Newcastle United – News Roundup – 18 August 2009
Posted on August 18th, 2009 | 17 Comments |
I can’t believe Ashley would let it run into the last week of the transfer window to sell the club, leaving mere days to strengthen the extremely threadbare squad. According to press articles of late, ‘D-Day’ is either today, tomorrow or Friday. Thursday is reported to be upset about being overlooked.
So what’s the latest? Well there’s nothing much new. Yesterday’s Journal claims that Barclays Bank will make a decision about Moat’s loan by Wednesday and claims that Shearer will be manager in time for the Crystal Palace match on Saturday if Barclays gives it the thumbs-up.
Meanwhile it seems that Joe Kinnear has been telling ‘friends in football’ that he will be manager by the end of this week if the sale falls through.
Personally I have no faith in Barclays. When I was 18 I applied for a loan from them myself in order to buy a MkI 3-litre Capri and they turned me down. If they couldn’t afford to lend me £700 I can’t see how they can lend Barry Moat £20m.
The same article claims that Jonas Gutierrez’s future is ‘shrouded in mystery’, which sort of implies that we need to find something like the Ark of the Covenant before we’ll know whether he gets transferred to Portsmouth or not. Whereas in reality it’s probably just that Portsmouth, Newcastle and/or Jonas haven’t made a decision yet.
The Mail is reporting that Coloccini might be on his way to Espanyol. The La Liga club are apparently ‘keen’ to sign either Colo or Valencia’s David Navarro before the Spanish league season starts at the end of the month. We signed the Argentine international hair-do for £10m last summer and have been paying him £60,000/week ever since.
The Mirror has a dour article by Simon Bird which cautions that, despite our convincing 3-0 win on the weekend, it’s too early for the Toon Army to be feeling good about life in the Championship. He has a point of course but I just found it a bit depressing.
Sheffield Wednesday midfielder Sean McAllister is confident that they won’t be overawed by their visit to St James’s Park tomorrow. He told their club website:
“All the lads are looking forward to it.
“We didn’t expect the likes of Newcastle and Middlesbrough to be in our league but they are and we’ll treat it as seriously as we treated Peterborough.
“We’ll go to Newcastle, work hard and hopefully come away with a win.”
George Caulkin at The Times reckons that the Moat sandwich in the directors’ box on Saturday was a show of unity for the benefit of Barclays Bank, but I’m not convinced. Surely banks aren’t going to be swayed by something so superficial are they? Then again, what do I know? Maybe if I’d sat between my insurance broker and the car salesman I’d have got that loan for my 3-litre Capri.
NUFCBlog Author: Hugh de Payen
I'm a baby-boomer of the punk rock persuasion, currently exiled in Somerset for crimes committed in a previous life where locals keep trying to poison me with something called 'scrumpy'. Hates sprouts, coat-hangers, Cilla Black, ornaments, Steven Seagull movies and 50 Cent (he's not worth 10).
Hugh de Payen has written 634 articles on this blog.
Without wishing to be uncharitable to a certain small club from London…..
Where are all the Spurs fans this week? Their claims of being a “big club” last week were embarrasingly exposed when in their glamour fixture against Liverpool they couldn’t even pull in more fans than United – who were only playing lowly Reading…..
Case closed, methinks Spuds