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Pardew: “Ireland can be a big factor for us in the second part of this season”

Posted on February 1st, 2011 | 102 Comments |

Stephen Ireland signs on loan to Newcastle United
On loan
Newcastle United have secured Aston Villa’s Stephen Ireland on loan until the end of the season, possibly with some sort of option to make it permanent if things work out.

Having spent yesterday largely concentrating on the Andy Carroll debacle, I thought I’d bring you up to date this morning with all the exciting players Newcastle have bought with their newly-banked £35m.

However, try as I might, I couldn’t find any.

The club have however completed a deal for Stephen Ireland, who joins on loan until the end of the season. The move has only been described as ‘temporary’ and nothing has been said about any arrangements to take the player on a permanent basis if the loan period is a success, although I would be surprised if no such possibility exists.

Alan Pardew had this to say about the loan:

“Stephen has shown over the past few seasons that he’s a real top player so we’re really pleased to have got him until the end of the season.

“As a creative midfielder he can create chances for others and score goals himself, and we think he can be a big factor for us in the second part of this season.

“I think Stephen feels he can deliver more than he’s shown at Villa so far, so he’s got a point to prove and I believe we can reap the benefits of that.”

After spending 5 years at Manchester City – knocking in 16 goals from 138 appearances – Ireland was transferred to Aston Villa last year.

The player has however seemed out of favour with Villa boss Gerard Houllier, having made only 10 appearances and been on the end of some public criticism from the manager.

Anyway, he’s ours until at least June now.

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.

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102 Responses

  2. So he can score goals 16 in 138 games for city that Will have defenders running scared , great replacement for Carroll .

  3. Good transfer window for newcastle, we gain ben arfa who we had until the end of the season anyway, we gain and injured steven ireland and get rid of one of englands future greats and the newcastle no9, Ashley needs to go NOW we need to force him out

  4. Ireland is a good addition to to the squad. Given the right amount of TLC from Pardew and co, I think he will come good for us.. As far as AC goes.. Well 35m could not be passed up and I must say he looked devastated as he arrived at Anfield.You would have needed a jack hammer to get the smile off his face. I don’t think we should be taking this to hard. The gunners lost Henry, Manure – Ronaldo etc etc… This is the way football is now days. It is not a personal insult to the fans, it is business. I was sad to see him go but life will go on. I hope like hell that Ranger can get his scoring boots on or we pick someone (a striker)up on loan!

  5. Let’s not forget the real victim in all this… Kevin Nolan!
    He is without a flat mate now!!!! Who is going to help meet his rental payments! He will be out on the street in no time!Poor sod.

  6. Look at the text by text on news now football Newcastle link. It is quite clear that he was forced out of the club. Fat swine how much more can we stand?

  7. Having slept on the Carroll deal I’m still gutted – club reluctantly accepts, yeah right
    Carrols love for the club obviously only lasted till someone made a bid and tripled his wages – tw@t

    Shola, best, ranger need to step up big style
    Ashley will reinvest 15 million in the summer
    Ireland – completely underwhelmed, he’s been utter shite for 2 seasons

    We’ve always sold our best players cole, Ferdinand, ginola, gazza, waddle etc it’s not new

  8. Ashley takes the piss out of all of us regardless!! Every transfer window!! Garbage.
    And I will bet anybody on Here that he will not allow all of the 35 m to be spent on the team!
    He loves being hated!

  9. Yeah he looked devastated on the pictures pullin into liverpools training ground. Come on anyone can send a text to save face, after all they rejected the 35 mil!! Only cos he handed transfer request in they sold him. His greed got the better of him. But rightly so because Liverpool will go further than we ever will. We are just too unpredictable with everything and it’s shocking. Hopefully it will go back in club and we get some quality replacements. HBA and Ranger will get us the goals just a matter of time. We just have to play a different style of football as oppose to pumping it up the pitch

  10. Just saw the text by text if all is true he never wanted to leave!!! Fat greedy bastard this shows this deal is only for MA n really dnt think money will be put back into club he needs to go how much more damage is he guna do to this once great club????

  11. No matter what the text saga says, I refuse to believe that Carrol was a victim in all this… He had a contract and was well within his rights to stay if he wanted. Saying that, I feel no ill will toward him, as I stated above, this is a part of football life now days. The stronger our team gets, the more players will move on, to bigger contracts. It happens to every team. Is AC worth 35m and should MA offered him similar money to keep him here?… My answer is no and no! It is good business for the club. If it is invested wisely at the end of this season, it will be a great bit of business.

  12. Ashley ain’t gonna come out and say oh yes we will spend the whole £35 mil on players in summer, I expect we will spend £50 mil, 15 anyway plus Carroll fee! But he would be stupid to even mention a figure otherwise prices inflate as clubs try to squeeze extra out of clubs with loads to spend

  13. The thing is, after all the dust has settled, surely Pardews position has become untenable. He has either been led down the garden path by Ashley and actually believed there was no way AC would be sold, or he knew all along and told bare faced lies to the fans. Either way he’s got to be feeling a bit uncomfortable this morning.

    Ps. I had been one of those prepared to give Ashley the benefit of the doubt in his running of the club prior to this carry on. I now realise the error of my ways and all of you who have been cursing the fat c##t from the start have been right all along. I apologise.

  14. even though judas could of stayed ,i cant beleive people are just beleiving what the club have said ,they are proven liars and idiots

  16. Posts 13 & 14

    Agree all the way. Everybody in this saga has lied through their teeth to the fans.

    If Pardew has an ounce of honour and respect about himself he will resign failure to do so means he is involved in the sorry mess.

    Their is a press conference this morning at SJP the journalists would be better advised to spend their time peeling the tatties and hoovering as going to listen to the lies

  17. Villla fan here, steven ireland is stuck up is own arse, everything is about him, you will see very little effort from him, hope i’m wrong as it is our money that will be wasted when he finally goes, I know how you feel with carrol going you must be gutted, good luck for the season.

  18. The reality of the matter this morning is we have three championship strikers, a lad of massive potential and a spotty faced kid to score the goals to keep us in the league. A scary thought.

    Please step forward Nolan, Ben Arfa, Barton and Ireland you are our only hope

  19. Ashley probably wanted to sell @ £25m, but knew we would go ape. I can just see him squirming as the bids go up. Pardew glaring at him not to sell. Then it reaches £35m. He’s ready to bust. Carroll hands in a transfer request and its the easiest decision ashley has ever made.
    I can see why people would want to believe the text story as they want to hate ashley and would never think a local lad playing #9 would never want to leave.
    Well,.sorry but the truth hurts. What would change your mind? Seeing Carroll miraculously recover from this injury that no one in England can help him with and play in Liverpools next game?

  20. Possible scenario:

    Club wants to sell AC.
    AC reluctant to leave and asks for increase in wages, club refuse (you have just signed a 5 yr contract)

    Agent contacts Pool who offer 75k a week.
    AC does the maths and discovers that over a 5yr period he is 12.5 mil better off.
    AC & Fat Cash in heaven, fans up the creek once again.

  21. Sorry guys, but this – like it or not – is how the club will be run. In order for the club to be substainable we need to be a ‘buying them young and selling them on’ type club. Every player has a price on his head. Andy’s price exceeds most of our realistic valuations of him. Yes he could have been a legend but this money goes to helping the club.

    Of topic – kinda – this seems to have missed me somewhere, but with Andy, didn’t he have a big court case coming up in March?

  22. Regarding signing Ireland on loan – Have you seen his tattoo on his back?? Sorry but that just sums up the player.

    TW@T

  23. Getting back on topic. If Ireland can recapture his man city form i will be more than happy. Let’s give the lad a chance before calling him names, eh.

  24. Mickey Toon.@19″Pardew glaring at him not to sell” Yeah right.Dave@21″this money goes to help the club” Yeah right.

  25. come on boys, has everyone got ther blinkers on? Very few people actualy know what happened yesterday but everyone seems to be ruling out the fact that a 22 yo would no jump at the chance of 80k a week! MA wouldnt turn down 35 mil then tell CA to put in a transfer request? For what? It would always come out even if he has! The fat knacker isn’t that stupid! Is he? Just got in to work now with 5 scousers so this won’t be fun! Ffs!

  26. You get a sight of how unprofessional NUFC is when you see late bids for Charlie Insomnia & Peter Bloody Crouch.

    There will always be this problem until we have an owner who actually believes we are a top 10 club and stop selling the crown jewels.

    Summer tranfers will be a bit of a let down as they plan to sell Enrique to Man Utd and Tiote to Chelsea bringing in another £30m.

    Oh yes and another thing, Andy Carrol was forced out of the club, believe me I would have gone long before he with the money on offer, he did NOT request any transfer and he held out until the last minute.

  27. There’s no doubt that £35m is a helluva lot of money for an unproven player and had it not been for tyhe fact that money was slushing around to enable Liverpool to table such an offer made it acceptable. The price was false and Ashley had no option but to accept it.

    HOWEVER, what concerns me is the fact that although we all new a big bid was coming, there was no contingency in place. Ashley’s a shrewd operator with an eye on the bottom line BUT, he’s also a gambler and has weighed up the odds of what we’ve got left keeping us up against spending a lot of the £35m.

    The calculated risk-taking wouldn’t ordinarily have bothered me (that’s wht business is all about) but I’d have though he’d have had sensible plans in place to mitigate for the long-term absence of Carroll – whether as a result of injury or whatever. That is my worry – he’s clearly taken a punt on whether we can stay up without spending mega-money.

    Despite the transfer, surely it would have made more sense to buy a striker when the window opened thereby not being screwed to the floor with inflated the demands that would have been made when the club’s back’s against the wall? At least we’d have had a ready made stand-in in place.

    Gambling’s one thing and running a business based on a sensible strategy’s another. I, like us all, hope this doesn’t backfire and we take a huge hit by the en of the season!

  28. Another act of revenge from the board for the abuse they got, bet they wont face the press and explain it.

  29. True we don’t actually know what went on yest. Is it still the case that if a player puts in a transfer request he forfeits a lump of cash from the selling club. Maybe Ashley wanted ALL of the cash and give nothing to Carroll. Can’t help but feel its a complete ashley manipulation.

  30. @27. para 1 should have read:

    …..There’s no doubt that £35m is a helluva lot of money for an unproven player and had it not been for the fact that money was slushing around to enable Liverpool to table such an offer to make it acceptable, the £35m wouldn’t have been tabled and Andy C would’ve still been with us. Such was the market-place yesterday.

  31. I ma gutted. Do not feel Like working at all.

    In my office.

    Feels like i hate mike ashley and am seeing him tear apart newcastle and do nothing.

    He would have gained all he lost during 3 1/2 years at newcastle.

    God forbid if we get relegated how will he get another Hughton.

    and Mark my words HBA and Gosling were bought with a view to sell.

    as they say a club which from now on will always be in transition.

    P.S

    Does any one know if there was any change in the bid that was launched which was rejected. in financial terms.

  32. am sorri like but everyone is jumping on this to have a go at the board u cant turn down that sort of cash, and the end of the day carroll could had 4 years on his contract he could of seen them out if he wanted no one can force him to leave

  34. Couldn’t care less about Ireland if im honest.

    The problem is Fat Mike he will do what he wants and when he wants, its his club and he knows no matter what newcastle will be sold out home and away, time and time again he has shafted us.

    Im not having a go at fans, i just got my tickets for Blackburn and Bolton this week but i have a bad taste in my mouth and am thinking what exactly is the point? Us, the fans are always the one shafted and laughed at my everyone else. Yet again NUFC are the losers, i worry for the rest of the season.

  35. Blah blah blah….all this conspiracy theory is very dull!

    AC has gone & we got an extremely good price for him.

    the timing is a problem for & that we didn’t have sufficient time to find a suitable replacement but I’m glad there wasn’t a knee jerk reaction (like bidding £15-20m for Carlton Cole). Not sure the timings can be blamed on NUFC as it all hinged on the Torres deal but it’s the easiest thing in the world(not to mention very lazy) to criticise &/or generate stories based on your own view of Ashley/Caroll.

    No-one really knows what went on & probably never will know what went on, there’s nothing anyone could have done to influence what happened so what’s the point in fretting…it’s happened & we move on

  36. Some of you lot need to give yourselves a shake.

    The prick walked. End of.

    The fact is we’ve sold a lanky streak of piss for Galactico money. We should be laughing.

    Normally it’s the scousers who get acsussed of robbing but we’ve just mugged their desperate dan owners for every cent they had. Haha!!!

  37. seriously some ppl are bein so disrespectful to the rest players we are not a one man team, n ill keep goin coz its in my blood i cant stop no can stop or they cant call them self a fan u cant jus go when theres good times gotta stick with it through the good n bad, carroll was 30k aweek its not like they wanted him off the wage bill

  38. Toon chicken, fair enough, the price was great and the back up plan was NZog and Bendtner late last night, would be better if they had said nowt instead of feeding us bullshit.

  39. Agreed Toon Chicken.

    We need to stop thinking of conspiracy theories about the board.

    He walked!

    The pr1ck.

  40. We didn’t sell or rob anyone, Mike Ashley – benefits – 35m in his back pocket (do you really think he ll spend big on our sqaud?!) and AC get 75k a week. We have a big hole in a team with noone to fill it and please don’t mention Nile Ranger.

    We have got decent results against Spurs and Sunderland recently but didn’t finish off those teams because we didn’t have anyone to put the ball in the net and keep the 3pts.

  41. hi all just want to say 1 thing ac did not want to leave newcastle i am a freind of his i for 1 was gutted to see him go ,
    ashley told him in a meeting that if he did not leave he would rot in the reseves ap told him to leave as well so he not to be trusted to ,
    us fans need act now and get ashley out of our club ,
    beleave what u want lads but i promise u carrol is feeling rejected this morning but he has to get on with it ,

  42. Davy said…… “we just went a month without him unbeaten so why we suddenly gonna go down… ”

    That is precisely the factor that may have influenced the cash in on Carroll….. but, where was the forward planning?

    Hello.. hello, calling the Ashley forward planning department…. is there anybody there?

  43. Carroll had his head turned by the cash, the Board had an offer they would be mad to refuse, simple. All this conspiracy stuff that Ashley stood over Carroll forcing him to hand in a transfer request is a load of b*******. Carroll just trying to save face with the fans. He obviously thinks we’re as gullible as he is. Time to move on. It’s done. All I’m bothered about are our current players not the one’s who left us high and dry again at the first sign of a bag of used readies.Hope he enjoys counting his cash in scouseland as he wont be welcomed back here.

  44. Why is ashley the only one who is to blame here? Carroll and ashley are both as guilty as each other, but if blindly hating ashley gets you though the day then fill yer boots

  45. ashley will invest to make profit nothing else dont be fooled by ashley dirty tricks to get what he wants ???

  48. Ex MAgpie!!!

    If you are a mate of his – what’s his sodding number so I can call him up and call him a CLINT

    You lying idiot!

  51. i am off but ashley forced carrol out .
    do i say more about keegan , shearer , hughton , keep beleaveing the lyes u lot are all idiots keegan right ashley knows nothing about football and this proves it

  53. the truth will be told to the chronicle today and even carrol will be to the truth will come out

  54. 35 million is a great ammount, and had we made contingency plans, then I would have no problems. However, money doesn’t score goals, and the problem we have is that neither do our remaining centre forwards with any regularity. We lose to fulham, and they are 1 point behind us, even there fans acknowledge they r in a relegation fight. We can quite easily fall into it. Even before Carroll left, are squad was weaker then at the start of the window. Barton was due to sign a new contract weekend just gone, it didn’t happen, wonder what he and Enrique are thinking now. All the best Andy, but don’t expect a warm welcome next time ur back.

  55. Does any one know if there was any change in the bid that was launched which was rejected. in financial terms.

  56. I’m shocked at some people saying there is no conspiracy.

    A bloke called Mike Ashley runs the club. I won’t dig up all the things he’s done since he took over, but he’s not one of my favourite people.

    If Andy Carroll says he was pushed then I will believe him over anyone on the NUFC board. After all, they have lied to the fans from day one, why would I believe anything they say?

    Yet again us fans have been raped by a fat londoner. And shame on anyone that thinks £35 million will be invested in the team, simply put, it won’t. It’s already gone. Thats Mike Ashley’s pie money.

    Yet again, I am feeling sick with the running of our club. Whats the point in giving support if it’s thrown back in our faces constantly?

  58. pardew is a lyer to he not to be trusted and exspect some players to put tranfer requests in not saying any names ???

  59. can i make public apology to STEVEN TAYLOR for all he times i called u for not signing a new contract and even when the club transfer listed u, u never once handed in a transfer request u are a TRUE GEORDIE, unlike that long lanky streak of piss who jumped when he seen the pound signs, lads carroll is what 6,4 built like a brick no one forced him to do anything carroll cud of seen out his contract and ashly cudnt make him rot in the reserves,

  60. ex mags – fcuk off instead of makin crap up, say the names if u kno then we kno if we can believe, i hav said time n time again if a player wants to leave he fcuk off simple as that, why are players gonna wanna leave coz we sold a kid who played for us for a season n a half get real

  61. davy davy says:
    what are u going on about carrol never handed a tranfer request in and he did not want to leave are u for real ,
    carrol loves nufc and he was liveing the dream keep beleaveing ashley lyes

  62. ex mag plz tell me wanna of those players is barton or nolan so i can rip u when it dosent happen coz those are the heart of the club not carroll

  64. Mike Ashley is a wrong un make no mistake he will get his money back and a profit whatever it takes.I cannot believe how naive most NUFC fans are,when Spurs put in offers for Andy Carroll they came out with he will be going nowhere and he,s signed a new contract comments.Andy Carroll could have said no to the move but he went anyway and all it took for Mike Ashley to sell was a little bit bigger offer about 5m more not much more in real terms.NUFC are one of the great names in English football but i am afraid that is all the days of you being up there are long gone.You lost Keegan and Hughton for Pardew and he said Carroll wont be sold so he knows as much about whats going on as my late grannie.Watch and see how much of the 35m gets spent on the team and i doubt it will be much.The next time a NUFC fan goes on a site to say he,s not for sale he wants to play for his home town club everyone will understand the fans passion for his club but it will reinforce his or hers naivity.THERE IS NO LOYALTY IN FOOTBALL AND NO PLAYER THAT CANNOT BE AQUIRED OR POACHED.

  65. ex mag- if i was in carroll position yesterday u kno what i would of said to ashly fcuk off simple as that u can except what ever bid u want am gonna c out my contract give the fans my all for 4n half year then walk away for free why bcoz am a geordie and am there hero now but did he no he jumped ship, players hold the power not clubs

  66. davy davy
    beleave me a lot of the players are not happy with what has happend and i wont say who could do it but it will , they they think if the club can do it to carrol they are thinking who could it be next ,

  67. Micky Toon says:
    February 1, 2011 at 10:07 am
    Pardew press conference at 1pm<<<>> things went so fast it was too late in the day too get a replacement ,andy handed in a transfer request and we got very good money for him ,there will be big investment on players in summer,and of course when summer comes tiote barton enrique will be of and cheap replacements in

  71. ex mag- say names if u kno, it could be anyone every player has a price, players kno that, we kno that, am not sayin ashly is innocent in this but u n i kno carroll cud of refused to go n ashly cudnt of done a damm thing about it, there wud be more of an uproar if carroll wasnt bein picked than wud b with whats happened

  72. Weather ireland comes and performs or not is neither here nor there as we have no option to buy him so who gives a shit.
    MA hates Nufc and everything associated with the club- end of.

  74. ex mag i kno i wud of refused to leave what about u although your name same everything we need to kno ex mag sumone who give up on his team but yet claims to be a fan

  75. ex mag if u kno he wasnt injured i dont remember u bein on here through jan sayin carrolls not injured there jus tryin to get best price for him

  76. we can move forward in the summer..with the cash..if ashley spends it..he has already spent more money then us are u said he would..anyway 35 mil for a player who hasnt done crap is..hell of money for english garbage thts what he is to me becasue he is no longer are player..we havnt struggled have we..we got ben arfa who we all luv more then that tw..t who has left…

  77. These texts were sent between noon and 4pm yesterday, the striker having reported for training totally unaware that Liverpool had tabled an initial £30m bid.

    Text One: “They have kind of said we don’t want u but want me to say I wanna go. And I said I don’t wanna go.”

    Text Two: “I don’t know mate. Gutted tho.” (In reply to question: what’s happening?”)

    Text Three: “They said they wanted the money”

    Text Four: “Gutted to be leaving but I was kind of pushed out the door”

    Text Five: “Just what I’ve just said really. Gutted to be leaving my home club but I was practically told to go. Don’t want to leave. that’s why I signed 5 year deal.”

    Wraith, who has known Carroll since he was a teenager, said: “I was in touch with Andy all day. “We went for a drink a couple of weeks ago when he told me how happy he was to have signed a five-year contract and fully intended to honour it.

    “Now he wants the fans to know the truth. He is quite happy for them to see the texts because he’d hate them to think he’d been lying to them.”

    Newcastle declared throughout January that Carroll was not for sale and rejected Liverpool’s £30m bid on Sunday.

    But when the offer was increased to £35m the Toon board decided it was too good to turn down.

    Newcastle declined to comment, but Starsport understands they were relaxed about the revelations because they knew the striker would not want to upset fans. And a source pointed out that no club could force a player to hand in a transfer request”

    Ashley told him if he asked for a transfer, thus waiving any rights to a loyalty fee, the transfer would happen quicker and he would get a 5 1/2 year deal from Liverpool.

    I would only add, if your boss of the company you worked for told you that you’d be better off joining another company would you dig your heels in and hang around ?

    The overall issue is that Fatman was going to sell AC which is why it was claimed he had been offered to Premiership managers last week. In order to save face he’s managed to manipulate a system so that AC looks like the bad guy and fool most of the people all of the time.

    We all know the N’Zogbia, Bendtner, Crouch tales were just smokescreens to hide the fact we werent spending any of that money on players. Why ? Maybe because yesterday was NUFC’s financial half year end ? I can only hope that Fatso was balancing the books before he sells :)

  79. asim benarfa will be of next jan when he proves his worth ,just like colo barton enrique tiote in summer

  80. chicken shit @ 36 – it’s a good job your fat mate didn’t cash in on joey barton at the same time – coz your bell-end would covered in blisters by noo.

  81. My bell-end is covered in blisters anyway, Roy, after I was shagging your missus all weekend.

  83. batty..its over the spending…teams like chelsea and man city and liverpool had to make pushes for the new rules which kick in place this summer..they will never make money to cover the costs..or no european football in 3 years..they wont be able to spend big money unless they make it…thru the club..we need to sell to make money..the player were worth nothin this time last year..were was the money coming from..thats what we all said..we got 35 mil for carrol..the only way is up..

  85. The thing is all parties in this wanted their own finacial slice of the pie.
    It just makes me sad and angry about what went on yesterday at our club….contrast that however with Blackpool who refused to sell Charlie Adams yesterday and saw off Liverpool and Spurs EVEN AFTER ADAMS HAD A TRANSFER REQUEST IN….. so a club can dig its heels in when a player wants away….. Blackpool showed that.

    What now of our number 9 shirt i ask you? because if a local lad who is a centre forward living the dream of being the clubs number 9 with all its impotance to the clubs history can walk away after wearing it for such a short time away then its obvious that the shirt is only important to the fans.
    If it means so little to a local boy who knows what it represents and understands its connection with the fans and previous wears then it would mean nothing to a player from else where.
    This saga with AC has shown that like him we should now no longer lament about our famous number 9 and treat the shirt like every other club treats their number 9…. its just a number because now no player can do it justice.

  87. The comments about Carroll being fit all through January doesn’t strengthen the case for him. It goes against him you nugget.
    If he could have played but was faking an injury then he can get fcuked. Especially when we were playing 5under1and.

  88. Clearly Pardwho has his story and AC has his. What is undeniable is we have a weaker squad now than when we began this transfer window. Routledge, Xisco and AC out and Ireland (FFS) in.

    Yet Blackpool’s chairman Karl Oyston defended the fact that he hadnt allowed Charlie Adam to leave because “it wasnt right for Blackpool” despite bringing in Andy Reid as some sort of replacement.

    Therein lies the difference between most other clubs and NUFC.

  89. Micky Toon says:
    February 1, 2011 at 11:05 am
    The comments about Carroll being fit all through January doesn’t strengthen the case for him. It goes against him you nugget.<<<< divent slag judases m8 :lol:

  90. Stopper not a chance I will be doing that. The money men and some of the players might be trying to take the fun and the passion out of the game, but we fans need to work harder to keep it.
    No.9 here, no.7 at Liverpool, no.10 for Brazil, no.4 for Holland. All legends shirts that should have meaning.

  91. @ 84 – that’s a load of turkish.

    they could’a just said – andy stop being a greedy b@stard – you’ve just signed a 5 1/2 year contract & your gonna honor it whether you like it or not – coz we need your goals to keep us in the prem this season at least.

    come back – freddy – johnny hall – kk – terry mac – all is forgiven.

  94. Cropper of course they could have, but £35m is an insane amount of money to turn down. Plus if they did I would imagine he would be “injured” for the rest of the season.

  96. The Big Clubs were never gonna stop knocking for Carol, so he would have left before too long – thats how it goes. I think ashley’s gambled, no sh&t sherlock, that we can survive the season (thus achieving our season plan), and then re-build in the summer. Personally, i’m gutted we didn’t include Sturridge coming to us in a 3-way-deal….but hey ho,

    Assuming we FIGHT OUT THE SEASON, championship style, who/how would people like to see us spend the 35million?

    assuming we still have Barton, Nolan, Guteirrez, Benny,fit Gosling, and a performing Ireland – i’d say midfield COULD be solid…

    so 35M – 2 strikers?

  98. micky 35 mil is alot of dosh – but his value may have gone up to 45 mil next season – who knows ? but without him the probability of us getting relegated this season is now far greater.if the club have forced him out i’m sure the other players will be aware of the truth & it could effect the team spirit.

    could be a big struggle from now till may like.

  99. Not to say ex mag is right on everything but I had heard a couple of weeks ago Carroll was fit and had a club gagging order on him. Also reports in Liverpool say he is able to play this week. But id he had wanted to stay, noone can force him to agree terms or sign a bit of paper. Not sure he put a request in, but he certainly didn’t look back after the bud was accepted.

  100. To be fair ex-magpie can barely write in English so there might be some credibility in his claims to know Andy Carroll…

  101. Quick question: why on earth do we need another central midfielder??? We have Barton, Nolan, Guthrie, Tiote, Vukic. Even with Smith injured, we are well placed in that department. The left back and striker roles on the other hand, are desperately lacking. Enrique is of course brilliant, but Pardew’s recent use of Leon Best Worries me. He got lucky against West Ham, but I fear that long term he won’t be able to score Prem goals.

  102. VanToon Pardew want to stamp his own mark on the club with some of his own players, Ireland is better dan Guthrie and Smith hands down, Vukic hasnt go enough prem exp and barton is been deployed on the wing,

    Nolan is likely to play off the front man man with ireland n the hole.. and we didnt buy an injured player we bought an out of favor player,