If We Lose Against Reading!!!!

and results go against us this weekend, do you think that would even spring Fat Mike into action or will he continue to gamble???

 

Ha of course not!!! I mean we will be in a worse position to sign anyone than we already are now. Mike Ashley does not care if we get relegated as we are set up financially to cope plus he would cash in on Cabaye, Ben Arfa, Santon and Tiote and nobody would bat an eyelid.

 

That's obviously not brilliant in the short-term, but as a long-term supporter , surely you are happy about that fact? I'd rather not be worrying about the club going bust around the corner

 

It's not bad, however I think the fans of this club deserve better than the fixxy pop. One of the things that keeps me going is the premier league coverage etc. The fact is supporting a club whold at least be about dreaming and under Ashley there it's like being dead not asleep.

I'm not saying thrwo money away, however the club should have spent in the summer at least spend the extra money for finishing 5th - if we have 8.5 million now we had it then. The fact is Mike Ashley is still getting it wrong when it comes to gambling. His customer service skills are disgusting.

 

Yes, we obviously should be offering over the top wages and screwing ourselves over long term for short term benefit of beating Reading....

 

No but we should have at least got some players in to aid us withing our wage structure. We are going around trying to capture pearls when some rocks would do fine right now.

Anyone I mean litterally anyone better than the Ameobis and Williamson

 

Hoping he springs into action

 

I personally don't think we have an preordained right, or especially deserve, to be in the premier league because we turn up every week on mass... The team decides the division, we go because we want to be entertained and want to support the club, irrespective of league position. There's nothing wrong with the Fizzy pop league, you get more fixtures for a cheaper ticket price, and when we went down they showed a lot of our games LIVE on BBC. There's also less of the corporate suits going to games and more of the actual supporters.

As for dreaming, I thought you were an uber-realist? Ashley should precisely be your cup of tea.

And we did try to spend money in summer by the way. As a business man, Ashley assessed our options and decided against buying at inflated prices, because we could buy at better prices in January due to the contract/happiness status of targets. I have no problem with that, and in my opinion he couldn't (and shouldn't) have preemptively just filled the squad with players to cope with the worst injury crisis most of us have seen at the club...

 

It's all a matter of perspective - we let the Debuchy deal drag, it meant we got him for around 4.5m as opposed to 7.5/8m - we've saved £3m, but that is only about 4 places in the Premier League (going on previous stats - 0.75m for each higher premier league position). Could Having Debuchy meant we'd have been higher up the table or will that £3m be spent elsewhere giving us an advantage later in the season? No-one knows, but when you gamble on the side of austerity, these are things that have to be considered!

 

I have a theory that's worthy of the X-Files and it goes something like this.

Mike has a plan to keep Newcastle in the Premiership, but only just. Whilst he can get the side ticking over about mid-table and perhaps a little lower then he can start to milk the club for what it's worth. Every few season he's going to need a good season so that he can attract, en masse, a pile of exceptional players which he can then sell on at a profit.

But for the rest of the time if he maintains mid-table or thereabouts then he can tick along nicely taking money out of his club.

Of course he needs a manager whom he can trust to do this. And he's got his old mate, Alan P, to do this for him.

I can't see Ashley ever wanting Newcastle to break into the Top Four because that would cost him more than he could possibly earn, or at least put more risk into his business enterprise.

Ashley won't get rid of Pardew; he's too valuable for him, hence the extraordinary length of his contract. As a business arrangement Ashley has got it how he wants. As for the football and the expectations, I'm sorry, it's not going to happen when he's in charge.

I think that this is one of the reasons why Chris H was shown the door; he wanted to go and win and that will never do.

Mark my words; it will be this season and next of nail biting relagation worries and then the seaason after that it will be a top six finish. Then another two or three poor years, a good year and so on.

 

I think we've been incredibly unfortunate to be honest, which has put pressure on how we conduct business and intensified fans thoughts towards the board. We started the campaign with pretty much everyone fit and healthy (a rarity), so adding the back-ups and youths we did seemed decent at the time. If Norwich, QPR, Reading, Sunderland, Villa... etc had the number of injuries we've had, they'd be in single figures for points this season most likely! Yet I think our back-ups are better than we've seen so far.

I just can't blame the board for our current situation, it was a gamble not paying the extra fees in summer, but on paper getting to January we could and probably should have been in a much stronger position in the league, so it was a fair gamble in my opinion. They do need to help out now, and I think they're trying everything they can possibly do at this stage. Let's hope 1/2 more come through the door.

 

Thanks, I know when to (and not to) renew my ST now!

 

Heard quite a few people saying they weren't renewing their ST's next season, they reckon they've had enough of the off the field nonsense, and some of them are long term ST holders.

 

I'm not renewing next year in truth, but that's only because I'm after more permanent work than the temporary contracts I've been getting, and in the current economy companies have so many applicants to choose from that you have to be available and flexible for their needs, and weekend hobbies like football matches allow them to dismiss you out of hand. It also might mean leaving the area, unfortunately

I'm sure I'll still get to games, even if I have to start going to away ones!

 

People seemed to accept things a bit better that season.

There wasn't nearly as much off the field dispute as there is now.

 

You'll enjoy the away games, all the fans as one in the same area and all getting together with the chants.

 

There are many similarities... The fans are nervous, we're playing poorly, our more expensive players aren't performing etc... The biggest similarity is the amount of games we have to play at irregular times, which I think has traditionally been a massive disadvantage to us. The year we went down we had about two Saturday 3 o'clock kick-offs all season, and with European commitments we've had the same issues. When we came up, the pundits used the old "Newcastle haven't won a 3 o'clock kick-off in the premier league for two years" stat, willfully neglecting that we were in the championship the season before, and the season before that we didn't have many fixtures for that time! I think Sky has a lot of power in shaping the season beyond their financial input.

We did have more points in that relegation season though!