Answers From NUFC....

Eh? So if you pay market value for a striker, you freddie mark 2? How? If you paid way over the odds maybe. The problem is they are trying to do the same as what they did with Tiote/Cabaye/Santon, pay 5m for player worth 10m. Doesn't work with strikers in the main as they are the most sought after commodity for obvious reasons. We're taking prudence too far and handicapping our manager in the process. Sometimes you have to pay the market value or even slightly exceed it. Nobody wants to be paying 17m for a crock. But class strikers are 12m -15m plus. Not 5m-8m. Thats how i see it.

 

I really really want people to read these answers from an intellectual and logical approach rather than a passionate stance and "football is exactly like football manager with magical money" approach.

QUIT ACTING LIKE IDIOTS!!! use your brains, please!!

 

We had offers accepted for Gameiro, Gervinho and Erdinc if you believe most sources - so how are we not bidding the right amounts? The club just isn't willing to pay more than £8m for Maiga (seems fair, I wouldn't) - or more than £10m for Cisse (unproven in premier league - that must have been their valuation, probably with the help of people like Graham Carr so who are we to argue).

 

Exactly - people are being too stubborn here, the answers make sense.

 

I keep on promising urging myself not to get into arguments about this, and now i remember why.

Did i say Mike Ashley should just do what ever the fans tell him to do? No, so you can stop making **** up and basing an argument upon it.

Should he keep his head down and try and provide despite being slagged off? Yes!!

Managers and players get slagged off by fans all the time. Look at that poor sod managing Aston Villa. Mobs of the vile slagging him off and some of them even boycotting matches because of it. He takes the abuse and gets on with his ****ing job, like Mike Ashley should do.

I am not saying we should pay ridiculous amounts for every player we buy like we used to but at the end of the day, you can't always get the bargains you were hoping for.

The fact that we put in a 10.7m pound offer showed that we have the funds to pay for good sum for at least one player, and that's all we needed to complete the transfer window. A quality striker.

We had 7 months to sort one out, more than enough time considering our amazing scouting system, which is the reason we have Tiote and Cabaye right now. The scouts surely must have pointed out plenty of quality strikers, but the club obviously weren't willing to pay value for quality.

I'm glad we didn't panic buy a **** striker and waste 4-5 mil on the likes of Carlton Cole, that was sensible, but we could have easily made a bid for the likes of Ruiz sooner. The fact that the club waited to the last hour of the window to put a bid in for a player that was basically already signing for another club, strongly suggests that Ashley just doesn't want to spend unless it's an absolute must, or an significant amount.

Can't be arsed to argue about this anymore. At the end of the day none of us really know what's going on inside the club, so we can't know for sure what's happening, and if the club could have really done more, but the fact that the club has been sued for trying their ****ty tactics before with the likes of Keegan suggests that they simply don't want to pay the cash, but they need to convince the fans they were willing to do so, so they put in a bid they know will most likely be rejected, so they wont have part with the cash, but they can claim they tried.

 

The membership scheme is a joke. If I want to take my nephew to away games I have to buy a ****ing membership for him! That's £25 over a year and he'll probably only go to one or two games tops.

 

Nothing you say here disagrees with what I said so I assume we're in agreement. Good.

I'm trying to actually think how the club could have answered the questions that would make you satisfied? I honestly can't think what else they could have said?

 

I look at Cisse. His price tag all summer was alleged to be 13m. A reasonable fee to expect to pay for consistent scorer in a top european league. Sources alleged we bid 9m. We'll never know as with Gameiro etc.Its irrelevant what sources say we've bid anyway, as I say you can only judge them by their deeds. They had the money and time to buy the class of striker we needed and the manager wanted, they didn't. They've chosen to put it down to it not being possible. If its not down to not paying fees, its down to incompetence. Neither is very palatable.

 

The same incompetence that got us Ben Arfa, Tiote, Santon, Cabaye? I dunno, I just think Newcastle fans are taking this bandwagon jumping, and conclusion jumping too far now. I'm sick of it. I'm not happy with the ownership, but I'm not so one minded that I can't accept when they do some things right, even if they do most things wrong. Of course it's annoying we didn't get a striker, but better no-one than a **** striker (we have enough of them) or paying ridiculously over the odds.

 

Looking at the responses from the NUFC board to the questions from the fan's in my earlier post; a few things stand out to me.

NUFC: "Assuming a tenth place league position, that gives us a wages-to-turnover ratio of approximately 65 per cent."

It seems we have a 65% wage ratio. So given we have a turnover of £100m for being a Premier League club and an average operating costs of around £20-£25million, last season should have seen us make a tidy Net profit of £10-£15million........not including massive transfer money gained!! But yet we still had transfer spend this summer of practically ZERO! Will be nice, interesting reading when the finance details are released.

NUFC: "The fee offered was a deal too good to turn down".

"That’s just one side of the equation of course. On the other side is a player, and one I would add that we have the greatest respect for. He could see an incredibly attractive opportunity for him too. Eventually both the club and the player agreed that a deal would be in the best interests of both parties."
It seems clear from this that the club couldn't refuse to turn down the Andy Carroll transfer fee, so to create the 'transfer request' controversary they did, for the sake of saving a few bob on bonus money that would have been owed to Carroll due to selling him when he was still under contract, totally crippling his name and reputation amongst 'his own' geordie fans, was and is a total disgrace. I knew it at the time, and with every quote from all parties involved since, it becomes more and more clear that Andy Carroll doesn't deserve the label of 'Judas' that he has with a large amount of NUFC fans. Which obviously harms any chance of the lad coming back to the club at some point in the future to finish what he started. Which the rest of us NUFC fans, who recognise the shenanigans of the board, are hoping will happen. Shocking!!

Some of the NUFC board quotes are acceptable, seem genuine to believe and are pretty obvious in places, however in general:

You may be able to fool the sheep who follow our football club; but some of us can see the wood from the trees at a 100 miles away. The smell of bullshit is also overpowering at times. I have learned nothing from these responses, except the views I already have are pretty much confirmed and set in stone.

We are ran by bullshitting, self-sympathising, incompetent clowns. End of. The sooner this black n white double act are long gone from our neck of the woods, the sooner this football club will finally meet its potential again.

 

I don't want them to pay over the odds. At most you push a little if they are special. They have money and are saying they are willing to spend it on the right player. This big signing much talked about is a striker. To get quality in this position you have to do your research and then nail them. 7 months is long enough in any sane persons book. Particularly when you consider scouting is an ongoing process at any well run club. Not every player you sign can be an absolute bargain. That attitude will lead to stagnating. Cutting off your nose to spite your face so to speak. We don't have a bottomless pit unlike some so we can't go paying silly money. But if you want the kind of striker we need, you know you are going to have to pay good money. So how has it not happened? I'm pleased with our business in general but we have proved incompetent in this pursuit. I don't put it down to hatred of Ashley, just on the facts on the table suggest something isn't right. But if as Derek suggests its because they couldn't get it done, then that pretty much falls into the incompetence category.