Isegrim

Ah from five new ones with no players leaving, he is already down to two in and one out...

You know your club is in a bad state when even Louise Taylor writes an apologetic article about Newcastle.

or a taxi to South Shields ? I got one in the end though.

48 hrs. It's like waiting for Godot (or Brett Emerton).

What difference does it make? The plastics will just buy a different shirt and will have being going to City ''all along'' and suddenly they've ''always been a big club'' . Etc etc. tbf it's a bit like us in the mid 90s when the south was full of people who'd 'suddenly' become Newcastle United fans... Oi, I'm still here.

Giving these stupid speculations some credence for the argument's sake: Do you think the owner would really give a toss about the effects of such kind of clauses in case he wants to get rid of the club?

Looking at the German league it could be Sosa from Bayern and Zaccardo from Wolfsburg. The first one is an attacking midfield player and has been offered to clubs on loan as he failed to win a place in the team, the latter is a right back and has been a total flop since his move last summer.

What's the odds the deals fall through as always...

Tbf to N'Zogbia, if I were him I'd look for a move too. It's about ambition. If he stays at Newcastle where his career isn't progressing at all he can start looking for good crepes recipes...

Tbf Shola is above these sort of things. Sign of grandeur if you don't need these kind of cheap demonstrations of skill to suck up to fans.

Enrique also has genuine pace. Apparaently this Lovenkrands bloke is quick as well, which would be good as all the rest of our fast blokes are left footed. Shame Lovenkrands is left footed as well, eh...

Was it televised? Not sure if this really helps though...

Likes to punch team mates, would enjoy Barton's company then...

Also if we are are looking at out of favour players from Schalke I'd rather try us to sign Albert Streit on loan. He's a very creative player and was always very high in the assists rankings when playing regularly.

I've ordered the list by level of improvement and i think it highlights what you're saying. It's clearly in defense where we've made the biggest strides, the whole back four is replaced with better when everyone's fit. Creatively though we've lost Solano, Dyer and Milner who were all capable of doing something (you could add Emre to that too) and only really brought in Jonas who's inconsistent at best. Curiously, we are scoring more goals than in the 2 previous seasons though. And probably also conceding more?

The prevailing wisdom is that one should compare apples to oranges, of course. It's no use to compare two stocks of apples by just looking at a handpicked few and ignore the rotten rest or lack of more apples and everything else though...

I don't thinke these like for like comparison show the real picture. Our first team might look arguably better on paper. The thing is that our whole squad looks even more unbalanced since two years ago. There is also the fact that the club looks much more in a turmoil these day making the atmosphere much more hostile. And worst of it all it's been unnecessarily down to self made problems caused by incompetent twats.

Ah, the amount of new players to be brought in is getting less each day again. Only a couple of days ago it were five players... What's the odds that we'll have an even thinner squad come Feb 1st...

Because he's been that shit?

Ashley must already have had more kicks up his backside than a black man attending a Nazi convention.

Lovenkrands did ok in his first season over here, but was mostly rubbish afterwards. He'll add depths to the squad but hardly quality.

We couldn't sell him when his contract was running out and he was clearly not wanted, so offering him a new one doesn't make his overdue exit any more likely. It's just a sign of the sad state of the team when you have to consider Ameobi as a valuable member of the first team tbh.

Here is a Winter picture: http://www.footballpictures.net/data/media...tle_Stadium.jpg

Do you reckon Keegan would have agreed to him being sold if he hadn't been assured that a replacement had been lined up? Well he agreed to sell Andy Cole without having a replacement lined up and even used that as an example in the press conference about getting the right player, that's without mentioning that Jonas is a far better player who's playing wide right now. The Cole transfer was in a completely different time and situation, Keegan had been banging on all summer about needing a stronger squad, to say that he would agree to selling Milner knowing he wasn't going to be replaced is absolutely ridiculous. He was banging on about wanting a left back which we should get in in January. The point about the Cole transfer is that sometimes you have to take the best deal you can and if you have to wait until the next window to get a replacement then so be it, the same happened when we sold Woodgate too. The only difference between the sale of Cole, Woodgate and Milner is that this time we had someone more than capable of filling in, in fact I don't think we even need to bring in another winger. The difference is that Keegan wasn't thinking about the next window. He also didn't say anything about actually wanting a new winger as replacement: "We got an offer that was good value and if you look into the next two or three days I wouldn't have sold him unless I knew I could move the club forward. "We have a good chance of getting three or four players in before the deadline. http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/nufc/newcas...72703-21633991/ A couple of days later in return for cashing in 12m on Milner the lclub signed an unproven Spanish youngster and a crocked South American. I am pretty sure they weren't the ones in Keegan's mind at the time of the interview when he said it was his decision to sell Milner. Yet Keegan met Xisco didn't he and told him all of the plans he had for the club, strange thing to do if it's a player that you didn't want. I still believe that the club pushed for Schweinsteiger too even if you don't, that is straight from Tony Jimenez btw. I still don't think that Keegan was speaking about Xisco as one of the players to move the club forward by quality but rather by numbers. Is there a public quote avaiblable from Jimenez or is this some Jol-like ITK stuff? BTW - Schweinsteiger just signed a new contract with offers from various big Italian and Spanish clubs on the table (according to the press). Him signing for Newcastle last summer was really a pretty likely scenario... Nothing public that I know of but the bloke is friends of his through property, not quite up to Martin Jol standards. It was the first I'd heard of Schweinsteiger being in the last year of his contract, he said Bayern were up for the deal but the player said no. It would make little sense with all public comments from Bayern officials this summer about their squad dealing. The only player the let go because the offer they received was too good was Janssen who went to Hamburg. With Schweinsteiger they always said they want to keep him, especially as it was unknown when Ribery was back from his injury. I only can see them accepting an absurd offer, something I can't see Newcastle would have done with their 'wise' transfer policy. The only time I ever read on a German website about an offer for Schweinsteiger is this page: http://insider.sport1.de/2008/09/02/brandh...nach-newcastle/ It's a blog from a journalist of a big German sports website who receices a strange call from a Newcastle journalist about Schweinsteiger moving to Newcastle. He uses it as a prime example for the madness of the last day of the transfer window and its absolutely incredible rumours.