NJS

Just got in - what a fucking shit day losing to East End vermin. Squad quality is frightening - 5 games in and we have two players (3 counting Geremi) who should be a fair distance from the team. I really, really hate to say this but I found Collocini's handling of Carlton Fucking Col to be extremely worrying. I don't want to use it as point scoring in the squad strengthening argument but "replacing" Faye with this bloke doesn't look the supposed good deal it did after 2 or 3 games ago. Also Charlie isn't a left back and Taylor isn;t as good as he thinks (sorry for stating the bleeding obvious). Owen tried his bollocks off - in fact most of them did but just didn't get anything. Weren't helped by a criminally corrupt ref - got my first police warning for fucking ages for pointing this out (though there were 2 other c words to go with corrupt). Something needs to happen soon - either a sale or they need to get a manager in.

Maybe - but there were no quotes at the time.

It might upset the great god Ashley.

Never been explained (like everything else) which led to rumours about the N'zogbia thing. Absolutely criminal if he didn't really want to go and another example of squad blindness.

Times Article

Yeah - it always bugged the shit out me when Hall kept saying the club was close to going bust - like that would have happened in reality. Worst case scenario we could have done what Boro did and formed a new club.

Wannabe Black Francis.

I'm going to the next two games but after that I'll be missing 3 home games and will probably only go to Sunderland in the next 6 or 7 weeks. I'm thinking of checking out non-league football to see what its like. I'd pretty much lost my love of football before KK came back - I'm now clinging to the hope a sale can happen and he can come back - if we muddle on and get O'Leary I think it could be a death knell - I'll certainly be cancelling the ST DD before February if it looks as bleak as it does now.

I also suspect that his sycophants will get a portion of the profit which sickens me further.

Good: Proper football (ie terraces and a lot less crap like strips and families)

Stevie I was referring to some of your comments on arabs, indians and chinese - obviously jokey comments about curries and camels are okay by me but some did go a tad too far. I don't think they were categorically racist - just things probably intended as jokes which slightly failed.

^ Ban this Fatist now

I have noticed more thread pages falling foul of our porn filter at work - it doesn't bar the c word per se but some of the contexts have meant they can be blocked. Seperate to that I enjoy Stevies rants but I think he has stepped over the line a couple of times lately - no offence meant Stevie.

I'm sure they said 3-6 months in May.

I'm not sure whether it was the man himself or an associate but whoever thought of the concept of putting the Our Father to Auld Lang Syne and calling it the millenium prayer and releasing it when it was is one of my absolute heroes in life - that level of cynicism is breathtaking and something I aspire to.

Would there have been anything stopping him appointing his own scouts in January? Also on Milner/Scweinsteiger the point is that it looks like he was persuaded on the sale by other possible deals being pretty certain. I've also said before that this structure didn't make use of a major weapon - Keegan's powers of persuasion- I reckon if it was "his" deal, Schweinsteiger would have come.

I fundamentally disagree. Keegan's record last time around shows that. So Keegan would have bought better than what we've got with a net spend of £0? I think so - but the size of the budget is another bug bear.

I fundamentally disagree. Keegan's record last time around shows that.

Leaving Keegan completely out of the equation, the overriding fact is that the recruitment structore/policy/team have failed to strengthen the squad to a satisfactory degree. Those involved and those who defined and peopled the structure have to take responsibility for that. Everyone recognises that the system worked to a point given the promising signings but there were not enough of those and not enough in areas that the manager had requested. If they weren't going by the manager's advice then how can they make judgements about the squad when they are removed from them on a daily basis (Bobby's point). That is what Ashley has done wrong.

That article is from just before the infamous "clear the air talks" where he was assured he had final say. So he said he had concerns which were then laid to rest only for them to surface massively later. And you wonder why he was insistent on not talking further without it being backed up by personnel changes? How do you know he was assured then he had the final say? And if he did have the final say then why did he say in an interview (on Sky after the Man Utd game) that Wise and Jimenez came to him and said they had signed Jonas, only for him to go and look him up on the internet? Because the Ashley interview was after the meeting and he also said he was happy with the outcome. Maybe he thought Jonas was acceptable at the time but the two deadline day deals when they should have been concentrating on his squad concerns were a step too far. I do share some of the "he shouldn't have quite when he did" feelings but to make the whole thing a 50/50 deal is absolutely ludicrous.

That article is from just before the infamous "clear the air talks" where he was assured he had final say. So he said he had concerns which were then laid to rest only for them to surface massively later. And you wonder why he was insistent on not talking further without it being backed up by personnel changes?

Exactly - every pound of profit is a pound less to spend. What a cunt for getting as much as he can for a club who's fans have protested to get him out. The "nonsense" reports that he was trying to sell the club when everything was rosy also had inflated figures - admittedly not this high but that just makes him look even worse. Similar to the "nonsense" reports that Keegan had no say in transfers which he came out and denied so that everyone went out and signed up to 3 year deals, only that turned out to be true too. Both as bad as each other. So Keegan restating what he'd been told and what had been said by Ashley in the press makes Keegan a liar?

Exactly - every pound of profit is a pound less to spend. What a cunt for getting as much as he can for a club who's fans have protested to get him out. The "nonsense" reports that he was trying to sell the club when everything was rosy also had inflated figures - admittedly not this high but that just makes him look even worse.

The "luck" is fair enough when mentioning lack of extinction events but the beauty of natural selection is that it pretty much smothers luck over time. You still need a receptive planet, hence the 'luck'. Statiscally though a receptive planet is almost ineveitble - along with other types of planet giving rise to other life forms. I find Fermi's paradox fascinating (if life elsewhere exists why isn't it here) but I feel confident we're not alone.

Exactly - every pound of profit is a pound less to spend.