Quote Originally Posted by ex_pat_magpie View Post
But Bournemouth are still above us despite your excuses and the financial huge clout we have over them.

Could it be that the reason is that they have a forward thinking ambitious owner and we have a fat greedy pilfering slug of an owner.
We don't have a huge financial clout over them.
Cast back to the days of normal TV (not sky, etc) and then you could argue that we would have huge financial clout compared, because that's when big clubs meant what was said.

Today, clubs are dictated to by TV companies?/dictators and basically what seems like a pecking order of the elites.

You see, you have to try and work out what ambition and investing actually mean in football terms, against clubs, because, to me, it seems like the elites are created and the TV elites dictate the spending of those catch up clubs in a sort of pay up to compete or be called minnows and misers and cast out and far too many clubs seem to fall from the ploy to try and be the club that hangs on tightest to the tail coat of the last in the elite league of clubs.

This is how I see it all and I do not see it in the way you do.
But the initial argument was that Bournemouth on 12,000 gates regularly spend over 20 million on players. They clearly don't and will clearly avoid doing so because they will die very quickly, just like Sunderland did by reckless spending and wages.

Newcastle United on the other hand, although not ideally placed in the minds of many fans, are a fairly solid premier league club and getting stronger, inch by inch after a lot of turmoil....but still with the brains to understand that trying to emulate the elites will end up with us being looked on as an elite in a league befitting Sunderland and the likes.

That's how I see it.
This is why I can content myself on not hating the owner and can expect from a top manager....progress, because he's paid handsomely to bring out the best in the players he buys, who are also handsomely paid.

Would I like more?......YES.
Am I prepared to wait?....YES.

Am I prepared to still carry on being a fan until that happens...or not?.....YES.

As for ambition. Does a stadium holding 18,000 in a premier league but which gathers 12,000 on occasions seem like a club with ambition or likely to hold its own, investment wise?
I don't think so.