acrossthepond

Pardew and Llambias have both confirmed that the club are 're-investing' the Carroll money in transfer fees, wages, the training ground, and other assorted projects. So what is being 'bought into' here? Deano, remember this quote from the other thread? (From here.) Pardew is directly telling us not to bother trying to add up the fees, spendings etc because he knows doing so will obviously reveal that the 35m has not been spent on the team, as was promised. It was a lie from the start and this is the spin.

Don't think Ben Arfa, Ba, Barton or Enrique will play. Ferguson, Airey and Gosling will feature, Abeid too maybe. Very excited for the start of the new (pre)season, despite the inevitable disappointment of this transfer window. I know it'll be radio only for this game, but I think the USA games might get an airing on TV (I really wanted to go to Columbus, but it's so far...New York to Columbus is nearly 65% of the distance between Land's End and John o' Groats, for reference, and Kansas City and Orlando are even more distant.) Too skint.

Keep. We'd get pennies for him at best and we don't need to sell. We could've used him in the second half of last season at several junctures...I'm thinking of the game against Bolton where R. Taylor played right wing and was sent off for a dreadful two-footed tackle. Had Routledge played instead of Raylor, I think we would've won that game.

Yes, they do. It never stops at just one lie. They lied to us about Carroll not being sold, so then they had to lie to us about the 35m being fully reinvested, so now they have to lie to us about all the ways they're reinvesting it. If there had been any straight talk at any point during Ashley's reign, we wouldn't be in this position. They could've just told us bluntly, "Look, the club is skint, we need the money to cover operational costs and there's no guarantee we'll re-invest any of it" (if that were indeed the case.) It would've been hugely disappointing, but it would've been honest. Instead we've had so many lies about "we are not a selling club" and "we won't let young Geordie talent like Shearer, Gazza and Carrick (?) go to other clubs" that we now have to have more lies to explain why selling our local hero, no. 9 and best player doesn't make us a selling club. We've had lies about managers, lies about players, lies about linked players, lies about the fans, lies about everything under the sun. Every so often these lies contradict each other and Happy Face updates his blog, but it makes no difference. The brutal truth is that Mike Ashley is not interested in seeing the club succeed, not interested in progressing, and not interested in running it as a club of our size and stature should be run (or indeed even how a club of Wigan's size and stature should be run.) He is only interested in making money off us, and anything else that comes out of his, his crony or his puppet's mouth is another lie.

Ticks all of the boxes for Ashley's stated transfer values: young, talented, good resale value. Unfortunately, he fails the unstated criterion, which is "available on the extremely cheap."

I don't think it matters what Pardew knows or doesn't know, I imagine he has very little input into incomings or outgoings. He's probably been told, "we're getting you two new players," with no more specificity than that, and that's what he repeats.

That's a good point actually. Seems to be a lot of sour grapes from within our masses. I bet the same people who are coming out with 'he's shit' would have been rubbing their hands had he come here instead. Moot point however IMO, he doesn't fit into Ashley's structure. northern soul doing his level best to epitomize that Sour grapes? Spunking transfer kitty on unproven players is hardly a progression for the club is it? Come off it man, we'd be over the moon if we'd signed him. No telling whether he'll come good or not but this is a sign of planning for the future, buying one of England's most highly rated prospects. I do question why anyone would buy Wickham for 8m or whatever the initial fee is when Sturride is reportedly available for 6m, but either way it's a sign of investment in the future.

Just thought I would add this: From Soccernet's live transfer blog, http://blogs.soccernet.com/onthemove/archi...f_a_downing.php The player was previously linked to us in 2008, don't know much else about him.

I don't think 'we all know this.' I think there's a lot of people on here who could do with some reminding of just what kind of operation our owner and his crony-in-chief are running.

Sending Ranger out on loan to Hughton sounds like a great plan to me, if we have enough backup at striker. I'd rather keep Guthrie and Best as I feel they'll make more impact in the first team.

Not another one. We shouldn't sell Jonas this season. Even if we buy a better winger, we'll still need competition and backup, and Jonas has also shown the ability to make a difference off the bench. If we're going to progress, we're going to need to build a squad (and I'm struggling to think of someone who's better than him who we could reasonably get...N'Zogbia, I suppose, but with all the baggage (and 10m fee, and mega wages) that would come with him.)

Have I ever mentioned that bringing Insomnia back would be a horrific move and one I certainly don't want to see happen? We've just signed a player who's described as being solely left-footed, and who therefore will have to play on the left wing. Why would we want to pay 10m for one of our castoffs who has a terrible attitude, who fucked off and left us in the lurch when we needed him, and who plays a position that we're now definitely covered for? Or is he to play in the centre of midfield? Along who? Tiote and Cabaye? Can't see him displacing either. Please, don't let this be true. We do not need Charles N'Zogbia.

A celibacy clause We'll see how this goes. Definitely has the potential to be another Gosling or Campbell, aka chronically unfit players, but he could be a good signing as well. Certainly we're in need of wingers.

Yes, they are more likely to qualify, but I am saying that they will not (and neither will we.) Only a mackem would take this long to understand something so simple. You can disagree with my prediction, but you're not even getting that far because you're too thick to properly understand it. Last time (only time) Sunderland AFC were in Europe: 1974. Last time NUFC were in Europe: 2006. It's better to have walked the heights and fallen then never to have risen, my good mackem.

Fair play, nobody is expecting you to turn on a club legend, but I think you are in for a tough time of it this season. Your fortunes improved last season because the players and fans both wanted Dalglish and got him (and because you sold Torres.) But your squad has a lot of dross that needs shifting and is weak in several key areas, and meanwhile King Kenny is blowing 20m on an extremely underwhelming midfielder who wasn't particularly good for club or country, and of course he has something of a history of being pretty awful in the transfer market. I think it'll be a while before you're having those 'magical European nights' again. You have that in common with us. Erm..... other than the fact it's only 6 years since they won the champions league, and have won it a total of 5 times, then... hang on....... :D DELUDED!!! Did you misread? I didn't say magical European nights were in common with us, I said it'll be a while before either of our clubs are having them again. And then there's your lot, who...hang on.....

Pleased with that, sensible contract by the sound of it. Bit of paranoia here - has it been confirmed anywhere that he's coming on a free?

Do you reckon? I thought he was class, personally.

It's the financial situation where Patron Saint Mike has paid off all the crushing, would-have-destroyed-our-club 'debt' and 'overdraft' and 'expenses' with 'his own money' but we still inexplicably talk about the need for fiscal conservatism and financial responsibility, as though we're in danger of going under. The gravy train has stopped. That's good. We all know it is. But just because we are no longer giving long and expensive contracts to players who are past it/were never worthy of them, doesn't mean that we should stop paying for quality. The truth is that Enrique wants to be off and Pardew can't stop him. Fine. I accept that and there's no blame attached (although if the club had been better run over the past 4 years, he wouldn't be wanting to go at the moment, but that's an entirely different story.) The 'financial situation' bullshit is just more doubletalk intended to lower our expectations. Net spend of only 10 million this summer despite the massive haul from the Carroll money? 'The financial situation was tough, but we tried as hard as we could to invest in the team.' Yeah, OK.

Hmm, actually CT posted that yesterday, so never mind.

And now for something that isn't from some bullshitting 'ITK' on twitter. Can't find where the original quote is from, but ESPN is running it. Look at 16.17 below. http://blogs.soccernet.com/onthemove/archi...sneijd_move.php

Fair play, nobody is expecting you to turn on a club legend, but I think you are in for a tough time of it this season. Your fortunes improved last season because the players and fans both wanted Dalglish and got him (and because you sold Torres.) But your squad has a lot of dross that needs shifting and is weak in several key areas, and meanwhile King Kenny is blowing 20m on an extremely underwhelming midfielder who wasn't particularly good for club or country, and of course he has something of a history of being pretty awful in the transfer market. I think it'll be a while before you're having those 'magical European nights' again. You have that in common with us.

40k or less if the clowns in charge have any sense at all. Of course, when you consider the contracts West Ham were handing out in their desperation, he might've already been on silly money and we might've had to match that.

From their website: 'The club actually wanted me.' Says it all. Goodbye Kevin, you will be missed, not least by those who claimed this was 'good business.'

No need to worry, gentlemen. This is all part of the Mike Ashley Five-Year Plan For Greatness. We can challenge for the top half every season!

"Sell your best players and replace them with relatively unknown ones that might be better" is a bad enough strategy, but I don't think we'll even be doing the "might be better" part. This is an astonishingly bad idea. How much will we get for him? 5m? A relative drop in the bucket when in the hunt for a player of proven class, although it's good for buying 3-4 Perches or Williamsons.