OTF

Probably another rubbish story, but I wouldn't mind us being able to tap directly into the largest talent pool of African soccer!

Fixed Mr Taylor's quotes.

You're probably right. I haven't seen that much of him in black and white, and when he was on loan he didn't exactly set the world on fire (even in the Championship).

Yeah, Viduka was apparently back in training around the start of the season. Don't know whether it was full training, but I find it highly unlikely. In fact I find it highly unlikely that he has been in full training at all over the past couple of years. Don't get me wrong, it would be great to get him back, just don't see it happening for a while. And when he does come back, I don't think it will be long before he is out again. If only we had him on a pay for play contract. I see Xisco and Carroll as the future of our 'big' strikers. Neither of them are the same sort of player as Viduka mind.

Looks like Steve Carrell TBH.

Sorry, I wasn't counting them as they were bought to flesh out the youth team by the Youth Recruiting Team. When the Youth Recruiting team took off their Youth Recruiting hats and put on their first team purchasing hats the only young first team players they bought were the afforementioned Guthrie, Xisco and Bassong. They did slip in Ranger in the same period, but he's more known for his ghetto exploits than his on field ones. The fact is they were responsible for all of the recruiting, and as such they failed. I can just see us in five years time, with all of our 'youth' players realising their potential, we'll have a wonderful side that will dominate League One.

can be taken any other way than the club had £100 million of debt and thats now been paid off It's semantics, and if it was indeed intended in the second way then it was deceitful. You have a basket of 20 apples, you eat 7 of them. You could say that like this. I had seven apples in my basket that I have now eaten. (Out of my basket I have eaten seven apples). I nominate myself for worst post ever.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/foo...icle3885412.ece So who is lying? Mort's statement can be taken in two ways: (i) Newcastle United had a total of £100million of debt. This has now been cleared. (ii) Newcastle United has cleared £100million of their debt. If taken the second way, it gives no indication of the total amount of debt. I wouldn't have thought it was Mort's style, but when it comes down to it, he is a lawyer.

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.