The Fish

Criteria? I'd look for a manager who had shown a genuine ability to improve the fortunes of the club that they inherited. Not a manager who rode the coat-tails of the previous top dog, using their foundations as a successful platform. I'd search for a manger who shows tactical nous, the ability to read a game and adapt to get the best from his team. signing a manager based on a couple of cup victories alone is akin to buying a car simply because it's got shiney alloys imo. I could take over Chelsea a day before the Cup final, tell the lads to keep doing what they've been doing all season. Sit back and bingo, I'm a manager with cup pedigree... enough to get employ by your criteria. regular european football over the past decade does show a degree of success. But like I said before, it's despite some god-awful appointments and decisions, not because of sterling chairmanship. the major signings we've made recently have been to silence the dissenters. They were not a well judged purchase with a view to laying strong foundations from which we couldimprove our lot on the pitch. does that smack of a) good business sense and sound financial acumen? 2) an exercise in ego-management by the fatman? III) 50 cent but we forget that you have, with bulldog determination, defended Shepherd to the hilt, and certainly will continue to do so, long after he is removed. So this was a waste of my time. This is like fencing with a blunt epee, it's fun enough but at the end of the day it's totally pointless.

Gemmil holds more contempt for Robert than Luque... Shirley... I hate Carr, Babayaro... but Luque tops the pile..

you're hardly one to judge, Adolf

Tada

would still say the RAZR is a good phone and as long as you don't try to treat it like a trowel it's not going to break on you.

The Shins- Oh Invented World pure bliss

sooooooo women troubles for you methinks I'm not allowed to say am I? But yes. no it's fine and fair if you're bitching about relationships Brockles, it's just the ubiquitous (sp?) "Spoke to a lass onthe phone" inserts into random threads which get peoples.... goat. god I'm getting old... All the same, I'm not saying owt. chicken shit.

I've got a record bag... does that count?

sooooooo women troubles for you methinks I'm not allowed to say am I? But yes. no it's fine and fair if you're bitching about relationships Brockles, it's just the ubiquitous (sp?) "Spoke to a lass onthe phone" inserts into random threads which get peoples.... goat. god I'm getting old...

your not wrang there like...went to party in the Park a few years back and some dodgy paki geezer wiht no licence tried to " do us a deal" what? Ten miles and a you get a free eighth? how was your night Radgelicious?

Other than one eye roll smiley I can't really see how Zathras is an cyber warrior? Dog... you need to simmer down mate, You were afronted by this piece and while that's all well and good, you need to see that all anyone on here were doing was trying to reign you in a tad. save your anger for them buggers what deserve it, not some knobhead journo who can't be arsed to write a real piece of compelling insight and settles instead for a pulp piece with precisely bugger all relevance.

as sweet as it is for you to try and drag me into this benal pissing contest, I'd like to point out a couple of things. I don't doubt that the money that has been supplied by Fat Freddy and his cronies has been an impressive show of support for the managers that they have installed. However, I'll contest until the day I drawmy final breath that they've made good decisions; be they the appointment of managers, the acquisition of token players or whatever. We do need forwards, we also need a back four. If you don't concede, you don't lose. but please, don't let a different opinion change the direction you've chosen to blindly follow. By your reckoning, we have a good board, strikers are the priority and Shepherd is the man to bring this home. so I'm right, we need defenders, we need an upper echelon whose style and focus is more modern than that which we currently suffer. think of it this way LM, if Shepherd was a Good chairmen, he could have quite easily steered a Title challenging side through the changes that have befallen the premiership. Under a good chairman, surely we would have at the very least kept pace with those around us, instead of falling by the wayside? We've stagnated since he took over, and despite the money that he has thrown at the club, the problems remain. We're crippled by injuries year after year, our squad has little depth, our youth system is laughable and our public image is a national joke. If I were the chairman of a company with those credentials, and gave a crap about it, I'd subtley remove myself from the equation. Shepherd's pride is getting in the way of business. I couldn't give a crap if he's suppplied us with money, don't care if the club has repeatedly got into European competition, or sporadically challenged for a top 3 space in the Premiership. I'd say those achievements have happened in spite of a bad chairman, rather than because of him. Think of it this way, what progress did we make under Hall... how much Progress have we made since? He chose the managerial replacements, he paid for shit players, he chose to play in front of cameras, instead of playing with a match fit squad. Other than the support he's given his managers, quite what has he done to secure anything but contempt in my heart? As the Beatles once put it. "Can't buy me love, love Can't buy me love I'll buy you a diamond ring my friend if it makes you feel alright I'll get you anything my friend if it makes you feel alright 'Cause I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love I'll give you all I got to give if you say you love me too I may not have a lot to give but what I got I'll give to you I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love Can't buy me love, everybody tells me so Can't buy me love, no no no, no Say you don't need no diamond ring and I'll be satisfied Tell me that you want the kind of thing that money just can't buy I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love " either way I know you'll fill a page with wonderful examples of how Shepherd has supplied every manager with substantial financial backing. However, He appointed them, they failed, how long before their failures are proven to be his responsibility? I employ an idiot to mind the till and he fucks up, surely it's as much my fault as it is his? I employ the wrong man for the Job, it's my fault. I misjudged the climate, the needs of the club, the mood of the fans.. Souness, Gullit Roeder, all the wrong men for the Job, all Shepherds appointments... how many monumental fuck up will you allow him? Token signings, awful PR, embarrassing meeja quotes... other thant he cash I'm failing to see a good point.... I genuinely don't know why I've spent 5-10 minutes replying... you won't take it in, far brighter men than I have tried to get a similar message across and you'd rather focus on what you hold to be true than let a little thing like reason and argument get in the way of a good tirade. so, aware of the futility I ask you a question. Other than financial backing... what has Freddy Shepherd brought to Newcastle United?

Frodo does the worst American accent I've heard in a long while So Elijah Wood is an American who can't do an American accent? yup. it's painful. it'd be like you or me "putting on" a Geordie accent. I dunno, I was watching it and thinking that the accent could have as easily been supplied by an English actor who could feign an American accent. cringe worthy if you ask me. same goes for the Tarquin supplying the Norf Lahdahn charcter

The whole point of this is clear. Newcastle (for what it is) is extortionately priced. It's living off the reputation it's built up as being a "party city". It's shocking when it comes to clubs, but the bars in Newcastle are top of the range. If you were to apply that price scale to that kind of night in Newcastle I'd be looking to spend... 2x £5 drinks, 3x£4 drinks. £25 taxi fare. £47 for the night, but the majority of that is just getting home. If I lived close enough to walk home the whole night would only cost me £24. I don't buy take aways, I wouldn't need a tin of beans of a loaf of bread... the whoole london taxi fare is bollocks as well... that's a taxi fare from the train station... so you should add another wedge of cash on top for train fare from whichever suburb you've travelled from...

biddle-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-dinnnnng I'm alright, I can outrun a tractor on foot me, man!

... he looks far too pleased with himself. clearly sitting on Santas lap.

the latter

I'm pretty sure you can't touch him at all now. they'd let things like pat on the shoulder and a nice big gay hug. but anything embarrassing or potentially violent and it's yellow card city

TR will search on that and then look at hubby dearest with an odd... queasy feeling in her stomach. "I'd like to introduce you to my brother and my husband..... Here he is!"

Frodo does the worst American accent I've heard in a long while and the English bloke sounds like a posh get trying to do a lahdahn accent. average film at best. Much better in the same genre

keep the normal option available. want none of that chrimbo crap on my pc thankyouverymuch

speaking of which, do you prefer a particular type of cloth?

"Better" or simply more "emphasis on"? I'd obviously concede less goals are being scored, but I wouldn't say that suddenly strikers have lost their shooting boots, but I doubt that defenders have suddenly improved ten fold

Just to give the flipside of that coin. If he wasn't a famous footballer half of the accusations would magically disappear. Really pisses me off when it transpires these girls who cry rape are lying or doing it for their day in the papers. not because I think footballers are hard done by, but it makes the world more cynical and dismissive when a girl who has been raped tries to come forward.

depends how you define a good thread to me this reads like one guy screaming at the top of his lungs "LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME" and a couple of idiots complying. Leazes is stubborn and ignorant... never a good mix for a contributor to a thread... unfortunately, it just seems to me as if I am "ranting" at a canny few apathetic people. fixed it for you.