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bluemoon.
He's not had the biggest budget in the world though has he? He's had two summer transfer windows, one was largely successful (Navas, Negredo, Fernandinho, Jovetic and Demichelis) the other was worse but with the caveat that there was a spending cap imposed.
He's done pretty well with the outgoings too. ~£20m for Negredo, £10m for Jack Rodwell, a fee for Tevez even after all of his bullshit.
Slashman X
Navas, Negredo and Demi were Pellegrini signings, I'm sure of that (Demi especially and that wasn't exactly a smooth transfer). He's also signed a lot of shite and Mangala is looking like a bit of a rip-off (especially with the 3rd party stuff), most of the spending cap went on him so it's not really an excuse
bluemoon.
Demichelis was definitely a Pellegrini signing but I'm not convinced Navas and Negredo were (for a start Navas signed before Pellegrini even officially joined).
I don't think he's got everything right and with hindsight the signings this season clearly weren't great, the Mangala fee is looking like a bad joke, but even those signings seem fairly logical. We needed a new centre-back and defensive midfielder (we did lose Lescott and García after all) so buying one of the most highly-rated young centre-backs in Europe and a defensive midfielder with CL experience isn't exactly the most ridiculous thing to do. The only thing that really stands out as a serious error in judgement from Begiristain there, is using such a large portion of the budget on a player who could realistically be expected to take a season to settle. That was naive at best.
Frankly given how many of our players have played below par this season, it seems pretty clear to me that there are underlying issues - not least the exceptionally open system we play and the general lack of attention to detail - that are effecting the form of established players and this is probably going to extend to the new signings as well.
Who's the other shite he's signed?
Slashman X
Fernando is pure shite. Even a guy who watched about 10 Porto games and a few YouTube videos could tell he was just not gonna suit the Premier League at all. Jovetic has been a massive failure (although that's his own fault really), Sagna hasn't exactly performed but I suppose he was a free.
Yaya is key in how shite we're performing. His lack of effort is dragging Dinho all over the place and dragging whoever is at CB out of defence and leaving massive gaps
Jonas
bluemoon.
I think Navas was set-up by Txiki and Pellegrini just gave his blessing to it. Don't know for certain though.
Mostly agree on Jovetic and Sagna. I don't agree on Fernando though. Whether he fits our intended style of play is up for debate but before he got injured he looked absolutely perfect for the Premier League, he was physical, hard-working and seemed to love a tackle. In my opinion, he's been one of those most impacted by all the shite this season. He's come to a new country and a new club, been asked to play out of position in a very open midfield - I think we can agree he's more defensive midfielder than central midfielder, right? - and to do most of the dirty work and running whilst he's at it. At the same time as he's trying to get the hang of all this, our form as a whole has got worse and worse, it's not a surprise he looks crap at this point. It's hardly a fair reflection on his ability as a player.
I agree about Yaya. For me, most of our problems come back to central midfield. Whether it's a lack of effort on his part or just time catching up with him, we need to replace him and rebuild the midfield. It's hideously unbalanced.
Shola
King Luis
bluemoon.
Shedender
Edit: That also should've been a penalty as well, blatant foul by Lovern imo.
VP.
Was the perfect example of a ref not being strong enough to officiate at this level.
Ninja
They probably would have, but your point about Ozil probably applies to Mata too, they're certainly too similar to play together effectively.
Shola
More just they don't seem to compete for players. - Hazard and Isco are the only two they seem to have lost. Yet willing to pay massive for their own targets.
I think refs bottle subconsciously - why give Newcastle a penalty when they'll probably will get beat anyway? And Carver will take the blame. Mitigate the risk. Amazing how many stonewall penalties we haven't been given though.
Shedender
King Luis
bmg033
Shola
Based Jorge
BR.
Are they not some of your better players?
bluemoon.
We pulled out of the Hazard deal over the agent fees apparently.
I know what you mean though. It's been a trend over the last few years. Hard to say for certain what the reason is but it coincides with the change at the executive level from Garry Cook/Brian Marwood to Ferran Soriano/Txiki Begiristain and also with the onset of FFP. In truth though, even before that despite all the money being splashed around we didn't make that many truly big signings. We tried with Kaka and succeeded with Robinho but other than the summers of 2010 and 2011 - Touré, Silva and Aguero - we've not really made that many really big signings since the takeover.
As for paying big on their own targets, some of that is just bad business, but in fairness City generally have to pay over the odds anyway. We're the oil-money club, cash rich and stupid with it. Rightly or wrongly, every club expects us to pay big bucks for their player and that's only amplified when you're dealing with clubs like Porto.
Sam
Shola
They never actually turn up though. Tiote has barely played for a couple of seasons. Sissoko looks uninterested, and Cisse has been good but only available for about 30%, Debuchy and Remy were also like this last year, Newcastle need a lot more from star players - Attitude and Commitment.
Last year at least Pardew showed some balls and dropped Ben Arfa and played Gosling ahead of him.
Poe
Apart from Cisse though, he tries his heart out when he plays.
Need a better chairman, owner, managing director, scout, manager, coaching team and players.
Shola
Number 1
Sissoko has shown a lack of effort for most of the last 16 months, Tiote has been cack since the 5th place season, and Coloccini should have been let go in January 2013 when he kept bitching and whining about leaving.
I don't think Cisse is a problem player, but he's missed an insultingly large amount of football, so if we're to keep him, he needs his indiscipline and injury problems worked on.
Clear out's clearly gonna be required. But I doubt we'll really get rid of 11+ players in one go and actually replace all of them.
Poe
We've (probably) stayed up this year so he won't see our completely substandard squad as a problem.
We need a proper coach who is allowed to bring in his own coaching staff and have a say on who he's going to buy. The club is rotten.
Croy
Poe
Of the 4 regular Englishman affecting our starting XI (Williamson, Ameobi, Colback and Carver) there's only Colback I wouldn't want to see dipped in a vat of acid and shot in front of their families.
Shola
Really fucking hate David Conn.
Carroll.