Before you all go into hissy fits read on. A bit tongue in cheek I know, but I cannot recall the last Newcastle player we sold on the cheap. Could this be the real reason other clubs have made NO offers for Barton/Enrique/Jonas? Here we were in June expecting these three to jump ship and there they are on pre-season tours. Barton was even tweeting this to one and all about them all leaving. I think making other clubs dig deep might work to our advantage. They're all on top wages with a year left for Newcastle to get the best out of them. What with the brilliant Mr Carr securing players who seem to be young/fast with potential, would these new French lads have been brought in without say Carroll/Nolan getting traded at top dollar?
This is why I can't understand anyone who claims 'we're now a selling club', who's the last player we sold for less than their value? £35m for Carroll couldn't be turned down, £4.5m for Nolan who wanted wages far in excess of his worth, both good deals. Compare that to us wasting money on average players in their late 20s with no resale value under Shepherd and I know what I prefer. We're now a club with actual saleable players, not a selling club.
Let's all be glad we're not Villa, aside from the big Bent buy, they've been selling their best players left, right and centre for the past couple years
A selling club is one that sells its best players and does not replace them with players of equal or better quality. I think Newcastle have fulfilled that criterion pretty well over the last three seasons or so.
Barring Carroll who's gone on to bigger and better things? Duff? Beye? Bassong? Martins? The only ones I can think of who we've not adequately replaced is Given, who's been well covered by Harps and then Krul and Forster, and arguably Milner and N'zogbia though we do have Jonas, Ben Arfa and Marveaux. Bear in mind that Given and N'zogbia asked for releases, and Milner showed his only loyalty is to money when he jumped to Man City a year after leaving us I can't see how your logic applies.
