Mcsncfcmcs

This is the difference between managing from the stands, and actually being the manager. We can all rant and rave about Holt/Flem/Eddy not playing well enough to stay in the team. But Worthy has to deal with the real world in which for the past couple of months he hasn''t had any one else to play. This is why the whole "playing his favourites" thing doesn''t wash with me. Who else could he have played who would have improved us? Mullers has been terrible so you couldn''t drop Holt for him. I guess Stuart could have played there, but Jonson''s not done that well either (who would have gone on the right). I don''t think there is much to chose between Flem, Doc and Charlie, so at least sticking with the same partner for Shack helps him. With Helveg injured we had no one else to play right back other than Eddy.

You shouldn''t forget that when the figure £3m is stated, that''s not the fee we are paying but the estimated possible overall cost. Firstly there will be a transfer fee. Then there might be some sort of time structure to how that initial basic fee is paid (eg we pay £1m now, £1m next year). Then there is probably "X" amount if we stay up (could be as much as £500k according to some rumours). That fee might also include "X" amount if he scores so many goals. Then "X" amount depending on appearances. "X" amount if he gains a full England cap during the period of his contract etc etc etc. Rooney''s deal was worth something like a possible £30m, but Man Utd "only" paid £10m of that upfront. All of the rest comes in installments and performance related factors ("X" amount if they win the Champions League when he''s there etc). It''s the same in most players contracts. I remember the end of last season Leon not starting at Crewe, supposedly because in his deal we had to pay out an extra £50k if he scored 10 goals that season (and he was on 9). So it''s not a case of finding £3m right now. Also we know that we have been cautious this season financially. If we do go down we know what income we will get from the Prem parachute and such, so we would have a rough idea of how much transfer money there would be next summer without player sales (of which there would be a couple at least , Green, Damo, but not as many as some fear I believe,). There''s no reason why we wouldn''t look at this minimum level of guaranteed income and allocate some of that money now to go towards Ashton.

Nice idea. But it''s completely impractical.If the idea is; "gamble now and if we go down we can sell them" then its flawed right from the start. If we NEED to sell upon relegation, then you can forget making a profit, we would make a loss on the player because every club would know we needed to get money back quick. And more to the point, if you sign someone for £3m, then that player is going to want a lucrative and relatively long contract (say 3 and a half years). If you then go down 5 months later and say "we need to sell you", the player would quite rightly turn around and want us to pay up at least half of the money remaining on his contract, as we would be breaking it. So if we gambled £3m on Ashton, and gave him a 3 and a half year deal at £10k a week, chances are we would be forced to sell for at least a £500k loss (probably more like £1m) and would be forced to pay out at least £780k to the player for the rest of his contract. And another thing people don''t think about when they talk about players like Ashton. We would hope to attract them to our club by offering them Premier League football, so they might only agree to join us if we accepted a get out clause in the contract on condition of relegation (a fee for significantly less than we paid), which would be madness for us to agree to.

Sorry, but that''s just blatantly rewriting history to suit your own means. Doncaster said Hucks was too expensive when: a) Man City were asking for somewhere in the region of £2m, hoping that the club would overpay due to us fans being so desperate not to see him leave at the end of the loan spell. We didn''t buckle and let his loan spell come to an end, and as such (with Keegan wanting rid of him off their books during the transfer window) they had to accept lower fees from interested clubs including us. and b) when it was clear Hucks still had £1.5m owed to him on the rest of his Man City contract. We certainly couldn''t afford to pay it on top of a transfer fee and a contract for Hucks (basically what Man City were originally asking in their price). Had Hucks not been able to come to an arrangement over it (largely by losing out on some money himself to make the deal happen) then he WOULD have been too expensive for us. And of course on top of all this was the fact (though some tried to deny it at the time) that buying Hucks alone wouldn''t have been enough to take us up. We needed at least one other striker (two taking into account injuries, like the one Svenny got early on in his City career) to make it a worthwhile gamble.

By the way knowhatimean I submitted my reponse before your second post so I accept you are not really comparing 2004 to ''95. And my comments are more about the general clamour for spending money rather than particularly at odds with your thoughts. It''s just that your comments made me think a bit more about the situaion in general! We all want the best for the club that''s for sure.

By the way knowhatimean I submitted my reponse before your second post so I accept you are not really comparing 2004 to ''95. And my comments are more about the general clamour for spending money rather than particularly at odds with your thoughts. It''s just that your comments made me think a bit more about the situaion in general! We all want the best for the club that''s for sure.

Firstly comparing this situation to 1995 is completely and utterly unjust in my opinion. Making the step up to the Prem from the first division (Championship as it is now!) is bigger than ever. We have had a very difficult time in the past 9 years battling back from the bottom and so sometimes I wonder how forgetful people can be. Is our club as a whole in a better position than even this time last year? Of course it is, and thats a very good start for ambition. The charge often levelled at the club is basically saying we don''t want to stay up, and I cannot see how anyone could believe that. Everyone wishes we had more money to spend. But that''s the same at every club bar Chelsea. AND the biggest factor which makes me shake my head in disbelief is that so many people moan about us needing to spend more money, whilst a team who spent more than us to go up, and have spent much, much more than us this season (from £4m for Earnshaw, to Kanu''s massive wages) are currently below us in the league. Who knows whether they will stay there, but the point remains that West Brom look little better than us. And how much money has been invested in the squads of Blackburn, Southampton, Birmingham and Fulham? Money is not the be all and end all and I think a lot of the time supporters can just use it as an excuse for their team not doing as well as they hope. It is a factor of course, but as we sit here now it''s easy to say "well if they spent £3m on a striker we would stay up", but no one can guarantee that. The crucial point is: If spending that money and not staying up would put us in a position where getting back up would be more difficult then you can understand why the club wouldn''t take that risk. And for all the jibes and claims of "not telling the truth" (which may have some truth to a degree as with any club), only the club truly knows whether this would be the case. As a fan it is easy to disregard this dilemma as we don''t have to accept responsibility for the consequences. If we spent £3m on a striker and still went down, chances are a few more players would have to leave and we would have less money to reinvest in the team next season. The same supporters angry now would be moaning just as much then, decrying a lack of ambition and such. Truth is, football club boards are on a hiding to nothing in many cases. As for the initial comment about our fans deserving to be in the Prem, of course I would agree with the sentiment. But don''t you think that Sunderland''s fans would say the same, or West Ham''s, or Leeds'', or Forest''s, or Sheffield Wednesday''s, or Derby''s, or Leicester''s, or Wolves'' etc. The cruel nature of the game is that everyone wants to win, but only a few can at any time. Every club around us will probably spend more money in January, but still 3 teams are going to have to go down. Hopefully we can get one or two new faces in with our limited money (perhaps one being a loan) which can just make the difference. It might not be good enough, but spending £3m might not be good enough either if you don''t buy the "right" player/s. A couple of new faces to give us a fighting chance would be enough for me, and I don''t think that''s being defeatist, but being realistic about our current position as a club.

I think the criticism of him is fair in a sense. But I think he was brought in on the basis that he had some quality about him. Now that''s a decent reason to add someone to your squad. But I don''t think it was ever really considered how he was going to fit into the team. Fact is, he is not a winger and thats where we always play him. He played behind the front two in the diamond, but the whole formation was flawed (playing Damo and Holt in roles they were not suited to for example) and so its hard to blame him too much for not shining at the time. Perhaps we could play him uprfont, just behind Leon, with Hucks and Jonson or Macca on the wings. Maybe that would give him better opportunities on the ball. I don''t think he is going to be very effective on the wing, and so maybe Worthy needs to find a way to accomodate him better. Otherwise he should play someone else. Personally so far this season I have seen nothing from Bentley or Jonson which makes me think either can do a better job on the wing than Macca, and I would go as far to say Macca is also a harder worker at both ends of the pitch. I''ve also been saying for a while that I would like to see Hucks on the right wing (say swapping flanks during the game to do something different) as he would be able to provide better service for the strikers from there I feel. He put in one good cross with his left foot on Saturday (when Jonson put the header wide) but I think he could do that much more often if he had the ball on his right foot from the off. Macca can perform on either flank, so you could swap the two over easily.

This is going be memory, but I feel sure that when officials were talking about how the TV money is dished out, the basic agreement was based on each team getting at least 6 games on SKY, with each being worth between £245k (Pay per view games) and about £300k. We have already had 5 games live (Man Utd, Newcastle, Arsenal, Everton, Man City) and I believe that the Liverpool match (3rd Jan) has been chosen as a Sky game already (can''t find offical confirmation of that though!), so that would suggest that we are virtually certain to receive more TV money than we had originally budgetted for. This isn''t just because we are likely to be in a relegation fight (as someone mentioned above), but also because we play Chelsea in March, and both Man Utd and Arsenal in April, who''s games are much more likely to be shown regardless of the opposition as we know. So it''s possible that we could have another 3, maybe even 4 more games which could bring in between £750k to £1.2m exrta. I guess the real issue is when these TV schedules would be announced as planning for this money and then not getting it would be bad news for sure. It''s certainly worth thinking about. Not least because we are usually quite guarded over our transfers, a sensible policy as we don''t have much money and we need to make all of it count. If clubs know exactly what money you have to spend, they can push you into paying more or less all of it for a player. Therefore I would be surprised if we came out and said we had £1.2m to spend and we actually only had that amount! I would say there might be a bit more, perhaps closer to £2m (possibly more). Not a great amount, but look how much West Brom have spent this season and where they are. Money''s important, but not the be all and end all.

Hucks - very unlikely to go even if we get relegated. He''s made it clear he is happy here and he''s on a good contract so no worries about that. Damo - I''m glad he has been getting a lot of praise because he deserves it. In a funny way its a good thing that there are rumours about possible interest in him because it shows he is playing very well. But all they are is rumours. As for him leaving, no way will he go in January (particularly with his injury). If we get relegated then no doubt there will be interest in him from Prem clubs. One thing his new contract DOES mean is that any potential buyer would have to pay up to buy him (not like say Leicester who had to sell people like Thatcher and Dickov for next to nothing). If he was interested in a move to stay in the Prem and we were offered a good sum then he would probably be sold. But that''s just the nature of football for any club in our position. Green - all the rumours have been going on for so long, most of them complete fabrications created by people putting 2 and 2 together and making 5 (eg "the only reason Bentley signed on loan was because we have already done a deal with Arsenal for Green" - absolute rubbish!). But he''s a great young goalie and so clubs will be interested. I would be very surprised if anyone came up with a decent bid for Green in January to be honest. Man Utd for example spent their money on Rooney. Wenger doesn''t usually like to bring in many new people in January either. Clubs such as Middlesbrough might also be more likely to wait until the end of the season in the hope that we get relegated and therefore any move to a Prem club might be on Greeno''s mind. At the same time, if someone like Middlesbrough did come in for Greeno now, he might be more inclined to wait until the end of the season in the hope that one of the bigger teams were then interested. One thing is clear, if Greeno did leave in January then the money would go to our player budget. Whilst our forthcoming financial results won''t look good (due to the nature of our last financial year), we are no longer in a position where we have to sell our best players due to needing the money to stay afloat (eg as with the likes of Eadie and Bellers). We don''t need to sell Greeno and we don''t want to sell him. But everyone has a price, and every good player has ambitions to further their careers. If a team offers us good money and he wants to go then maybe a deal would go through. But a lot of things would have to come together to make it happen and I don''t think the month of January offers sufficient time to sort everything out. Not least the fact that we would only sell if we knew we had the time to reinvest the money into our squad in January as well. Staying in the Prem would bring massive financial reward, far, far outweighing any transfer fee we might get for Green (and I think people who believe we will get £5-6m are misjudging the current transfer market personally). So even from a basic financial standpoint it wouldn''t make sense to sell Green if we couldn''t reinvest in our squad to help us stay up. There will still be plenty of interest in Green next summer anyway. in truth I think most of the talk is just supporters worrying. I doubt anyone will go in January (well, any of our best players that is) and in all likelihood there will only be one or at the most two players coming in.

Thanks for the reply!

Looks like two good line-ups are going to be on show so it should be a good game. Hopefully Mullers can put in a good performance to start knocking on the door for the first team after his injury problems. Will be good to see the Doherty-Shack partnership as well. The report on here states that kick-off is at 19:00 rather than the normal 19:30 start. Just wondered if anyone knows whether that is a mistake or not!

Unfortunately as everyone knows, at every ground there are always sections of the crowd who like to pick on players for no real reason. They move from one target to the next as they kill each one off by sapping the players'' confidence (as shown in Iwan''s book). God knows why they do it. Take Svenny. He got abuse from the moment he arrived off some people despite the fact that he played for quite a while when he wasn''t fully fit, and despite the fact that he contributed a lot to our promotion when the pressure was on in the run-in. Some people were calling for Iwan every time he got the ball against Wigan before he shut them up with his fantastic goal. The same select idiots screamed abuse at Svenny as soon as anyone so much as looked like passing it to him against Palace (a couple sat near me unfortunately). Same has happened to Holt this year. He did have a few poor games at the start of the season no doubt, but in the last few he has improved and seems to be picking up the tempo of the Prem. Despite this, a bloke sitting near me during the Pompey match started moaning every time he got near the ball. When he struck the cross bar all he could say was, "well, I still think he''s a w+++++" and then stayed quiet for the rest of the match! In no way whatsoever were "the fans" on Hendo''s back, it was just the same small group of mindless idiots who seemingly have a compulsive need to victimize certain players (which can create the sheep like response from others as Marty states). If you think they were doing it as a result of an intelligent assessment whereby they looked at the players performance, considered all surrounding circumstances (eg a youngster playing out of position) and then made their decision then you are sadly mistaken. The very fact that some idiots booed Hendo was not because they were rationally criticising and giving an honest footballing opinion, it was because they are stupid, and consequrently that is a useless way to judge a players performance (which is why I said to look at the DVD, something you seem to find funny for some reason - honestly if you are subjective you will be surprised). Truth is, anyone can see that Hendo is not "crap" as you put it. Is he as good as Rooney? No, of course not. Does playing for the U-20''s mean he will represent the full England side in the future? Not necessarily, and chances are it''s not likely. Are we saying that Hendo is the greatest talent ever to pull on a yellow shirt? No we are not. All people on here are saying is that he is a player of genuine promise who despite still having a lot to learn, made a significant contribution last season when called on despite getting undeserved stick from some quarters. He might not go on to be a club great, but he has done well so far which suggests he has every chance to become a regular first teamer in the future with hard work and more experience. People getting on his back for no reason will not help him progress, and it won''t help NCFC as a result either. Thats the end of me on the subject as it''s clear you have your own personal agenda on this topic for some reason.

[quote]Let me put it this way: Hendo is now, what 20? This is a similar age as players like D Bent, Westlake and Bowditch - I know they''re all binners and I don''t like admitting this but Hendo is not even on...[/quote] But that last point is just your opinion, and personally I (as do many others) completely disagree with it. Like I said in my previous post, go and watch the season DVD and see how big a part Hendo played last year in helping us gain promotion. If you watch it and still cannot see it then I give up, you must have a personal agenda at stake. I''m particularly pleased you mentioned the likes of D Bent, Westlake and Bowditch because those without some sort of bias would have to agree that Hendo was one of the main reasons we beat them at home last season. It was he who lit the fires by going straight through Magilton (not the actions of "a little boy"!). And more importantly it was Hendo''s "penetrating" work down the right which won us both free kicks which resulted in Malky''s two goals, crucial moments as we were playing very poorly before hand (thats just a fact whch you cannot deny). "offers you nothing other than a lot of running"? What about in that dire home game against Forest. The one piece of genuine quality we showed, and what won us the game, was an excellent cross by Hendo which Svenny got on the end of (even you cannot deny the quality of that cross). And he also stuck a few goals away, not least the two against Millwal you mentioned, both of which were far from easy chances and showed his abliity in front of goal. How you can say he was wasteful on the ball is a mystery to me. Yes he did give the ball away at times, but a 19 year old playing out of position on the wing is going to make such mistakes. It''s part of the learning curve which all young players go through (some said it about Bentley''s performance against Villa for example). Most of the time fans got at him was when he didn''t waste the ball, and played a simple pass to make sure we kept posession rather taking on a defender or two with little support ahead of him. Hendo is certainly not the finished article, and with young players you can never quite tell how they will develop over time (and Jarvis would be a good example of this, as despite his greater talent he seems to have taken only a few steps forward over the past year, but I''m sure he will get back on track and come good for us over the next couple of seasons). But he has showed a lot of potential and to claim his performances last season were "dire" couldn''t be further from the truth in my opinion. Like I said, go and watch the season review. That provides conclusive proof that your opinon is wrong in my book.

Yep everyone is entitled to an opinion, but some aren''t worth listening to! Barely want to rise to that comment above! Shows you know sod all about football though. Not good enough for the First Division? That comment is completely insane. Just go and watch the season DVD of last year and note how many times Hendo played a key role in us scoring. I think even supporters of Hendo (which should be everyone as far as I''m concerned, you should never moan at your own players during a game, especially youngsters who will always make the odd mistake) would be surprised at how big a part he played when you look back. And all this whilst playing out of position on the right wing! 99% of the time some "supporters" had a go at Hendo last season was when he was actually doing exactly what Worthy wanted him to do, i.e. don''t bother tring to take on people if there is little support ahead, just put your foot on the ball and play it simple so that we keep possession and can build from there. Bottom line is, if you cannot tell the difference between a player like Hendo and players like Che Wilson, you must really be struggling! He played very well for the U-20s at the weekend, as he has done so far in the reserve games I have seen this season (he was excellent against Pompey reserves, best player on the pitch). I also thought he was our best player when he came off the bench against Everton in the cup last season, so I don''t think the step-up would bother him. I know Worthy and the coaching staff rate him very highly (thats why he got a new contract this summer) and the fact that he is moving so easily through the England youth ranks suggests that they rate him highly too. I really look forward to Hendo proving you completely and utterly wrong in the next few years! And I would have to agree that out of the two Hendo has been a lot more impressive than Jarv. I think Iwan noted this in his book, that Hendo just has a bit more desire to make it. Always shows in the performances. Any City fan would want both to do well though and thats why I can never understand such mindless criticism.