Bruce's Cabbage Patch Kids V A Wee Small Club In Manchester

[Kid Dynamite 7168]

9 hours ago, Howay said:

Not really what I said mind. My point was a win against Manchester United papers over the cracks like the Brighton, Norwich and Leicester losses, and will likely lead to Bruce keeping his job longer. I don’t expect us to carry on winning games, nor does a win at home against a Manchester United side who were missing big players like Pogba indicate that we will, but again it papers over the cracks and will buy him more time. It was also a post made at a time in the match where it was looking like we could get something out of it, so I was talking about a potential positive of a win even though it was going against getting relegated. As it happens I was pleased to see Longstaff score and always enjoy watching us beat Manchester United. 

We’re currently on relegation form (or hovering slightly above it), and my personal preference is we go down as it’ll cut Ashley off from the PL money. Imo the longer we keep Bruce the more likely we go down. 

 

If you’d like us to stay up and continue this cycle of Ashley milking the club that’s fine, I know plenty that are simply happy to see PL football, but personally I see relegation and staying down there as a way to get Ashley to sell up. 

 

He didn't sell up after the last 2 relegations. Why would he do it after a 3rd? A relegation knocks 2/3rds off the price of the club. If anything he's more likely to sell if we stay in the premier league. 

 

 

[Rayvin 5294]

3 minutes ago, Kid Dynamite said:

 

He didn't sell up after the last 2 relegations. Why would he do it after a 3rd? A relegation knocks 2/3rds off the price of the club. If anything he's more likely to sell if we stay in the premier league. 

 

 

 

Not if we stay down.

Edited October 8, 2019 by Rayvin

[Kid Dynamite 7168]

But that's based on fuck all as well. It's a complete guess. 

 

It's not far behind that plan NUFC fans had to all chip in some cash and offer it to Ashley so he would sell the club to the fans. 

 

 

[ewerk 31195]

I just wanted a pub tbh.

[Alex 35568]

I think he’d probably sell if the club was a financial burden to him for any sustained length of time. And I think that’s the assumption being made. Obviously it’s a guess but it makes sense and it’s the one scenario which hasn’t played out so far. It’s not exactly a choice which fills many of us with joy. What should be a relatively simple pleasure, ie following our team, is always a complex range of emotions under Ashley. You should be able to enjoy a young, local lad scoring the winner against Man Utd. But once the joy subsides you’re left with that bitter taste where you still have a half-witted dinosaur managing a club owned by someone for whom mediocrity and survival is the goal. The flip side is that even if we went down and stayed down then there are still no guarantees. But it’s gotten that bad, with no prospect of Ashley ever changing, that it’s a chance some are willing to take.

Edited October 8, 2019 by Alex

[Rayvin 5294]

22 minutes ago, Kid Dynamite said:

But that's based on fuck all as well. It's a complete guess. 

 

It's not far behind that plan NUFC fans had to all chip in some cash and offer it to Ashley so he would sell the club to the fans. 

 

 

 

An educated guess though. He clearly prizes PL advertising revenues and income and is prepared to spend extensively to get us promoted at first time of asking.

 

It seems clear that the only real reason he keeps us is to promote sports direct  and going down and staying down would absolutely harm that goal. It's also the only position under Ashley that we haven't really occupied which makes his reaction unknown rather than set.

[Rayvin 5294]

16 minutes ago, Alex said:

I think he’d probably sell if the club was a financial burden to him for any sustained length of time. And I think that’s the assumption being made. Obviously it’s a guess but it makes sense and it’s the one scenario which hasn’t played out so far. It’s not exactly a choice which fills many of us with joy. What should be a relatively simple pleasure, ie following our team, is always a complex range of emotions under Ashley. You should be able to enjoy a young, local lad scoring the winner against Man Utd. But once the joy subsides you’re left with that bitter taste where you still have a half-witted dinosaur managing a club owned by someone for whom mediocrity and survival is the goal. The flip side is that even if we went down and stayed down then there are still no guarantees. But it’s gotten that bad, with no prospect of Ashley ever changing, that it’s a chance some are willing to take.

 

Exactly this.

[Kid Dynamite 7168]

1 hour ago, Alex said:

I think he’d probably sell if the club was a financial burden to him for any sustained length of time. And I think that’s the assumption being made. Obviously it’s a guess but it makes sense and it’s the one scenario which hasn’t played out so far. It’s not exactly a choice which fills many of us with joy. What should be a relatively simple pleasure, ie following our team, is always a complex range of emotions under Ashley. You should be able to enjoy a young, local lad scoring the winner against Man Utd. But once the joy subsides you’re left with that bitter taste where you still have a half-witted dinosaur managing a club owned by someone for whom mediocrity and survival is the goal. The flip side is that even if we went down and stayed down then there are still no guarantees. But it’s gotten that bad, with no prospect of Ashley ever changing, that it’s a chance some are willing to take.

 

I disagree, but it's a fair enough explanation. 

 

[Alex 35568]

53 minutes ago, Kid Dynamite said:

 

I disagree, but it's a fair enough explanation. 

 

I think it’s important to at least try and respect both points of view. Even allowing for apathy, we all love the club and the fans aren’t the issue here. 

[Howmanheyman 33820]

9 minutes ago, Alex said:

I think it’s important to at least try and respect both points of view. Even allowing for apathy, we all love the club and the fans aren’t the issue here. 

Except for NUFC fans tv. They can fuck off tbh.

Edited October 8, 2019 by Howmanheyman

[Dr Gloom 22142]

i don't know if relegation will get rid of him more quickly. has he ever cut his losses before? he seems too stubborn and fuck knows how long he'd hang on for. 

[Rayvin 5294]

9 minutes ago, Dr Gloom said:

i don't know if relegation will get rid of him more quickly. has he ever cut his losses before? he seems too stubborn and fuck knows how long he'd hang on for. 

 

More quickly than what? Cos it looks like he's here forever at this rate. I think 3 years in the Championship mid-table would do it. Parachute payments run out, level of investment required to push us back is extreme.

 

So the question in my mind is would I prefer to spend the next 3 years 14th to 17th in the PL with no hope of progress, the whole concept of supporting the club reduced to simply the enjoyment you can get out of a single match at a time rather than any bigger picture - or would I prefer to spend the next 3 years in the championship with an elevated chance that Ashley might fuck off at the end of it. It's easy for me. Even with the risk that he doesn't sell after 3 years, so what? You still get the enjoyment from a single match at a time and an otherwise non-existent bigger picture in the championship. We've lost basically nothing more than the occasional, inexplicable victory over "big clubs".

 

Also, even if he does stay after the 3 years, it'll be fucking painful for him. Which is a plus.

Edited October 8, 2019 by Rayvin

[Dr Gloom 22142]

i don't think he wants to sell but i suspect our best chance of getting rid of him is if were to ever receive an idiotic bid, which massively overvalues the club. this is more likely to happen while we're in the PL. 

agree that the financial pain he would suffer from multiple years in the championship, or below, would be pleasing.

[Rayvin 5294]

4 minutes ago, Dr Gloom said:

i don't think he wants to sell but i suspect our best chance of getting rid of him is if were to ever receive an idiotic bid, which massively overvalues the club. this is more likely to happen while we're in the PL. 

agree that the financial pain he would suffer from multiple years in the championship, or below, would be pleasing.

 

Hmm. I suppose that is the other way to look at it.

 

I could actually kind of get behind him coming out and saying his plan is to pay off that fucking debt and thus lower the asking price the the club. It means any bid in the £300m range immediately becomes a much bigger win for him since he isn't also using that to pay off £100m of debt. If that was the plan, and he was clear about it, then fine. I could handle plodding along pointlessly in the PL for a few more years. But he's not made it clear at any point that this is something he really wants to happen.

[Ayatollah Hermione 14043]

He also seems like one of those fat blokes who’ll have a strangely stubborn heart.

[Kid Dynamite 7168]

3 hours ago, Alex said:

I think it’s important to at least try and respect both points of view. Even allowing for apathy, we all love the club and the fans aren’t the issue here. 

 

I can accept apathy, it's the knackers wanting us to lose that wind me up. Mackem esque 

[Kid Dynamite 7168]

1 hour ago, Rayvin said:

 

More quickly than what? Cos it looks like he's here forever at this rate. I think 3 years in the Championship mid-table would do it. Parachute payments run out, level of investment required to push us back is extreme.

 

So the question in my mind is would I prefer to spend the next 3 years 14th to 17th in the PL with no hope of progress, the whole concept of supporting the club reduced to simply the enjoyment you can get out of a single match at a time rather than any bigger picture - or would I prefer to spend the next 3 years in the championship with an elevated chance that Ashley might fuck off at the end of it. It's easy for me. Even with the risk that he doesn't sell after 3 years, so what? You still get the enjoyment from a single match at a time and an otherwise non-existent bigger picture in the championship. We've lost basically nothing more than the occasional, inexplicable victory over "big clubs".

 

Also, even if he does stay after the 3 years, it'll be fucking painful for him. Which is a plus.

 

Again though, being in League 1 under Ashley would in no way be more fun than being in the Premier League under Ashley. That's Mackem level of cognitive dissonance when they reckon they love away trips to Lincoln and Fleetwood

 

There are plenty of clubs like Pompey who are fucked after being out of the premier league for too long 

[Rayvin 5294]

12 minutes ago, Kid Dynamite said:

 

Again though, being in League 1 under Ashley would in no way be more fun than being in the Premier League under Ashley. That's Mackem level of cognitive dissonance when they reckon they love away trips to Lincoln and Fleetwood

 

There are plenty of clubs like Pompey who are fucked after being out of the premier league for too long 

 

I'm not saying it would be more fun. I'm saying that it's only marginally less fun. If fun is indeed the right word. I'm saying that the risk is very slender for me because the margins of enjoyment are so fine.

 

Look, if all you need is your weekly kick of excitement to get the blood going and you could care less about the wider direction the club is taking then fair enough. But for me, the former isn't enough. So I don't care if we're beating Man Utd on occasion, with the slim exception that a young local lad scored and that this is always nice to see, because the overall lack of direction makes it impossible for me to emotionally commit to any of this.

 

I can't take it anymore, I'd rather see us go down and hope that if we languish long enough, it'll force him out. I didn't care that we beat Spurs. I didn't really care that we beat Man Utd. I mean a few years ago I would have been jumping up and down around my living room even with the club owned by Ashley, but now it's gone.

 

So it's not that I want us relegated because we'll win more, it's not that I think it's good for the club in general, it's that I think it's literally the only way that Ashley will ever go, and that I can't enjoy this football club properly until he has. And really, for me, it's because this club isn't on a journey to anywhere. It's at its endpoint under Ashley. This is the destination. This is all there is.

Edited October 8, 2019 by Rayvin

[Alex 35568]

3 hours ago, Dr Gloom said:

i don't think he wants to sell but i suspect our best chance of getting rid of him is if were to ever receive an idiotic bid, which massively overvalues the club. this is more likely to happen while we're in the PL. 

agree that the financial pain he would suffer from multiple years in the championship, or below, would be pleasing.

People with that sort of money aren’t stupid enough to pay way over the odds. They also aren’t going to be held to ransom by Ashley. Ashley can’t negotiate when he can’t bully the other party 

[Dr Gloom 22142]

2 hours ago, Alex said:

People with that sort of money aren’t stupid enough to pay way over the odds. They also aren’t going to be held to ransom by Ashley. Ashley can’t negotiate when he can’t bully the other party 

Do you see him cutting his losses though? Doesn’t seem his style. The pig headed, stubborn slob would probably hang on to us out of spite. Fuck knows what he gets out of it or what it'll take to see the back of him. A coronary, probably.

[The Fish 10963]

3 hours ago, Alex said:

People with that sort of money aren’t stupid enough to pay way over the odds. They also aren’t going to be held to ransom by Ashley. Ashley can’t negotiate when he can’t bully the other party 

That was one of the lines that jared most from his interview with Samuel. "He's a prince and got £30bn, why would he argue over £10m?" 

Because he's not a fucking moron, and you've got £1bn, why are you quibbling over £10m?? £10m isn't an irrelevance, even if you're Carlos Slim.

53 minutes ago, Dr Gloom said:

Do you see him cutting his losses though? Doesn’t seem his style. The pig headed, stubborn slob would probably hang on to us out of spite. Fuck knows what he gets out of it or what it'll take to see the back of him. A coronary, probably.

If we go down and stay down I can see him slashing costs, dumping assets to try and clawback the debt we owe, then selling us for far less than the £300m he's reportedly demanding. 

[OTF 7485]

The most likely event preceding a sale of NUFC is the failing of Sports Direct. If that happens Ashley will want cash in a hurry and it removes the reciprocal benefit to him through free advertising.

 

In the meantime I'm not bothered by us being relegated, principally because if we stay up it's an endorsement of the way Ashley is running the club because that is all he's interested in. Controlling the purse strings as tightly as possible whilst maintaining premier league status. If you support Bruce and the club in a traditional sense at this stage you too are passively endorsing the way the club is being run.

[RobinRobin 11549]

2 hours ago, OTF said:

In the meantime I'm not bothered by us being relegated, principally because if we stay up it's an endorsement of the way Ashley is running the club because that is all he's interested in. Controlling the purse strings as tightly as possible whilst maintaining premier league status. If you support Bruce and the club in a traditional sense at this stage you too are passively endorsing the way the club is being run.

It would also shut those fuckers in the media who spout the "it's a well run club" rubbish endlessly - especially the hairy-handed one, who I see has raised his hands above the parapet again to slag off Rafa

[essembeeofsunderland 811]

Is DELLboy's plan to buy us after taking the piss out of the makems for a few months?