Master Ashley and His Puppets on a String

Over the past few months I have repeatedly remained optimistic about how well the transfer dealings at NUFC have come along. I have relentlessly backed the owner and gaffer on their assurances that the money will be spent. We brought in a couple of promising signings in the likes of Marveaux, Ba and Cabaye, and truly felt , you know what he is sticking to his word, he is bringing in players.

When people back in July when the transfer door flung open, prematurely questioning the whereabouts of the £35 million quid, I responded with the belief that all in good time the money will be spent to bring players in there is plenty of transfer time left. As we kept getting told and assured that “ Were leading in the transfer market”.

Reams and reams of paper reminding us of how close they are to getting payers in , Gervinho, Gameiro etc...but oh apparently so close but couldn’t quite reach terms. The fact is Erding would rather play 3rd choice than play here. Oh and hows about the patronising speech from Pardew how these free players you know aren’t actually free..

Now with 12 days to go until the first game, the broken promises keep appearing, more recently with Pardew telling us we need just one more player...

ONE MORE F****** PLAYER!? You kidding me, we got 35 million in the bank we’ve brought in free players and a 4 million player,( which we got back) got rid of our top scorer and team leader in Nolan , ousted our best player of the season in Barton by having the audacity to not offer the lad a new contract!?

Im all for as I’ve expressed so detailed before, Ashley’s idea of some sort of business model by reducing wages so that we don’t spiral into debt, but come on how much puppeteering can you continue with , asking Pardew to drip feed us with all this Bulls**t!?

Fact is we have sold key players yet brought no one in of any value, that doesn’t mean fork 20 million quid for DJ Campbell “because hes a striker” but show the fans that you’re willing to spend to make us a better team.

Arsenal have the same problem but the BIG difference is this..... Wenger doesn’t come out with repeated bull about how the money will be spent, how they are leading in the transfer window, players on the radar etc...this way the arsenal fans aren’t too pis**ed when no one turns up in the summer. Whereas us toon fans have more or less been promised a whole new team with all this so called cash.

Im one of the more optimistic toon fans but even I am finding it difficult to show continued support to owners that has no drive, no ambition and no heart.

Shameful. For the first time that Sheikh bloke down the road is a far more appealing prospect.

Rant Over .. Have a nice day

 

Your right about all of this. Today seems to be the darkest day in terms of we are getting pig sick of the sh** thats going on. 01 August 2011 a new month aswell but the anger is there and we are getting more and more frustrated. Now this Barton announcement this afternoon could well be him out of the door and that will push a lot of Toon fans over the edge.

We had 4 key players in our promotion race and 4 key players last season.

Carroll - Gone
Nolan - Gone
Enrique - Likely going
Barton - Gone at the end of the season.

What club in the right mind lets this happen.......... I get so angry I have to go and beat the wife... back soon. (P.S I wouldnt dream of doing that she would kick my balls in)

 

Anyone who calls us fans that new exactly was going to happen, Pessimistic. can go **** themselves. Even an eternally optimistic individual as this OP has seen the wood for the trees.

Being optimistic hurts our club, because its a nice little word for 'in denial'. Unfortunately.

We seem pessmistic, because the reality is actually dire. Not our fault....! Keep Smiling. : D

 

In fairness Gameiro and Gervinho were nothing but rumours that the internet got excited about, not serious transfer targets hence the number of 'if we get him I'll cut my penis off' posts. Both players moved to teams in Europe as expected in the end which we can't boast.

Our team today is stronger than the team that finished last season, with 30 days left of the transfer window, I'm not panicking yet.

 

Gervinho and Gameiro were probably fake bids to appease the fans, shame we all saw through it.

 

De Nile can't score for **** tho blud.

Oh and why's this on the Arsenal board?

 

Because I mention arsenal

 

To be fair I think Pardew even confirmed that Gameiro was our top target and rejected us. The Gervinho stuff was not confirmed. I don't see how our team is better than last season, it looks more or less identical to me. We are hoping Cabaye and Marveaux will prove better than Jonas and Nolan but we don't know yet and Ba looks pretty poor but he's got a decent record, identical to Best's

 

I'm not entirely sure why people think things are so 'dire'.
I don't see myself as deluded, or any other classic anti Ashley buzzwords such as puppet or cockney mafia etc. We've actually had an ok transfer window, we've gone in for players, allegedly, and not got them, as is the case with almost every other club. But we have brought in good players and saved money, it seems people would be happy of we'd paid more for these signings because then this elusive £35m would have been spent.
The problem we have is that everything we do is feverishly discussed on blogs, forums and twitter (the nufc activity on here is testament to this) and soon snowballs, with lots of emotion added to the equation. We've done a lot better than most clubs so far in the window, and yes, we desperately need a striker, but other than that were doing ok, we have a great midfield, one good keeper in Krul, a decent defence and as with last season, were lacking up front.
I'd be furious if we don't sign a striker but I suspect we will, one thing we know about Ashley is that he is no fool in terms of money, and going down cost him millions, and thus made the club unsellable. All the half-brained conspiracy theories about Ashley pocketing or gambling the Carroll money is laughable, there is no way one of Britains most successful businessmen would risk going to jail for embezzling what is to him a paltry amount of money. However people don't look at our club in a rational way, which has always been the case, and the lack of communication from owners is a major problem which is unfortunately exacerbated by the instant and highly vocal hatred from our fans after every decision.
A little bit of patience and context I think is required overall, we could be in a much worse situation...

 

I'd argue a lot of clubs in the EPL are going this route right now; that said, we should aspire to be better than those clubs.

I just wish everyone would shut the **** up and go about their business the way it should be done, that includes the manager, the players, and a lot of the dumbass fans too (e.g. some twit who on SSN commented that we should buy John Carew)

 

this this this

 

But its not stronger than the team that started last season. Therefore we have not progressed.

 

From what I've watched of Cabaye in the past 12 months, and his performance yesterday (when having to do the job of himself and Tiote combined), I think we'll all be saying his overall game is far superior to Nolan's (especially as time passes and Nolan only gets older) -- but I do know what you're saying

 

I think we are all aware that all teh 35 mill wont be spent on players I would rather that than 20 million on someone like Carlton Cole, what we ask is for a few quid to bring in a striker , if it costs 10 mill then happy. We understand that he needs to pump money in what he lost. A bit of honesty is all we ask. To go from wanitng to bring in 3 players to one in matter of weeks is silly to be frank.

 

Time will tell frankly. The only difference is Carroll, a player who spent half of last season out injured anyway, as did Ba and Best. Carroll was without doubt a phenomenal prescence in the the air and bossed the league early doors, but if our new passing midfield can fire on all cylinders thats no longer the type of player we need. Any striker we have (or bring in) should hopefully no longer need to feed off scraps.

I'll admit that I'm an optimist, but given that I've already paid for next season and I'm hugely looking forward to a week on Saturday I just can't share in the gloom. I'm not expecting a result against Arsenal (far from it), but actually seeing the team play competitive football should hopefully be the antidote to the 'oh no, we lost a friendly', 'aargh, Bartons talking ****e again' nonsense that means that in this age of Twitter and messageboards every last thing gets blown up into something huge due to an absence of anything else to talk about.

 

I tihnk the only real difference is Carroll who is much better than Ba, no real difference in the team other than that, I reckon Cabaye could well prove to be better than Nolan as mentioned by Colo above.

 

I reckon this is the key point though. What kept us up essentially last season? Nolan and Carrolls goals. Where are we getting those from now? The spine of your team in the PL is vital. We are still strong in all of those areas except the strikers. I hope Ba, Best, Shola etc prove me wrong but I just can't see it. I think our midfield is stronger. Defensively we are weaker if Jose goes. We've just got to be careful for me. I want the debt gone but these two areas not being sorted and getting rid of Barton? Bit risky for me.

 

It is exactly this attitude that is the reason Mike Ashley will never sell Newcastle United - no matter what he does, some people will always make an argument for him.

Cast your minds back before this Barton farce or Nolan not getting the contract he wanted, or Carroll not getting the contract he wanted, or Chris Hughton being sacked, or Kevin Keegan being treated in an illegal manner with the club being sued... hmm, quite a lot of **** happening and yet no real positives.

Enjoy...

 

I'm quite confident that Cabeye will do a good job for us but it would have been so much better if he'd been doing it with Joey still in the team.

I'm not overly confident about Ba though.