OTF

T'was simply a "point of order", Alex and I snipe quite a lot, all in good fun, it was far from being a defence of CT per se and pedantry is fun. Since I have ignored LM I haven't quite completely recalibrated down the sensitivity of my "making things up" radar/defences. Good Answer. CT, you really haven't said a lot in that post. Do you think the sale of Nolan is a good one? Do you honestly think that Cabaye was signed to replace Nolan... or was Nolan's sale opportunistic because the club was able to force West Ham to offer what they felt was an acceptable figure? If Nolan had signed the contract that Simon Bird talks about would you have seen it as a good thing? Do you think the three players you have idnetified (Jonas, Shola & Lovenkrands) should be sold to facilitate their replacements, or do you think the 35M for Carroll shuold be enough to replace them whilst keeping them for depth?

Exactly. And the Barton one that he knocked back in January. I agree about the Nolan contract if that is true (big if of course). Though you could understand his reluctance to sign a deal where a significant bonus is based off the results of the entire team, regardless of who that team consists of. I'm still of the opinion that we should not have even been talking contracts with Nolan at this stage. It was the perfect opportunity - we bring in new players and see how they settle and how Nolan performs up to January. If the new players settle well and if Nolan's influence is faltering then there's no need to offer the contract extension. We could have negotiated his sale at that stage with 18 months to run on his contract. As it is the club rarely says no to offers to buy our players regardless of how influential they are. Case in point our two top scorers (one the club captain the other a local kid) have been sold. From Nolan's perspective though I don't think it's realistic to expect to sign a contacrt that carries you to the age of 33+. Barton is another story altogether. He was right to question the sale of Carroll and the way in which that business was conducted. No question though if the club doesn't show any loyalty to our players you can't expect the players to show loyalty in return.

CT out of interest from the current side who would you sell and who would you keep if it was entirely up to you? Would be great if you could include a little blurb explaining your reasoning. Eg. Ferguson - Keep - Exciting young player with attacking flair and skill on the ball.

Not sure why Toonpack was trying to defend CT when the point was clear. Typical of the fickle nature of this board of late that everyone's trying to get the one up on someone else over even the most trivial of thing.

We did well to cover over the fact that his legs were gone this season. The perfect crime. Will be surprised if anyone even notices that Nolan's not here next season. Business as usual, chalk up another win for Ashley.

But you'd have to be making a profit on every game, particularly home matches. No need to pay the players any/much more (pending appearance bonuses) and at the very least you get a chance to give your young players a chance to step up - that's assuming you don't care about having a shot at winning it. If you go for it and it stretches a small squad at the expense of the league then it could be negative but with careful planning and good use of young players there's no reason why it can't help to develop the squad and enhance the European profile all whilst making the club money. No brainer - you'd have to be excessively arrogant or poorly managed as a club to knock it back IMO.

Probably speaks at least a little French as well on account of being Swiss. That seems to help.

Pointless thread until the transfer window is over. We've already got more than enough with transfer speculation within...

Saying what he feels and he's got a right to do so. Just as Ashley and co. have a right to sell who they please as they have done here. The Nolan sale came out of the blue, he is a friend and was an integral part of the team.

If we only offered 5M then we surely will be offering less now after he had a less impressive season and has already in effect been replaced. Spending under 5 should in theory leave plenty for a higher calibre striker partner.

Depends on the price as to whether we should be interested. With his replacement already there the scent of a bargain is no doubt in the nostrils of Ashley.

Not in any way getting my hopes up, but it would be fan-fucking-toontastic news if he stayed. That to me would signal true intent.

Only picking up on one of the obvious and monumental errors in this 'article', but there's no basis for the argument that being relegated was good for the club financially or otherwise. At best you can suggest that the relegation was a catalyst for some financial decisions with long term benefits, though the fact is that just as many players (if not more) could have been sold if we weren't relegated. In addition it's likely that they could have been sold for higher fees for the following reasons: (1) We would have been in a much stronger position to negotiate if we weren't relegated. (2) They won't have been buying players who weren't good enough to keep the team up. So we could have sold exactly the same players without doing damage to the reputation of the club through being relegated. Plus of course the small matter of the £40 odd million of television money that was forfeited and the dramatic decline in corporate revenue that would have occurred. If the 'finances at Newcastle are immeasurably better than they were then' despite the relegation then just think how fucking fantastic they could have been had the owner not completely fucked everything up and contributed heavily to a relegation that likely had a cost approaching £50M. How exactly is that a good thing?

A spend of +£43Mill is hardly frugal, they support it by buying low and selling high and by making profits. That's the point though isn't it. If they've apparently spent less than us over the period in which you would normally assemble a side then why is the value of their side so vastly in excess of ours?

Some would say the last two were exceptionally good. Last summer brought us Tiote and Ben Arfa while most agreed the January business was very shrewd leaving us in this strong position to rebuild that we are now in.

Here's an interesting comparison looking at how much was paid for existing members of the team. GK Newcastle Steve Harper - Free Tim Krul - 200K Fraser Forster - Academy Total: £0.2M Arsenal Manuel Almunia - £1.5M (transfermarket.co.uk reckon 4M + ) Lukasz Fabianski - £3.8M Szczesny - Free (as good as) Total: £5.3M Defense Newcastle Fabricio Coloccini - £10.3 Jose Enrique - £6.3 Mike Williamson - 960K Danny Simpson - 750K James Perch - £1M Ryan Taylor - Free Steven Taylor - Free Total - £19.31M Arsenal Bacary Sagna - £7.9M Thomas Vermaelen - £8.8M Laurent Koscielny - £11M Sebastian Squillaci - £5.7M Johan Djourou - Free Gael Clichy - 330K Kieran Gibbs - Free Total - £33.73M Midfield Newcastle Kevin Nolan - £4M Joey Barton - £5.8M Danny Guthrie - £2.5M Dan Gosling - Free Alan Smith - £6M Jonas Gutierrez - £5M (compensation) Cheik Tiote - £3.5M Kazenga Lualua - Free Haris Vuckic - 100K Hatem Ben Arfa - £7M (£2M loan + £5M signing) Yohan Cabaye - £4.3 Total: £38.2M Arsenal Abou Diaby - £2M Cesc Fabregas - £2.5M Tomas Rosicky - £8M Samir Nasri - £14M Denilson - £4M Aaron Ramsey - £5M Alex Song - £3M Jack Wilshere - Free Andrei Arshavin - £14.5M Emmanuel Eboue - £1.9M Total: £54.9M Forwards Newcastle Peter Lovenkrands - Free Xisco - £5.7M Leon Best - £1M Shola Ameobi - Free Nile Ranger - Free Phil Airey - Free Total: £6.7M Arsenal Robin van Persie - £3M Carlos Vela - 550K (some dispute) Theo Walcott - £10M + Marouane Chamakh - Free Nicklas Bendtnar - 200K Total: £13.75 Newcastle Total Squad Purchase Price: £64,410,000 Arsenal Total Squad Purchase Price: £107,680,000 So, despite Arsenal's squad being very frugally assembled they still spent in excess of £43M more than Newcastle did. I'm not even saying that there should be a comparison between the two, but the author of the original article drew the comparison so it's free to be commented on.

Was curious as it only takes into account players bought and not those sold. If you include players sold I suspect Arsenal would have a greater spend over the same period.

Happy Face what are the above figures from? - And what spendings do they take into account?

I'd have my doubts as to him being on 90k. I was more comparing an English player with a history at the club to a fully developed foreign player. It's hard to tell now though as most players are mercenaries who will go anywhere for the highest value - or if they actually want to stay will pull a Rooney to up their wages. The role of agents also can't be underplayed. If he's on that much then Liverpool are stupid. He won't have been on a huge wedge at Sunderland so once they agreed a fee there's no real reason they would have had to probably more than triple his wage to get him to agree personal terms.

Obviously the hope with signing young English players is that they get 8-10 years of solid service (or more). Their wages initially won't be excessive as they're still in their formative years. They'll find it easy to settle and are at the ages where they'll become more set in their ways and will start families etc. Foreign players will cost less but they're less likely to come at young ages and you generally won't get anywhere near as long out of them. You'll need to pay higher wages to bring them from their home countries and there's no guarantee that they'll adapt to English life let alone the Premier League. So if you pay for two foreign players plus the increased wages over the same period as a single young English player then there's an argument that it's a wise investment. The other side of this story is that they could burn out or fail to live up to their potential and then that's a lot of money thrown out the window. That's where you need to rely on a solid scouting network. I haven't seen much of this kid, but from what I have it seems an excessive fee even taking into account the above.

It's tough giving a single player an incentive bonus based on something that can only be achieved by an entire team with management included. For all it's worth Nolan could sign an incentive rich extension and then the club turn around and go on a selling spree. I'm completely of the opinion that nothing needs to be done with Nolan's contract at the minute. Wait until January next year to see how he's traveling with any new signings also given a chance to make their mark on the team. If Nolan still has the same impact and positive effect on the team next season then offer him a citing extension of max 2 years with potentially an option for a third pending appearances. Noone can talk to Nolan without the clubs consent until this time next year. It's common sense and there should be nothing to these stories at all - that is unless the club is angling to sell now. If that was the case it would make little sense.

Ba's signing will be prototypical of our recent transfer movements. Why pay 12M when you can hoy someone over for nothing? Always on the lookout for bargains is obviously a good thing, but it should be coupled with moving for players that we absolutely want.

BTW there's no chance he's on 65K.

Still got a ginormous forehead though I hear that's in fashion

For the price they apparently want for N'Zogbia to go to a Premier League side good luck to them!