Hatem Ben Arfa..... can we keep him?

Well said absolutely spot on

 

I don't understand the reasoning behind your post, I'm afraid.

You are aware of the article in the national newspapers a season or so ago when the journalist was given a full tour of the boardroom of the club and was given a full explanation to the inner workings of the club, I trust?

In that article it was made very clear that there is a whiteboard on the wall listing every player in the club and in one of the columns next to each of the names is a value that the club has put on that player. It was made patently clear that if an offer was made to match or exceed that figure then he'd be off. In short, every player is up for sale.

Now, I have mentioned this whiteboard about half a dozen times now and either you don't read my posts, which I accept, or you choose not to accept the simple fact that every player is up for sale. There is no player which is 'sacred' to the club and isn't for sale.

So, given all of this then how can Pardew come out and NOT say that a certain player isn't up for sale? If anything he's highlighting the fact that he is vulnerable to a player being whisked off without his say-so.

You mentioned, quite correctly, what Ferguson, Wenger and AVB have said. This may be true in their clubs and the manager may have a say in who stays and who goes. But that is not the case here at Newcastle. Every other manager knows that every player is up for sale so Pardew saying so isn't going to make a jot of difference. All Pardew is saying that the situation is out of his control and it stinks to high heaven.

The blame here is not with Pardew the blame lies upstairs. So please can we stop this nonsense of Player XYZ is committed to the club or Player XYZZY isn't going to move? The fact is, if Ashley gets the price then the helicopter is started up, the player put on for a one-way trip to another club.

 

Pardew more or less said Carroll wasn't for sale. Two days later, he was sold.

Pardew learned that what he says matters little and is not now willing to say anyone is not for sale when he knows it's not true. Instead he says that he expects someone to be bought and hopes it's true. Even then he gets made to look like a fool

 

So is that the next step in Pards' honesty campaign? Benny offloaded, Pardew saying "everyone has their price, I'm sure we'll replace them". Come Feb 1st we HAVEN'T replaced them, so does that mean Pards then has to regularly say "yep, all of our players are available and they won't be replaced"?!

 

Have never heard of nor seen this "white board" article that you refer too.

As said in my post, it's not all about trying to get the maximum for one of our players. It's about trying to provide our players with some confidence that the club does have a certain level of ambition.

I think you'll find that Pardew has more of a say than you think, to suggest that he has zero say in the sale of our players is just plain daft. At any club, every play has a price and the only exceptions are Barcelona and Real Madrid and every football fan with any common sense knows this. Again I will put to you that plenty of other clubs that are just as vulnerable as us to losing players for big money don't advertise this in every other press conference. I believe it's the soul reason he continuously gets asked the same questions, because he never actually dismisses the speculation which only adds fuel to the fire.

As somebody has just pointed out, by saying Carroll wasn't for sale we got 35m for him. If he'd said we're vulnerable back then are you really naive enough to think Liverpool would have bid 35m for him?

I'll repeat again that this isn't an attack on Pardew, just a small concern that manager's of other clubs don't do this and you don't see speculation regarding their players on a weekly basis. Imagine if Pardew haid said cabaye wasn't for sale from the off, it may have even resulted in him having his head in the right place to play as he wouldn't have the uncertainty of not knowing his future. He'd have known or at least had to assume that he was staying. By saying he isn't going then Cabaye can only assume he won't be sold and could ahve got with his job which is to play football for our club. If a silly bid did then come then he's sold and we move on.

Now I'm not saying the above would have happened if we'd have gone with the "not for sale" approach, just that by taking such an approach we may have had Cabaye available for the first few games.

 

Can we keep our posters? That's another worrying thing.

The season has started and there's less happening on the board than there was pre season.

 

The 'Whiteboard' article was in the business section of one of the newspapers. I can't remember which one it was now. If it was in The Times or The Independent then I would have read it first hand or someone would have sent me a copy if it was in another newspaper.

The article came around just after the wage cap was introduced by the club and this was the club's explanation for everything that it does behind the scenes and it spelt out, rather clearly, what the whiteboard is for. The article did state that the journalist wasn't allowed to photograph the whiteboard nor metion what was on it. Which is not surprising as it is corporate confidential information.

From memory, and my memory when it comes to past points in time (i.e. I can never remember what came in what order when I am dealing with the past unless I can tie things down to what people have said or where I was -- no need to bore everyone with why this is), but I believe that this article came about just after Carroll was sold. But I could be wrong on that, however, I believe that I am not. If this was the case then Carroll's name would have been on the board with an absurdly large figure next to it and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now what is Pardew doing here? Well he may as well tell world plus dog that everyone is for sale as that was established in that article and this would be known by every other club in the world. So there's no point in Pardew saying that a player isn't for sale when the same world+dog knows otherwise. What he is saying is that this is a bloody stupid situation when players' heads are being turned and I can't get on with my job and someone upstairs please sort this out. No other club works on this principle, but then no other club works on the principle of Newcastle's where everything.. and the space thereon, is up for sale.

If the club wants to stop the Everyone For Sale approach then this can only be changed by one man; and it's not Pardew. Ashley is running the club as a business. He has 50,000 going through the gates each week, people are buying his merchansise as fast as he can change shirt designs (if he had his way he'd had a pre-winter break strip and post-winter break kit) and he's doing alright, thank you, on the transfer markets. Get some semi-unkowns in from France or wherever, get them to showcase therir stuff for a season or two and then wait for the calls to come in from the Chelseas and Arsenals of this world.

There's no use us shouting out "Where's the replacement for Carroll? Who's going to go up front now that Ba has gone?" None of thee concern Ashley at all. He's done what's he achieved with these sales and each time there's a new signing it's not a replacement for whomever was sold in a previous transfer window instead he's simply replenishing his stock on the shelves. And in the meantime Pardew has to work with this week in and week out as frustrating as it may be for him.

Ashley runs a very succesful business empire with Sports Direct and he's running Newcastle United in much the same way; get the players in cheap and sell them with a high margin of profit. And that is simply it. So asking for Pardew to start saying that a certain player is not for sale is hiding one's head in the sand; Pardew is highlighting the problem here and you're effectively asking him to stop shining the light in that direction.

Keegan, if you recall, tried to put the Not For Sale tag on Milner. That didn't stop Ashley flogging him when Manchester City came along, did it?

I will say it again: having Not For Sale signs is not in Ashley's Business Plan anywhere.

 

Throw this into the mix.

Take away The Andy Carroll sale, there is no club in the country would have turned down £35m for him.

Since the return to the PL, how many players have left the club, either;
Come to end of contracts
Wanted to be away
You weren't bothered about them going
Couldn't stop them going

Keep on hearing every player has a price, and no doubt they have, but we don't sell many players.

In Janaury, it will be 3 years (6 transfer windows) since Carroll left, but other than Ba, and possibly Nolan, Barton, Enrique who else has left of any real consequence. The likes of Guthrie, Perch, Simpson etc may have gone, but they are now playing at their right level in the Championship.

The first problem has been that we didn't replace Carroll and Ba quick enough and in the case of Ba, the way his contract was written he was off, no matter what. Don't forget, that a good percentage of fans were happy enough to see the back of Barton back then, same with Nolan, who we didn't miss the following season. As for Enrique, another that wanted to be away, but replaced with Santon.

The bigger problem is that Pardew keeps on giving the impression that players are available for some reason whereas if he just kept his mouth shut, we could avoid the Cabaye situation.

If Ashley has a whiteboard with player prices on, well the prices must be high for the core of the team, as the players are on long term contracts. Agents will know what we will sell for, and up to now, other clubs haven't been prepared to meet the required amount. Arsenal were never serious with Cabaye.

That may change as contracts are run down as in the case of HBA. In January with 18 months left on his contract, the club need him to extend by a couple of years, otherwise HBA will hold all the aces. Whether we like it or not, his value will plummet by next summer with 12 months left and is the first real test for Ashley. Get HBA to extend, and he can increase the figure on the board, but it will be a high figure again.

Maybe a different look on it.

 

I'm sorry but this white board thing is crazy...as if there is a white board somewhere at the club headquarters with every players selling price

I doubt the club even keep a record of what they'd sell each player for and IF they did it would be stored on the clubs computer data base and be password protected to ****.

I'm not doubting that the story was published, just that it's pure fabrication on behalf of whichever desperate hack produced it.

 

Aren't they all desperate most of the time?

 

Fine. I will shut up and continue to get my gen on Ashley from the business pages and the FT and keep my counsel to myself.

 

No Chance

 

we can keep Hatem easily past this Jan and probs another year, but if we continue to show little ambition to get to Europe I can see him getting itchy feet.
I would be gutted but you couldn't blame him, whenever he has a run of games in our team he consistently produces magic. Yeh i get the picture he's not messi or ronaldo (disclaimer for sunland fans) but he ****s allover players like Walcott, there will be a top 4 team in one of the top nations looking for a winger around the time he's destroying teams and I can understand he'll look round at us with one proper striker (shola you say? good one) and think 'i can't achieve European football here'

 

According to the local press he's desperate to stay here.

 

well a google search of:


newcastle united whiteboard players prices

brings up this thread but no other reference to anyone ever having seen a whiteboard of player prices. if it was published in a major paper, it is for some reason no longer available to google. Just saying.

 

yeh i read over summer quotes actually attributed to him, something about loving the fans and wanting to sign a new contract,
but i do also remember the one where he said he was happy to stay at Newcastle IF we could match his ambition.
To be fair we then went one and signed half the French team so perhaps that was enough!

 

Quite a strong French contingent.

4 Yohan Cabaye
7 Moussa Sissoko
10 Hatem Ben Arfa
11 Yoan Gouffran
14 Loic Remy
17 Romain Amalfitano
19 Massadio Haidara
22 Sylvain Marveaux
25 Gabriel Obertan
26 Mathieu Debuchy

 

I think he likes it here.

I think he'd like to play Champions League football.

If he could both, he would probably stay. If has to choose, I think he would probably go.

 

forgetting big bad Yanga! add yourself a GK and you've got a full team for a 4-5-1
I reckon you couldn't do that with our English contingent without some youth team straw-clutching

 

yeh if he's real about trying for the Ballon D'or i don't foresee a future where he can win it here