McFaul

I hope you're right but you have more confidence than me in them. It is an awful lot of luck. Graham Carr should be knighted, if he can do it again, Ashley should just say here Graham, here's £2m for yee son don't spend it on toot and prostitutes.

Tell me an example of another club signing so many cheapies (and in modern football anything under £10m is a cheapie) and them jelling together so quickly. By hook or by crook we've done it, against all odds. If he say sold Tiote, Cabaye and Cisse that's easily £60m brought in, but people are living in cloud cuckoo land if they think we could do it again. Liverpool spent £120m on shite. We clearly are more prudent, but we are where we are by luck. Nothing else. When he lowered the asking price to £80m and no one would buy it, he was clear then he was prepared to take a £100m + hit on his investment. Then once he realised no one wanted to buy it, he decided he'd say "it's not for sale". Taking the spine of our team about would potentially claw a lot of his initial investment back, and we'd still have enough to survive in mid table, but it would take us back to 2006 in terms of the potential on the playing side, would be an unmitigated disaster, but if he wants to sell the club, that's what he'll do sell 3 or 4 of our better players, and the club is far far more sellable than it was 3 years ago, he'd get £150m+ for it in my view easily, while potentially taking some of the transfer funds for himself, as he's entitled to do as it's his business. To be honest, I'd take all of that player sales, a few years of mid table, for a decent bloke or decent honourable people to buy and own the club. It's amazing how short peoples memories are after a bit of success. Him and Derek they're scum, they've been prepared to LIE for their own gain to hundreds of thousands of Newcastle fans consistently "they've learned from their mistakes", maybe but you've their morals, and I'm sure they'll show their ugly head again while they're here.

Agreed. Best club in the world by a million miles. Not supported by a government or an oligarch, as loyal a hard core as ours and that's as loyal as it gets, Barcelona are a new thing, all this Catalunyan pride bollocks, they can't match the history of Man Utd, Barcelona were largely nobodies before the 70's. As I've said there's nothing special about Man City winning it, how it ended up was pretty spectacular, but with the Mansour's, Stalybridge Celtic could've won it. The title win is a victory for greed and ego, millions starving in Africa and these cunts spunk a billion quid on formula 1, and a football club who could never maintain this without their support. We're not going to win it next season, so I'd like to see one of two properly run clubs win it Arsenal or Man Utd, who are and always will be the big two clubs in this country.

Aye I'm Stevie, put mine down in the book.

I pm'd someone saying I bet HF contradicts this watch. You didn't disappoint.

Looks like Steve Kean will be given the season to get them up. Good move by Venkys.

Yee and me are two of the only ones who aren't steeped in negativity and misery on here, it amazes me that our support ever gets called deluded, we're the most depreciative bunch of wanks in football in my view.

We got 7 wins.

I think Jagielka is quality meself like. European football hopefully means they'll all stay for us, but I'm not holding me breath.

Everton were very good yesterday, better than us. Naturally I still think we are better and had an off day, but you have the basis of a decent side if you can keep them all and spend some money. The teams who are top 8 will be the same next season. It was a great season for Everton in the end 56 points is not to be sniffed at, if you could start seasons better you'd have been up there with us challenging for third and fourth.

Had loads of shit luck betting recently but it all changed yesterday. I was £600 down for the month, so I opened an account with BET365 £100 on Rangers who won 4-0, Cheltenham who won 2-0, was just waiting of VVV Venlo in the Dutch play offs, I studied the form like a fiend, and went over everything with a fine tooth comb. Fucking in the pub after our game finished. VVV 2 Cambuur 2 81 mins, 82 VVV 3-2 "thank fuck" 86 mins 3-3 fuckin absolutely floored, 94 mins checked again VVV 4 Cambuur 3, I celebrated like the Man City fans when Aguero scored. £732 in the click of my refresh button on me phone. Tip today Mother Jones - 315 Wolverhampton 6/1 at the minute.

I'd love the way he says "WHAT?!?!" dead rude to a perfectly civil question from Shreeves.

Misleading that. Everyone else benefits from Man Utd's 75000 attendances but they don't. nufc.com do it the fairest way, by adding the clubs own average gate to their tally and dividing it by 20. Every season Man Utd and Liverpool are first and second, and we've never been lower than fourth, it's us and Arsenal swapping places. Every season we're top 4 on that score, its funny why more home fans turn out for us than Man City, Spurs and Chelsea every season. There must be a reason.

Getting back to the opening post. Where is the evidence for this, and why would you post it 345am on a Friday morning? He/she did the same simultaneously on other NUFC forums.

True fanbase to me is they support the club for reasons other than "they're good". People who are emotionally involved, who have at least 3 waking thoughts about the club a day. Not someone who likes Rooney, or likes Liverpool's kit, or because they still think their favourite Japanese player is at Fulham. That's not a fanbase. The core of your fanbase is people who are willing and able to go and watch the team play. It's pretty obvious why clubs strive to increase their worldwide support, money. Cardiff City's ploy to wear red shirts sums it up. If someone in Malaysia is sat there now, but will support Cardiff because of the Malaysian connection, in 10 years time they're not part of the fanbase. Not in my eyes, they're just attaching themselves to a sporting organisation, in the same way wanks do who wear New York Bulls caps.

What a load of pish. This is global and it has no baring on anything. People playing FIFA are likely to be young doilums for starters, secondly there's NEE WAY ON EARTH, in England which is where it counts, Tottenham, Man City (?!) or Chelsea have a bigger true fanbase than us. It's ridiculous to say they have in my view. I've seen people using facebook, and twitter stats, to support their arguments. Everybody knows the truth, of proper fans i.e. people who could name more than 10 of their players, we're fourth at worst.

I still want England to win, but gone are the days where I would be passionately involved. The Germany game in 2010 was the finish for me. That said I'd go away to another tournament and watch them again if it coincided with a decent place for a holiday. I think the Sven era they gradually turned in to spoilt twats the players and they've got even worse since. The fact is England don't have a system of play to win a major tournament, nor the personnel. Since 1990 many countries who may have not had as good quality players as we have, have won tournaments, Denmark, Greece and Italy (worst world champions in history) spring to mind, but they all disciplined players and a system that worked for them. We've never really had one. We had a good system against the dutch at Euro 96, but a lot of the time it's a rigid 4 4 2 pish that rarely works for us. The Woy appointment will change nothing, he probably masturbates while thinking of blackboards with 442 systems on. Even at Inter that's how he played. So we've got nee chance, we're wank, and it's a waste of time. The future is nee brighter, even if we had one player who was 18 or 19 who's like David Silva or even wor Benny, but we haven't. "Jack Wilshere" do me a favour. The fact is all this England perenial underachievers pish is bollocks too, we'll continue to be ranked 5th-8th best in the world, because that's our level, based in our tactical ineptitude and our population. For every 10 English people there are 17 krauts. For every 10 English people there are 39 Braziliians. It's not all population far from it, Spain's pop. is slightly smaller, but it's not as insignificant as people make out.

I agree to compete with Chelsea we'd have needed a Mansour. People of our generation grew up believing Liverpool FC were the biggest in the world. We did. They were the benchmark, but in my view even they can't compete. The only thing I'd raise in your post is the fact we were ran in debt, we weren't up to 2004, we broke even or made profits largely speaking up to 2004, then the shit really hit the fan. Anyone reading doesn't need to debate that, because that whole subject may have been discussed once or twice on here iirc

Nose hair is the wrongun of body parts.

I just feel it was far more noble, far fairer that the players we were attracting were indicitive of the size of Newcastle United Football Club, based on the income we were generating from our vast fanbase at the time. Only Manchester United were richer, we had no Jack Walker, all of the Shearer money was paid for by our turnover. You look at the likes of Abramovic and the Arabs, when their association with Chelsea and Man City ends they will have losses approaching £1 billion for the excitement of creating a professional football club at the top of the tree. The overly praised Sir John Hall made SEVENTY million pound profit on Newcastle by speculating to accumulate. Man City and Chelsea are not where they are because they are or have been big clubs, they're there by artificial means, they're there because someone made a decision to make them a big club. We were there because by completely fair means, we developed in to a big club by maximising our potential on and off the pitch. It's my view that Man City and Chelsea could never be what we were, which was for a time on the pitch, and quite a long time off the pitch, the second biggest club in English football in the 90's. That's why I'm bitter, and people new to football, your talksport generation, "Newcarsewww aint a big claaab", we were a big club one of the biggest off our own means, our only piers were Manchester United Arsenal (who are the only two SBR saw as being above us) and probably Liverpool. We were so far away from Tottenham it was laughable, and Man City and Chelsea well if I'm going on it is because I'm bitter, and I don't care how deluded I appear, it's not right for clubs to have such an unfair advantage by artificial means. If we were all on an even level playing field we'd be a regular top four club again, something the likes of Everton, Man City and Aston Villa couldn't have even dreamt of. I know it's swept under the carpet a lot but I always remembered that it was rumoured we were first choice for the Mansour's, we were and Ashley didn't want to know. I'm not name dropping, but I know a lad from school, who a lot of you will know off the telly, Richard Conway, cracking lad he does the F1 and chips in on BBC News, and the odd FF interview too he's quite a player. He always was a good kid. The last time I had a pint with him, he was adamant that, it's a 100% fact that Mansour did everything he could to buy Newcastle United, but in the end had to go with his second choice Manchester City due to the obstacles that were put in his way. If I sound bitter, I am. We'll always be a much bigger club than Man City in my eyes, a football club who before they moved to the COMs had averaged over 40,000 twice in its' history. Paul Calf remains my image of Manchester City.

Eyebrows, they just grow and grow and look shit. If you don't clip them you end up looking like Tony Benn, or Leon Briton.

I don't think they'll all leave like. There's a lot going off the wage bill this summer. I'm guessing here: Simpson 15k, Harper 35k (?), Smith 60k, Lovenkrands 10k, Best 10k possibly. You're looking at over 100k worth of weekly wages, which would easily accomodate two or three decent signings like Pieters.

Opened a few new betting accounts lately, some great offers on. Ladbrokes will give you a free £50 bet opening an account, as long as you gamble £50 on something over 1/2. Opened one with Boylesport yesterday if you gamble £20 on something they give you TWO £20 bets free. I've used one today on a daft treble Na Li to win the tennis, she did Rubin Kazan to win the Russian Cup Final, they did, and a team called Usti winning a Czech second division game at 4pm, £195 back for my first free £20 bet if they win. Never wanted Usti to win as much in my life. There's no catch. For the uber cautious, if you're not a member of Skybet, you don't even need to deposit any money and you get a free £10 bet, when you sign up.

Aye nice one. Ant clear your pm's. Every time I quote it's quoting double, and it was doing the same for Andrew the other night.

Abusing regions and countries? What are you on about you fuckwit? A piss poor reply from a piss poor poster. Nothing more to say of note about you, because there isn't anything to say. A bit of light hearted banter and the chip on your shoulder appears.