tmonkey

Returns might not be about cold hard annual revenue profits though, as they can be capital. Buying a football club for £300m when it makes a £30m loss every year and investing £200m isn't a bad idea if in 5 years time due to the next inflated TV deal, better commercial deals, regular European football, greater brand values, etc etc, the club is now worth £800m and has a playing squad worth double what it was when taking over. There's also "synergies" to consider, with NUFC these past 10 years being a Sports Direct advert one prime example of how there is money to be made indirectly through owning a football club and utilizing it to favor your other interests. The other possibility with many of these Arab, Russian and Chinese investors/oligarchs is that they just just want to move some of the vast sums of money they have out of their respective high risk/volatile countries (over the long term) and invest in "reliable" assets in stable developed economies that aren't going to depreciate anytime soon. Business, buildings and land are the obvious options, but they're saturated markets at the moment and I'd imagine these investors already have large investments in mansions and skyscrapers in major cities around the globe. Football and sports are a different option, yet if you were to look at valuations of football clubs over time it's going to be a consistent upwards trend, and that would appeal to these types of investors looking to stash their cash somewhere safer. That's before considering the degree of prestige and exclusivity that owning a PL football club brings, whether they're football fans, etc etc. It doesn't necessarily have to be the case that they have nefarious intentions or want to milk NUFC immediately. Although that's obviously always going to be a risk. To be quite honest, I genuinely don't care what their intentions would be providing they put competent and skilled people in charge of running the football club, which is Ashey's biggest failure imo. I'm sure many on here wouldn't care one bit about Ashley running NUFC to the benefit of Sports Direct if he had put in place both a David Dein or Daniel Levy type in the boardroom and a Rafa equivalent (or the next best we can attract) in the managers dugout from day one and supported them (as opposed to backing buffoons like Llambias, Kinnear, Jiminez, Wise, Pardew, Penfold, etc). Of course the issue is that someone like Ashley who intends to run NUFC like a circus act isn't generally going to be able to persuade a Dein/Levy to work for him, he'll inherently want/attract yes men desperate for a job, but then Ashley isn't a good standard to measure against. The point is that I'm sure it's possible to want to make a profit from a club like NUFC and still run it competently through employing the right people. You have to be a special kind of tool to want to make money from NUFC by running it in the worst possible way.

It never fails to amaze me how big a difference a good manager makes over one that is out of his depth. Benteke, Townsend, Zaha, Loftus-Cheek - that front 4 man for man is considerably better than what we have imo. All of them have a decent combination of pace, power, or skill. Stark contrast to our front four, who constantly lose the ball with pathetic/timid attempts at controlling a football, dribbling, exploiting space, or crossing. The lack of quality and pace from the front 4 is pretty awful, and results like this won't be sustained over the long term unless we improve on the personnel we have playing there. The reason why we scraped 3 points yesterday is because they played with no semblance of a gameplan or tactical/attacking drilling. Standard Pards style throw players forward and hope for individual brilliance (or diving) to produce something. As a team they looked disjointed, and it's easy to see why they're bottom of the league despite the players they have on paper. The fact that we're not down there with them is entirely due to Rafa.

Most of them are corners floated in. He's still been pretty poor in general play.

The entire front 4 has been shit.

Palace are a right bunch of cheating twats. Thuggish tackles, constant diving, false claims. It's as though they've practiced this in training.

Referees go by reputation. Cabaye is a known c***, though. Known to us because we watched him play every week. Ultimately he doesn't have a reputation of being a thuggish hot headed player, as opposed to a classy one who gets stuck in sometimes. Reminds me of Paul Scholes with the numerous nasty, spiteful, dangerous tackles he'd get away with.

Referees go by reputation.

That's a leg breaking challenge. What the fuck?

If that was Shelvey lunging in like that you can guarantee it would be a red card.

ROFL Cabaye. That was red mist personified.

The only player we have in this squad who can beat a man is the defensive midfielder sitting on our bench.

Class from Townsend.

Perez is so unbelievably gash in general play.

2:20 he says "obviously I have an opinion, obviously I have some information, obviously I have some ideas, but ...[reverts to football only talk]". He knows what is going on.

Reading between the lines given everything Rafa has said since the last miserable transfer window closed, wouldn't be surprised if one of the reasons behind Ashley's desire to sell is Rafa eventually getting through to him exactly what is needed (financially) to build a sustainable PL side that isn't going to be dragged into a relegation battle every other year. Can imagine Rafa to be the type of footballing nerd who'd actually back things up with stats, costed projections, research, etc.

Why does Perez have dark brown/black skin in that video?

I will continue to believe that as the journos and everyone else for that matter have no clue about whether there's any truth in this, and given the silence from the two parties themselves, that this must be an indication that both sides are abiding by the NDA that has been signed and agreed. Amanda is most likely performing some sort of pre-purchasing due diligence and having her team of solicitors and accountants analyzing the accounts and all major agreements/contracts in place. The publicly announced price drop from £400m to £380m was Ashley's attempt to turn Steveley's interest into a concrete bid. The NDA publicly announced was a condition of either Ashley or Staveley, flip a coin and there's half a chance you're right, either way there can be only one conclusion: it is happening people. Believe.

The performance against Liverpool was as good as we could expect given the players we have, but I'm taking it that I'm one of the few who felt like they could have scored 4 or 5 if they actually finished a bit better? Salah especially seemed to be constantly running into acres of space to exploit. Alot of their shooting on the day was straight at Elliott, or we had somewhat fortunate goal-line clearances. Don't have much a point to this mind, beyond saying that I don't think we're quite as solid defensively as many seem to think and that we'll most likely get a couple of pastings this season by teams less forgiving in front of goal. They had 2 shots on target IIRC. That can't be right unless stuff that looked on target wasn't. - Lovren had a shot at goal from 6 or so yards out (after Wijnaldum's flick hit the post) cleared by a defender. - Coutinho scored with a shot. - Sturridge had a shot on goal straight at Elliott after being put through by Clark's sliced howler. - Lovren had a header that looked to be on target cleared a few yards out by Shelvey. That's 4 that I can remember, a couple of which should really have been goals (especially Sturridge being put clean through). On top of that they missed a fair few other chances with shots or headers off target, and then on top of that you have a fair few attacks which didn't result in a shot but were highly promising situations for Liverpool due to the gaps left by our defense. I dunno, maybe I'm being overly critical, but I felt they could have scored a few more but weren't clicking on the night. We're better defensively for sure but I don't think we're "solid" just yet, which was my only point.

The sad fact is, discounting of course Leicester's remarkable season, to even have a chance of being what traditionally was regarded as being successful, you absolutely need one of these mega rich type owners. Otherwise you are really settling for being at best mid table and we are refining the term if successful as finishing in 10th spot in the PL. The underlying point (i.e. that you need heavy investment from a mega rich owner) is not strictly true though. Spurs were close to winning the league the past couple of seasons, as were Liverpool fairly recently under Rodgers, and neither of those clubs bought their way to success using owner funds like Man City/Chelsea did. So it's certainly possible to build a title challenging side the "normal" way.

The performance against Liverpool was as good as we could expect given the players we have, but I'm taking it that I'm one of the few who felt like they could have scored 4 or 5 if they actually finished a bit better? Salah especially seemed to be constantly running into acres of space to exploit. Alot of their shooting on the day was straight at Elliott, or we had somewhat fortunate goal-line clearances. Don't have much a point to this mind, beyond saying that I don't think we're quite as solid defensively as many seem to think and that we'll most likely get a couple of pastings this season by teams less forgiving in front of goal.

Maybe Rafa identified Newcastle as a "project" because he has these connections and wanted to go to a club where he could eventually persuade his connections to buy into his vision? And maybe this is why he didn't walk in the summer after all the lies from those above him? To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub.

Mitrovic is less mobile than Joselu. The chance yesterday wouldn't have been created if Mitro was on the pitch as I don't think he'd make that run. Ultimately both Mitro and Joselu (in the few games we've seen) are too poor in front of goal to be selected on the basis of who is more likely to score. Mitrovic has had far too many moments where simple chances have "surprised" him and he's scuffed or lashed at a shot and completely wasted a sitter. With both Mitro and Joselu it seems like it's a mental issue - I'm sure in training they can lace the ball into the top corner 10 times out of 10, but on match day with so many things happening (trying to fight off a centreback, find some space, anticipate a ball) they just fall to pieces by the time it comes to connecting with the ball. The irony of this is that in complete contrast we have Gayle who is only good for sticking the ball in the back of the net, but with everything else about his game being p*ss poor (beyond effort). So we need to go with whichever one brings more to the team. At the moment it looks like Joselu adds a decent enough combination of hold up play, movement, and work rate to give the team a bit more to work with. Mitrovic has occasionally had OK'ish "target man" performances, but I think he's a bit overrated in this category as all too often he gets bullied easily by centrebacks who are stronger than he is (and that seems to be the majority), plus his aerial play is weak at best. We just need to crawl through to January with whoever is the least s*** and hope that Ashley releases the purse strings.

Ayoze bottles the challenge and slips straight afterwards. Starting to hate him.

Ayoze shouldn't be playing at this level.

Perez with horrific balance again.