BlueStar

See Shearer's been named as one of the people whose phone was hacked by people working for the NotW, wonder if that's how the seven bells malarky came out.

He is apparently very confident that he will takeover. Well I wish he'd fucking hurry up.

This is like pissing through a stiffy, fucking get us SOLD for fucks sake.

Sounds like just the kind of stuff that happens when you're nine. They've probably heard some Malaysians are gonna buy the club, asked the only asian lad in the class if he knows anything about it and he's said "Aye, my Dad works with the guy who's gonna buy them" and gone along with it. The kid's probably Korean. Remember when a rumour went round that a lad in my class had been born in America and suddenly he was related to practically every WWF wrestler.

I'm gonna buy it on novelty value alone, I've got a pair of bright orange and yellow beach shorts it's gonna go a treat with.

.com are right about bouncing back being our best chance of not being stuck in the Championship indefinitely like, really can't fuck around wasting time.

Makes it sound very authoritative that it comes from an Asian news source, until you realise they've just read the Shields Gazette.

Man U fan's reaction on another board to the pic of Owen in their new shirt

http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/7214/12019808116525432552.jpg

Like I say, he's a known quantity and from that I think he'll at least have us challenging for promotion in my opinion. It was sticking with Shepherd that got us underachieving mid-table, but it was ending up with a mystery man in charge that no-one thought could be any worse than Shepherd that got us relegated.

It's being picky because we don't know who the other bidders are. I'd be much happier with the known quantity of Shepherd considering the position we're in, rather than gambling on someone who could take us down another level.

We need an owner now, being picky and hoping there's some rich footballing genius about to have brain failure and take a gamble on the club is absolute suicide. If we kick our heels in the Championship for a few seasons we're going to be just as trapped in it as anyone else. Saying somone might have the club "well run" by then ignores the fact that any other team in the Championship might also end up being "well run" and we may end up with another knacker who doesn't know what they're doing. We need to knock some of this arrogance on the head and understand we're about as appealing as e-coli at the moment and we're not so big that we won't become just another Championship club if we tread water assuming we're going to end up with a better option than Fred. As for spending money we don't have, we may fucking have to, it's called speculating to accumulate. The lower divisions are full of teams steadfastly living within their means and being frugal and many of them are doomed to remain where they are because of it.

Mostly because we've not just spent two seasons in the Championship. In terms of being an attractive prospect for players I'd rather we were seen as a Premiership team that took a brief hiatus in the Championship than a Championship team which is making a brief visit to the Premiership. It doesn't take too long in the second flight for previous accomplishments to fade away and it's naive to think after failing to get promotion for two seasons we're going to be held any higher than our peers in that league.

Two years in the Championship "sorting ourselves out" will only result in us being cemented as a championship team. If we go up after two seasons we'll be going up as a WBA, Derby or Hull and odds on to go straight back down. Best thing we could do is go up next season.

I think people who would prefer to slam the door in Fred's face, twiddle our thumbs and find out what's in the mystery box are vastly overestimating our attractiveness to a buyer with no previous connection to the club. After watching Ashley's spiral of mutual destruction you'd need your head seen to if you wanted to buy this club and pump money into it confidently expecting a return. Shepherd may act solely in the interests of his wallet and his ego but at least his ravenous pursuit of feeding both motivates him in the right direction for the club and we can clearly see that's what drives him. I'd be very suspicious of both the intentions and the competence of anyone else who's wanting to buy the club for around this £60m sticker price.

Explain.

Getting rid of Robson was a good decision, the timing and resulting replacement was the bad decision.

Fucking hope so. Hope it's Fat Fred as well for what it's worth,

I went and asked for that exact same thing and they hadn't a clue what I was on about and told me they couldn't do crests because of copyright, so I think it may depend on who's working at the time.

Basically let's just get a fucking owner and a manager and start grafting on getting back up, we can start being picky about how fat and obnoxious Freddy Shepherd is when we're a Premier League club and there's a vague possibility of some Arab billionaires giving a shit about us.

I really don't think we're going to do any better than Shepherd, hope if mongs start revolting and boycoutting on SSN that no-one fucking listens to them or we're going to end up being the architects of our own demise, going into next season with no owner and no manager with people dancing in the streets that at least it wasn't Freddy and sure that some Geordie oil baron is coming along soon.

Even though the Souness appointment is an absolute epic fail, we still did far better with Freddy backing the wrong manager than we did with Ashley not backing the (supposed) right manager.

GOOD. Edit to expand: The possibilities at the moment are either 1) Freddy and co 2) Not being sold, drifting rudderless into the new season 3) New owners who are about as hapless as Mike and/or want the club for the wrong reasons 4) A rich oil baron type with a good understanding of how to run a football club. As two of those are worse than the known quantity of FS and the other is highly unlikely, I'd be perfectly happy with playing it safe and having the devil you know back rather than rolling the dice on the other options.

So I've been in a tent for 3 days and absolutely fuck all has happened in the meantime I take it?

Fact is, this season to them is their equivalent of our 100 games in Europe, going to the San Siro, beating Man U 5-0, tonking them 4-1 at their place, finishing above Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal etc all rolled into one so you've got to expect their forum will explode like they've won the league. Liverpool have that night in Istanbul, Sunderland have that season where they were fucking dire but, hey, the Mags got relegated. When's the official DVD coming out?