OTF

3 weeks is better than I was expecting tbh. Lets see the club try to defend their transfers (both in and out) now. Given that they have assembled a crack team to do just that it's pretty poor that a player who they tried desperately to get rid of started a match. Love how he uses the term 'such as' prior to listing the young players we've bought, indicating that there is more than just the ones he mentions. Such as??

Bet he wishes he had a billion quid in cash. Also you'd get a hell of a lot more than a 4% return on a billion quid. He's not without fault in this whole situation, but I think he's being painted as more of a villian than he actually is.

Surely that means that Ashley should sink that 20 million straight into debt that we still have?

Call me naive, but I more or less believe what Ashley says in his statement. I don't think he has had that much of a controlling hand in the day to day dealings and going-ons within the club and that I think is where the problems with Keegan were born. Making the money available for transfers may not have been the problem, the problem was more likely that the stringent age restrictions on incoming players (particularly when large transfer sums are involved) meant that Newcastle were competeing with teams at or above thier level for these 'promising' players. Sure, it's great to have a wide spread scouting outfit, but the reality is that there is very little world-class talent waiting to be uncovered anywhere in the world. The cream rises to the top pretty quickly in modern football, so you have to be able to not only front the money but also present a welcoming location for incoming players. Each year that passes sees us slip further and further down the order in the profile stakes, to counter this you then need to increase the financial stakes, and if you don't you will flat out miss out on getting the players in. The vision of bringing in all this talent for the future is a noble one, but we've seen promising talent stagnate in the past at our club for several reasons, one of which is that there is no talented senior players to nurture and progress the youth. When Arsenal bring in young players, they're bringing them into a winning team, playing in Champions League with the ability to challenge for silverware. We're not. The fans have got what they asked for. What happens from here though is anyone's guess. It's not like there is a queue of billionaires lining up to buy Premier League Clubs, and even if there was, having seen what happened when things went awry at Newcastle may have been enough to drive their interests elsewhere.

It's not just Football players, Rugby League players over here have a horrible habit of saying you know before, during and after everything they say. Interviewer: It was a good performance out there tonight from the team, particularly impressive was the defense. Was it something the coach has been working on during the week? Player:You know.. the coach has you know always been talking to us about our defense, you know, so it's good to you know come out here tonight and have a good defensive game, you know Some of the best interviews come after grand final victories etc. Where they can't talk about taking it one game at a time, and not getting ahead of themselves. Plus they're so ecstatic about winning (or depressed about losing) that their true feelings come out.

Yeah, we have a £12 million budget for transfers, and we'll spend £5.7 on someone who isn't even going to be a first team player!

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11661_4117052,00.html Hughton's got the nod. Money and Alan Thompson to assist.

Four Brothers. Was surprisingly good. Both me and the missus enjoyed it. Revenge\venegance flick from John Singleton, starring Mark Wahlberg (its from 2005). Doesn't sound like it would be any good, but definately worth a watch.

Zola!

Well we're now officially up shit creek, sans paddles. What a disgrace.

I'm still waiting for Fat Freddy Shepherd's tell all auto-biography in which he releases the names of all the great world class manmagers that were queuing up for our manager's job after Sourmess was shown the door.

Stopped reading at 'Lee Bowyer'. I think I did pretty well to get that far.

Problem was, Roeder was allowed to go after his own men, and despite plenty of promises that we'd see new faces we got Sibierksi and Bernard!

I must admit that I am unfortunately keen to hear what he has to say - only because it seems our operation is such a cloak and daggers affair, and he must have slightly more of an insight to give. No doubt the juicy bits have been suppressed by the fat wad of cash that he sauntered out of Newcastle with.

Despite not being fit to manage us, I quite like Ratty Potter.

You can't say that Allardyce got the chance to fully realise his vision for Newcastle. However you can say that the glimpses of it (and the general direction in which he was heading) were not very appealing. He always said that it would be a long term assignment, and people were happy enough to accept that at the time. With the new owner in, he was only given a very brief period to prove himself - and when the road became rocky they took the decision to axe him to bring in 'their own man'. I'm completely indifferent about him now. I think his intentions were good, but he was out of his depth. I would never have him back at the club over Keegan (obviously).

Here's the story from Appiah himself. http://www.stepapp.com/latest-blog1.html I'd certainly welcome him, though I know that there is no chance at all of this happening.

In the current climate 12 million isn't a lot. I mean we sold off Milner for that much! Not meaning to be argumentative, just mean that I don't think we'll see Arsenal making any 20-30 million dollar buys in the immediate future (unless they sell someone off of a similar value - ie. when they tried to rob AC Milan blind with Adebayor's asking price). american dollar? if so you basically said this: In the current climate 12 million isn't a lot. I mean we sold off Milner for that much! Not meaning to be argumentative, just mean that I don't think we'll see Arsenal making any 10-15 million pound buys in the immediate future (unless they sell someone off of a similar value - ie. when they tried to rob AC Milan blind with Adebayor's asking price). Sorry, mixed up my currency. I was talking in pounds the whole time (in my head at least ).

In the current climate 12 million isn't a lot. I mean we sold off Milner for that much! Not meaning to be argumentative, just mean that I don't think we'll see Arsenal making any 20-30 million dollar buys in the immediate future (unless they sell someone off of a similar value - ie. when they tried to rob AC Milan blind with Adebayor's asking price).

When was the last time Arsenal splashed big money for a player? After all their transfer dealing this season they've made money (but lost a good player in Flamini, and were paid too much for Hleb IMO). Arsenal are a buy to sell club. May mean they will sometimes struggle to compete with the 'Big Foreign Boys' splashing the cash about. That said, I don't know whether it's Wenger who's so tight, or the Dorectors/Board/Owners. Nonetheless they seem to be run more responsibly than many of the other so called big clubs. They do need to strengthen their midfield, and I guess they feel it's worth a chance with Appiah based off his previous reputation.

FACT In the 2007/2008 Premier league season Darren Bent started in 11 Premier League matches. In those games he netted a total of 3 goals.

FACT Xisco scored a goal for every game that he started in La Liga in 2005/2006. That's as a 20 year old. The year before as an 18/19 year old he scored for every second game that he started.

If they sort out their differences I think they owe it to the Newcastle supporters to have a press conference with ALL of the players present, and speaking openly and frankly about what has gone on. The cloak and daggers approach obviously has not worked and as a result Ashley is in danger of completely losing the support of the fans. Wonder if we can get Mort back in on secondment?

have to agree with the footwear comments. Try to find something with good arch support. Also could very well be your running style. I overpronate a lot when I run and this doesn't help with shin splints. Fixing your footwear though will help to naturally correct this. Shin Splints are a fkn pain!

Think someone forgot to take those irons off the fire.