Charnley Speaks (Brace Yourself)

I can't believe they cannot fathom that no signings plus Carver as manager until end of season will mean us embroilled in a vile relegation battle.

Then again, if we do manage to scrape the required points they will say 'we will not consider our options throughout the summer' and in August appoint Carver as full time coach. Its enough to vomit one's spinal column out in hatred and frustration.

 

We have 42 players, including, Aarons Aarons Armstrong Streete Campbell Sakta Kemen Woodman Mbabu Gilliead, my understanding is these are the players that dont need to be registered due to be 21 or under, there may be others as it depends on the date of birth.

That takes us down 9 to 33

Of the 33, we have Bigi, S.Taylor (who can be removed due to injury) Mbiwa, Ferreya, Gutierrez, Alnwick, vukic, Good. Ferguson

Taking another 9 away easily = 24 players.

I could have been harsher, naming Guttierrez and wishfully praying williamson!

If we were to bring in any under the age of 21 then that adds nothing

if anyone goes, tiote, cisse and sissoko, we could easily bring in 4 or 5 players and still register 25

the 25 man rule as an excuse is a complete joke.

 

They are laughing at the fans. Yet, we still turn up in our thousands. Just like Shepherd and Douglas Hall did all of those years ago.

 

I wonder how they've dealt with Carver on this. Seems more likely he's not a candidate, and if he has been kept informed then he's a fabulous actress. Always struck me as really frustrated with everything. Again, the club seem to sit in this cloud of arrogance that Carver will simply be grateful to have a job when he's told "right, watch the phones for the next few months, but you won't be in charge in July".

I may be getting this wrong and the club may well be nice and stable, and easily pick up the next 12 points needed for safety and probably a few more besides. But another opinion could be that the club is on the brink of a complete and total collapse, which it will struggle to come back from. The MD seems blinkered and clueless, the owner is too busy with another club. The bloke who is going to be in charge is nice enough, but a limited dinosaur who I cannot believe will be able to manage PL egos. Should the £££' of North London or Paris come calling for Tiote/Sissoko, they will be sold and I strongly feel we have no contingency. We couldn't even plan for Pardew going, and it's been a month, how are we going to recruit a DM or CM in less time? We can't even find a CB or Striker in 6 months of looking (or more). So those two go, and it's about more than their individual contribution - it destabilises. Look at Cabaye, he was good, but he wasn't perfect. His leaving made everyone just look around and think "what's the point". The same will happen, but it's a repeat so it'll be more apathetic a second time around. Then the club are effectively asking the likes of Perez, Abeid, Dummett, Anita to should the responsibility of a relegation fight!! Laughable notion.

The voices on here seem to be fairly unanimous. I don't think Ashley sees it, or cares enough to want to look. In Charnley we have yet another cheap, Ashley ally. A limited man who by all accounts was an accounts assistant a few years ago and is now, somehow, in charge of everything. We run a threadbare back office with a threadbare squad and although we are peppered with the odd taleneted individual, we are a gnat's hair away from being incredibly weak.

I've said before that we just don't replace people. Who replaced Donachie? Who will replace this "analyst"? No-one's replaced Pardew, and in giving the job to Carver, we're effectively yet another man down on the training pitch. You cannot run a football club in this way, it just doesn't work, it can't be done constantly on a calculator by calculating averages and taking risks. I appreciate frugality and living within means, but profit should be generated to put back into the club in its' entirety. There's no shareholders to pay, the profit is the clubs' to use, I just don't understand how an individual - any individual - can cream off the top. The football side is frightening, we're so chock full of no-marks it's unbelievable. I mean, they are saying we've got a full quota of players and will now crack on with, what, 3 coaches? THREE, for fux sake, for a Premier League club!!! If we apply last seasons second half to this season, we may well be going down, tell me if I'm wrong? With Carver in charge, we'll be LUCKY to replicate the dross of last season!!

As it stands, I'd put money on relegation. What then? For about five minutes I'd crack a smile, knowing that Ashley was wrong and had been proven wrong. Then the doom of going down would settle in and I'm not sure we're coming back any time soon. The fat kent would have to sell, he wouldn't be putting another £30m+ loan in. And he'd make a loss too.

 

ARE YOU GOING TO END UP WITH A YES MAN?
I’m confident at the end of this process the individual will be best suited for what we’re looking for and can work within the structure we have.

Translation: "As he will have no say in anything, we will never have to ask him anything and so it doesn't really matter whether he would have agreed or disagreed if we had asked, which we won't. So no."

 

There's this club, in the middle of the season, loses its' manager. It identifies the perfect candidate to replace them, approaches said candidate, meets prerequisites to do with release clauses, agrees a contract, tidies it all up and under the new manager gets to the 4th round of the cup, then wins two league matches on the bounce. Hardly cryptic, but I'm talking about Crystal Palace. For Palace, you could almost read "West Brom". Two clubs we should have been finishing above, both of whom we will now finish below. The list of clubs worse than Newcastle grows ever shorter. Would you put money against Redknapp or Dyche keeping their sides up? I wouldn't.

Newcastle united, in the middle of the season, loses its' manager. It doesn't/can't identify a perfect candidate, instead choosing to explain to the media just how constrained and limited the role of "head coach" actually is. It brags about 80 applicants, yet can't hire the right one from those 80. Subsequently the club floats along, left in limbo, because of those 80 people who approached the club and the countless others who would welcome an approach, Newcastle United cannot find the right one. It boggles the fcking mind, it really does, that the MD thinks it's somehow acceptable to sit on this pile of steaming horsesh1t. If McLaren is the right one, pay Derby the fcking money and ensure the football club is still in the Premier League. I would hazard a guess that Charnley, today, still has no fcking idea or clue as to who is going to take over. What he significantly fails to understand is that for everyone he'd like to take over the club, if it's in the Championship he has one candidate, John Carver.

It's all so bleak, what exactly is the point?!

 

I don't think we need to seriously worry about relegation but aside from that, hard to find anything to disagree with.

 

Have to be honest and say I think he's given a decent interview to be fair. We all know our aim is to be top ten and that to get there we want to promote youth, sign players with a re-sale value etc.

He's stated his preference is to get in a head coach for the remainder of the season but it has to be the right man. Again there's nothing wrong with this approach. If by waiting it means we can get a Galtier or De Boer then this is surely the right approach. He all but ruled out Carver as the long term option which I'd imagine near enough every supporter is pleased with.

As for not signing anyone this January, we might not agree with it or like it but at least we've been told. It would be far worse if he'd said "we've got our eye on a couple of players and are hopeful of doing a deal" only for us to do nothing. Both Charnley and the club would then be accused of being liars etc and it creates bad blood all over again.

As for us being difficult sellers I'd suggest that history backs this up. 35m for Carroll would not of been Liverpool's opening offer meaning we'd obviously turned down at least one sizeable offer before accepting. 20m for Cabaye (at nearly 28 years old) is again a good sum. Debuchy at 12m for a 28 year old is again good business. Demba Ba and Jose Enrique had the upper hand because of a release fee and only 12 months remaining on their contracts. 5m for an ageing Nolan (who was replaced by Cabaye) was good business.

As far as selling players that we don't want to lose goes we always, always get top dollar. He made a point about himself getting involved in communication with the fans going forward and not just leaving it to the head coach.

Granted he didn't mention changing the club attitude towards the cup and admitted that we'll always sell a player if we feel the price is right which was disappointing but at least we're finally getting a bit of transparency from the club. Hopefully we continue to get this.

 

Very balanced and I understand what you're saying, but two things:

1) We have had Kinnear, Hughton, Keegan, Pardew in charge under Ashley. The track record suggests we are all going to be impossibly underwhelmed by whoever the club deems the right man, but we will have to wait and see on that one. For me, as I put above, the broad assumption that we're already safe is a strange one, and so if we do in the Summer happen to appoint someone weak, or someone who could have been pulled in now, the question is why wait? Why "risk it"? Every year a club from the middle of the table gets involved in a relegation battle. If we'd been on 34 points, I could feel safer, but right now I'm worried that I'll just be watching a Carver "inspired" Newcastle, with its' HUGELY limited coaching team, get humped week in, week out.

2) At what point does this "good business" get PROPERLY reinvested in the team? Saying Nolan = Cabaye +£15m is all well and good, but at what point should it be Nolan = Cabaye + £15m WORTH OF OTHER PLAYERS?! We stand to post profits when released in Feb of what some could claim to be £80m. Yes, Mike will start to cream his bit back, and that's good, but at what point do we think "hmmm, £80m? we could probably buy a couple of players who are better than Gouffran, Williamson, Alnwick and Haidara with that....."??

I may be wrong and Frank De Boer takes over in the Summer, quickly spending £50m to propel us up the table. But I seriously fcking doubt it.

 

I doubt we'll ever spend 50m regardless of who we have in charge. Carroll got us Ba, Santon, Cisse, Cabaye off the top of my head. Cabaye got us Cabella, Riviere, Perez, Janmaat, De Jong. I don't look at the whole price thing, if we lose a player such as Debuchy and replace with one like Janmaat then that's good business.

People forget we've not had De Jong all season, he was set to be a very big player for us. I'm not saying I always agree with out transfer policy but I certainly understand it.

As for the new manager/head coach I think the main point of the interview was to stress that whoever ends up in charge (long term) will have been vetted thoroughly and therefore won't be of the old "job for the boys" brigade. I think it's fair to say Garde, Galtier, Tuchel, De Boer and possibly McClaren have all at the very least received an informal approach to gauge their level of interest in the position. If it was to be an underwhelming appointment it would have happened quickly IMO with Curbishley, O'Leary, Hoddle etc all being available now. I'd suggest it's taking so long to hire someone because the club like to know exactly what they're getting and that as on this occasion they aren't going for a "friend of a friend" they want to feel both comfortable and confident that they've appointed the right man when that time comes.

It's all about opinions and we could both be very far off the mark but my take on things is that we're doing things the right way for a change but that it's just taking a little longer than it should because this is a new approach from the club.

 

I don't actually think we are safe. Not by a long shot. Hull is a classic six pointer and we are only 8 points clear of them. Lose that game and we will be looking over our shoulders. If the 'board' are gambling on the fact that we are mid-table, they are taking a massive risk. Add to that a lack of signings. We've seen already that all it takes is a couple of injuries and we are on our knees.

 

The thing that gets me about what he has stated, what the club are doing etc is that the only person benefiting from the clubs action plan is one man. The sheer lack of anything positive to talk about at the moment is crazy. All the problems of old are back. Doing things on the cheap, saving money, cost cutting, not buying players, not signing a manager, not having the right staff, selling the clubs soul. It all benefits one man, not the club.

It becomes almost a joke when the club communicates nothing for weeks and then when it does so it basically confirms f all and what we already suspected.

I still cannot bring myself around to thinking that there is a longer term plan regarding the manager/players. I think this is smoke and mirrors.

If the plan is to sell the club (at all) then selling the players is daft. You sell the player, it devalues the club?

Owning a football club directly is not going to make you money. All money should be reinvested. The fact is and quite rightly people have pointed out is that as long as we are mid table/lower table without risks to relegation they are happy because it gives Sports Direct the platform it needs for advertisement.

But at the end of the day the product is football. What is being served up on the pitch at the moment and for some time is dross. And people are getting sick of it. Sponsors will start to go, season tickets will drop, the results will continue to decline and ultimately we will get relegated. If Ashley is around then he will lose more money than he has ever made from the club.

I cannot see any bright future for us under Ashley and his muppets. I support the team through thick and thin but that is seriously getting tested right now.

 

# Net Spend last 5 Years Purchased Gross Sold Nett Per Season

1 Manchester City £467,450,000 £147,400,000 £320,050,000 £64,010,000
2 Chelsea £471,609,000 £188,400,000 £283,209,000 £56,641,800
3 Manchester United £356,300,000 £76,600,000 £279,700,000 £55,940,000
4 Liverpool £351,950,000 £220,770,000 £131,180,000 £26,236,000
5 West Ham £95,100,000 £12,800,000 £82,300,000 £16,460,000
6 Arsenal £244,525,000 £162,300,000 £82,225,000 £16,445,000
7 Queesn Park Rangers £106,600,000 £32,750,000 £73,850,000 £14,770,000
8 Stoke City £61,475,000 £7,600,000 £53,875,000 £10,775,000
9 Hull City £71,675,000 £23,750,000 £47,925,000 £9,585,000
10 Aston Villa £103,550,000 £72,450,000 £31,100,000 £6,220,000
11 Sunderland £117,630,000 £88,550,000 £29,080,000 £5,816,000
12 Southampton £130,250,000 £106,350,000 £23,900,000 £4,780,000
15 West Bromwich Albion £47,020,000 £25,009,000 £22,011,000 £4,402,200
14 Leicester £23,000,000 £3,850,000 £19,150,000 £3,830,000
15 Crystal Palace £37,950,000 £18,900,000 £19,050,000 £3,810,000
16 Newcastle £99,550,000 £93,300,000 £6,250,000 £1,250,000
17 Everton £88,000,000 £84,016,000 £3,984,000 £796,800
18 Swansea £62,375,000 £65,660,000 -£3,285,000 -£657,000
19 Burnley £12,900,000 £20,350,000 -£7,450,000 -£1,490,000
20 Tottenham £214,650,000£236,500,000-£21,850,000-£4,370,000

Just found this, which appears to be up to date upto this transfer window. The net spend table for the last 5 years of the current premier league teams.

To just put it into perspective we have just had a net spend at the beginning of this season of £25 million. And of course it does not inlcude any players to be sold.

 

Carroll got us Ba and Cisse, tops. It was the sale of Enrique that allowed for Santon, the sale of Nolan that allowed for Cabaye and we've shipped out more or less as many as have come in, because we run to very tight quotas. If the business model were to make profits whilst improving the team, nobody would mind. But we're still lining up with Mike Williamson, we had to play with Jak Alnwick in nets, we've had to get very lucky with Perez who continues to get more game time than Riviere and Cabella combined! We caught a tough break with the injury to De Jong, but even Wikipedia is aware of his appalling injury record. If a bargain-hunting shower like us grab a player of renown like De Jong, something's wrong somewhere - in this case, the fact he can't actually appear is a bit of a hindrance. So I think we could all happily overlook the "price thing", if only it came with some ambition above and beyond being a conveyor belt of footballers and what appears to still be a ludicrous model of x amount of "purple" players only

I understand thoroughness. I don't understand it when clubs around us can make their moves quickly and seamlessly. It's all so confused - the MD is trying to stress the simplicity of the Magpies' model, yet it's too complicated to pick something as basic as a Head Coach. I'm a little sceptical over the "80 applicants" as well - I mean, who would actively apply for such a high profile job? Even the likes of Bruce or McLaren wouldn't actively approach the club, so what level are we talking about? Well below PL, probably fishing around Lee Clark, et al, and into League One. Oh, look - back in League One looking for a coach, where have I seen this story unfold before?! The tone from Charnley wasn't so much about us going out and finding the right person. It sounded much more like we have awaited CV's and sifted through them, with the intonation that only one candidate has been approached who hasn't actually applied. This may be reading too deeply into it, but are we saying that it will or won't be an existing applicant? Are we searching, or are we considering those who've applied? Unfortunately only time will tell on the coach, but given the track record and the umpteenth promise of "doing it differently", you'll have to excuse me for thinking we'll simply end up with another Alan Pardew.

 

Tend to agree with everything you have said. It's all how people interpret what he's saying, inevitably most will see it as a negative due to the way the club has been handled so far.

Regarding transfers I think the club is right to a certain extent on their policy however they should be looking at a cb and cf even if they are just on loan

 

How you interpret things has to be largely based on historical information and what we already know about the club/how they operate. I think it is therefore more than fair to interpret it in a fairly negative light

The club is rotten, we all know this. This is just the latest guy willing to do the dirty work. Although the club has been dishonest in the past, generally we have been told the truth by the regime for a while now. The problem is what they tell us is very uninspiring and not exactly making fans want to keep paying their money.

The two things I completely disagree with and find are complete and utter bullshit - 1. 25 man squad - get to **** you idiot. 2. The no value in January excuse - why not buy in the summer then as we were short then. Things will never change when it comes to transfers, we do the bare minimum. I accepted this a long time ago. As for manager scenarios, well I can understand the desire to wait to the summer if I believed them about wanting to wait for the right candidate. History is not with them again though is it? We appoint cheap options and scurry along spending as little as we can. Carver is a cheap option through to the summer. If it works out well, they can retain him on buttons. If not they can look at their list of 80 () and find some subservient fool who costs very little.

Essentially I'll start believing all this bollocks we get fed when their actions actually back it up. I'll not hold my breath if its all the same to them though...

 

I'm actually scared relegation is looming. Carver is a bottling ****. The equation of No ****ing players this transfer window + him as manager/coach/fat **** will equal disaster. I can almost picture him now in tears with Stone and Woodman as he attempts to explain how we were relegated.

I'm also trying to picture a wonderful moment of all three being dragged to a stone table, legs swiftly broken and forced into a giant wickerman. As the torch does its work, all the fans unite, hand in hand and sing 'Sumer Is Icumen' as they are roasted alive.

 

80 Applicants

Carver
Hoddle
Garde?
The Heed

Who the f*** are the rest that aren't good enough.

 

I didn't get an interview despite my impeccable record in Non League football. Obviously not a yes man.

 

My application was rejected as well. I think it was because I had forgotten to change the cover letter from my previous job application (as Marketing Manager for Grosvenor Casinos). Think the sentence "I am sure I can improve your business by bringing in lots of new players" may have been the deciding factor.