Archive for tag: January transfer window.

Hughton ready to strike in January?

November 12th, 2009 | 32 Comments |

Hughton: "Have to be the right players"
Hughton: 'Have to be the right players'
Newcastle United’s manager, Chris Hughton, has seemingly had “more rabbit than Sainsbury’s” (to quote the famous Chas n’ Dave song) in the last few days. Today, he was looking at future transfers, suggesting that while he is always on the lookout for new players that could genuiniely improve the squad, he would not sign bodies just for the sake of it, and will probably hold out until the January transfer window.

Anyway, over to Chris:

“We are constantly looking at possible signings, but there isn’t anything pressing at the moment. I can’t see anything happening in the short term. We don’t want to sign players just for the sake of it, they have to be the right players as we work towards the January transfer window.”

Referring to the return of ‘big hitters’ such as Coloccini, Steven Taylor and others, he added: (more…)


Random gripe about the random Toon.

November 4th, 2009 | 149 Comments |

Chuckles
Chuckles
In his statement when he took Newcastle United off the market, Mike Ashley said “… he is totally committed to the future success of Newcastle United and will be focussing on gaining promotion back to the Premier League.”

Fair enough, but what’s with all this nonsense about giving Hughton a million or two to buy some players as if it was some unplanned afterthought? I mean, what’s his transfer window budget for January, the summer, the January after that?

Surely if he’s ‘totally committed to the future success of Newcastle United’ he’s made financial projections for some years ahead, established his incomings and outgoings and got some sort of business plan for rebuilding the club that takes into account various scenarios (such as succeeding or failing to get promotion).

Of course, after his screw-up over Keegangate, he’s keen to make it known that he has the final say on transfers. Llambias said in his recent interview:

We work with Chris. Let’s clear up the final say – the final say is with the board, which basically is Mike. At the end of the day, Mike has to put the money into it. But Chris will recommend the players and we will go out there and get his first choices, if we can.” (more…)