I remember hearing Southampton have a young left-back in their ranks that their academy people said was a better prospect than Shaw, although I don't know how true that is. At the very least you wouldn't bet against them finding such a player.

Lallana might be trickier to replace.

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12 May 2014 10:56:48

By SpinSwimScream | On 12 May 2014 - 10:38 AM

I really like Delph, he'd be class for you think

I don't think he's the Cabaye replacement - I think that's going to be Remy Cabella, given he's leaving Montpellier - but as an upgrade on Anita, I would definitely be happy with that.

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12 May 2014 10:35:06

By Rick87 | On 12 May 2014 - 09:20 AM

To be fair Lambert hasn't even got the excuse that he had no money to spend from Lerner, last summer he paid over £18m for the likes of Helenius and Okore who have six appearances between them, the ever disappointing Alexander Tonev, Jed Steer who hasn't played a single game and Libor Kozak who got his leg broken by one of his own team mates just as he was starting to adapt to English football.
The defence needs strengthening more than anything, Baker and Clark are a ongoing comedy at the back, Joe Bennett is shit and Lowton and Luna are inconsistent.

Tbf I went to see Villa play Newcastle back in September (how time flies) and Okore did look decent before getting a season-ending injury.

Mostly seems to have been a miss on the transfers though, not least with the uneven defence.

There's a rumour Newcastle want Delph and Weimann for £15million, although I'm unconvinced by the latter.

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12 May 2014 00:53:44

By Poe | On 11 May 2014 - 21:51 PM

Apparently he sent Shola off for sarcasm

Fat cunt.

Given Mourinho got told off for this after Sunderland, is sarcasm now banned in football ffs?

#165203 Newcastle Thread

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12 May 2014 00:14:31

Quite.

So... what's next?

I don't think Pardew's going to be shown the door but he has to improve or else next season is going to be unbearable. No matter who is manager, investment has to be made and given we got almost £79M in TV revenue and prize money for a top 10 finish (apparently), plus the profit of transfers, there really is no excuse for not providing a transfer budget this time.

#165125 Transfer Rumours 2013/14

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11 May 2014 20:14:28

Sky reporting £27million bid by Man United for Luke Shaw

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11 May 2014 19:43:19

By Shola | On 11 May 2014 - 17:08 PM

Two sending offs, an offside goal, and several Liverpool kicks around the area. And ZERO fouls by Martin Skrtel.

Doesn't Skrtel get away with fouls that should be penalties every other week?

#165015 Barclays Premier League 2013/14

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11 May 2014 15:25:47

Well... that fell apart quickly.

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11 May 2014 14:23:53

Well fuck me I did not see that coming.

#164867 New four-point plan to boost England football

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10 May 2014 19:34:05

The Premier League themselves don't seem keen on the idea, but the clubs, or at least certain high profile managers, are.

But its moot anyway - the bigwigs at the PL, FL and Conference are all against the B-team premise, and unless they can be convinced, I don't think that part's gonna happen. There's other stuff that might work if implemented, but that B-team one is the headline grabbing figure and also its most unwrokable aspect.

#164810 Newcastle Thread

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10 May 2014 15:24:16

They banned the Telegraph for saying something about dressing room divisions. It was the Independent who did the line about fans chanting anti-Semitic stuff about Ashley, although I haven't heard anything about that story since it first appeared.

I swear fans of every team have some people that say "these journalists don't understand the club". Lower league clubs and even the bottom 10 of the Premier League to an extent frequently seem to fill comment boards with this shit.

To my view, journalists are analysing our season as a whole and the results game over it, which largely paints a reasonable campaign by virtue of a top 10 finish. But that's one way of looking at it, and most fans, or at least the vocal ones, view other ways of seeing the year - either that the second half of the season has been fucking dreadful, or that we're still continuing the mistakes made since blowing the advantage of 5th in 2011-12 by ignoring much-needed investment, or that Ashley is still blundering as he always has done. There's no real way one way of looking at it.

#164658 Newcastle Thread

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09 May 2014 23:45:35

One way or another with Pardew, a decision will probably come out of the end of season meeting next week.

I stand by my earlier thought - while results since Boxing Day have been ludicrously unacceptable, the minimum expectation was top 10 and as he met it, Pardew will be sticking around. Not that this has stopped speculation beginning - Christophe Galtier of St. Etienne has been linked with us by L'Equipe.

Saying that, I'm pretty sure L'Equipe are meant to be hideously unreliable so we can ignore that rumour.

By Poe | On 08 May 2014 - 02:07 AM

tbf - the media are never going to support you when you ban them from the stadium for no real reason.

True. Other local newspapers do it as well - Stoke's papers weren't amused after Port Vale banned them for doing a story on where missing overdue replica shirts were, and I seem to recall after Billy Davies and his superiors banned a number of journalists and publications from Nottingham Forest games, some titles seemed to be almost cheering Davies out of the door.

#164613 New four-point plan to boost England football

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09 May 2014 19:56:32

By bmg033 | On 09 May 2014 - 16:16 PM

About 6 or 7 players went from Spurs to Swindon this season, half of them on loan. The others i'd imagine have some sort of buy back clause. There is the proof that these "new strategic loan partnerships" aren't new at all. The FA showing once again that they know sweet FA.

The article I red said that the deal between Spurs and Swindon is the nearest to a so called "footballing nursery", so its more of a unique arrangement in English clubs.

Not so much with the Chelsea-Vitesse arrangement, though I'm pretty sure part of that is primarily set up to dodge work permit regulations.

#164559 New four-point plan to boost England football

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09 May 2014 15:24:06

The plan as a whole feels half-baked, and it also feels quite dumb that they didn't bother to consult the Conference when they and everyone below are the ones being shafted.

I don't see it being implemented because its just unworkable and encourages player hoarding. At the moment, Chelsea have 30 players of a variety of nationalities out on loan and they're never going to use all of them in the first team squad as they have the money to buy the best players which begs the question "what is the fucking point?"

This arrangement as well where "a new strategic loan partnership system that would allow clubs to loan up to eight players to a single Football League side and retain more control over them" is also bizarre, as it means Premier League teams can have B and essentially a C team.

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08 May 2014 00:06:20

By Sam | On 07 May 2014 - 23:15 PM

Yeah, good luck with that.

Be hilarious if that happened.

#164072 Barclays Premier League 2013/14

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07 May 2014 20:38:14

Brilliant goal from Toure.

Can't see City fucking up now.

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06 May 2014 18:21:12

By Slashman X | On 06 May 2014 - 17:08 PM

They should at least with til EPPPPPPPPPP is in full effect and see what the outcomes of that are

Aye its bad enough now even though they have to pay. It'll be even worse given that the terms of EPPP means they can hoover up any remotely promising talent for peanuts. Some clubs are already closing down academies, and even then, the damn thing only passed because the Premier League behaved like cunts and refused to give any money to youth development unless this plan was passed.

You'd like to think they could create a situation that pleases everyone, but no. Apparently what's good for the Premier League is good enough for the England team. Equally, it just seems like a lazy attempt to emulate Spain, even though the academy graduates of 2 or 3 teams comprise their entire national squad. I'm not dumb enough to say it doesn't work for them, because it does. But its too disparate here, and this is the wrong solution.

#163469 Barclays Premier League 2013/14

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06 May 2014 10:30:23

I'm really bewildered by the Football Writer's Award giving Gerrard second best player in the Prem. Why? He's not even one of Liverpool's 5 best players this season (Suarez, Sturridge, Coutinho, Sterling, Henderson and Mignolet to an extent have all been better)

I wouldn't have minded if Liverpool had won it - they've waited a while (not as long as Newcastle ffs), played the best football, and their manager is a reasonable fellow. But just because I find Man City and Chelsea annoying doesn't mean I'm suddenly going to campaign for Liverpool to do it.

Anyway, in other news: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/27289819

Something about this really does not work as an idea, be it the lazy copying of Spanish ideas to try and emulate them, making fixture arranging unnecessarily complicated and the fact it compromises the Football League as an entity. But also, why not just either make teams include younger talents in a first team squad, or tell them to reduce this unnecessary "buy everyone else's players then send 25 on loan" that they all fucking do?

#163401 Newcastle Thread

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05 May 2014 23:56:17

Aye its exceptionally over the top, although banning them probably gave them free reign to go to bombastic levels. The Sunday Sun backpage after the defeat by Stoke (I think it was?) was hilarious, but after that, its just been absurd.

In terms of AP, I don't think he's going to be dismissed. We're now mathematically assured of top 10, which was the minimum aim, and its certainly an improvement on 2012-13, which even he will admit would have got him fired if it wasn't for that fecking contract. Something, however, has to change big time for next season, whether its in tactics, player coaching, player motivation or squad investment, otherwise this all-consuming negativity is just going to continue.

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05 May 2014 22:45:09

Hell Jamie Carragher was his fucking teammate for 4 seasons.

I think he was referring to fans calling him shit, which has been going on all season long. But if you wanna insulate yourself from fan criticism, don't have a Twitter account.

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05 May 2014 22:22:23

Liverpool getting Pardewed.

In fairness, how the fuck did they throw that away?

It's easy to forsee City failing to win one of their games, but they're not going to lose either.

#163175 Barclays Premier League 2013/14

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05 May 2014 15:53:36

Aye its a strange puzzle. Chelsea were much better this time last year, even in spite of their incapable frontman Torres, and were still reasonably tight at the back. Yet although they're stronger at the back, the midfield has lost the verve and the strikeforce is just useless.

#162869 Barclays Premier League 2013/14

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04 May 2014 17:02:43

Norwich really should've bought on another striker and gone for it.

#162794 Newcastle Thread

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04 May 2014 11:27:03

Oh yeah... that was a surreal time of things when the nearest challengers to the top 5 were Charlton, Bolton, Fulham, Middlesbrough and Birmingham City - both in terms of ability and in the fact none of them will be in the Premiership next season.
EDIT: In a quick Google, it said the Liverpool team that beat Newcastle to 4th in the 2003-04 season got the same amount of points Manchester United currently have.

I don't really remember big calls for "Robson out" but then I was 11 at the time, and the players were more of the problem. I do think I remember John Hall a few months after Souness' appointment saying he would have fired Robson after the UEFA Cup defeat by Marseille that year, but that would probably have made shit worse.

In terms of this season, it was easy to worry when JFK strolled into town. Its easy to be paranoid in those sort of situations, and also to create elaborate conspiracy theories surrounding it. I suppose him gone means there's no chance of them coming to fruition, or at least for the moment, but a failure to properly replace Cabaye has been a problem in the second half of the campaign. Alongside either tying Remy down or replacing him, the biggest summer priority is getting in that player, whoever it may be.

#162783 Newcastle Thread

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04 May 2014 10:20:37

I'm not sure how many people walked out as the estimates are all over the shop. All I know is that more did walk out on 69 than on 60. I'm going to guess about 4,000 max, but it was probably/certainly less than that. Certainly, nufc.com did estimate more stayed for the post-match appreciation laps than walked out on 60/69. I'm not sure what I expected tbh - I thought it'd be a situation were either nobody left or, if not quite everybody, than the majority left, and it wasn't really either of those.

I think the agitation, or at least it is in my case, is the premise that we wasted a good position in such a crap fashion. Going from 6th on Boxing Day to showing form that would be bottom from that day out, combined with some utterly tragic performances in that time period is a weird combination. Yes, we wanted top 10 at the start and are going to get it, and I don't think I expected us to challenge for top 4, but even so, its pretty annoying to waste what was a promising position and in such a hopeless manner. The fact the nearest replacement to Cabaye is a Dutch 'striker' who seems to have his feet on backwards probably didn't help.

Some fans are certainly fearful of the premise of this carrying over to next season. Certainly, I'm reminded of West Brom last season - good first half, lackluster second, largely reliant on the goals of a loan player. With any luck, we won't emulate what they did this season.

I know it was almost 10 years ago but I'm still not sure why we fired Bobby Robson - yes, 5th was underwhelming after being 3rd the year before, but the no confidence shown in him during pre-season in 2004 was appalling and the botched replacement process spat out a contender for our worst ever manager for no fucking reason.

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04 May 2014 00:31:25

By Sam | On 03 May 2014 - 20:18 PM

Sunderland face fight over 'lenient' punishment for ineligible player

They'll try anything.

Imagine if he'd actually contributed to Sunderland's goals or points tallies and a similar lack of punishment happened to them - the uproar would be massive, and justifiable.

This... dunno. If anything I seem to recall Sunderland only beat MK Dons in the Capital One Cup because he'd been subbed off.