Craig

Aren't you the very same Ugly Mackems who in the past in defence of Mssr Robert's abject performances has said that you should never judge a player one one idividual performance alone?

Dunno about anyone else but SGE's comments read to me that Michael Owen has to get out of Real Madrid if he has any ambition of playing for England next summer. Eriksson is crafty with his line of "If he plays as many games as he did last season Real Madrid, I will pick him." He knows fine well that as Madrid have signed two new big name strikers, Owen has very little chance of playing as much as last season! In my mind, the England coach is saying if the move to Liverpool doesn't happen, you have to go to Newcastle for the sake of your international ambitions.

Well the BBC were commenting this morning that Everton are concerned that ourselves and Celtic were interested in Moyes... Personally I'd have any of Moyes, O'Leary or Bruce in replacement of Souness should he go... But has been said earlier, Stuart Pearce would be my first choice - an ex-Newcastle player but it's his passion and enthusiasm which excites me. He literally does kick every ball and he's certainly got a huge chunk of Brian Clough in his style.... The best English manager in the Premiership by far IMO!

Aye but he has the missus with him!

Craig, do you know the name of the paper/magazine he got this from? From my time there I'd say there are 40% excellent ones, and 60% are crap. 20440[/snapback] Dunno mate, and as it's one in the morning over there, I think I'll leave it til tomorrow to find out!

If the claim was just coming from NUFC then I'd see where you're coming from Ritchie but Real have confirmed we've made the bid. I think the money is there and the very reason we haven't been 'flashing the cash' this summer is because they've been putting it to one side for a ridiculously high bid like this!

.....is that the offer on the table for Owen IS £18m AND........ there's already a £13m bid on the table for Kuyt!! And the word is that everyone in Spain is advising Owen to make the move to Tyneside rather than Merseyside. Source? A text message from our good friend Shearergol who's currently on holiday out there!

Does anyone know who'll get the no.99 shirt?

He's a clever lad that Shearergol.....managed that one all the way from Majorca as well!

You were the one who told us we'd be signing Luis Figo though.... And didn't you say Kluivert was a god?

Yep we do it for comic amusement...... What happened to Figo anyway?

TBH I'm not that fussed which one it is, so long as we do buy another decent striker...

Nope, it was in reference to the fact that it was down from about midnight til 7am this morning and was giving an explanation as to why

Are you referring to Toontastic or Newcastle-Online? This is place is backup and running, for Newcastle-Online, you'll have to refer to either Phil or HTT for more info.

You getting prepared for Sunday?

The fun and games of being on a shared server I'm afraid. The hard limits with regards to MySQL connections are set by the owners of the server. The only way around this is to run on a dedicated server and at the present time, we're unable to afford this. It's the most frustrating aspect of running a free fansite, but please remember when we get this particular error that this place is indeed free to members and currently un-sponsored. When this happens from time to time, it is resolved by me playing with the DB behind the scenes and as I am not always logged on, it may not get fixed immediately. It is the one and only compromise that I ask you to consider. Thanks...

The way I see it is this: 1. Real Madrid have accepted a £17m bid from us for Michael Owen. With that in mind, they are never going to accept a bid of £8m from Liverpool, it just won't happen 2. Liverpool sold Owen for £8m last summer, he's now a year older and a year nearer to retirement, therefore if they buy him back at the fee we've offered, they've effectively just handed over £9m to Real for nothing! 3. Owen will not want to stay as 5th choice striker in the run up to a World Cup, therefore he WANTS the loan move so that he gets the best of all worlds. Realistically he knows the Liverpool move is unlikely to happen so the next bext thing for him is to be on loan at a club who want him desperately and who can offer him regular first team football and maximum exposure in the run up to the World Cup (I doubt there's a better team in that position in the world more than Newcastle United). All sense pointed to option 3..........until we steamed in with a £17m bid. That immediately wet the appetite of Real Madrid realising that they could actually make a hell of a lot of money on a player who really, they no longer want and as a result, were no longer happy with the idea of a loan deal. Liverpool have as good as said they'll pay no more than they received for him effectively leaving him with the option of a permanent move to NUFC or stay sat on the Real bench and risk his World Cup spot... Tough decisions for young Michael, personally I think he needs to look beyond the sentimentality of Liverpool FC and make the permanent move to SJP for the sake of his future career, but then I am biased.

I've heard that he may have clauses offering him upto a 5 year contract....

It even turned sour a few times and got dragged out in the press if I remember right. He got 1.2m in compo I think. Not bad for someone who got sacked and did a crap job. 18852[/snapback] The word 'compensation' scares me about the potential sacking of Souness... There's conflicting rumours as to what the length of his contract is, but if there is a potential 5 year deal in there (performance permitting or not) then there's also the potential for 4 years worth of compo if he went tomorrow... Money better used invested in the team IMO!

Dalglish was sacked, quite correct even if that wasn't the official line. Some kind of deal so Dalglish's CV wasn't stained. That's why he got compensation. Gullit walked but would have been sacked anyway. At least to his credit, he held his hands up and turned down any money owed to him. For all his bad press in these parts, even Shearer says he was a canny bloke. Just shit at man management and two-faced at times but he was pleasent and well liked apparently. 18843[/snapback] Agreed - Dalglish chased the legal angle far too much for him not to have been dismissed.

Agreed!

I stand corrected on the Gullit situation as he did indeed resign. Dalglish was most definitely sacked though, despite the club denying it at the time! And IMO, Gullit was more than likely asked to resign...

Shepherd without a shadow of a doubt... If you're gonna do some weeding, FFS dig the roots out, otherwise they'll simply grow back! Shepherd has: 1. Appointed Souness in the first place 2. Sacked the last 3 managers before the end of August (worse possible time to sack someone). 3. Has this ridiculous view about the team should be full of Geordies - wrong, it should be full of the best players we can get hold of! 4. Promised that we'd be 'pleasantly surprised' by the outcome of the Woodgate sale - still waiting Fred. 5. Pays himself a ridiculous dividend each year, despite the fact that the club is not improving!

I'm happy with that... So long as there's no personal attacks (whether public or private), whoever wants to post on here is more than welcome....

Is Craig Bellamy using a wheelchair to get himself to the treatment room then?