Jan transfer news 2012

[pondus]

I think we have the least imaginative scouting network ever.

Henderson, Downing, Bellamy, Downing, Caroll, Enrique - I think our world wide network of scouts suggested these names after watching MOTD in their living rooms.

We bought him twice

[peekay]

We bought him twice

[Kenneth]

It would explain the fee.

[Fivex]

It would explain the fee.

If only it did

[Shaggy]

GarethBale22 Gareth Bale (NOT!)
Ba, Cabaye, Ben Arfa, Papiss Cisse, Tiote, Krul, Santon and Taylor = £34.5m. £500.000 less than Liverpool paid Newcastle for Andy Carroll.

Jeez.

[Craig_H]

Yep and we'll still finish comfortably above them in the table.

[Daniel 7]

Ashley's done a lot wrong, but he seems to be getting this right for NUFC

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/oct/08/newcastle-united-french-scouting-policy

When Newcastle appointed the dad of a well-known comedian as chief scout it must have looked like another joke on Tyneside. Instead Graham Carr, father of Alan, has surpassed even Arsène Wenger in his knowledge of emerging French talent and has inspired the recovery at St James' Park.

Newcastle, fourth in the Premier League table and unbeaten in nine games in all competitions, are in danger of giving prudence a good name. So addled by salary inflation is the English game these days that voluntary wage caps are seen as an act of self-immolation. Sick of funnelling money to big names, the owner, Mike Ashley, turned away from Dennis Wise in matters of recruitment and towards a Geordie obsessive whose 49 years in the game include stops at Tonbridge, Dartford and Bradford Park Avenue.

Alan Carr jokes that when he told his dad he would not be joining him in football and would instead be heading for the stage he offered to explain through "expressive dance". With the family tradition broken (Graham's father played for Newcastle), the chief scout headed back to Europe, where he has recruited seven French players, among them the creative midfielder Yohan Cabaye and 19-year-old Mehdi Abeid.

Graham Carr worked for David Pleat at Spurs and scouted for Sven-Goran Eriksson before coming home to end the club's Wise years in February 2010. Ashley has tried many a punt in his time as Newcastle owner, from bringing back Kevin Keegan to hiring Alan Shearer for eight games to overloading the place with advisers with brackets after their titles to renaming the stadium after a website to clearing out Andy Carroll, Kevin Nolan, Joey Barton and José Enrique.

Those evictions were expected to bring the death agony of Ashley's reign, with Newcastle sliding back to the Championship while the £35m earned from Carroll's sale to Liverpool remained unspent. A maximum wage of £45,000 a week or thereabouts was greeted as an admission of defeat by a self-made man who had been stripped of his reputation for shrewdness in the piranha pool of football finance.

From fourth spot, Newcastle now look down on Liverpool as well as Spurs, the visitors to St James' next Sunday. To proclaim wins over Sunderland, Fulham, Blackburn and Wolves as a return to the David Ginola-Andy Cole-Peter Beardsley era would be stupidly premature. Adversity will strike Alan Pardew's side at some stage in this season and then we will assess their true calibre.

For now, though, they are entitled to slide off the hook of ridicule that has held them through Ashley's many experiments. In defending their club against "southern" critics some Newcastle fans have acquired quite a persecution complex. They assume all scrutiny is hostile when much of it is directed at mismanagement from above rather than the team or the congregation.

Over many months now a fresh breeze has blown in with Cabaye, Hatem Ben Arfa (back from serious injury), Sylvain Marveaux, Gabriel Obertan, Chiek Tioté, Abeid and Demba Ba, the Senegal striker who was born in the Paris suburb of Sèvres. Leon Best also continues to improve in a squad where Fabricio Coloccini and Alan Smith are the last of the big-earners from the money-spraying years.

The goalkeeper Tim Krul says "everyone is fighting for each other" — a nice change from the time when everyone was merely fighting each other. He cites Pardew's policy of tightening the back of the side as the catalyst. But basic coaching falls apart in the end without a sufficient quality of incoming player.

This is where Carr comes in. "We won't just watch a player once. With someone like Cheik, it was the result of four years watching him," he said in a rare interview. "I'd first seen him playing for Roda against Arsenal in 2006 — they were hammered 4-0 I think, but you could tell he was going to be a good player. He never stopped running.

"So you keep an eye on him and track his progress, which is where we are with plenty of other players. People will all look at Arsène Wenger and say he's got the French market covered, but we've got a good handle on it, believe me. The same is true of other countries too. The key is to react quickly – that is what will get us our targets. That and the fact that Newcastle United is a big, big draw overseas."

In a world where scouting and recruitment have become highly corporate and legalistic endeavours there is something reassuring about Alan Carr's journeyman player of a dad delivering to the tortured Ashley the solution he was groping for and failed to locate in what you might call the Xisco years. "Being a Geordie and having supported Newcastle gives me a bit of an advantage, I think," Carr told the local Sunday Sun. "You look at some players who are talented, but you just have to say: 'They're not a Newcastle United player.'"

Poor Wenger: even his title of French oracle is under threat. But having found them, Newcastle will now have to keep them, and somehow square that need with wage constraints.

[Gibbo]

Jeez.

Wow

[cream]

Wow

We've made them better than us

[kingfunk]

Good on Mike Ashley, that's it.

[Mostar]

Anyone know anything about Papiss Cisse who's just signed for Newcastle?

Wonder if he's a replacement for Ba or slated to play with him?

Newcastle are taking the Papiss now

Decent footballer but I am not sure he'd be able to adjust to PL with same amount of convinction or success as Ba.

Imo a risky move on their part but it could work especially if Ba will not be sold and Pardew wants to play with 2 strikers upfront as Cisse can make things easier for Ba.

[Alex]

I think he is the replacement for Ba. Not to partner him.

[Liverpool]

Jeez.

thats a superb foundation of players if you add suarez gerrard lucas skittles agger and a couple more into

[Liverpool]

howson to norwich, wonder what the fee is with only 6 months on his contract

Leeds are going nowhere

[lickedlollipop]

It would explain the fee.