Howay

Funny time to bring all that up when Pickford is England number one and allegedly being chased by Chelsea, and Mbemba just signed for the Portuguese champions.

Did we ever decide if Ashley has gotten the hang of this footy lark?

Schar and Muto both seem canny enough players, Kenedy and Dubravka we know are good, and Ki is fine as back up. It’s fucking gutting to see Benitez toiling like this though, imagine what we’d be getting in if we had a budget. He’s basically funded that lot by flogging our utterly shite 5th string keeper and our 4th choice CB ffs.

Totally forgot about that craic he had around winning cups being bad for the club, what a complete cunt .

I’m becoming more and more convinced our dickhead owner and thumbman think it’s about 1995 going off the transfer fees.

Even if there’s any truth in that £100M over three years isn’t the “war chest” they’re making it out to be. We’d make well over 3 times that just in TV rights in the same time period if we stayed in the PL.

We’re going to sell Mitrovic and give Gayle away to get Rondon in. What a fucking bottom feeder of a club we are under this utter bell end.

Agreed, iirc if it’s true it’s yet another example of Mike Ashley being a lying cunt as I’m fairly sure at one point he said we’d only sell players for the full fee, no installments, and buy players that way too. What a complete waste of time this club is with this whopper as owner. Fucking Leicester just spent £12.5M on what could be a back up keeper (I know they may be selling Schmeichal but at the moment they’re claiming Ward is competition) and we have a net profit of about £6M or so when we desperately need to improve a workmanlike squad.

If that was the reason then surely he could just hoy in a clause to any deal that he gets 10 year of free billboard advertising to any deal if he was to sell. That way he’d get his shite shop advertised without the hassle. I honestly think at this point he’s just being a monumental cunt tbh. He’s got skin as thin as Trump’s when it comes to insults so I’d not be surprised if he had a massive chip on his shoulder with regard to NUFC fans. As an investment it’s a fucking pointless exercise, if he’d invested the £134m or whatever it was elsewhere 10 year ago he’d get a far better return than sticking it into a football club.

What a fucking winnet he is man.

tbf it won’t be long until they won’t need scouts and the fans can just play.

The situation is utterly expected but still fucking galling. We’ve come to the end of the road here imo, to a point where NUFC is fucking pointless to support. I might be just being a mopey cunt here, but basically if there was ever going to be one iota of ambition every shown it would be now. We have a top class manager, who got the club back up at the first time of asking on a net profit, or low net spend (I don’t remember as that counts for nowt with ownership anyway as they’ll always just say we have fuck all), kept the club in the PL with a tight budget. We should have a surplus of cash, instead he’s told we are still paying off the one season we spent down there. How the fuck do clubs survive if that’s the case? How have fucking Fulham come up to the PL after donkeys years out and immediately bought Seri, a player who was almost signed by Barca 12 months ago. If the stories that Benitez was offered a five year deal but turned it down as he wanted assurances about control over the youth set up are true, this club is completely and utterly fucked. I rarely say this about people but I’m getting to the point where I just wish this cunt would just die. I know it sounds harsh but what is he doing here? It’s a massive part of people’s lives this football club and he’s fucking on with it as if it’s one of his fucking tatty shops. It’s just so fucking annoying to sit and watch him fuck over any good chance for the football club to be good, for no reason whatsoever. Just give Benitez a budget man, it doesn’t have to be outrageous or even what other clubs are spending but anything is better than hamstringing him to the point he’s getting frees, loanees, and priced out of moves for Solomon fucking Rondon. Im just curious as to what he expects when Rafa does leave. He can’t honestly be thick enough to think it’ll be okay this time? I know he’s done some abhorrent stuff before but there was always a glimmer of hope to cling to, a feeling that we would spend or do something but once Rafa leaves next summer it’ll be clear to everyone it’s never getting better. What the fuck runs through your head where you allow Steve McClaren to spend a wedge (under this wanker anyway) and give Rafa Benitez nowt?

Aye, the plan seemed to be just get control of it and then figure out how to get the backing. A really fucking idiotic plan, which I hope and expect will spectacularly backfire and see that rotten, fucking cesspool of a football club even lower down the league. To a level far more befitting that shit show of a town.

“Debt free marras” predictably lasted a few weeks. Glad the dozy cunts have had that bubble burst.

While I’m not surprised I just don’t see the point in what he is doing. If he was to keep Rafa and just allow him to spend a decent amount with transparency about how much there is to spend, there would be no risk of relegation, no risk of Rafa leaving, and honestly we’d become a more marketable club etc. Instead he willfully risks relegation year on year and is doing his best to chase off the best thing that’s happened to the club during his disgrace of a tenure. If Rafa leaves I can see a lot of people packing it in, I think many were about there just before he took over, and to have had a manager of this calibre come in and be so willing to stay only to see him pushed out because Ashley would not spend a fucking penny it would just be a bit much for most iyam. Genuinely don’t understand why Rafa is hanging about. Ashley clearly has no intention of ever letting him spend owt. Tin pot no mark sides like Huddersfield, Brighton, and Bournemouth outspend us every year.

It’s all because Rafa doesn’t have a hair island.

Ashley is such a fucking bellend.

What are they complaining about? I have my complaints about VAR but that was a great use of it, the referee missed an intentional hand ball and VAR was used to make the right decision. The only complaint I’d have is I don’t understand why the referee had to watch it about 20 times as it was fairly blatant but that’s not on VAR just the referee being a bit of a fanny.

Aye I have liked him as a player but his comments after the England game were unneeded. Two fantastic tic goals by France here mind. Could get fucking embarrassing this, hopefully it does.

I thought he was shite when he was 23/24 and pretty much wrote him off as a jack Colback type but tbh he’s improved a hell of a lot.

Players generally improve I disagree that it’s a myth. Barkley is just injury prone so would struggle to improve, Sterling has improved imo even at International level but I’m happy to agree to disagree on that one. It’s a squad where we had players who got more caps during the tournament than they had before it. Which, as I’ve said, have shown they are better than all previous England teams since at least 2004. Southgate is learning as well, this was the blokes first tournament, I’m not willing to just write the bloke off because he made some decisions I disagree with. Capello was a far better manager on paper but he was a fucking joke of an England manager, if we chuck in Southgate at the start of his project we’re back to having no identity and no plan. At the moment we have an identity to build on, we were lacking in some key areas but the talent is in the youth and they’re all playing a similar system to the side which was at the World Cup so it’s creating a potential pipeline. Southgate deserves a lot of credit for that imo. Also when saying those sides look forward to their youth talents improve in 4 years, those are the lads England have been brushing aside in the majority of youth tournaments? I know you acknowledge that point later but it sort of makes the point about those teams moot imo. Of course there is always the risk they won’t come through, or that lads like Foden and Sancho won’t get games but what’s the point in being negative about it? Of course those sides have more quality, all of them (with the exception of Belgium) have had more quality than us for most of football history. You can make pretty much the same point regarding Mbappe kicking on as you can about the England players improving, you’re only one bad injury away from being half the player you were. In 4 years Rashford could improve a lot, look at Kane now compared to his level at the previous World Cup. My main point is really that there are positives to this World Cup, we’re a country that two years ago lost to Iceland, four years ago were put out at the group stage by Costa Rica. I just don’t see the point in scratching around for negatives, as ewerk says we may as well pack in watching England if we can’t enjoy that World Cup.

It would be so good to watch mind, the contrast to the Juventus one would be brilliant especially if they did a second season of it, as it would feature whatever no mark they buy driving their Ford Focus home compared to the Juve lot cutting about in custom Range Rovers.

Maybe so but two years ago we were put out by Iceland. We comfortably beat teams of that level at this tournament. That’s progress imo. We also have a very young squad who will improve, the Croatia side that put them out had massive amounts of experience at international level and big game experience. The amount of nervous energy the England players probably expended compared to a squad littered with players used to similar stake games (Modric, Lovren, Rakitic, Mandzukic off the top of my head all playing in a lot of semi finals and finals of tournaments), did count for something as the England players looked knackered. In a similar way as the Croatians this was possibly this Belgian sides peak World Cup, I know the attacking talent will be at the next one but Vertonghen and Alderwierald will be 35 and 33, Kompany will likely be retired and I’m not sure they have a lot of defenders coming through. I’m not saying this crop will win anything but at least they actually play quite well compared to the disasters of the previous tournaments.

It was aye . It’s a bit of a weird and pointless game, suppose it’s a nice way to end the tournament for Belgium. Good tournament for England, they far exceeded my expectations. I have a feeling that many who are shitting on England and how they played no one likely had England going out at the group stage before the tournament.

This is spot on. Some of these lads have 9 caps, 6 of which came at this tournament. This system is new to them and they’ve took to it well. The “only beat weak sides” argument doesn’t wash with me either, in the past 8 years I’ve seen England struggle like fuck against sides like Iceland, Algeria, Costa Rica, etc so I’m happy to see us just put sides like that to bed with comfortable wins. We also have a lot of talent coming through the system who are all playing in this same sort of style. It’s about as positive as I’ve ever been about England so I’m going to enjoy it. On that note, I can take a bit of piss taking as much as the next bloke but the Scots online are getting tedious as fuck, they keep acting like we have absolutely no right to have taken any enjoyment or pride from getting to a Semi Final and that the “it’s coming home” craic was completely serious. They can bore off tbh, it also wasn’t absurd to start believing either as if you make it to a semi final you definitely have a reason to think you’re in with a chance. The quality and experience has told again here but I’m just glad to finally have an England side I give a fuck about watching. It’s also always worth pointing out that as decent as Young has been we’d have a better player there in Luke Shaw if Mourinho hadn’t made it his personal mission to bully the lad out of football.