I'm stumped. A little video post to celebrate one of the brave players who had the courage to join the campaign: [YOUTUBE]NC54A2PFwqw&feature=related[/YOUTUBE]
I'm fairly sure Blackburn's big rivalry is with Burnley.. and Bolton's is probably with Wigan or Bury.. but I don't really give a shit about either of those teams. With Bolton vs Blackburn it's just a bit of fun and games, we both want to win but it's not heated in anyway it's definitely one of the friendliest derbies. Every club loves twatting Burnley though, just because they are dirty racist **********, although you do have to laugh slightly (in a none racist way of course) when they just abused Ian Wright when he played for them.
I'm shocked out how tight things are right now. Hull is in 8th place and is only 6 points clear of the relegation zone. Arsenal is in 5th and only six points in back of first. It's likely to be the closest finish in years at both ends of the table.
Well, if we don't turn it around, we're certainly one of the doomed. Better bring the Mackems down with us if we do go.
It's kinda odd that Sunderland and Newcastle are going forward with what are basically interim managers.
I don't think Ashley could have gotten anybody else, honestly. It's sad because we're only going down, down, down with the current structure and current climate up in Newcastle. It's not a very good situation all the way around. Ironically, the person with the most venom initially directed at him (Dennis Wise) is the one person I'd like to see stay. The rest of them can piss off to the casino. Won't speak of Sbragia because I just kind of pretend Sunderland don't exist.
Why would you want Wise to stay? As far as i can tell it's him and his position that's preventing Newcastle from signing a real manager.
We don't know for certain if it's Wise who is undermining the manager, because no one will just come out and tell the truth about it all. What concerns me is that the youth signing campaign is about the only thing that's gone right for us in the last year or so, and that (as far as we are told, at least) falls under Wise's jurisdiction. He's obviously doing something right, even if he'd need to be reassigned under a new regime, or re-labeled if you will.
But everyone seems to be assuming that Wise has and will undermine the manager, that's why no one would touch the job with a ten foot pole.
I can see why that would be an issue, but we don't really know what's going on. Best case for me, everyone but Wise leaves, he becomes "director of youth development" or some other fancy title that has FA to do with the first team and we start otherwise from scratch. The problem with our setup, as I illustrated in one of the threads on the Newcastle forum, is that it's only halfway doing the Arsenal model that he allegedly wants to follow. We scour for good youth talent on the cheap but then don't back it up with established players that will cost more than a 2m fee to get. Whereas for every Clichy, Denilson, Song, etc., that Wenger brought in, he had a Cygan, Gallas, Henry, Kanu, etc. The only real big signing that Ashley has sanctioned is Coloccini, and that's proving to be more and more of a bad buy with every passing game unfortunately. You could argue Bassong, but I'm applying the blind squirrel-nut rule to that one, not to mention that he was on the cheap as well.
I think it's pretty clear by now that no one is going to buy out Ashley, so i don't know why he's allowing the club to limp along with no apparent direction. It just seems silly.
The credit crunch killed Ashley more so than other owners. While a lot (like Abramovich) were affected, they basically lost a couple of billion off of 5 billion, let's say. Ashley was only worth 1.2 billion to begin with, and he's made his fortune in retail. The figures I saw floated about on the internet (which are by no means necessarily accurate) suggest he's lost almost 40% of his worth since taking over Newcastle. He's basically turtling it like most "normal people" are in the crappy economy, even though he's a multi-millionaire. He's still trying to run the club like a business, and it's about to be run into the ground, frankly.
I was just reading that Abramovich has been crushed by the downturn with over 20 billion dollars of his net worth erased. http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,600164,00.html And while i think it's smart that Ashley is trying to run his club like a business, it seems like he's trying to run it like one of his businesses, with "Going Out Of Business SALE!" plastered all over the front windows.
Well, my point was that when you're talking about buying players at even 5m, Abramovich is still going to have plenty of money to spend if he so chooses whereas someone like Ashley is going to be a little more thrifty than he already was, if that makes sense. That's the only rational explanation I have for what's going on at Newcastle right now. It's either that or Ashley is a complete loon, which actually might be just as plausible.
I'd suggest the main reason why no-one would touch the job is that Newcastle managers have an average tenure of about nine months. Man City may end up the same way if Hughes ends up being forced out.