Howay

Demba Ba btw iirc he couldn’t get away fast enough once an offer come in, now you’d think we were a club he was torn to leave. I know that’s modern day football btw but he can’t have it both ways.

Spot on, we’d let the UAE and Qatar become massive players in the world game how long did they realistically think Saudi Arabia would sit on the sidelines? I do find it interesting that any time the UAE or Qatar involvement is raised in these arguments many leap to try and twist on about how they’re different rather than try and have some actual discussion about how fucked the game has become. The Saudis are an end point to these type of owners, they’re the worst but it’s very hard to draw a line in the sand against this type of thing.

Agreed, these people are scum there’s no doubt about it and there’s no point excusing any of it as we have no reason to, but I also don’t see it as fair to put it on Newcastle fans that they should be making constant protests like you say. We had zero say in any of this, and as Rayvin said if it wasn’t NUFC it was going to be somewhere else - the same group had made overtures at Manchester United and Liverpool’s owners in the past. The coverage at times gets so absurd that the fan base is going to get prickly and defensive about it, just look to Oliver Holts ridiculous “Eddie Howe is a good appointment” “OMG look at me getting suckered in to sports washing!!! They’re so evil, did I mention the bone saw? and Newcastle fans are theeee wooooooorst” type back to back tweets as an example of it, of course Newcastle fans will want to occasionally talk football without everything constantly having to have 27 disclaimers about the owners, and quite honestly doing it is doing no good imo as it makes the defensive people say more outrageous things and it takes the impact of the awful things these people do away if it’s just constantly repeated. I think the opinion pieces are often the best place for this discussion, the Holts and Delaneys that just throw in some quip about the Saudis being bad and a dig at Newcastle fans onto any random breaking news tweet about Newcastle are to me almost as ridiculous as the fans who put Saudi flags in their profile and try to defend/belittle what the new owners do. We could protest constantly but it does fucking no difference, this is the way football has gone. This is the same game that essentially supported Qatar when they were trying to cover up that a French player living there had essentially been imprisoned due to a conflict with the club and his family had to flee back to France, the game that has sought to come down like a ton of bricks on Norway when there was a hint of possible boycott of the 2022 World Cup. If people truly want to kick this type of investment out of football that’s fine with me but making pariahs of Newcastle fans for wanting a drink out of the same trough swathes of football have been guzzling from is a bit rich imo. I know it’s impossible to support but if there was some mass boycott by Newcastle fans, what do these journalists that are so desperate to attack us over this think would happen? What would the PL do? My guess is they’d not show much support for the protests for long (if at all).

Agree on it being a short term problem. It’s a desperate, ill thought out, and short term play. Once we establish ourselves as being away from the relegation candidates there’s literally no incentive for half the PL clubs to avoid selling to us, I understand if they’re on board now hoping we will drop instead of them but even then the lower teams will know it does nothing but push the timeline back, it’s not like the owners will just throw their hands up in frustration and walk away. It’s why I always saw links to players like Tarkowski as a bit daft, why would Burnley sell us their main defender? It would essentially resign them to relegation or massively increase the odds of it coming to pass. Illegal agreement not to sell to us or not we were always going to struggle to sign players from those teams around us. The issue for me would be more the mid to top end sides refusing this season as those would have been the players we’d have been more likely to bring in. Even if the “top” sides carry it on it’s not really an issue in future, as realistically how often do they buy from one another?

Not if he keeps getting fucking SCOOPS like the below: Aye maybe he should stick to school eh.

The level of neglect of all areas of the club by Ashley is fucking tragic, areas like this will be the hardest to fix. I admit I’m not certain but I think there’s some interplay between the level your academy is rated at and the protected catchment area, I remember ours didn’t make the top tier which meant the protected area was greatly reduced which has likely allowed other clubs (seemingly Chelsea) to muscle their way in. Other clubs coming in and stealing away youth from the clubs area is fucking tragic tbh, I hope it’s an aspect the new ownership really address.

A lot of those that you highlight as not working out well they still turned a profit on I think. That seems to be what the bloke did really well at Chelsea, aside from bringing in players that had a first team impact he made them into a side that generates so much money from loan and transfer fees.

It’s fucking class isn’t it? Being actually excited and positive about incoming appointments is such a difference compared to ‘which fucking idiot is out there that’s been forgotten about or is about 15 years behind the times?’

The Knight Ryder approves.

I know it’s probably reading way to much into it but ASM’s body language throughout doesn’t look great. Couple that with his poor form since Bruce left and his message about Bruce, there’s a little bit of a thought that he really did like Bruce as he was basically allowed to do whatever the fuck he wanted and he’s going to be frustrated by the more controlled atmosphere going forward. Obviously I hope I’m reading to much into it, if it is the case obviously it’s better to have the team playing collectively better anyway, it would just be a shame as I think he could be a real star player if he can thrive in a Howe set up team.

That Grayson is a rare looking fucker isn’t he.

Bruce would be out of breath just watching that, why is Howe running? Shouldn’t he be guzzling coffee in his office to fight off the hangover from last night?

Aye, I think it’s part of it for sure but I think there’s also a big dollop of laziness. I think a lot of them flat out can’t be arsed to talk about another club, and do some actual research, it’s far easier to just blast out a load of cliches and then go back to talking about how amazing Manchester United is. I think that’s why the Bruce stuff got so absurd, they’d spent two seasons just saying their mate was doing a great job and looking at a mid table finish each year, not seeing how everything was rotting and a relegation was clearly coming, then when we got bought and were relevant news they all doubled down to make it seem they hadn’t been lazy bastards for years. It struck home to me when Martin Keown finally looked past simply the finishing positions and had some mind blowing revelation complete with shocked face on talkSPORT pretty much going “he’s actually doing a bad job!”. Luke Edwards is a prime example of this imo, the takeover news broke when he was traveling to cover the Europa League final and he wanted to just go out on the piss when he got there so decided to just tweet out it was all a load of bollocks and pray nowt come of it, he then proceeded to keep doubling down on this by pretending things like legal difficulties with the PL process was what he had in mind when he’d said a year prior that it was all bollocks, while he kept hoping it would all just go away. In short they’re all a bunch of lazy cunts.

Shelvey is a weird one, I’d seen a stat somewhere that he does actually cover a decent amount of ground per game, so I think his problem more lies in his poor positioning and that he very clearly gives up on a lot of defensive plays. I think a manager like Rafa forces him into a role, and basically tells him where to stand, where to set up, what to do when he’s in each situation on the pitch, which I think is something he massively needs or else he looks fucking lost and like he’s giving up on absolutely everything like he did under Bruce. Fwiw I don’t like him, but there’s a decent PL level player in there which hopefully Howe can use until January. Like I’ve mentioned before our squad is hard to judge after two years of Bruce, as Gloom mentions Shelvey looked to have a resurgence at times under Rafa, Sean Longstaff looked capable, Lascelles was seriously linked to Chelsea, Man City, and an England call up. I’m not saying they’re great players, but if middling PL players are given a strict role in a system they can excel at it and look better than their level, in the same way given absolutely fuck all instruction makes that level of player look utterly fucking clueless (as they have under Bruce - which has gotten worse the longer we had the bloke).

Aye both Farke and Smith got their sides promoted so are the reason they’re in the league. I’m not against them going but they’ve both been totally fucked over compared to Bruce, yet there’s not a peep of sympathy for them. Smith iirc inherited Bruce’s fucking mess at Villa, turned them round, got them promoted, built around their star player who was then promptly sold, he’s then been sacked at the first dodgy run while trying to find his feet after having his sides tactical identity upended - personally think out of any this is the sacking the press should be whinging about. Agree regarding Nuno as well, the only reason he was sacked was because they caught a whiff Conte had interest. Levy is to blame for their fucking mess as everyone in the footballing world knew he had to sell Kane, refusing to do so created a nightmare situation for a new manager imo. Usually I don’t give a fuck as at the end of the day that’s how football is, but the absolute fucking nonsense wrote about Bruce is further highlighted by these glaring examples.

Edwards has just been plucking that £50m from fucking ages ago where the was something about spending 250m over the first 5 years. Not sure if anyone to do with the consortium actually said it, or if it was just some report but chicken and wine boy has been wittering on about it ever since like it was fact. As he’s been wrong about pretty much everything to do with this takeover it’s fairly safe to assume he’s no more clued in than us.

Aye I’ve never seen why people give a fuck about them. It’s a bunch of grown blokes fighting over football ffs.

I honestly half expect a thread along the following lines to pop up on there: ”Now that Emery has turned down the barcodes would anyone have him at SAFC? I personally think he’d be the type of manager we should be looking at with our mega rich owners who have shown nothing but MASSIVE ambition so far as we slog towards maybe making the League One play-offs”

Is that Mike Ashley on the left? Must have been back in the 2008 hey day of necking pints in the crowd.

You’re only allowed 2 loan players iirc. I also don’t think we need to sign world beaters to avoid relegation, we just need good players who would improve us and many in that bracket would undoubtedly be happy to sign for us for an increased wage and the potential project, some may reject it but I don’t think it’s as clear cut as thinking if we are in a relegation fight they’ll have no interest. From what I’ve heard (take it or leave it I’m not saying I’m massively itk) we’ve scouted Weston McKinnie and Ramsey this weekend, and the Sule link is genuine. Possibly it’ll come to nowt but who knows? I think our focus has been players outside the PL

I think the hard bit with predicting us over the rest of the season is that despite all the prior data of teams with similar records to ours being destined for the drop, none of them were in the position where they could realistically spend £200m in January. The team we have now is also hard to gauge in terms of quality as well, imo they’re not as poor as they all look and a complete lack of conditioning is a big reason for that. By mid January we will possibly be a completely unrecognizable side to the one that started the season, in terms of current player standard and new players coming in.

Can’t stand the bloke tbh, happy clappy, everyone’s mate and shining his shite fake teeth at everyone when everything’s going their way and the refs are giving them big decisions, then when something goes against them he becomes a right nob.

Worth noting that the mackems hounded out Moyes as well

I assume he doesn’t like Liverpool as the mackems have a friendship with Everton? The bottom feeders in every rivalry have a club similar to Alcoholics Anonymous it seems. Pedo sympathizing little rats.