Another week rolls by and still no recruitment to what is now looking like a pretty threadbare squad. Since the manager, staff and players headed down the tunnel at SJP following the Arsenal defeat on the last day of last season, we have lost Harper, Simpson and Perch permanently from the payroll and seen Ferguson and Tavernier leave on season-long loans at Birmingham and Shrewsbury respectively. They are five players no longer available to the manager and the first three who may not have been amongst the ‘purples’ in our squad but were certainly more useful to Alan Pardew than some left at United and who are clearly, demonstrably not PL quality ‘ step forward Obertan, Williamson and Sammy Ameobi, the latter of whom desperately needs to go out on loan for an extended period to see if he has any hope of making a living in the game let alone at Newcastle United. Good on Twitter though.

Then of course we have Danny Gosling coming back to United after his transfer to Crystal Palace collapsed. Gosling has had a nightmare with injuries since we er, pulled off a coup in luring him to Tyneside from Goodison Park but his mooted move to South East London demonstrates where he is quality-wise. His treatment by the Selhurst Park club seems completely out of order however. There are others of course hanging around who have been told they have no future at United ‘ Amalfantino and Abeid. Form an orderly queue please.

Closer to the first team picture there are questions about Marveaux, who has delivered little more than cameos so far and suffered a succession of injuries as some predicted he would when we signed him. I’ve never been one to climb aboard the anti-Shola bandwagon as I believe the Fenham Eusebio has had his uses, never caused us a problem off the park, probably been misused in terms of his fitness etc but I think now is the time for a parting of the ways. But he’s still there and denying interest in moves away to Boro and Sheff Wed, which again, shows where he is in terms of quality. Not a PL player but still on the books.

There are those seriously questioning what Gutierez brings to the party (apart from being un-sub-able by Pardew) and by common consensus the likes of Tiote, Cabaye and Cisse had disappointing seasons last time out whilst Capitano Colo had his portrait taken down from the TF Gallery of Greats after the bollocks about wanting to do the off back to Argentina last winter. We all still love Colo though. Pardew appears committed to playing Sissoko out of position, Debuchy needs to justify his reputation in a B&W shirt and Steven Taylor should concentrate on delivering as a centre-half rather than embarrassing himself in front of the Gallowgate each home game with the phoney badge-kissing-style schtick while his agent (Willie McKay) has his name linked (just my opinion) with Marseille and QPR in a bid to renegotiate his contract north of what he’s on now. Santon is an elegant player going forward but for me he has a lot to learn about defending and I don’t think I’ll ever be happy about a right-sided player playing left-back for us. As for Mbwia, he has looked more Boumsong than Baresi since he arrived but that whole backline has looked abysmal on too many occasions and goes completely to pieces without Colo in it. There is a lot of work to do.

This is what Alan Pardew tells us is enough for the new season. Enough for what is the obvious riposte and with Yoan Gouffran touting himself for a role through the middle, I detect a collective heart sinking across Tyneside.

Still, the manager reckons he’s going to ask Mike Ashley for a hot-tub as all the top clubs have them, so it’s not all negatives.

Clearly, Kinnear’s failure to get players over that fucking line we keep hearing about is causing a great deal of angst in our ranks and whilst I wouldn’t put him on a SJP turnstile let alone in the United top job, it can’t be all of his fault deals aren’t being pulled off. I just wonder how much money he has got to spend from Ashley.

News that we want Remy on a season-long loan from QPR switched a light-bulb on and is the best illustration yet that Kinnear probably hasn’t got two ha’pennies to rub together in the transfer market and is attempting to do the best he can with the cards he’s been dealt. And Joe Kinnear’s best has never been much despite the creative CV he has wrote for himself on fantasy Island.

Add that to the news we have offered about half of what Lyon want for Gomis and a picture is forming of Newcastle United going to the transfer market in the same raggy-arsed fashion we have every close season since Ashley’s mad Allardyce-inspired trolly dash around the crap of the PL back in the summer of 2007.

But there were some positives last week. Sort of! Mackem Mick Harford, who allegedly spent a bit of time calling the United support at Selhurst Park ‘cunts’ in his playing days (to be fair, we could be, in the best possible sense) decided being Kinnear’s assistant (or carer as I saw one wag put it) wasn’t for him and he’d prefer to stop at Millwall amongst the criminally insane. Birds of a feather and all that! That Harford was offered a job as a kind of scout, checking out talent in the lower divisions is an interesting one on a few scores but the first one is, you mean we don’t have somebody doing this for us already as a matter of course? At least one? And the second point of course is that Harford has never ever in all of his years in something bearing a passing resemblance to football had a role doing anything like this.

Jobs for the boys? This is the kind of cronyism that brought us Wise, Jimenez, Vetere, Llambias and er, Pardew!

Or is it the start of Kinnear preparing for the moment when Pardew is either binned or walks? Who knows? Probably nobody at Newcastle United!

Another piece of good news! Sort of! Papiss Cisse will wear the United kit next season. This is now the kind of good news straight from the manual that expects us to be grateful we are calling our stadium St James’ Park. ‘I don’t think we’ll ever get to the bottom of this and it seems like it depends how cynical you are about human nature the position you take. Still, we’ll have him available now and we can look forward to seeing him running offside at a football stadium near you very soon.

More good news! Sort of! Capitano Colo won’t be suspended for PL games after throttling the Portuguese fella last week.

And some of you lot think we are a glass half empty bunch of guys. Give us a break, man!

Have a great week.

Keep On, Keepin’ On ”

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