acrossthepond

A really good performance from him. I still worry when he shapes up to shoot but in terms of keeping the midfield tick over he did it very well today so credit where credit's due.

That was awful. Obviously our squad is so strong that we didn't even bring on a 3rd sub in an easily winnable game and it doesn't need reinforcements at all, especially not in the striker department. Another season chucked away on the back of performances like that, which are down to a weak squad. Scratch the gold of our first 11 and the pure, base copper of our shit squad players shines through.

Sammy's looked fucked for fifteen minutes now, surely we must have someone to put on. Give the Armstrong lad a go, at least he'd be a willing and fresh runner.

Idiotic of Remy to retaliate, Johnson should've gone for the savage kick and elbow to the back of his neck in the first place. No need for Remy to make a move, if he doesn't then Johnson walks alone.

So Sissoko is the Cabaye "replacement" for today, as he's gone into the middle? We'll see how it works out today. He's good at driving attacks forward, I'll definitely give him that, but he lacks any of the craftiness of Cabaye and his decision-making is poor.

Real reason in bold. Another good french player is needed in the squad for home-grown regulations.

Or, that Arsenal were massively lowballing us, which they were, with that feeble 10m offer.

We shouldn't have taken less than 25 million. They haggle over half a million for Debuchy and let Cabaye go for almost 10 million less than his value (initial fee only, not taking add-ons into account.) Penny wise and pound foolish.

Please don't even mention Thauvin. That ship has not just sailed but it has disappeared over the horizon. He's signed for what, 2 different clubs since we expressed interest?

Gouffran for 1.4 is equally a steal. We did good business in that window. I thought maybe the corner was turning, but that just turned out to be this summer's spend being spent early.

We are "out of sync." It's intentional. We do have a scout at the club who knows what he's doing, so we identify good targets, then buy them not when we need them but 6 months later after more time on their contracts has ticked down and they're available on the cheap. We've needed a Ba replacement since he left. Signed Remy (on loan) 6 months later. The squad desperately needed strengthening in the 12-13 summer. We bought no-one, then signed 5 players in January 6 months later. When Shola and Cisse go this summer, along with Jonas and other squad players, we'll replace them the following January, after their absence has already cost us. But it'll be cheaper to do so!

Fair enough. We panic bought in January when we were going down, and Kuqi as a replacement for Carroll was tantamount to a "panic signing." I'd like to think Ashley (and Llambias, while he was still here) had learned from those mistakes but I suspect they haven't.

I did see HBA against Fulham. I also saw him against Arsenal and in his other unproductive appearances. Cabaye is a more consistent player and will win us more points over the season than HBA will, as much as I love having a player of his quality play for us. Selling Cabaye now could work out in our favour. I can agree with that. If we had scouted his replacement. If we had planned for his departure. If we intended to spend even one penny. I appreciate that you try to be an optimist, or maybe just try to see the best possible side to the endless banquet that is NUFC - course after course of falsely raised expectations and brief, almost painful joy, followed by bitter disappointment. But now I ask you, in your toon-loving deepest heart of hearts, do you really believe we will reinvest the money if we sell Cabaye now?

We'd be a lot worse off without a replacement, which is what's about to happen. 7 goals this season from midfield, our second top scorer. Where on earth do you think those goals are going to come from without him? Tiote, Anita, or Sissoko? Ben Arfa who barely plays? Our non-scoring duo of Ameobi and Cisse - when was the last time either of them scored from open play? He almost beat West Ham on his own. We simply don't have players of that quality lining up to play for us. We need time to scout a proper replacement (which obviously should've been done from the summer but wasn't) and that means we cannot have another Carroll situation on our hands if we are to produce anything whatsoever this season except another uninspiring mid-table finish. We simply must tell PSG to fuck off. At this point, so late in the window, there is no other legitimate option that makes sense from a footballing perspective. You say take the money, but spend it on who? Is there some list of transfer targets all ready to sign for NUFC if we sell Cabaye? Compare it to the equally obvious and protracted sale of Bale this summer - Tottenham brought in players that they never would have signed without Bale's departure. Some of those players have not worked out so far, but the logic behind their transfer policy was undeniable. We are not ready to do the same. If we sell Cabaye, we'll not replace him, the money will be promised to "improve the squad" later on, and will disappear into Fat Mike's pocket never to be seen again, just like the Carroll money.

Then maybe we should have a sit-down with him (without JFK at the table - there must be somebody else at the club who has the power to talk straight business with a player) and tell him we will not stand in his way in the summer, but he needs to honour his commitment to us until then and that's the end of it. If we promise him we'll sell in the summer, why would he pay the reported 6m out of his own pocket (does he even have that lump sum lying around?) and go for nothing?

We have no reason at all to sell at this point. There is no footballing logic behind selling your best midfielder and maybe best player at the end of the January transfer window when he has 2 years left on his contract, it's a World Cup year, and we're in eighth and still in with a chance at Europe, and we don't have a replacement ready. We literally hold all the cards. Money isn't even a good enough reason. If he has a good end to the season and a good WC (and why wouldn't he, his class is plain for all to see) his value could easily top 25m. Channelling Freddie Mercury: No, no, no, no, no, no, NO!

Tell those fucking wankers to come back with twice that and then we'll talk. 37mil for Mata and they bid 14 for Cabaye? Blatantly having a laugh. The answer should be no, no, a hundred times no, and if Cabaye hoys his toys out of the pram, he spends time with the reserves and maybe doesn't go to the WC. We hold all the power here. There is no way we should be letting him leave for anything less than 25 million and a lined-up replacement. Of course, knowing Ashley we'll sell him in the last 2 hours of the transfer window for 20 million and play Anita instead of him.

It's too bad Salah is going to Chelsea. I never held out much hope that we'd sign him but he's a brilliant player and one of the few shining stars of a shit Egypt team who look a pathetic shadow of their former continent-dominating selves.

Fuck off, you cunt? Is that what you were looking for with this obviously attention-seeking thread? OK then. Fuck off, you cunt.

But old red nose would never have allowed them to surrender so pathetically. I agree the state of the squad is (mostly, not counting Felliani) not Moyes's fault, but he seems completely out of his depth, can't motivate the decent players he does have, and is turning the club into a laughingstock (or has done already.) A proper, world-class appointment (didn't have to be Mourinho) after Moyes would not have done the same, even if he couldn't win the title in his first year.

Astonishingly shit from Man U. I wouldn't be surprised if that was Moyes's last game. There's no excuse for Manchester United losing to Sunderland over 2 legs. Moyes has made Man U into an unremarkable, utterly average pack of cloggers who are feared by no-one and I cannot see the Man U hierarchy permitting that to continue. This was worse than a defeat, it was a humiliation.

Ideally we would fucking destroy these to choruses of "you're getting sacked in the morning" from both home and away support, upon which Fat Sam would duly be sacked in the morning. Probably we'll grind out a 2-1 win with a largely toothless and boring performance aided only by their defensive flaws.

Obertan has featured this season, and nobody would ever play him ahead of Jonas. It is clearly the pay-rise issue at work here and Pardew wasn't enough of a man to tell Jonas that to his face (neither was anyone else at the club - anyone remember how Lovenkrands was told we were releasing him at the end of his contract when we went down?) which is not a surprise.

Not a chance. You're right, the bullshit-o-meter has really been ratcheted up this window, starting with the unbelievable load of horseshit from SSN that we're "interested in signing up to 4 players this window." Aye, "up to four" includes 0. Expectations have been well and truly lowered around here. Some would say it's just clearing up the unrealistic delusions of the post-SBR through relegation era, but I'd say it's more like ripping away the heart and soul of a club with the obvious potential to be a top 4 contender and transforming us into a Fulham or Aston Villa - a nothing club with no aspirations and no future beyond mediocrity. Nobody should be happy with the direction the club is headed in. It's a slow inching slide into full-on, total also-ran status at best. I'll let you contemplate what it is at worst.

I guarantee Kinnear has had no influence on the club whatsoever beyond a sudden shortness of loose change in the pay phones surrounding SJP, an odd smell emanating from the gents' most days of the week, and an astonishing increase in the "Director of Football - Unspecified expenses" column of our budget. After he's lost favour with Ashley or whatever happens to get him thrown out on his alkie arse in a few years' time, we'll hear from players and staff alike about the surreal experience that was JFK as DoF: "He used to wander the halls like something out of the Walking Dead. You'd try to avoid eye contact so he wouldn't have to pretend to know who you were." - Mike Williamson "Sometimes we'd pass by his door and hear him yelling things like, 'I don't give a fack, Graham, we're signing John Hartson and that's fackin' it!' But there was no-one else inside his office...." - Cheik Tiote "He called me Shirley." - Shola Ameobi