Robbie Keane

[Gemmill 35618]

Standing ovation time. It's like the end of Dead Poets' Society.

 

Good craic, Samuel.

[sammynb 2934]

Nice post Sammy, as fitting as a pair of symmetrical breasts

[Guest]

Leazes you have to disassociate the two arguments though, that's the thing. You can't forever keep reading each post looking for a Shepherd/Ashley comparison.

 

Shepherd and Hall turned the club round in the early 90's-nobody disputes that at all-and we had fabulous football. The sheer pleasure of that period simply doesn't have an equivalent for most posters on here. But the fact of the matter is they then failed to capitalise on those advances and Shepherd (by the final stage acting alone) basically had zero strategy left at all and it was a complete shambles. You have to look at it in the same way as you sometimes hear some managers say that they'd: "taken the club as far as they could." Now Shepherd never said that obviously but the truth is everything was going backwards and (imho) we'd never have got back to where we had been. The Prem was getting more competitive and we'd got ourselves left behind.

 

The great tragedy for me is (and I know you disagree with this but I'm not trying to persuade you, merely stating my opinion), I think Shepherd's professionalism was ultimately miles off what was required for a top club. When you say about him trying to bring top names here and ambition etc, I genuinely do think players were coming here from top clubs and once they'd got here, they thought the place they'd arrived at had become a joke. Thats just my opinion and I know you disagree, but I do genuinely believe that players had seen and been accustomed to much better standards of professionalism elsewhere, with massive demands of pressure to achieve and then arrived here to be paid the same money (if not a fair deal more) with none of the high standards that should go along with that. It had effectively all just become a show of matching or outspending other clubs with nothing to back that up in terms of direction and, which is worse, chaos behind the scenes as far as managerial appointments were concerned. Ultimately theres few things more demotivating to a player of a top calibre-they can get the cash anywhere, it's top standards and expectations they respond to.

 

Turn then to Ashley. Now for me personally I actually think he came on board largely because he saw it as being a purchase that would enhance his lifestyle (vanity/ego/etc). I also think that was partly because he thought you could follow the Shepherd example of (by that stage) just aimlessly chucking money about (which he did) and that would at least preserve your Prem status, in which case he could just continue to enjoy himself as owner of a 'top' club. He could also happily sit tight enjoying himself fr a few years and then sell on for an added couple hundred million simply because the prices of football clubs just keep going up don't they?

 

Well that all went to shit pretty damn quick, and where I will agree with you entirely is that Shepherd would have made purchases in the crucial January window where Ashley ultimately didn't and we ended up down the spout into the Championship as a result. Gutting. However, long term for me by that stage that would have just carried on forever and a day under Shepherd and the culture of the club would have kept disintegrating.

 

So where we are now is full circle. Ashley's now doing everything on a shoestring which is galling, or at least hard to take in one sense, and I too ultimately want to see the back of him, but what has to be seen as good (and what I think was desperately needed and long overdue) was that we got rid of the complacent, gravy train attitude that was just absolutely pervasive at the club. A complacency that ultimately didnt even have the laurels of one trophy to fall back upon might I add. That was actually born of necessity of dropping down a division. Now that might not seem like a lot to be massively thankful for after the 'glory years' of Shepherd and Hall, but the truth is they were long, long gone, were never coming back and we really did need a new direction.

 

I repeat, I don't believe that long term direction is Ashley, but it wasn't Shepherd either. So how about some balance to your opinions after all these years?

 

Top post tbf, I think the effort made to convince him that we were deteriorating under freddy will be wasted though, after all, we were worse in 92

[Tooj 17]

Leazes you have to disassociate the two arguments though, that's the thing. You can't forever keep reading each post looking for a Shepherd/Ashley comparison.

 

Shepherd and Hall turned the club round in the early 90's-nobody disputes that at all-and we had fabulous football. The sheer pleasure of that period simply doesn't have an equivalent for most posters on here. But the fact of the matter is they then failed to capitalise on those advances and Shepherd (by the final stage acting alone) basically had zero strategy left at all and it was a complete shambles. You have to look at it in the same way as you sometimes hear some managers say that they'd: "taken the club as far as they could." Now Shepherd never said that obviously but the truth is everything was going backwards and (imho) we'd never have got back to where we had been. The Prem was getting more competitive and we'd got ourselves left behind.

 

The great tragedy for me is (and I know you disagree with this but I'm not trying to persuade you, merely stating my opinion), I think Shepherd's professionalism was ultimately miles off what was required for a top club. When you say about him trying to bring top names here and ambition etc, I genuinely do think players were coming here from top clubs and once they'd got here, they thought the place they'd arrived at had become a joke. Thats just my opinion and I know you disagree, but I do genuinely believe that players had seen and been accustomed to much better standards of professionalism elsewhere, with massive demands of pressure to achieve and then arrived here to be paid the same money (if not a fair deal more) with none of the high standards that should go along with that. It had effectively all just become a show of matching or outspending other clubs with nothing to back that up in terms of direction and, which is worse, chaos behind the scenes as far as managerial appointments were concerned. Ultimately theres few things more demotivating to a player of a top calibre-they can get the cash anywhere, it's top standards and expectations they respond to.

 

Turn then to Ashley. Now for me personally I actually think he came on board largely because he saw it as being a purchase that would enhance his lifestyle (vanity/ego/etc). I also think that was partly because he thought you could follow the Shepherd example of (by that stage) just aimlessly chucking money about (which he did) and that would at least preserve your Prem status, in which case he could just continue to enjoy himself as owner of a 'top' club. He could also happily sit tight enjoying himself fr a few years and then sell on for an added couple hundred million simply because the prices of football clubs just keep going up don't they?

 

Well that all went to shit pretty damn quick, and where I will agree with you entirely is that Shepherd would have made purchases in the crucial January window where Ashley ultimately didn't and we ended up down the spout into the Championship as a result. Gutting. However, long term for me by that stage that would have just carried on forever and a day under Shepherd and the culture of the club would have kept disintegrating.

 

So where we are now is full circle. Ashley's now doing everything on a shoestring which is galling, or at least hard to take in one sense, and I too ultimately want to see the back of him, but what has to be seen as good (and what I think was desperately needed and long overdue) was that we got rid of the complacent, gravy train attitude that was just absolutely pervasive at the club. A complacency that ultimately didnt even have the laurels of one trophy to fall back upon might I add. That was actually born of necessity of dropping down a division. Now that might not seem like a lot to be massively thankful for after the 'glory years' of Shepherd and Hall, but the truth is they were long, long gone, were never coming back and we really did need a new direction.

 

I repeat, I don't believe that long term direction is Ashley, but it wasn't Shepherd either. So how about some balance to your opinions after all these years?

Utter Tosh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gemmill 35618]

Leazes you have to disassociate the two arguments though, that's the thing. You can't forever keep reading each post looking for a Shepherd/Ashley comparison.

 

Shepherd and Hall turned the club round in the early 90's-nobody disputes that at all-and we had fabulous football. The sheer pleasure of that period simply doesn't have an equivalent for most posters on here. But the fact of the matter is they then failed to capitalise on those advances and Shepherd (by the final stage acting alone) basically had zero strategy left at all and it was a complete shambles. You have to look at it in the same way as you sometimes hear some managers say that they'd: "taken the club as far as they could." Now Shepherd never said that obviously but the truth is everything was going backwards and (imho) we'd never have got back to where we had been. The Prem was getting more competitive and we'd got ourselves left behind.

 

The great tragedy for me is (and I know you disagree with this but I'm not trying to persuade you, merely stating my opinion), I think Shepherd's professionalism was ultimately miles off what was required for a top club. When you say about him trying to bring top names here and ambition etc, I genuinely do think players were coming here from top clubs and once they'd got here, they thought the place they'd arrived at had become a joke. Thats just my opinion and I know you disagree, but I do genuinely believe that players had seen and been accustomed to much better standards of professionalism elsewhere, with massive demands of pressure to achieve and then arrived here to be paid the same money (if not a fair deal more) with none of the high standards that should go along with that. It had effectively all just become a show of matching or outspending other clubs with nothing to back that up in terms of direction and, which is worse, chaos behind the scenes as far as managerial appointments were concerned. Ultimately theres few things more demotivating to a player of a top calibre-they can get the cash anywhere, it's top standards and expectations they respond to.

 

Turn then to Ashley. Now for me personally I actually think he came on board largely because he saw it as being a purchase that would enhance his lifestyle (vanity/ego/etc). I also think that was partly because he thought you could follow the Shepherd example of (by that stage) just aimlessly chucking money about (which he did) and that would at least preserve your Prem status, in which case he could just continue to enjoy himself as owner of a 'top' club. He could also happily sit tight enjoying himself fr a few years and then sell on for an added couple hundred million simply because the prices of football clubs just keep going up don't they?

 

Well that all went to shit pretty damn quick, and where I will agree with you entirely is that Shepherd would have made purchases in the crucial January window where Ashley ultimately didn't and we ended up down the spout into the Championship as a result. Gutting. However, long term for me by that stage that would have just carried on forever and a day under Shepherd and the culture of the club would have kept disintegrating.

 

So where we are now is full circle. Ashley's now doing everything on a shoestring which is galling, or at least hard to take in one sense, and I too ultimately want to see the back of him, but what has to be seen as good (and what I think was desperately needed and long overdue) was that we got rid of the complacent, gravy train attitude that was just absolutely pervasive at the club. A complacency that ultimately didnt even have the laurels of one trophy to fall back upon might I add. That was actually born of necessity of dropping down a division. Now that might not seem like a lot to be massively thankful for after the 'glory years' of Shepherd and Hall, but the truth is they were long, long gone, were never coming back and we really did need a new direction.

 

I repeat, I don't believe that long term direction is Ashley, but it wasn't Shepherd either. So how about some balance to your opinions after all these years?

 

Top post tbf, I think the effort made to convince him that we were deteriorating under freddy will be wasted though, after all, we were worse in 92

 

Let the man respond before looking to set him off again, quim-features.

[Gemmill 35618]

Scent of a Woman, not Dead Poets' Society.

 

Hooah!

[ChezGiven 0]

Standing ovation time. It's like the end of Dead Poets' Society.

 

 

I think we all got a bit glassy-eyed reading that.

[LeazesMag 0]

manc-mag: good post, for the most part. I've never disagreed that appointing Souness set off a downward turn in fact see my sig, which has been there for a few years now. I only point out that the owners of our football club need to have certain characteristics [for want of a better word] which is mainly an appreciation of the size of the club [not easy bearing in mind we have not won a domestic trophy for over 50 years so a lot of the country doesn't realise how big a club we really are] and the desire to punch our weight at these levels. The Halls and Shepherd possessed this, despite their mistakes. Yes, mistakes, I've admitted many times they made mistakes, of course they did. What I find galling is a lack of appeciation of the club they found and the club they left and the massive strides they made, which is all that really matters. Even worse is the notion that certain people have that you can put together a good, consistently successful football team on the cheap. You can't. It costs a lot of money, and you have to be prepared to speculate and gamble or you have no chance whatsoever of doing it. The transfer window we have had is, in my view, nothing other than a stab at survival. Hughton may have done well bearing in mind his limited options, but that just isn't good enough that he has to operate like this. I think this window will be repeated every summer under Ashley ie just enough to stay up, hoping a few bargains will come up with the goods, but the law of averages is such that more do not come up to standard that do, hence a permanent struggle with survival the only goal. Certain posters don't understand this, basically because they haven't experienced it. It's easy to spot when you have though. I thought almost immediately from the rubbish spouted by Mort that we had an owner who didn't see how big the club was and wasn't going to capitalise on it. That makes him not good enough for this club, end of story. I can only talk about the Halls and Shepherd because unfortunately they are the only owners in my lifetime that have owned the club and understood the size of it. I wish that wasn't the case, but it is.

 

Thompers/Ashleysskidmarks : Mentioning 1992 is completely relevant son. It shows you how far the club came under the ownership of the last owners. How else can you measure it. This football club couldn't sell itself on the stock exchange for 2.5m quid in 1991, such was the state it was in, and the measure of interest shown by the "most loyal supporters in the world", all 15000 of them, and the local business communities. The share issue was aborted because it failed to reach half of 2.5m quid ie 1.25m

 

Look at it in 2007. The transformation, the value, the profile around europe and the world. You say that isn't relevant ? You're completely mad. Mike Ashley was interested in buying a top football club, because that is what they made it into, the same as managers such as Bobby Robson managed it, when they previously weren't interested, along with all the top players who were signed, and signed because they knew they were signing for a top football club, not one on its knees and one foot in the 3rd division and staring at bankruptcy.

 

So, please. Cut out the praise for Ashley. He is nothing but a cockney bastard who will never deliver a good football team on the pitch. He doesn't understand the club, he will sell our best players when we get good offers, and he will sell the club as soon as he decides it isn't profitable to him, either on its own merit, or as a publicity arm to Sports Direct. Survival in the premiership is his only aim, and he will spend only the amount to hopefully safeguard it.

Edited August 30, 2010 by LeazesMag

[Dr Gloom 20173]

Is anyone really praising Ashley though? Most want him out. That doesn't change the fact that most wanted shepherd out too.

[LeazesMag 0]

Is anyone really praising Ashley though? Most want him out. That doesn't change the fact that most wanted shepherd out too.

 

aye, and we are now back to having no ambition. They got what they wanted alright.

 

Anyway, Robbie Keane isn't coming. Maybe he was looking for a permanent deal ?

[Matt 0]

If Keane left on loan and had an iffy season, he'd be struggling to find takers. Right now he could probably score a 4-year contract on decent terms. Things could well change on this just before the deadline.

[Monkeys Fist 39184]

Standing ovation time. It's like the end of Dead Poets' Society.

 

Good craic, Samuel.

Oh Manc-Mag my Manc-Mag!

 

 

Excellent post

[Papa Lazaru 0]

If Keane left on loan and had an iffy season, he'd be struggling to find takers. Right now he could probably score a 4-year contract on decent terms. Things could well change on this just before the deadline.

 

Yeah i think we'll be hanging in there till the last second to see if Spurs and/or Keane change their thinking, so if it happens i expect it to be very last minute and perhaps relating to any transfers Spurs can pull off elsewhere.

 

Hopefully he'll try and get cover for LB as well if possible, again even if it has to be last minute on loan or something.

[Besty 4]

What's up with that van Aanholt? He getting a look in at Chelsea or not? Thought he was decent when he was here.

[Gejon 2]

What's up with that van Aanholt? He getting a look in at Chelsea or not? Thought he was decent when he was here.

 

I think they have confirmed he is staying, which is a shame as he would have been a good option as back up for Jose or Jonas imo.

[Monroe Transfer 0]

No chance of him coming, both his club and national manager have said as much.

 

This might have been mentioned already but I'm not trawling for the quotes.

[spongebob toonpants 3643]

Nice work MM -

 

players were coming here from top clubs and once they'd got here, they thought the place they'd arrived at had become a joke. ........players had seen and been accustomed to much better standards of professionalism elsewhere, with massive demands of pressure to achieve and then arrived here to be paid the same money (if not a fair deal more) with none of the high standards that should go along with that.

 

And I think that nails exactly the reason why the regime ultimately failed.

[Asprilla 96]

[Kitman 2188]

Top post MM, pretty much agree with everything you say. A lot of the amateurism behind the scenes has to be put down to the manager and coaching staff, in particular Souness and Roeder. Obviously these were the Board's appointments but the day to day stuff like the onboarding of players, training, fitness, preparation, handling of players etc fell to the club staff, and in retrospect weren't good enough for a "top club".

[Guest Tuco Ramirez]

Leazes you have to disassociate the two arguments though, that's the thing. You can't forever keep reading each post looking for a Shepherd/Ashley comparison.

 

Shepherd and Hall turned the club round in the early 90's-nobody disputes that at all-and we had fabulous football. The sheer pleasure of that period simply doesn't have an equivalent for most posters on here. But the fact of the matter is they then failed to capitalise on those advances and Shepherd (by the final stage acting alone) basically had zero strategy left at all and it was a complete shambles. You have to look at it in the same way as you sometimes hear some managers say that they'd: "taken the club as far as they could." Now Shepherd never said that obviously but the truth is everything was going backwards and (imho) we'd never have got back to where we had been. The Prem was getting more competitive and we'd got ourselves left behind.

 

The great tragedy for me is (and I know you disagree with this but I'm not trying to persuade you, merely stating my opinion), I think Shepherd's professionalism was ultimately miles off what was required for a top club. When you say about him trying to bring top names here and ambition etc, I genuinely do think players were coming here from top clubs and once they'd got here, they thought the place they'd arrived at had become a joke. Thats just my opinion and I know you disagree, but I do genuinely believe that players had seen and been accustomed to much better standards of professionalism elsewhere, with massive demands of pressure to achieve and then arrived here to be paid the same money (if not a fair deal more) with none of the high standards that should go along with that. It had effectively all just become a show of matching or outspending other clubs with nothing to back that up in terms of direction and, which is worse, chaos behind the scenes as far as managerial appointments were concerned. Ultimately theres few things more demotivating to a player of a top calibre-they can get the cash anywhere, it's top standards and expectations they respond to.

 

Turn then to Ashley. Now for me personally I actually think he came on board largely because he saw it as being a purchase that would enhance his lifestyle (vanity/ego/etc). I also think that was partly because he thought you could follow the Shepherd example of (by that stage) just aimlessly chucking money about (which he did) and that would at least preserve your Prem status, in which case he could just continue to enjoy himself as owner of a 'top' club. He could also happily sit tight enjoying himself fr a few years and then sell on for an added couple hundred million simply because the prices of football clubs just keep going up don't they?

 

Well that all went to shit pretty damn quick, and where I will agree with you entirely is that Shepherd would have made purchases in the crucial January window where Ashley ultimately didn't and we ended up down the spout into the Championship as a result. Gutting. However, long term for me by that stage that would have just carried on forever and a day under Shepherd and the culture of the club would have kept disintegrating.

 

So where we are now is full circle. Ashley's now doing everything on a shoestring which is galling, or at least hard to take in one sense, and I too ultimately want to see the back of him, but what has to be seen as good (and what I think was desperately needed and long overdue) was that we got rid of the complacent, gravy train attitude that was just absolutely pervasive at the club. A complacency that ultimately didnt even have the laurels of one trophy to fall back upon might I add. That was actually born of necessity of dropping down a division. Now that might not seem like a lot to be massively thankful for after the 'glory years' of Shepherd and Hall, but the truth is they were long, long gone, were never coming back and we really did need a new direction.

 

I repeat, I don't believe that long term direction is Ashley, but it wasn't Shepherd either. So how about some balance to your opinions after all these years?

There are paralells to when you first tell a lass you have feelings for them. You say it 100 times but have to find a different way of saying each time, same with this FFS bollocks on here.

[henda11 0]

ScottWilson on the Echo seems to think Keane has said he wants to stay and fight for his place. He also said Hughton was at Celtic to see Utrecht play so he could watch R.V Wolfswinkel

[Asprilla 96]

Leazes you have to disassociate the two arguments though, that's the thing. You can't forever keep reading each post looking for a Shepherd/Ashley comparison.

 

Shepherd and Hall turned the club round in the early 90's-nobody disputes that at all-and we had fabulous football. The sheer pleasure of that period simply doesn't have an equivalent for most posters on here. But the fact of the matter is they then failed to capitalise on those advances and Shepherd (by the final stage acting alone) basically had zero strategy left at all and it was a complete shambles. You have to look at it in the same way as you sometimes hear some managers say that they'd: "taken the club as far as they could." Now Shepherd never said that obviously but the truth is everything was going backwards and (imho) we'd never have got back to where we had been. The Prem was getting more competitive and we'd got ourselves left behind.

 

The great tragedy for me is (and I know you disagree with this but I'm not trying to persuade you, merely stating my opinion), I think Shepherd's professionalism was ultimately miles off what was required for a top club. When you say about him trying to bring top names here and ambition etc, I genuinely do think players were coming here from top clubs and once they'd got here, they thought the place they'd arrived at had become a joke. Thats just my opinion and I know you disagree, but I do genuinely believe that players had seen and been accustomed to much better standards of professionalism elsewhere, with massive demands of pressure to achieve and then arrived here to be paid the same money (if not a fair deal more) with none of the high standards that should go along with that. It had effectively all just become a show of matching or outspending other clubs with nothing to back that up in terms of direction and, which is worse, chaos behind the scenes as far as managerial appointments were concerned. Ultimately theres few things more demotivating to a player of a top calibre-they can get the cash anywhere, it's top standards and expectations they respond to.

 

Turn then to Ashley. Now for me personally I actually think he came on board largely because he saw it as being a purchase that would enhance his lifestyle (vanity/ego/etc). I also think that was partly because he thought you could follow the Shepherd example of (by that stage) just aimlessly chucking money about (which he did) and that would at least preserve your Prem status, in which case he could just continue to enjoy himself as owner of a 'top' club. He could also happily sit tight enjoying himself fr a few years and then sell on for an added couple hundred million simply because the prices of football clubs just keep going up don't they?

 

Well that all went to shit pretty damn quick, and where I will agree with you entirely is that Shepherd would have made purchases in the crucial January window where Ashley ultimately didn't and we ended up down the spout into the Championship as a result. Gutting. However, long term for me by that stage that would have just carried on forever and a day under Shepherd and the culture of the club would have kept disintegrating.

 

So where we are now is full circle. Ashley's now doing everything on a shoestring which is galling, or at least hard to take in one sense, and I too ultimately want to see the back of him, but what has to be seen as good (and what I think was desperately needed and long overdue) was that we got rid of the complacent, gravy train attitude that was just absolutely pervasive at the club. A complacency that ultimately didnt even have the laurels of one trophy to fall back upon might I add. That was actually born of necessity of dropping down a division. Now that might not seem like a lot to be massively thankful for after the 'glory years' of Shepherd and Hall, but the truth is they were long, long gone, were never coming back and we really did need a new direction.

 

I repeat, I don't believe that long term direction is Ashley, but it wasn't Shepherd either. So how about some balance to your opinions after all these years?

 

I can't disagree with a single word.

[manc-mag 1]

manc-mag: good post, for the most part. I've never disagreed that appointing Souness set off a downward turn in fact see my sig, which has been there for a few years now. I only point out that the owners of our football club need to have certain characteristics [for want of a better word] which is mainly an appreciation of the size of the club [not easy bearing in mind we have not won a domestic trophy for over 50 years so a lot of the country doesn't realise how big a club we really are] and the desire to punch our weight at these levels. The Halls and Shepherd possessed this, despite their mistakes. Yes, mistakes, I've admitted many times they made mistakes, of course they did. What I find galling is a lack of appeciation of the club they found and the club they left and the massive strides they made, which is all that really matters. Even worse is the notion that certain people have that you can put together a good, consistently successful football team on the cheap. You can't. It costs a lot of money, and you have to be prepared to speculate and gamble or you have no chance whatsoever of doing it. The transfer window we have had is, in my view, nothing other than a stab at survival. Hughton may have done well bearing in mind his limited options, but that just isn't good enough that he has to operate like this. I think this window will be repeated every summer under Ashley ie just enough to stay up, hoping a few bargains will come up with the goods, but the law of averages is such that more do not come up to standard that do, hence a permanent struggle with survival the only goal. Certain posters don't understand this, basically because they haven't experienced it. It's easy to spot when you have though. I thought almost immediately from the rubbish spouted by Mort that we had an owner who didn't see how big the club was and wasn't going to capitalise on it. That makes him not good enough for this club, end of story. I can only talk about the Halls and Shepherd because unfortunately they are the only owners in my lifetime that have owned the club and understood the size of it. I wish that wasn't the case, but it is.

 

I asked for a bit of balance and that's exactly what that post was so fair play. And when you put it in those terms there genuinely isn't a lot I disagree with you on. And btw the bits in bold I agree with entirely.

 

I think the only area where we really differ is in the methods employed by Shepherd. You're right about it being pretty much impossible to put together a top team without spending serious money, but for me it's only half the story-you need massive discipline to engender respect too, and you do that largely by example. Again just my opinion but I think in the latter years it had become a case of spending money without any of the latter, which sadly contributed to the slide and rendered a lot of the money spent, money wasted.

 

Ashley I can't even get started on tbh. I'm sure there's a post of mine backing this up somewhere in the annuls, but after the first games in charge (where we'd done well and spirits were quite high) you'll recall he was out on the piss in town buying everyone drinks. I was fucking mortified at that bit. Ditto when he was necking pints with the crowd. I know some people think I bang on about the 'professionalism' thing too much, but that was honestly the last thing you want to see your top man doing. For me it signalled the fact he was here principally for a laugh and that was ultimately going to be to our detriment. Standards are a non-stop fact of life for the top clubs, boring as it is, but at the end of the day it's the only way any commercial organisation is going to experience success. Along with canny investment, I grant you.

 

Anyway we got pretty much what that sort of carry is going to get you in a league as competitive as the Prem has become and down we went. Things have changed now out of necessity. I'm glad of that but I can assure you it's not because I think Ashley is some sort of visionary in the same way that Shepherd and Hall very much were to beging with (on the contrary, it's just pure economics and he realised he'd lose his entire investment playing in the Championship). But I am glad of it because I think we needed a change to that complacent mentality of running the football club. It's just sad it had to come about through the harsh lesson of relegation.

 

Beyond that, as you say, I totally agree Ashley is no good for the club's long term interests. My hope (naive as it may be) is there's ultimately some future change of ownership which can capitalise on the move away from excess and wastefulness which had very much set in, to one of clear vision and professionalism, so that any future investment is good, sound investment backed up by a real focus on driving this club forward back to where it belongs.

 

It's the only way it's going to be done.

[Guest Tuco Ramirez]

Besiktas apparently trying to sign Keane now.

[Howmanheyman 27605]

Can't say I'd be too disappointed if we don't get Keane.