How confident are you...

that we will get the appropriate players this transfer window? Surely to Christ we have to make a move soon? Pardew cannot come out on the 1st of Feb and say the immortal line of 'Couldn't quite get them over the line!'. This would finish off what small remaining confidence we as fans have in the man and confirm to everyone the poor bugger has no say in what the **** goes on!

If we do not buy a striker or a centre back (If Colo goes add another CB to that list) we are going to get relegated, its as simple as that imo. I just couldn't take it seeing that donkey Shola being trotted out again, apparently 'leading' the line.

 

I'm 100% certain we won't and also 100% certain Colo and another player at least will be gone.

 

Not confident in the slightest. We will be scrambling round like turkeys a few days before the window shuts, or that's what the press will have us believe. As far as players in positions we actually need, I think our transfer business is done. If the time they spent on the remy deal is an indication of how long it's going to take us to get a striker in, then I think we haven't got a hope in hell.

 

Everyone knows Pardew has no, or no important, say in whom we sign. He's said as much. He was hired with that as an express term in his contract, because the wording in Keegan's contract turned out not to have said it clearly enough.

As to confident that we will have one more striker and one more CB than we do now, 50/50 at best.

As to confident we'll be playing in the Prem in September, 75/25. We're bad, but there are a lot of clubs fighting for the bottom three places

 

Gotta say my confidence is draining by the day.

 

I'd rather sign nobody than a load of dross for inflated transfer fees.

Problem we have now is that everyone knows we have at least £8m to spend on a player – selling clubs will try and nab as much of that as they can.

It's also much tougher to convince clubs to part with players midway through a campaign, they know they'll have to find replacements themselves.

This week I just hope the playing staff aren't distracted by rumour and can get on with the most important business, getting three points against Reading...

 

I'm amazed that anyone hasn't realised we will not get the players we need this window!!! how many times must it take before people realise.

 

My main concern is that from the 31st January 2012 we needed at least one striker and, possibly more importantly, one centre back (minimum - we obviously needed full backs as well). We are now approaching an entire year and still have no-one remotely close to coming. You cannot tell me that Loic Remy was and always has been Plan A? He was £20m in the Summer, known for his tantrums and just plain out of our league, so we can never have considered him. Sure, when a £20m player is then worth £8m you can go knocking, but how in the name of all that is holy was this Plan A? So my major concern now is there's not really been a Plan A at all. Graham Carr has been there unearthing two things - rough diamonds (many of whom remain unpolished) and discovering ropey contracts (Cabaye, Ben Arfa). What we don't seem to have been doing is identifying shortfalls in our squad and aggressively addressing them. I'm no scout, but here's a list of strikers all of whom should be able to improve on Shola/Ranger....

De Jong - Sow - Yedder - Aubameyang - Alain Traore - van Wolfswinkel - Ben Basat - Finnbogason - Bonno Wilfried - Adam Szalai.

All I did was search for top scorers in domestic leagues (Dutch/French/German). All have excellent records, all are sub 26 years of age, all play for arguably smaller (financially) teams than NUFC. They have one more thing in common - not one of them will be coming to the Toon. We could all do this, we could go to South America, Belgium, Spain, Italy, North America, Africa and pull lists of names of people, have a look on FM2012 or YouTube and make a rough judgement call whether or not they're worth watching. With a Prem budget, we could fairly quickly get them scouted. I cannot for the life of me fathom what's difficult about any of this, yet we seem to screw around, procrastinate and do nothing.

So far, January has seen us replace Simpson with Debuchy (in all but physical presence) and attempt to replace Ba with Remy. Where's the CB we desperately, desperately need? What are we looking at a 20 year left back for - the sceptical mind wanders to the sale of Santon here. Where are the two strikers? If we want youth to flourish, why has Campbell not appeared since November? If we want to adopt a different playing style and need AM's, then where are they??

As usual with the Toon, more questions than answers. And, as usual, absolute silence from the club.

 

Cock on for me. Good post.

 

Horses?

 

I'd like a centre back and striker but I couldn't say I was confident. I think you can only have confidence in Januray if you are either armed with the reputation of a Man U, or the ability to pay silly wages. We have netiher and will not see any movement in the wage budgets.

I am confident we will not go down regardless of our business in January.

 

Agree, but we did try and sign a striker in the summer, De Jong. I believe that was plan A, and Remy was either plan B or C. And this was while we had Cisse AND Demba. If no strikers come in, there will be some very strong questions to be asked.

I fear that Pardew has been punished for failure in this manner, just as he was rewarded in the summer by Ashley not dissecting the playing staff during the summer.

I think there's time for the situation to be rectified, and I desperately hope it is!

 

Regardless of what happens this transfer window, I hope we can make a strong finish to the season, it will enable us to encourage new signings in the summer, and persuade those that we wish to keep, to stay on.

 

Ok, so a striker quoted as saying (with some regularity) he only wanted a move to Germany was Plan A, where was Summers Plan B? Where was the CB from the Summer as well? It just always seems to stagnate at NUFC, it never seems to go right and the biggest concern of all is that we do not seem either interested or capable of building a squad of players. Every player in under Ashley has replaced someone else, we are not any better off in terms of net playing staff. In fact, we have gone down in terms of 1st team numbers and that is what has been utterly transparent even before this seasons disaster. Arsenal have had as bad if not worse injury issues than us and they sit top-6.

There just seems to be considerable shortfalls in our planning or action.

 

There just seems to be considerable shortfalls in our planning or action.

It has to be about a burning desire to see the club do well, sitting high in the table and really competing for things. This needs to come from the heart and as we are all now only too well aware, our owner does not have that love, desire and ambition for Newcastle United.
Just look at how Redknapp praised Fernandez for not letting the Remy deal fall away!
It's a business, run as a business. Granted he will not want to see us relegated ( for financial ) reasons, but in my opinion he will risk it happening if he thinks he can get away with it.
Am l confident we will see the signings we so desperately need, no not really, and as the end of the month draws closer and based on how long it seems to take for us to complete anything, that confidence is diminishing.

 

Pards should demand to have new players coming in or he should just tell them to get a new whipping boy in.

 

Would Pardew do a Keegan and make a stand as a point of principal ? No l don't think he would to be honest

 

Pards isn't KK that's for sure.

 

Certain we won't get what we need, it's what we specialise in during transfer windows.

 

I doubt we'll get anybody in. There seems to be no news and the quotes coming out suggest we are 'trying', which does not inspire me with confidence. I do believe we will stay up, how I'm not sure. I just hope we are conducting deals privately. It would be so much nicer if we could just see the news that we have signed somebody and nobody has the chance to gazump us, ala cisse last jan.