tmonkey

As a side note, I personally don't buy the notion that Ashley isn't going to utilize legitimate "backdoor" means, which won't be identifiable in high level summarized annual accounts (nor require disclosures), for making money out of NUFC since he's a billionaire and can legitimately take money out of NUFC if he wanted to. It's like saying that that because Ashley is a billionaire he wouldn't exploit low paid zero hour contract workers for a few quid by using 15-30 minutes of their time unpaid doing additional security checks and thereby paying under national minimum wage. It's like saying he has no need to buy shares at a struggling but widely supported Scottish club on the cheap, get his mates onto the Board in an attempted power coup, and look to force through debilitating merchandising/retail deals to benefit Sports Direct. It's like saying because Ashley is rich Newcastle United wouldn't be paying Sports Direct £1.3m a year for unknown reasons (buying all our stock from a retailer? What?) - Ashley doesn't need to do any of that. Except he did. The man is a shyster by nature. He seems to revel in beating the rules and sticking fingers up at others whilst making as much money as possible, even though he doesn't need to. As a hypothetical scenario, if he has two possible options, one which exclusively benefits NUFC only (sign a player the manager wants) and the second which potentially benefits NUFC ("Xisco/Doumbiya might be alright") but which also benefits himself/his mates/Sports Direct in the process, what about his personality and track record makes people think he's going to go for the first option? Football is a dodgey sport. Again, it's why unscrupulous business men with questionable pasts or current practices seem to be attracted to it. Lets not use financial statements as a concrete argument to portray a complete picture of what's going on financially - it's not like Juventus included a disclosure for bribing referee selections in their annual accounts. There's all manner of ways in which someone can benefit through off the book deals involving an entity. An agent might pay Ashley money directly for his player to be signed/loaned by us as one possible example in hundreds, or favors could be exchanged if we make promises. Did Grant Thornton audit Mike Ashley's personal bank accounts, or even Mash Holdings', when they signed off NUFC's annual accounts? Of course not. https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/newcastle-united-hmrc-tax-raid-14579810 "Accounts look alright to me, everything adds up, don't be so silly he's not taking money out of the club, nothing to see, move on."

I was at that talk-in – it still beggars belief that the current World Cup Golden Ball winner was on the verge of singing until Ashley and his imbeciles ballsed it up! The key question I'd want to know is "why?". Why are we seeing deals sabotaged and scuppered when we can afford them, and under successive managers? It doesn't appear to always be for budgetary reasons since we're cancelling deals we can afford - Keegan says as much. You have Llambias/Jiminez/Wise sabotaging deals for Hyppia and Modric (and iirc others too, Kamil Zayyatte for example), Kinnear cancelling a free transfer for Douglas, Barnes cancelling loan deals arranged by Rafa for Tammy Abraham and Loftus Cheek both of whom you'd expect to be relatively cheap/affordable, and those are just some of the ones we barely know about. We then do spend some money elsewhere, even if it's not as much as we should be we still sign players. It makes me suspicious because it's what we did under Freddie Shepherd in one of his many schemes for milking the club. We know that Freddie Shepherd used to buy a disproportionately high number of players from agent Willie McKay, so much so that Freddie's son used to work for McKay out of a dedicated office at St James' Park (i.e. commission into the Shepherd family's pockets if we make any big money signings). This was why Freddie used to seemingly piss about in the transfer market, offering derisory bids for players the manager wanted knowing they'd be rejected, whilst at the same time paying over the odds for other players. A good example of this was Michael Carrick, available for £3m from West Ham, Sir Bobby wants him, Freddie offers £0.5m knowing it'd be rejected and "playing hardball" on it, we miss out. Could argue it was because Freddie didn't rate him, but then look back at the relationship established already with McKay and the fact Carrick was with a different agency. Freddie had no problems signing wasters like Celestine Babayaro who was a McKay player. It's not like this accusation in relation to Ashley would be entirely baseless either. We know from the Nacho and Xisco signings that under Ashley we've signed players specifically as "favors" for agents, and since Keegan is the only one to have spoken out about it, it's fair to assume we've done similar (Seydou Doumbia always seemed a dodgey piece of business). As Keegan said about Hyppia, Ashley and his minions actively put in bids with the intention of it being rejected. So it's not like there's no grounds at all, on the contrary it actually explains their actions better. In some ways it's actually worse if they're not doing this, because otherwise they're fucking with the manager in the transfer market for the sake of it.

This is confusing - didn't Rafa say he was approached by Spain a few weeks ago? Or was that Bishop's PR nonsense?

Griezzmann loves his cringeworthy celebrations.

Fully agree. Alot of the praise smacks of being far too lenient/eager at this point in time imo, and it's always been like this when someone has a slightly fortunate run (Pardew 5th for example). If you look into actual performances and the opposition instead of how far we got on paper, it's a bit of a different story. We didn't beat anyone of note, and the two barely half decent teams we came across (Columbia minus their star player, Croatia knackered after two games that went the full distance in a row) dominated us comfortably over 120 minutes and made us look the inferior side with inferior footballer incapable of retaining possession or stringing a few passes together. Look at our game plan for the most part against both Columbia and Croatia - long balls over the top and attacking set pieces with big guys. If that was an Allardyce/Pardew team #hoofball would be trending. Is that progressive football? If Pep Guardiola was given the England job and had a few years to drill a play style in them, is this how you think we'd be playing? No chance. Nothing has really changed imo beyond a few "brave" selections. In past tournaments England were shit as soon as we faced a more technical side, now we just have younger players failing to control a football properly under pressure instead of more experienced/older names. As a side note, in some previous tournaments we faced some fucking amazing teams with fucking amazing players. Remember Brazil with Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Rivaldo up front and Carfu/Roberto Carlos all in the same team? Argentina with the likes of Batistuta, Zanetti, Ortega, Veron, Ayala? How is it really fair to be praising Southgate so much when we haven't come close to even an inch of the quality of opposition that some previous England managers have had to face, or are we just comparing to Hodgson? Back to Southgate, some of the praise for his squad selection is a bit strange. Who has he really left out for which he was "brave" or made the right decision in terms of going for youth? Rooney, who is so over the hill he was released on a free by ManU, then Everton, and is now in the MLS? Majority of the teams that started against Iceland a couple of years ago are still here. Gerrard, Lampard, Scholes, Beckham, Rio, John Terry, all retired. Maybe Milner, Llalana and Hart, but they're hardly world class talents and all of the players Gareth selected are equivalent or better in terms of reputation and performances. The praise Southgate is getting for going with picks that were hardly risque is over the top. Being brave would have meant taking the likes of Shelvey and Wilshere and looking to dominate the opposition through ball control/passing instead of pissing his pants filling the midfield slots with mediocre defensive players. Being brave would have meant potentially leaving out the current big name English players for tactical or ball retention reasons (e.g. Alli, who is entirely an off-the-ball player). I also think this entire propaganda drive to get us more patriotic, which started in the build up to the 2012 Olympics and has led to a systematic failure of pundits/commentators to be both impartial and critical of English sportsmen/players/managers, is behind some of this spunkfest over Southgate's bravery in going for young lads. Alot of brain washing about how young they are when we're talking about £50m-£150m rated Premiership players, all of them first teamers or near abouts. Whilst I wouldn't want the type of toxic campaigns against the England manager from the press that the likes of Sir Bobby had to endure, it's sickening to see nothing but praise and positivity towards someone clearly making errors in judgement, as though any objective criticism is tantamount to treason. It's this type of mentality that leads to the likes of Pardew, Allardyce, whoever, continuing to operate without any real scrutiny or ever being called out. He's earnt a few more tournaments now, by default. Whether that's good or not, time will tell.

As much as a quarterback style passing CM can, Shelvey just had a season where he fucking decimated at least half the teams in this league through ridiculous passing ability alone, and this in a relatively dire/low quality side going forward. As I said, insane to not take him, to not even try him. Southgate is just another false dawn mong manager in a long list of mong managers operating in the UK, even more so with his dickhead goodie two shoes retarded waistcoat act the goofy rat faced mother fucker. Bet he didn't even see Shelvey play the entire season, and was too scared to handle a potentially difficult player which requires man management (Pards anyone? World Cup semi final = 5th anyone?). Went for the players at the bigger clubs (Delph Man City, Dier Spurs, Rose Spurs, etc) even if they'd done literally nothing in recent seasons and country miles less than Shelvey has, and then dick rides on the back of this supposed "faith in young blood" nonsense when the truth is there's no real options in the 26/27+ category as everyone has either retired or gone way over the hill. Got lucky this tournament with the draw, didn't beat a single good side, and he'll probably fuck up Euro 2020 with more shitty selections as I bet the likes of France/Spain/Italy/Germany will come back stronger. Anyways, same old.

Game still up for grabs. Both these teams are dire.

Nice hoof into row Z by Hendersen.

Some meatheads in this Croatian team.

Personally never seen Mandzukic have a good game against English opposition. Hope it stays that way.

Croatia have made so many unforced errors. Sloppy passing and decision making, panicking, etc, all over the place. Really nervy stuff from them. This should be a comfortable win.

All Croatia for the past 10 minutes. Need someone to get hold of the ball and calm everyone down.

Don't think being in the semis is a strong argument against Shelvey potentially making an impact in this team. We barely beat Tunisia (ok, storming first 30 minutes where we should have scored alot more), thrashed the mighty Panama in style but it's still Panama, barely scraped past a James Rodriguez-less Columbia on penalties where they looked the better footballing side over the 120 minutes, and did alright against a dull defensive Sweden side half comprised of Championship tier players (i.e. the type of players our PL lot are used to playing against). Croatia is going to be the first big test and they're barely decent themselves (scraping past Denmark/Russia on penalties). It's a freak tournament, and I'm not sure we know whether this England side is actually good or not - everyone else is also average/crap and we've had a draw of a lifetime where we won't face a single big gun until the World Cup Final . No Germans, no Argentina, no Brazil, no Portugal, no Spain, no Italy, none of the usual lot who tend to knock us out, and maybe one game against the French. The stars have aligned for once (hopefully). In terms of Shelvey, I think it's insane to not have taken him. He might not suit Southgate's system, and the team probably is finely balanced (the three CB's effectively do what Shelvey does for us in terms of spreading the play from deep, Alli/Lingard are more like false CM's who join the attack alot providing the sort of off-the-ball movement Shelvey doesn't, Henderson does the donkey work which isn't Shelvey's playstyle). However, Shelvey in the past season is comfortably in the top 5 passers in the PL imo (De Bruyne obviously way out in 1st place). He's also very neat in possession. Whilst he's not tested outside of the PL, I'd at least want the option of taking a CB off and sticking Shelvey in front of the defense, spraying balls forward, in situations where England desperately need a goal. It's better than throwing the likes of Dier on and hoping they do something.

They needed a penalty programme alongside the doping one. Unlucky.

They're pumped up for this.

Sterling Gets carried to fuck at Man City.

Quality.

Bias in commentary is too much. That was an absolutely disgracefully bad decision by the linesman, complete guesswork when the Swedish player was in his own half, and the commentators barely acknowledged it. If it was the other way round they'd be complaining no end.

VAR pls r u drunk.

Lukaku has had a quality game so far for someone who struggles to control a football when running.

Lukaka's ball control

We played some of our best football with Sellars in the team, a very underrated player for us. According to KK it was niggly injuries and a lack of hunger that prevented him being a bigger player for us, in that he was happy to just play a part and wasn’t one to bray the door down when not picked or dropped. You need squad players, team players, but KK if a player had talent he did just could not fathom such a player being OK with playing a bit part. Sellars could play ACM, a keen eye for a pass, hard working, deceptively quick and also able to play wide with a great cross on him. I rated him highly and always thought why didn’t he feature more. he seemed to have a good thing going with Clark and Cole early doors. Ritchie is nowt like him by the way. Nolan is probably a better analogy. Decent player if you look at performances in isolation, good stats (well, season before he left), popular with fans and a leader/positive influence in the dressing room, but needed to be upgraded on for us to progress and wouldn't have been happy sitting on the bench. Nolan also had to step down a division to find a team willing to pay comparative wages.

The Andros Townsend who was here under Rafa would be a huge upgrade on Ritchie imo. Pace, skill, ball carrying, threat, trickery, etc. Looked a quality player here, and almost single handedly tore a few teams apart and sparked a brief bit of hope for survival. If he's close to where he was, he'd still be a huge improvement. If he's waned, then maybe only a moderate/minor improvement. Ritchie is in complete contrast to that imo. He's a decent player if you look at his performances in isolation (and ignore the large pitch of poor form in the middle part of the season), hard working and passionate, but in terms of a team game he unfortunately provides severe limitations/bottlenecks by virtue of not having pace/skill, and thus is comfortably inferior to Townsend. For example, when opposition left backs were out of position, how many times was the space left by them exploited by Ritchie? Answer: pretty much never. Townsend on the other hand caused all manner of headaches for opposition teams, hence why he's a huge upgrade. Kenedy did the same, and had he not then we'd probably have gone down again (and Ritchie would have been part of the problem - instead Kenedy's presence papered over that crack). With respect to wanting to upgrade on Ritchie, I do think there's some rose tinted specs being used here (same applies in the Mitrovic thread). Last season it felt like there were too many games where he was visibly struggling to provide any meaningful threat on his flank. Alot of huff and puff, harassing defenders, etc, but very little by the way of any actual meaningful quality. Being a conduit for Yedlin issn't good enough because Yedlin's end product isn't exactly great, so that type of winger-full back relationship wasn't even worthwhile imo. On top of the lack of pace/skill I'd also say that whilst Ritchie has the reputation of being a sweet hitter of the ball, he consistently flopped decent shooting/crossing positions, which is sort of unforgivable because you'd expect him to be clinical/ruthless as way of compensation for not having pace/skill. All of this is probably why only Championship clubs are really interested. You'd expect a good PL quality experienced 28 year old British winger available for £15m to have numerous mid table PL clubs knocking the door down to sign him. So far it looks like only Stoke and Boro have shown interest. But anyways, decent player, and I'm sure he'll do alright wherever he goes.

Strange way to spell Messi.