59 pies in 115 appearances.Micky Quinn has been trying to become the new Supermac by trying to spout rhetoric and his (often misguided) opinions – usually when things are going well. His words recently didn’t earn him any special consideration with fans but it did give us a chance to work off some fat jokes and that can never be a bad thing, can it?
Known for stating Newcastle “would get nowhere” under Kevin Keegan as his set up was “shambolic” in nature. That season saw promotion, and the following saw us finish third.
After his application was rejected from the vacant managerial post at Second Divison Burnley FC in ’96, he decided he didn’t actually know that much about football outside of scoring goals and instead went to look after horses. Good career move all things considered.
Speaking to the Evening Chronicle today, he said:
“From what I have seen, there is no-one ready to take on the shirt; maybe they can go with Shola Ameobi or one other. However, they need to sign at least one more striker, a No 9, to keep them in the league and help them progress.” (more…)
How will that £35m be spent?The transfer market is a strange and sometimes scary place, with confusion abound by exactly how much money we apparently have, others have the knowledge only provided by Football Manager and FIFA and you’d be surprised how correct that actually is. The long and short is, we have never had £35m to spend – never.
There’s a lot of confusion around exactly what we have to spend since the sale of local lad and full time thug Andy Carroll to Liverpool for £35m with £30 of that being handed over in cold, hard cash – just how we like it. Alan Pardew himself stated that the money was to be reinvested in the squad and even went as far as to say that he wanted it solely for players but unfortunately, that isn’t how it works.
At the start of the season, the manager and the chairman sits down and discusses season targets, contracts, incoming players, outgoing players and everything else you’d come to associate with a professional football club. (more…)
All aboard the arkIs Newcastle United embarking upon a ‘new era’? This humble blogger thinks so and attempts to quantify some of the changes that mark this new era.
Remember when God supposedly gave us all a rinse, rebooting mankind with Noah and what must have been an exceedingly large ark? I get the impression that a similar process is underway at Newcastle United at the moment. A kind of ‘out with the old and in with the new’ situation. It seems like the Good Lord Ashley and Archangel Llambias are doing some smiting and rebuilding the club in their own image (and didn’t Ashley smite Pestilence when he got rid of Dennis Wise?).
The obvious smiting begins with Nolan’s move to West Ham, Barton’s disappearing contract, the possible departure of players like Enrique, Jonas and Best (and, yes, I admit it’s only speculated that they’ll go at the moment), all seemingly replaced by an influx of Frenchmen. The wisdom of tearing out the crux of the team that got us promoted and established us once again as a Premier League side remains to be seen. The proof of the pudding is in the eating as they say (or in just being edible if it’s one of my wife’s puddings) and we’ll know over the next season or two whether Ashley’s gamble has paid off. (more…)
Birmingham target, allegedlyBirmingham allegedly want Newcastle’s Leon Best. Dan Gosling and Hatem Ben Arfa gets in some early pre-season training. And Michael Owen seems to have upset a few people.
With all the speculation about who we might be buying, I’d quite forgotten that other teams might want some of our players other than Jose Enrique.
If you believe the Mail (no tittering), freshly relegated Birmingham are after Leon Best to replace Cameron Jerome who Alex McLeish seems resigned to losing. I actually thought Leon Best did a decent job for us last season, getting 6 goals in 12 games, and of all our current strikers he’s the one I’d most like to keep, but I guess it depends on who we bring in over the summer to enhance our goal-scoring capabilities.
How much do you think Best is worth anyway?
Both Dan Gosling and Hatem Ben Arfa have made an early return for pre-season training to ensure that they’re fully fit for next season. (more…)
Joey Barton with the good luck 'stacheJoey Barton recently heeded Danny Simpson’s advise and decided to join Twitter. Joey has been known to be quite forward and somewhat outspoken and of course wasted no time pondering whether or not his biggest fans Robbie Savage and Piers Morgan would be as vicious in a logged and public manner. Of course they were and I assure you, it’s great fun bullying Mr. Morgan but after being bombarded with tweets from fans requesting he sign a new contract, Joey broke his relative silence.
Now I’m not in the habit of reporting the usual waste you hear on Twitter but, as they say, this is from the horses mouth.
I tend to be fairly positive and patient in regards to this club primarily because I understand knee jerk reactions don’t help us in the slightest. I like to wait for all the facts before I make a solid judgement and until then try to remain as calm as I can and stay as level headed as is humanly possible… but then something like this happens and that Zen-like state goes out of the window. (more…)
