Quality of signings

[Guest Insider]

The new signings all add cover but do any improve the first team? Does it concern anyone that some of them are on moderately long term deals?

[JawD 99]

I like what I've seen of Routledge so far. Only one thats stood out for me. early days like. Fair point about the deals though given that we could be stuck with them if we go up when we'd have a dire need for improvement.

[Guest Insider]

I like what I've seen of Routledge so far. Only one thats stood out for me. early days like. Fair point about the deals though given that we could be stuck with them if we go up when we'd have a dire need for improvement.

 

 

I'll second that, but I'm not sure how much of it is down to having to endure centre midfielders and right-backs playing down the right wing all season.

[Deano 0]

Van Aanholt...Short term loan im happy with...very green though.

Hall...6 month loan...Lokks strong and composed...good cover.

Williamson...3 year? Looks pretty good...good cover for CCC yet to be seen if he will be as good in PL

Routledge...3 year? Happy with this deal, looks a good player but REALLY needs to be encouraged to get chalk on his boots more.

Best...3 year deal...looks like he works hard and is strong...OK

Simpson..3 year? Solid defensively would like to see him improve going forward.

 

All in all i dont think theres is one bad signing but non are outstanding.

[Guest Insider]

Van Aanholt...Short term loan im happy with...very green though.

Hall...6 month loan...Lokks strong and composed...good cover.

Williamson...3 year? Looks pretty good...good cover for CCC yet to be seen if he will be as good in PL

Routledge...3 year? Happy with this deal, looks a good player but REALLY needs to be encouraged to get chalk on his boots more.

Best...3 year deal...looks like he works hard and is strong...OK

Simpson..3 year? Solid defensively would like to see him improve going forward.

 

All in all i dont think theres is one bad signing but non are outstanding.

 

 

How can you confidently call them good cover after they covered at Derby County and conceded 3 goals though? Are they really good enough?

[Sonatine 11545]

NEWCASTLE owner Mike Ashley has introduced a strict transfer policy.

 

The Toon owner insists players will only be bought if they are under 26, have resale value and accept a wage ceiling below £15,000 a week.

 

Boss Chris Hughton missed out on first-choice pair Jermaine Beckford and Matthew Kilgallon because of the new rules.

 

Beckford stayed put at League One Leeds and central defender Kilgallon went to rivals Sunderland.

 

And Hughton was only allowed to make a loan move for Birmingham defender Martin Taylor, now 30.

 

He did however sign four players in Wayne Routledge, Danny Simpson, Mike Williamson and Leon Best and took Fitz Hall and Patrick van Aanholt.

 

But crucially all four players signed permanently cost a combined total of less than £4million and are all young enough to be moved on one day at a profit

 

A source said: "The club is being run completely differently now.

 

"The days of throwing money away are over.

 

"There was a budget limit and there was an age limit. Mike wants players who will have a saleable value."

 

From a downmarket Sunday rag, but not entirely inaccurate i bet

[peasepud 59]

You know what? the logic behind buying young players who arent on high wages is a sound one but it wont work in the Prem, to be able to get a 25 year old whos cheap to buy and will accept less than 15k a week will get you the quality of signings we already have.

 

Not a chance of building a mid table Premiership club like that, you need experience in there, you need a couple of older heads with years of PL playing experience.

 

To top it all though, as soon as a player is seen to be "quite good" then he'll be sold on to our rivals and we'll start again.

 

Worse than all of that however is the fact that these rules mean a manager cant effectively build his own team.

 

We are now officially a selling club, a staging post if you will for the bigger clubs such as Wigan, Bolton and the Makems.

[JawD 99]

The only way this would work is if we brought in young raw talent and we had the coaching team and manager to turn them into bigger better players.

 

We dont.

 

But as PP says, any player who does show any signs of developing will simply move on for a better deal.

[tinofbeans 91]

You know what? the logic behind buying young players who arent on high wages is a sound one but it wont work in the Prem, to be able to get a 25 year old whos cheap to buy and will accept less than 15k a week will get you the quality of signings we already have.

 

Not a chance of building a mid table Premiership club like that, you need experience in there, you need a couple of older heads with years of PL playing experience.

 

To top it all though, as soon as a player is seen to be "quite good" then he'll be sold on to our rivals and we'll start again.

 

Worse than all of that however is the fact that these rules mean a manager cant effectively build his own team.

 

We are now officially a selling club, a staging post if you will for the bigger clubs such as Wigan, Bolton and the Makems.

 

some interesting views there pud. if we get into the premiership, i'd expect the fat bloke to relax these rules somewhat. i reckon teams like stoke ( who are vastly underrated) would be employing similar rulings. take ryan shawcross, as an example, he's young, hungry, not on great wages but they know when the big guns come along, that he'll be off and they can get decent money for him. we'd have to do that for a couple of seasons with our more saleable assets, i beleive.

 

this of course raises another point, survivability in the premiership. well i for one beleive this side is absolutely nowhere near good enough. its a very tricky balancing act, which from our most recent "golden patch" i beleive we've got very very wrong.

[sandman02uk 0]

You know what? the logic behind buying young players who arent on high wages is a sound one but it wont work in the Prem, to be able to get a 25 year old whos cheap to buy and will accept less than 15k a week will get you the quality of signings we already have.

 

Not a chance of building a mid table Premiership club like that, you need experience in there, you need a couple of older heads with years of PL playing experience.

 

To top it all though, as soon as a player is seen to be "quite good" then he'll be sold on to our rivals and we'll start again.

 

Worse than all of that however is the fact that these rules mean a manager cant effectively build his own team.

 

We are now officially a selling club, a staging post if you will for the bigger clubs such as Wigan, Bolton and the Makems.

 

some interesting views there pud. if we get into the premiership, i'd expect the fat bloke to relax these rules somewhat. i reckon teams like stoke ( who are vastly underrated) would be employing similar rulings. take ryan shawcross, as an example, he's young, hungry, not on great wages but they know when the big guns come along, that he'll be off and they can get decent money for him. we'd have to do that for a couple of seasons with our more saleable assets, i beleive.

 

this of course raises another point, survivability in the premiership. well i for one beleive this side is absolutely nowhere near good enough. its a very tricky balancing act, which from our most recent "golden patch" i beleive we've got very very wrong.

 

the current team we have will get relegated if we do go up

[LeazesMag 0]

NEWCASTLE owner Mike Ashley has introduced a strict transfer policy.

 

The Toon owner insists players will only be bought if they are under 26, have resale value and accept a wage ceiling below £15,000 a week.

 

Boss Chris Hughton missed out on first-choice pair Jermaine Beckford and Matthew Kilgallon because of the new rules.

 

Beckford stayed put at League One Leeds and central defender Kilgallon went to rivals Sunderland.

 

And Hughton was only allowed to make a loan move for Birmingham defender Martin Taylor, now 30.

 

He did however sign four players in Wayne Routledge, Danny Simpson, Mike Williamson and Leon Best and took Fitz Hall and Patrick van Aanholt.

 

But crucially all four players signed permanently cost a combined total of less than £4million and are all young enough to be moved on one day at a profit

 

A source said: "The club is being run completely differently now.

 

"The days of throwing money away are over.

 

"There was a budget limit and there was an age limit. Mike wants players who will have a saleable value."

 

From a downmarket Sunday rag, but not entirely inaccurate i bet

 

I hardly know what to say.

[snakehips 0]

I saw these transfers by LardAsh as totally reluctant. For me, he paid out as minimal a sum as possible to get some cover for the threadbare squad. He reluctantly had to do it or face the possibility of missing out on promotion. LardAsh wants NUFC promoted (obviously) so he can have a Prem club for sale. In the meantime, he wants to claw back as much money that he's 'loaned' as he can.

[Dr Kenneth Noisewater 0]

I think the signings are all alright, relatively speaking, except Best who I don't think adds anything different to what we've already got.

[LeazesMag 0]

I saw these transfers by LardAsh as totally reluctant. For me, he paid out as minimal a sum as possible to get some cover for the threadbare squad. He reluctantly had to do it or face the possibility of missing out on promotion. LardAsh wants NUFC promoted (obviously) so he can have a Prem club for sale. In the meantime, he wants to claw back as much money that he's 'loaned' as he can.

 

 

this is how the club was run by Westwood, McKeag, Seymour etc etc etc .......

[LeazesMag 0]

http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/opinion/co...icle321167.html

 

 

Remember the days when Newcastle United regularly stunned the football world by signing stars of the quality of Alan Shearer , David Ginola, Michael Owen, and Tino Asprilla?

 

Contrast that dazzling array of talent with the barely-recognisable names who arrived in January - Danny Simpson, Mike Williamson, Wayne Routledge and Leon Best.

 

The latest transfer window made for a chilling reminder of exactly how far the fortunes of Newcastle United have plummeted under the stewardship of owner Mike Ashley.

 

The Freddy Shepherd era at St. James' Park may have been a contentious, controversial period in the Magpies history, but it was always colourful and exciting.

 

 

But under the Ashley regime expectations have sunk to their lowest point for more than 20 years.

 

The scale of the Magpies fall from grace hits home when the clock is turned back just seven years to those wonderful days under the late Sir Bobby Robson.

 

Then in the January 2003 transfer window Newcastle could afford to pay Leeds United £9million for centre back Jonathan Woodgate and after a Jermaine Jenas winner against Bolton they actually led the Premier League.

 

It was a season when a memorable last-gasp goal from Craig Bellamy in Rotterdam sent Newcastle into the second phase of the Champions League and the Toon were only eliminated from the last 16 by the might of Barcelona and Inter Milan.

 

It was a campaign that saw Alan Shearer rattle in 25 goals with Bellamy and Nobby Solano both regularly backing him up in the scoring stakes, while Jenas, Given, Kieron Dyer, Gary Speed and Laurent Robert were always worth watching.

 

Newcastle finally finished an excellent third in 2003 ahead of both Chelsea and Liverpool. It seemed that the club were on the verge of something very special.

 

Alas, seven years on, the Toon Army can only dream of that time and wonder, over and over again, where it all went wrong.

 

The Magpies were knocked off the Championship pinnacle by a 3-0 drubbing at Derby this week and I fear that the players being brought into the club offer little hope for a serious assault on the Premier League.

 

Newcastle may well win promotion from a division that is embarrassingly poor this season. But Ashley has so undermined the club's infrastructure with his relentless cost-cutting that I simply can't see United surviving in the Premiership without a regime-change and a massive injection of funds.

 

Since January 2009, Premier League standard players of the quality of Shay Given, Habib Beye, Sebastien Bassong, Damien Duff, Charles N'Zogbia, Michael Owen and Mark Viduka have all departed.

 

They have been replaced largely by loan players, free transfers, Premier League reserves and Championship-standard journeymen.

 

Only Kevin Nolan and Ryan Taylor recruited from Bolton and Wigan respectively were top-flight regulars before they joined Newcastle.

 

My fear is that Ashley is running down Newcastle to the point where they will never again be a major player in the Premier League.

 

The bargain-basement buys and loan captures that manager Chris Hughton was allowed to make in the January transfer window may be able to sustain Newcastle's bid to go straight back up.

 

But in terms of ambition and building a squad fit for the top-flight I see no evidence that Ashley is looking beyond this summer and yet another attempt to sell the club.

 

Simpson, Williamson, Routledge and Best undoubtedly add depth to a shallow squad, but to my mind they do not represent a long-term strategy.

 

Newcastle have managed to supplement their paper-thin squad with a generous sprinkling of loan players this term, but they won't get away with similar sort of numbers if they go up.

 

Realistically, I think Newcastle have no more than half-a-dozen Premiership-class players and even then it would not surprise me if Jose Enrique, Jonas Gutierrez and Fabricio Coloccini left this summer.

 

I believe the Magpies will go up this season but an instant relegation is very much on the cards unless Ashley finds a buyer or a new investment partner.

 

Unless there is a Geordie Abramovich out there I am afraid the long-term future for Newcastle looks bleak.

[Deano 0]

Pretty much spot on imo.

 

We all know that one of two things needs to happen if we are going to start getting anywhere near where we were in 2003.

 

Either Mike Ashley has to take a leap of faith and break his business model, which would mean not throwing money about but putting a realistic and flexible transfer and wage policy in place, one which would allow us to bring in quality players to improve and start building again. Also we need to drop this idea of buy now and sell later...players we bring in need to be here for a long time if we are going to challange.

 

That or a buyer comes in with a substantial amount of money to invest in the team in the summer...this is more likely but the next owner could be just like MA or worse...we need a little luck and boy are we due some!

 

A club of our size, might and tradition should not be wollowing in the CCC nor should it be settling for the standards we are setting now...all we can do is hope that there is someone out there who will revive the sleeping giant...a giant who even for the good spells in the 90's and again in the early 2000's imo has never truely woken up.

 

Geordie Lad is back!

[snakehips 0]

Nice article. It does, however, talk about 7 years Leazes. LardAsh has only been here, what 2 or 3 at the most. There are four years of demise missing according to my maths.

 

Anyway, I'm not having a go. One thing that does appear reassuring at present - despite all our ills of a poor team (depite being top of a shitty league) is that the banks don't look like they're calling the shots or about to pull the plug. Nor does HMRC. At least we appear safe from financial disaster at present.

[Deano 0]

Nice article. It does, however, talk about 7 years Leazes. LardAsh has only been here, what 2 or 3 at the most. There are four years of demise missing according to my maths.

 

Anyway, I'm not having a go. One thing that does appear reassuring at present - despite all our ills of a poor team (depite being top of a shitty league) is that the banks don't look like they're calling the shots or about to pull the plug. Nor does HMRC. At least we appear safe from financial disaster at present.

 

Would you not say that the only positive coming from MA tenure is that we now actually have one of the better financial situations in the country?

 

I dont mean in terms of bank balance but in little debts and infrastucture?

[snakehips 0]

Nice article. It does, however, talk about 7 years Leazes. LardAsh has only been here, what 2 or 3 at the most. There are four years of demise missing according to my maths.

 

Anyway, I'm not having a go. One thing that does appear reassuring at present - despite all our ills of a poor team (depite being top of a shitty league) is that the banks don't look like they're calling the shots or about to pull the plug. Nor does HMRC. At least we appear safe from financial disaster at present.

 

Would you not say that the only positive coming from MA tenure is that we now actually have one of the better financial situations in the country?

 

I dont mean in terms of bank balance but in little debts and infrastucture?

 

The only positive that appears good in LardAh's favour is that the banks or Customs aren't holding a knive to our throat. However, all that debt hasn't gone away. He wants every penny back, which, I suppose, he is entitled to expect.

[Deano 0]

Nice article. It does, however, talk about 7 years Leazes. LardAsh has only been here, what 2 or 3 at the most. There are four years of demise missing according to my maths.

 

Anyway, I'm not having a go. One thing that does appear reassuring at present - despite all our ills of a poor team (depite being top of a shitty league) is that the banks don't look like they're calling the shots or about to pull the plug. Nor does HMRC. At least we appear safe from financial disaster at present.

 

Would you not say that the only positive coming from MA tenure is that we now actually have one of the better financial situations in the country?

 

I dont mean in terms of bank balance but in little debts and infrastucture?

 

The only positive that appears good in LardAh's favour is that the banks or Customs aren't holding a knive to our throat. However, all that debt hasn't gone away. He wants every penny back, which, I suppose, he is entitled to expect.

 

Fair enough!

 

What i mean is if and when a buyer comes in and should they takeover...we would effectively be debt free rite?