, man.

Lad ^

He won't have spent £200k on putting the signs up. The club will have paid for it.

In that case for once in my life I was right, laughing smilie aside. This is ridiculous.

I bet somewhere in this 36 page thread someone posted a jokey comment along the lines of "he'll be renaming it the Sports Direct Arena next", followed by a laughing smilie. Instead of immediately changing the name to something which won't benefit the club at all, could they not have just made it clear that naming rights were up for sale? Is there any need for having a supposed placeholder there as an example to potential investors? Like .com said, the fallout from this could in fact put investors off.

Honestly, I'm speechless. Tony Evans says what we're all fearing there.

He goes on about a new sponsor coming in sponsoring both the stadium and the shirt - but I fully expect said new sponsor to be none other than Sports Direct.

I wouldn't mind as much if the press release says something along the lines of "to accompany increasing the size of the stadium, it will be renamed to Sports Direct Arena", or "as this move will obviously on face value benefit Sports Direct more than it will the recipient, we are delighted to announce that this will lead to a massive cash injection from Sports Direct starting from the next transfer window".

.com, spot on.

Completely agree with this, it's absolutely appalling if this is true. Back to the poisonous atmospheres of previous seasons. I'm not saying "it's just a name" or anything like that, but we should try to keep our feelings towards the owner seperate from our respect and appreciation of how the players and staff are doing.

Needs a marketeer not a financial type. It's all about brand awareness. Having his branding at the ground limits it to a TV audience for those televised games and those in the ground. Renaming it opens up millions more mentions of his brand (newspaper reports, radio reports, Non televised games twitter, facebook). However, by the time you take all the negative brand damage of such a move and no doubt a lot of SJP regulars who will now boycoutt his stores, the benefit isn't that great. In pure business terms it's probably worth the risk. It's a shame that Sports Direct has always been his proverbial favourite son, with only the required amount of affection (money) being spent on NUFC. I wish he'd keep the two separate, or at least do things with SD to benefit NUFC instead of it always being the other way around.

You're asking if advertising works? The billions pumped into it every year suggests so. What's with the attitude? Difference between it bringing in a massive increase in money for the company, as opposed to bringing in a moderate amount more that is offset by fans of the club's anger towards the decision in the short and long term. And possible lost revenue from said angry fans (however minimal), if they feel that way inclined. It's good for spreading the name out across the world, but bad because you know it will offend the people you're supposed to be one with.

Confused. On one hand I'm enjoying the club doing well, on the other hand I've just been reminded about how much of a prick the owner is. Feels even more offensive given I've just listened to an hour long radio feature that was gushing with praise for him and the club.

Can one of you clever financial types explain to simpletons like myself what sort of extra revenue Sports Direct receives from branding like this? I.e. is it even really worth it for them?