Paphos People

It beggers belief but only at Newcastle do we have a team struggling for survival, struggling to win games that when a transfer window opens, we start bringing in players for the youth & reserve team with no signs of anyone coming into the 1st team

What the hell are they playing at bringing in under 18's when we should be looking at players who can start our next game, players who can help us fight away from the bottom 3 instead of bringing in players who'll probably get to play for us in the CCC

I don't understand, I'm perplexed at the reasoning behind this, should they be doing that during the summer not now when we need experienced players

You imply there is reasoning behind it - I just don't think there is any more. All the signs are that Mike Ashley has lost interest and doesn't give a toss either way whether we go down or not.

Keegan saw it coming, and it's even dawning on JFK now....

I doubt thats true as he'd be mad to let us go down after all that money he's spent paying off our debt, as he wouldn't get half of it back if we are relegated & no man would throw away £250m, no one

Calm down Pete. Little Dennis is in France today trying to tie up a midfielder and a defender.
Gary

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So close yet so far away

He threw away 300 million gambling on HBOS shares, and HBOS didn't have 50,000 employees calling for his head and (allegedly) threatening his family.....

I question the 250 million figure anyway - Keith Harris suggested recently that the "debt repayments" were actually structured as a loan from Ashley to the club, so theoretically could be called in any time, so that just leaves his inital 134 million investment, of which large chunks will already have been clawed back by trousering the estimated 40 million Sky money and flogging 10,000 3 year season tickets at over a grand each. Where's all this money gone, because it certainly hasn't been on strengthening the team? Could it be NUFC is actually subsidising his other struggling businesses?

The next 2 weeks will tell us an awful lot about his intentions - a lack of new players coupled with a home derby defeat on the 1st Feb could see a complete meltdown.....

Well maybe its because he's no longer a Billionaire & only worth £800m that is stopping him spending any money on the team but if he lets us get relegated, then the asset that is NUFC won't be worth half what he payed for it & I don't care how much money he has/had, he's not going to want to let it go without a profit & the further we slip doen the leagues, the less worth we become & Ashley isn't the sort of business man to lose money!!

The HBOS money he lost was a calculated risk & he lost £300m on that, if it had gone the other way, he'd have made over a billion on it, so I think he understood the risk... the TOON on the other hand won't get him that sort of income, no matter how hard he tries to sell as no one will pay that for a club, not even Chelski

From what I've read, Keith Harris has stated the club is debt free as Ashley paid the £100m debts off, that's what was written in the financial statement they sent out, I've not seen anything about any loans to Ashley outstanding!!

Well I read in The Sun today, so it must be true, that FJK has £10m and if he wants to spend more than that he has to sell.
Hey Boro and Us haven't even got that much !
Gary

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So close yet so far away

And today's instalment.....not content with Barton and Enrique swapping punches we learn that NZogbia and young Carroll had a go in training. Kinnear tells the paper he likes a bit of passion ? eh ? does he think it's good for team morale to knack each other ? if it was everyone would be at it !

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So close yet so far away

And Pete/ Captain Nutmeg, don't you think that Cashley is teaching you all a lesson ?
He was obviously hurt by the slagging off the geordie hordes gave him and he hasn't forgiven you.
He still can't show his ugly pugnacious face at the games and he's still in a huff.
The cockney mafia are teaching you a lesson and maybe you've only got yourselves to blame.
Gary

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So close yet so far away

Gary mate, he said he was coming back after the transfer window is closed, so I wonder if that means he'll give us money in the last week to get some basement bargain players

Citeh bid £6m for Given, they're having a laugh, Ashley say he wants £14m or he's not going anywhere, I wonder if they offer £10m-£12m he'll accept it

He's showing you numpties who's boss.
Gary

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So close yet so far away

According to today's papers the fight between Charlie boy and Young Carroll continued back in the changing room and then again in the car park. On each occaision they had to be pulled apart by officials from the club. It seems neither of them wants to call a truce until it is sorted out once and for all. It has been reported they are looking for a venue away from the club and its officials to finish it off for good.

Not good for morale if this is true.

I suppose you can't blame them, after all if it is OK for the manager to have 3 outstanding misconduct charges against him he can hardly complain about the players having a bit of a ruck, can he?

Seriously, the club need to sort themselves out very quickly otherwise they could find themselves in real danger of going down, which I am sure none of us really want.

As far as the Given affair is concerned it does look like he will go to City at some stage. The danger for the Toon is if they hold on for the £14m being quoted and City play hard ball you may not get the money until the end of the transfer window and that won't leave you time to bring in new players. Remember what happened to Spurs with Berbatov.

Cheers

John

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Never let truth get in the way of a good rumour.

So much for not being able to sell the club, when Cesspool & Chelski are both being linked with takeovers this week
Cesspool by the Kuwaiti who was interested in us just before Xmsa & some German investers are apparently ready to offer Abramovich £750m for Chealski

So has Ashley being lying to the fans yet again regards his attempts at selling us

As I suspected, the accounts released now show that the money Ashley put towards paying off our debts is actually just a loan, repayable with interest as and when he sees fit. So we've basically swapped one set of creditors for another.

Accounts also show a wage bill of over 70% of our approx 100 million income, so some of the high earners need shifting asap. We have the likes of Geremi, Duff, Viduka and Smith pulling in upwards of 3 million a year each and giving virtually nothing in return, while at least we won't have to worry about Owen's 6 million annual income after this season....

Well at least 4 of those 5 you've mentioned won't be here come next season, the only one I can see staying is Duff & that's only because of the Irish connection he as with Kinnear

I know you say Owen gets £6m a season, so where does the other £64m go on wages, we surely don't have players worth paying that much each season for, as we don't have that big a squad, so who gets what

That's the wage bill for the whole club, so includes JFK, Llambias, Wise, all the coaching staff etc. Plus apparently Mort got 1.3 million.

For the players, I don't know obviously, but would hazard a guess that they're roughly in the following brackets:

6m - Owen
4m - Geremi, Viduka
3m - Smith, Barton, Martins, Duff, Given
2m - Butt, N,Zogbia, Beye, Cacapa, Colcoccini, Enrique, Guthrie, Taylor, Jonas, Harper

There's 51 million accounted for....

I've now heard you are in for Bobby Robson till the end of the season......... I mean Bryan, Bryan Robson, Captain Marvel
I hear they are making a film about Joe Kinnear's time in charge at Sid James, yes, it's gonna be called.....................
Four Wins and a Funeral !!!
Gary

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So close yet so far away

Oh Gary you are funny

Yes it's a tossoff between Ol Tel or Robson jnr to take charge while Joe is resting.... the only problem is, that crap hasn't come from the club, as they've said Hughton & Calderwood will take charge over the next 2 matches & if they do ok, then they'll stay in charge until Kinnear is fit again

So mock as you will the failures of the TOON, as you're manager is still on his honeymoon period, which as we know don't last long once you lose a couple of games

Guess who boys?

Sorry I have not posted for a while, been enjoying the first couple of weeks retirement. I have however been reading the posts and see nothing really has changed has it. The Toon are still rubbish, Spurs are no better, the Smoggies are already in the Championship next year and for a few hours last night Sunderland were in the top half of the league. I must be honest I did have to re-check the last one there as I thought it was an error.

Now I have a confession to make, this afternoon I was sitting at home after finishing lunch when the phone went. My friend had a spare ticket for the Everton game and asked if I fancied it, so without thinking it through properly I agreed and an hour later was standing outside Sid James Park. What a mistake to make, the match was rubbish.

Everton didn't look like they wanted to win and Newcastle didn't look like the knew how to win. I thought Harper was very poor, he couldn't kick the ball straight throughout the game. Bassong was OK but the other defenders looked scared everytime they had the ball. The midfielders ran around like headless chickens, when they weren't kicking lumps out of the opposition and the attack was non existant, how did Lovenkrands miss that one in the first half? Even when Martins came on for Shola he hardly touched the ball. All in all a very poor game.

Also interesting was the crowd. There were lots of empty seats across the stadium, there was very little vocal support for the team, at one stage in the second half we could clearly hear one chap on the other side of the ground trying to start off a Toon Army chant. After about 5 goes even he shut up. The most vocal they got was either when shouting at Shola, who actually thought they were cheering for him when he went off, or at the Ref who got the blame for sending off Nolan for what was obviously a very high and dirty challange and I was about 60 yards away from it when it happened.

I suppose at the beginning of the game if you had offered the Toon a point they would have taken it, especially with 2 further hard games to come, however the manner of their play does make you wonder how many more wins there can be for they this season. At least thanks to the Boro and West Brom there is likely to be only one place left to fight over.

I also noticed Mr A shley was in the crowd but he seemed to get away without any abuse, have the Toon army final decided to accept him and his set up?

Hope to posting more often now I am caught up with everything.

Cheers

John

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Never let truth get in the way of a good rumour.

Hi John,

Watched the Everton game down the George - have to agree it was absolute rubbish, but would have taken the point beforehand and certainly when down to 10 men.

I still think we're in big trouble - we've a shocking list of games coming up which could quickly see our 5 point cushion from the drop zone eroded. Big, big game away at Bolton this weeked where we really need to avoid defeat.

The situation with Ashley seems to be something of an uneasy truce at the moment - the fans seem to have realised that with the transfer window shut then any further protests are only going to have a negative effect on the players, and we really can't afford that.

The big backlash I think will be this summer, when I fully expect season ticket sales to be seriously down (even if we are still in the Premier) especiallly with this noises we're hearing about JFK getting a new contract and only 8 million in the transfer pot, plus we're going to be losing our Captain for free - there just seems to be no cause for optimism any more.

Ah Well

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So close yet so far away