Rayvin

CT, this is pathetic The Tories were what, branding him a traitor a little while ago? And they've tied him to Pro-Russian groups repeatedly. Pot calling kettle black. Hoisted by their own petard. Fucking rekt, as the kids would say. They can get to fuck. I may be slightly drunk.

Sorry

Of course we're going to be screwed over by countries that are this much more powerful than us. China will be the same. This is why the EU was such a good thing. It's economically stronger than both, or at least would be if we could centralise economic affairs. Fucking stupid.

I think you can rightly push them hard on this, but domestic couriers are a low margin enterprise, and I would imagine that they will not go as far as reimbursing you for the failed delivery. You should absolutely get another free saturday delivery though. These companies aren't as well run as the international ones IMO. You get the presentation of a slick outfit at the front end, but behind the scenes it's a bunch of guys who don't really care what your package is, or when you need it.

Well, you know how I love to apologise.

Agree on how he improves the players around him for certain though. Surety of self and confidence I guess.

Ah apologies if I'm repeating something someone else said..

Was just reading a comment BTL on the Guardian's match report from our game at the weekend, and one guy pointed out the following: Great win for Newcastle, though probably the easiest of the season. There's a fascinating stat out there. The first ten games of the season, where Lascelles played the 90, we got 14 points. For the next six, when he was injured, we got 1 point. Since he's returned, we've picked up 17 points from 14. So 1.3 points per game WITH Lascelles, 0.2 points per game WITHOUT. To put that into context, we'd be on for 49 points over a season with Lascelles playing. And in that spell without him, we had some very winnable games - WBA away, Watford, Everton and Leicester at home. 49 points would have us 6th, above Arsenal. So for all I'm saying Lascelles is replaceable at £50m, this is a good argument that I could be totally fucking wrong

Grim

Tbh I actually hadn't considered the driving bit. Fair enough.

Still entirely possible you could be bang on tbh

Aye the dad is almost as culpable, but at the end of the day, spitting is a more aggressive action than saying a few words, and Carragher should be man enough to handle it as he himself has acknowledged. Why not just give the guy the finger?

Doesn't help that he technically spat on a 14 year old girl mind, rather than her dad.

Aye but that's just football. If he played for Liverpool and someone came along and offered them £50m then yeah, they could probably turn that down. But £70m? £100m? No matter who was in charge of us, based on where we are in the league, £50m would see Lascelles away. And it's more than enough to replace him with.

Aye but Lascelles is the player he is thanks in part to Rafa. If we get another decent young prospect for him to develop then who knows. Or two.

If we sold Lascelles for £50m, we could get a decent replacement with that. Probably two. I don't want to see the lad go but £50m, even in today's market, would be a good deal for us. Also, tbf to Ashley, if we end up signing the loan players we brought in at the end of the season (Slimani aside) then I'm tempted to argue that the 'try before you buy' deal is actually a good arrangement. We brought in good players in positions that we needed. Ashley just needs to keep hold of Rafa. If he can do that, I'm confident we'll be ok, short, medium and long term.

I suppose it depends to some extent but realistically we should be able to improve assuming that a full year of the TV revenue being behind us is actually making us profitable. I can't think of any of our players that would be losing value at the moment, based on recent buys anyway, so any sales should be at profit also. I think the thing with Rafa is that he seems to be able to positively develop players in a way that managers like Pardew, Allardyce, the usual shite, don't seem to be able to. Those managers need to keep buying to improve. Rafa can improve just by continuing to work with his team. So while it will be a slow process, I think we can assume that players will be sold at profit from the first team, and that this means we are able to buy better 'base' players for Rafa to develop into an improvement on the ones we sold. Yeah it relies on the manager being here for the long term to be sustainable, but I think that has to be the hope.

I reckon he can - I don't think there's any way of us breaking into the top with Ashley there, but I think Rafa can make us a solid top ten side.

Not saying we should trust him or he will behave any differently, just saying that it's not like Rafa won't understand this.

Exactly. They will have more options at the end of the season and can start talking to people and avoiding a panic replacement now. Although I guess it becomes more difficult for them if Pardew continues to lose every game.

Yeah but if promises being broken was going to be an issue he'd be out the door at the end of the season anyway. It's not like he hasn't been lied to already. If Ashley sticks to this "the club can spend what it generates" bit, then at least that's something.

I would argue that it needs to be a pitch invasion with a relocation of the corner flag. It's the West Ham way, after all.

Aye, can't be overstated how important Lascelles is for us. Great to have such a likeable player as captain. Also, encouraging that Rafa and Ashley are now speaking? All this talk of Benitez leaving at the end of the season may not come to fruition, hopefully. And the longer he stays, the more you expect he won't want to go - especially if we are still making progress.

They're down anyway. Make him stick with them until they are actually relegated and sack him at the end of the season. No one they bring in now is going to make any difference.

Still think he's going under the radar a bit though which is helping us.