Just a reminder again - when we were relegated the first time under MA, I would say some 90+% of our supports said it was their best season of football since SBR. We played good football, away from the PL circus, travelling to some "exotic" grounds, meeting some awesome fans etc Now I am not saying I don't want us to be out of the PL but for argumentssake - imagine FS was still in charge as of now, where do you honestly think we would finish?
My Crystal Ball says we would have qualified for Europe, yet again... Where does your Crystal Ball reckon?
Yes - why because we can't keep up financially (even on the never never) with 6 of those clubs. Burnley had a stormer of a season (who knows we may have finished where they were). We could in my opinion finished between 8th and 12th.
My bad on the 11 it is in fact 9. Only 1 year when we weren’t in Europe. Had counted Inter toto and UEFA individually, soz. Pretty poor performances in the Finals yes. But you miss the point. We got there. We gave it a go. We tried to win it. But “pretty identical”? You’re not on Chippy’s I’rn Bru’s are you? Pouchy I would expect to say that but he has to defend his Dad. Everyone else, noooooooo. You can’t say FS only has a better record than MA only because he got SBR because FS went out and got SBR and then gave him the players as well. MA has got Rafa, not saying he is as good as SBR but he’s a top manager. Now MA has to go out and financially support him but he’s not going to, is he? Also, I can’t see the “R’s” in FS’s record nor the times in Europe or the Finals or the Semi-Finals in MA’s. Yes we are financially solvent and I will give MA credit for that but we will never know how things would have panned out with FS and whether he would have reigned things in or not. MA has not run the Club well though as the finances are only one part of a football Club. An important part yes but not the be all and end all of everything. Look at other Clubs such as Southampton and Burnley to see what could have been achieved by a more ambitious owner.
Wasting your time DPP. The delusional believe we’d have somehow kept pace spending on the never never. It wouldn’t have caught up with us at all because generate such massive sums. FS would have crippled the club. The game of football has changed and he saw the start of this. As did the Halls. They recognised they could no longer manage or cope with the situation and the financial spiral was out of control. We were a mid table side already. We’d already finished 14th, 7th, 13th. The slide had begun. The cold reality of the new breed of owners meant they needed out before the club spent irresponsibly trying to keep up. FS would have steered us into administration for me. Ashley only has enough to keep our heads above water.
Lets be realistic though - we all know what realistically would have happened! Relegation, the sale of our best players (CC), -12 points at some stage for going into administration. Though you never know some idiot may well have still bailed us out.
What an utterly pointless 'argument' lads ................ speculating what might have been if Freddy Shepherd had stayed at the helm, Lets stick to cold hard FACTS ......................... Mike Ashley is a FAT ****!!! The rest is irrelevant.
Our record signing is 13 years ago. I bet every other team in the league have broken theirs in the last few years
Kind of a misleading stat though isn't it. No other *****s were paying that kind of money for injury prone England internationals past their best. It was an ego trip for Fat Fred and nothing else. A good portion PL clubs have a record within 2-3m of that either way, 13 years later. Its not that we're cheap now, its that we were ****ing morons then.
I think they are. 27m on Benteke and 24m on Sakho, enduring the same fight with relegation last year and finishing below us. Mind they've only signed 7 players for more than 10m ever. We've done that 18 times with 10 of those under Ashley's stewardship. Reality is nearly always somewhat different to perception with regard to transfer spend.
This https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/spo...s/strange-tale-newcastle-united-dele-12410778 is the reason I am sick of Ashley. If he just speculated to accumulate we wouldn't have a f***ed up balance sheet. We could sign the players for reasonable amounts and then sell on at a profit. We wouldn't mind that as long as it was re-invested in like for like players. The problem is the whole club has been asset stripped and not much left to sell. We could have been so much better off if we had took some (now less costly) gambles on players. It seems we haggle of the pennies and the pounds then go and fook off somewhere else.
This cannot be correct as Pouchy has sworn down on his hamster's life that we have been well run for the last 3 years.
January 2015 isn't within the last 3 years Regardless I'm supposed to believe this prick to be telling the truth. More likely is Spurs became interested as his agent played us. If I recall correctly both Spurs and Liverpool held long term interest also. I'd imagine we were just a pawn in him receiving a better deal and move. But hey you guys keep believing this press guff by all means.
Wondered if you'd pick up on that very minor detail. Didn't know it was 3 years to the literal date you first said it or whether it was a "generous" 3 years. I'll wait for Delli Alli's World Cup memories autobiography which should be out by the end of this month and see if he mentions it. More likely that if we didn't haggle over a few thousand pounds and delayed matters enabling Spuds to step in we would have got him. Mind he probably wouldn't have developed as he has and would be at Blackburn this season on loan but at least he would still have been ours.
