brummiemag1

The only "teams that are starting to catch up with the so called big four" are teams that are prepared to spend money. If we dont spend the money then we have no chance whatsoever of challenging for a trophy in the next 5 to 10 years - Stoke and Bolton are what we can try and emulate if we are lucky, thanks to that billionaire bastard Shameful lack of ambition for one of the best supported clubs in the country. In fact we are still ranked as the 20th most valuable club in the world - I bet we are the only one in the top 100 who have set our sights so low, not one of them would be happy with merely surviving in the top division

That means the very best we can hope for with this wanker is years and years of mediocrity. I think most of us knew that already though We may survive next season simply because there are plenty of other shit teams about, but we wont be any stronger the season after or the season after that. We will consider it a success (or some people will) if we can compete with the likes of Stoke and Bolton in a couple of years time and that is criminal for a club with our level of support.

Its all very well for people to say we will build year on year and develop a good youth policy and sign hungry young players etc, but all the other clubs are already doing that. The problem is that if we want to make serious progress in the next few years we need to spend the money on quality players this summer, this season, next season and every season. Ultimately the clubs who are regularly competing for the major honours in the game in this country (and I include the FA and League Cup in that) are the clubs that spend big. If Ashley doesnt spend the money this summer, then he wont do it in the future either, it will confirm his lack of ambition and means we will have no chance of competing for major honours in a few years time and the best we can look forward to is survival and years of mediocrity.

Well it depends on how you look at it.....Ashley, and this is the only good thing I can say about him, hasnt borrowed a penny that he has put into NUFC. Maybe the fact that he's had to put £111 million into the club should raise the blinkers from some folks eyes....we may have had a couple of FA cup final appearances and and half a dozen great results in the group stages of the champions league to look back fondly upon, but what has been the real price of that to the club?...maybe we were heading for the second division all along, maybe there was always going to be a huge financial reckoning at the club at some point. If the Halls hadnt forced Shep's hand while he was lying in hospital where would we be now?...I'm not saying for a minute Ashley has been good for the club, but a £111 mill "loan"?....I know little of the financial world, but what the fuck has been going on? Is that the bill just to run the club in the last 3 years or was that to take care of the mess it was in when Shep departed? or both? does it include transfer fees paid out? or do the figures not give a strict breakdown of what its gone on? The debt accrued before Ashley arrived bought a brand new stadium and transformed NUFC from a club on the brink of the third division into an established top flight club, not a few decent results in Europe. It’s also worth remembering that a relegation (brought about not by the quality of the squad but becuase of the chaos Ashley’s created) cost the club £50m (Lambias’ words not mine) and the dismissal of Allardyce and Keegan another £10m. Ashley made a bad financial situation a whole lot worse and has only lent the club money to stop his incompetence costing him the £135m he paid for it. Ultimately somebody will have to pay for Ashley’s mistakes, the question is will it be him or us? Good post The first sentance in particular is so important, easily forgotten and sums up the difference between then and now. The old board, whatever their faults, had ambition and were determined to realise the enormous potential of Newcastle United and turn it into a club that would challenge for the major honours in the game. And they largely succeeded. Ashley is a million miles from that, both in ambition and delivery.

I've been slated on NO for going on about how much Ashley has managed to lower peoples expectations, but its true. Too many people seem to satisfied with scraping around in the premier league next season for enough points to finish 17th and playing shit football. If Ashley has any intention whatsover of competing for major honours in a few years time then he needs to spend a minimum of £25 million net this summer, next summer and every summer, hopefully more than than that. If he's not prepared to do that the he should get out of the club. Otherwise we can look forward to years and years of mediocrity and if we are really lucky we might end up with an established top division tream like Bolton or Blackburn. Newcastle are bigger and better than that.

Well, compared to Cameron he pretty much is actually. What would have happened if Cameron and Osbourne had let the banks collapse? Sorry, I should have clarified: the line needs to be that it's a bit rich positioning yourself as the great rescuer when you were complicit in creating the problem and exposing the country to the global crisis to a massive extent in the first place. True, but what's done is done now, and we are hardly unique in this aspect. I want to back the best man to get us out of the mess, and think Brown is still best qualified to do it. Daftest thing I've ever read. Brown got us into this mess by piss poor planning. We had the biggest economic boom in ages and rather paying off our debt and saving for future issues like the pension time bomb or banking collapse like the Australia did, he wasted it while making arrogant claims (e.g. 'end of boom and bust' etc...). We are in £848.5 billion debt (Feb 2010) and have to pay 42 Billion a year to service it. What baffles me is Gordon has the cheek to attack the Conservatives aim to cut 6 billion spending to try and reduce it, while claiming he will reduce it by half in four years. Wake up and smell the coffee mate, even Shepard would agree borrowing 14 billion a month is wrong. The conservatives have laid out their plan to regulate the banking sector and force them to lend, which will stimulate SME and grow the economy. Super Gordon wants to piss away more money on public services which has created an unsustainable reliance on the public sector. If you want the country to stand any chance vote conservative, if you want to work until you die and live in a crappy over crowed care home with a worthless pension, stick with Gordon - the debt is out of control. The debt was perfectly manageable until the ripple effect from the sub prime crisis in the US fucked up just about every economy in the Western world. We are not alone in this and would have been completely fucked if we had followed the tory plans during the peak of the crisis. And now its the same old story from the Eton brigade - tax relief for the super rich and specific plans to fuck the North East over as Cameron admitted last week. As for tax relief for married couples, parents setting up new schools etc, what a joke. Amateur stuff which hasn't been properly thought out. Your last sentence reeks of scaremongering, or perhaps you've just not had a very good time of it of late. For me personally I recognise all the good things Labour have done whilst in power - massive improvements to the NHS, to schools, minimum wage, working tax credits, winter heating allowance for the elderly, etc, etc. The fact that the tories in opposition objected to most of these things tells its own story. In the last decade since Labour has been in power our citiy centres have also been virtually rebuilt (for the better in general). We've had genuinely good times and now are suffering the hangover of a global recession, but it is NOTHING compared to Thatcher under the 80s. Agree with you 100%. A lot of people must have short memories or be too young to remember the Thatcher years if they planning to vote Tory. Once elected the Tories will see this as an historic opportunity to smash the public sector and the public sector unions once and for all and finish the work Thatcher started- it will be a world of sevices being contracted out to the lowest bidders with low wages, non unionised labour with no rights and mass unemployment. This will help fund tax cuts for the better off. After a couple of years of a Tory Government an awful lot of people will bitterly regret the day they were stupid enough to vote Conservative

I believe it - must have been a big boat though. Evangelists and such like always base their beliefs on evidence and the facts so it must be true.

Not handy for the match but I found the Navigli area to the South of the city was spot on for restaurants and there's a smattering of bars around there (and on the way from the city centre). As for San Siro no idea, but I thought the surrounding area looked dodgy as fuck. Cheers

Me and 2 mates are going to Milan for 3 nights from Saturday to Tuesday in the middle of May. Got flights for £50 each and 4 star hotel in the centre of Milan for £105 each for the 3 nights (£35 pp per night). Best of all we have booked tickets for the AC Milan v Juventus match on the Sunday - the cheapest we could get was approx £90 each, up in the 3rd tier. If anyone knows any good bars/areas with bars in Milan, (particularly for before the game) but also in the evening then would be grateful if you could let me know

Another good web site which we use for away games is called the Football and Real Ale Guide. It gives maps and suggested pub crawl routes from the train station to the ground for all 92 league clubs - well worth a look

If you like good pubs, decent beer and good chat you can't go wrong with the Bogeda, Newcastle Arms and Strawberry

What the fuck has my post about lowering expectations got to do with being more or less passionate than anyone else? Why dont you stick to the arguments rather than trying to score petty points? It was just a joke. Fucking hell Sorry, thought you were having a go!

What the fuck has my post about lowering expectations got to do with being more or less passionate than anyone else? Why dont you stick to the arguments rather than trying to score petty points?

Well Ashley as done a brilliant job in lowering expectations. 20th most valuable club in world football, still the 5th biggest supported club in England and yet some people will be satisfied if we cling onto 17th place in the Premier League next season

White Ribbon. Good film, German film, sort of film that wouldnt be made in the States, disturbing, uncomfortable viewing still have not really worked out what it was all about though, about the seeds of facism I read afterwards

Fair play to all the Rochdale fans who have stuck with them over the last 40 years. Imagine 40 years of playing in the 4th division with not a single promotion or relegation. I notice they took about about 800 or so down to Torquay last week. Proper football fans - would be all too easy to support Man U or Liverpool down the road

Wow, now that is insulting, and nonsense of course. It's as banal as saying that everybody is the same. Also comparing the church with academia? Hmmm. Somebody's going to have to run it by me how atheism - an absence of belief in any God or Scripture - can be described as dogmatic as well. Sounds like an oxymoron to me. Yep the first quote is nonsense. If your an atheist you dont believe in god - end of. Its not a case of being fundamentalist or dogmatic. Dawkins doesnt advocate war or persecution like many religious leaders do. As Richard Dawkins has said, there is not the slightest scrap of evidence for the existence of a god. Thats a fact, its not being dogmatic Theres no comparison between the rational, evidence based approach of Dawkins and the sometimes fanatical comments made by religious leaders whose doctrine is largely based on mumbo jumbo nonsense from thousands of years ago. Is anyone going to provide some examples of his so called annoying comments?

Worrying in the sense that they are really only thinking about survival and tight budgets for team upgrading. No vision. So I'll get in before LM does. Whats the use in being there? whats the use in existing if all you're going to do is attempt to survive? thats not football, at least not for the fans, its balancing the books. Its making a profit, its all the things that football should not be about. Make no mistake, with that kind of business plan then the only people to profit (in any way shape or form) are the shareholders. I honestly think it must be more fun as a football fan to support say Blyth Spartans or Whitley Bay, teams who have a huge amount of things to aim for and are constantly striving to reach those goals than just ensuring they survive and make a profit. A good cup run for them means paying off some debts so they can buy a new player or two, those players will maybe get them promoted and hopefully get more cash in to clear more debts and buy more players...... Ive been here before though. What made this season more exciting than any in the last few years is the fact we were pushing for something, fighting to get that promotion. I dont see fighting to avoid relegation as anything like fun. As a football club owner Id no doubt think differently but as a fan I want us to compete for things not just hope we can spend as little as possible to guranteee staying in the Premiership gravy train. Agree with all that. The last thing I want is to spend years scraping around in the lower reaches of the Premier League playing shit football and playing the reserves in cup competitions. We should be aiming high and that includes trying to play good attacking football (rather than going away from home putting 11 men behind the ball) and competiing seriously in the cup competitions. In my opinion thats what Newcastle should be about and thats what supporting a football club should be about.

If Ashley is serious about making Newcastle a force to be reckoned with in a few years time then as a minimum I would expect him to invest at least £20 million net on players. Ashley needs to sell up or if he is staying then he needs to make a statement of intent by investing in players. The alternative is year after year of scraping about in the lower reaches of the Premier league playing crap defensive football We have the core of a decent team already, (Harper,Enrique, Colli, Barton, Jonas and Carol) so £20+ million on 3 or 4 quality players and theres no reason why we can't finish mid table, playing decent football and maybe with a bit of a cup run thrown in.

I read somewhere (and dont ask me where cos I can't remember) that based on the size of the catchment area, a bigger percentage of local people attend home matches at Burnley than any other club in England. Their support is local, loyal and passionate and they certainly can't be accused of being glory hunters, they could easily support bigger clubs just down the road but they dont.

5 years ago relegation would have been unthinkable but this clown Ashley has now managed to lower expectations to such an extent that a lot of people will now be happy to see us cling to 17th place by scraping around for bore draws playing shit defensive football next season. He is now even getting credit for doing a decent job in some quarters - unbelievable

Top bloke and a one in a million as far as I'm concerned. Exactly the sort of character and personality the country needed during the early years of the war to lift morale. Was also a great public speaker, came out with some classic quotes over the years, by all accounts drank from the moment he woke up until last thing at night (25 units a day apparently), smoked like a chimney and still lived until 90. I read that he took part in last ever cavalry charge by the british army in the 1890's and that he wanted to be in the first wave of allied landings on D Day. A man of action as well as words and a man of substance rather than image. We will never see someone like him again

Looks like there are 4 or 5 good real pubs within a 10 minute walk of the station

Have you not got homework to be getting on with im off tomorrow and the next day, keegans off also, did you hear? he walked out on his job, wouldnt be like him eh. You obviously have not got the slightest clue about what Keegan did at this club

Happy Birthday Kev. Thanks for giving me the best footballing memories I have ever had, we will never see the like of it again. And thanks for turning Newcastle into an attacking, entertaining team with ambition and belief. Fucking hell we could do with some of that now