McFaul

Pish. We're missing our best players and we still won. We were totally shit, but it's better to be shit and win, than play class and lose. The problem is Best and Shola to a large extent, they'll be gone from Sunday onwards, people will actually have some players to hit up front, mobile, skillful, imaginative strikers. We didn't have them and we still won. The thing is you're only my age and you put negative spin on everything, what are you going to be like at 45. "11 points from 12 tells its' own story", well my bit of spin tells its' own story too....

Swansea 1 Chelsea 1 Spurs 3 Wigan 1 Wolves 0 Liverpool 2 Everton 1 Man City 1 Man Utd 2 Stoke 0 Aston Villa 2 QPR 1 Blackburn 3 Newcastle 2 Bolton 2 Arsenal 1 Fulham 2 West Brom 1 Sunderland 2 Norwich 1

Ah aye sorry it was 2bias. That's what pisses me off with OOT's 400 miles away they have no comprehension of what Newcastle United are. Not all OOT's granted, spend a year in Newcastle and a year as a Tottenham fan it wouldn't even be close. The advantage they have presently is an ambitious board, a better side, and they're in London, and that really is it. They're not a bigger name than us, they don't have more fans than us, and they're not as important to the footballing nation as we are. I think right now, players would choose them over us because of what a good side they are, and their ambitions and recent performances in Europe, but that doesn't make them bigger. In 1994 Chris Sutton knocked Arsenal back for Blackburn for similar reasons why someone would choose Tottenham over us.

You'll have to explain to me why a team who couldn't fill their little ground till 2004, who have been in the top 4 once in 20 years, who have won TWO league titles in their existence, are a bigger more historic better supported club than us. Without a doubt they're making £20m more than us at the minute but that's a lot to do with the last 7 or 8 years for both clubs. On what ground are they bigger?

Think there'll be a lot of goals in the match the neet, but nee points for us. 4-2, 3-2, 3-1 loss. I wish I could say different but that's it. I'd rather play Raylor CM than Gosling or Perch though. This is what I'd dee.... Krul Simpson Santon Williamsons Coloccini Ben Arfa Guthrie Raylor Gutierrez Lovenkrands Shola

English people who use yank expressions "Aye I think I'll take a rain check on that." Pipe down you mug.

Then WHY did you demand UNLIMITED backing for your man Souness??? There's TWO ways of looking at it. UNLIMITED backing only ends up in a Leeds scenario, but we didn't go as balls deep with them and we were richer. ALEX made a few good points about it this morning. All we need is hope that one day we'll lift a trophy and have one big PARTY. LIVIN in this toon all you want is a bit of JOY for the fans.

Durin the wawwa!

The Mariappa thing says a lot to me. They obviously see Mariappa as someone who can play well for Newcastle, yet they didn't value him at £2.5m?!?! That's all we needed to pay, it's fucking peanuts. Pardew's crack yesterday pissed me off, "if the deaw dowwnt goww froou todie, we'ww be lookin at avva opshuns in the samma". That to me says signing him would be settling for second best now through sheer desperation. We had 5 weeks to sort some cunt oot, clearly the target is Vertongen but maybe Ajax wanted to retain him to get in the CL even so, totally pathetic we haven't got someone sorted. Aye, disappointing on that score I have to say. That said, the broader context of this window is that nobody really bought owt apart from us, because clubs are skint/are now choosing not to buy in Jan. Bassong on loan to Wolves can only have been good business though, I'd definitely have taken that as a stop gap bolstering. That just baffles me that does, the Bassong thing. We're surely not deluded that we think Spurs think of us as rivals this season. Sometimes I think in football there are clubs and agents who are thick as thieves, and maybe we're not with Tottenham. Viola, FFS, McKay, Souness, Rangers was one in my view. Everton, Man Utd and McKay is another, while there's been plenty business been done between particular agents and Wolves and Tottenham in recent years too.

Cunts. Fucking Ray Stubbs wants to keep his bindipping mouth shut in future.

Exactly. Shows Toonpack has no point using that as part of his non event argument. I thought it he called mackem lasses dogs, rather than geordies when it came out. I'm sure Toonspac is macbeth, who used to post on NO. He posts exactly the same anti-Halls/Shepherd sentiments, his hatred gets in the way of any common sense, and macbeths hatred stemmed from him heading some sort of supporters group who were refused permission by the Halls and Shepherd to have a say in how the club was run ie a seat on the board or similar. What sort of planet did these people live on ? Who would give a seat on the board to a bunch of supporters with no financial input or committment ? Unbelievable like, but its true. He used to have articles published in The Mag about his obsession and bitterness, they really thought they could have a say in the running of the club. Ah that wank? I remember him.

The Mariappa thing says a lot to me. They obviously see Mariappa as someone who can play well for Newcastle, yet they didn't value him at £2.5m?!?! That's all we needed to pay, it's fucking peanuts. Pardew's crack yesterday pissed me off, "if the deaw dowwnt goww froou todie, we'ww be lookin at avva opshuns in the samma". That to me says signing him would be settling for second best now through sheer desperation. We had 5 weeks to sort some cunt oot, clearly the target is Vertongen but maybe Ajax wanted to retain him to get in the CL even so, totally pathetic we haven't got someone sorted.

I agree, but they're there or there abouts, and no one is saying Ashley look spend £200m on players or even copy what Liverpool have done, just have a bit of a go like Spurs, I think if players like Cisse were the theme while retaining our top players, I'd be happy with that. with Roy Makaay and Valeron (and *ahem* luque) god I loved that team The little winger was a genius, Fran, mind that game they had to beat Milan 4-0 to go through and they did.

van der Vaart was as good a transfer deal as you'll see, outside of our dodgy frees like Ba. Never in a million years would anyone expect van der Vaart to go to Tottenham or be able to fit in with their wage policy, but they thought well he can only say no. Next thing you know, he's taken a wage cut and agreed to go there for a transfer fee probably one third of his true value. That's called ambition, and they didn't care if they'd be ridiculed and they ended up with their man.

Exactly. Shows Toonpack has no point using that as part of his non event argument. I thought it he called mackem lasses dogs, rather than geordies when it came out.

I never used to understand why Sima used to call you "Toonspac", I do now.

Tottenham could win the league, they're no bigger than us on an even level playing field. Barcelona and Real Madrid are streets ahead in Spain right now, but with Valencia's 2003 team I doubt they would be, or even Deportivo in 2002.

The true-ness of that "love" was admirably described in a brothel to an undercover reporter I seem to recall. Oh do one, the whole point he was there was to help the club! For fuck sake, the whole point he was there was to attract further investment for the club. People get too caught up in the details and miss the bigger picture.

It's a good guide to what we were, they had their very own FFS "but the vast sums splashed out on mediocre players (e.g. Manuel Fernandes, bought for €18 million, sold for €2 million, and Nikola Žigić, bought for €14 million, sold for €7 million) and the constant changes in management (costing over €30 million in severance payments) were certainly down to him. His attempts to “live the dream” resulted in no major trophies, exacerbated by failure to qualify for the Champions League, and massive debts". "they still carry a vast amount of debt. Soler’s excesses increased this from around €100 million when he took over to a crippling €550 million in 2009. Although this was reduced to €471 million in June 2010, it is still extremely high, only surpassed in Spain by Real Madrid €660 million and Barcelona €549 million, and those two clubs benefit from much higher revenue and greater borrowing capacity. In fact, Valencia’s annual revenue of €102 million means that their debt cover is only 0.22, which is the weakest in La Liga. The other particularly worrying aspect for Valencia is that a large amount of this debt is from bank loans with €249 million owed to Banaja – and most of that (€229 million) is short-term, so payable within a year. Apart from the standard trade creditors, accruals and provisions, Valencia also owe a large amount (€58 million) to other football clubs for transfer fees, while €31 million of the loan from local businesses remains". Yes all of those fuck ups were after 2004 when after they'd won two la liga's and reached two CL finals with the same chairman.

I try not to get too heavily involved in the crack about FFS and Ashley, for me it boils down to sentimentality in some ways. The fact is, when Shepherd was here, he cared about the club they were without doubt in his heart and he made decisions sometimes like a deluded fan in love with the club would make to try and make many people happy. He failed to do so some of the time, but he tried and he loved the club, he loved geordies. Ashley wants the club to be a success because he wants to protect his investment, and to massage his ego showing what an astute long term businessman he is. If he got a few more quid than what he paid he'd be off and he wouldn't give a fuck about NUFC, he wouldn't be a fan or care about our future and he'd move on to his next leaching adventure. These two paragraphs are clouded in sentimentality, but I don't care it's what I think.

I think he was right to talk up the club and look high. We qualified for the Champions League twice, without a doubt I think for a period only Man Utd or Arsenal were more attractive, we were certainly equal to Liverpool and maybe above Chelsea till Abramovic came, you only had to look at the players we signed and the clubs we were signing them from to see we were big players.

The vision is to make the club like an Ajax, developing top top class players and selling them on for silly money, like they have done for 30 years. I suppose it'll be better than the last 5 years, but I don't think the ambition of the club stretches to being something like what Valencia were 10 years ago. I think Valencia is a good guide for what we should be, similar sized clubs, they've won two titles in the last 10 years.

I knew what you meant. There obviously weren't plenty of good managers willing to come at that exact time though. Hence ending up with Souness. I don't think it was a case of good managers unwilling to come, I think it was more a case of a catastrophic error of judgement from FFS. The "brat pack" pish was vastly over played in my view. Who gives a fuck if you have a brat pack when you're top 4 anyway, and we only came 5th the next season because of too many draws and a terrible injury crisis. He got Souness in as he saw him as someone who would bang a few heads to together because he was a hard man. I think that clouded FFS judgement, and he ignored people like Redknapp, Moyes, Jol etc... who he could've easily got here then.

SBR was a good man for the club, a good manager, loved by everybody, but I don't think when he was sacked that was the nail in the coffin. It was finally all over when he appointed Graham Souness. Basically a different way of saying the same thing though, although I do know what you mean, given that one followed the other. Nar my point is there are plenty of good managers who could've continued the work of SBR, kept Bellamy happy, kept Robert happy, spent 50 odd million wisely, and the last 7 or 8 years would've been a lot different. People have short memories there was a lot of fans out there who weren't too sad to see SBR lose his job, as time goes by that becomes eroded from peoples memories. Souness wasted everything Owen, Luque, Boumsong you can go on and on, they were Man Utd type fees and we could've had total top class players we ended up with a cunt manager, and shite players.

SBR was a good man for the club, a good manager, loved by everybody, but I don't think when he was sacked that was the nail in the coffin. It was finally all over when he appointed Graham Souness.