tmonkey

Giroud is whinging at every single thing. What a miserable cunt.

Insane how far the fans are away from the pitch.

This camera view is what I go for in FIFA so I can see if my strikers are in space when I hoof it.

The club hasn't said anything other than confirming the first statement from the Sheikh, that a fee had been agreed. Everything else has been journalists claiming sources at the club, who for all we know could be random people on staff completely in the dark (if not entirely made up).

Why wait till 5pm ffs. Just post it now you cunts.

We're not getting daft levels of money to spend, people don't think that do they? Normal owners pls, grow commercial revenue maybe invest a bit. Keep Rafa and build the club slowly. That's all we need. Agree with the sentiment, no top tier player in demand would want to come here other than for money and as we've seen with ManU that's a risky policy to employ. It worked initially for the likes of Man City and Chelsea because they were in early on the "overnight transformation through oil money" phase and pre-FFP too, now it's a different climate and we'd just end up with more Duffs or Owens, the biggish name rejects from CL sides looking for an easy payday. Having said that, an initial injection to fund 5-6 first team classic Rafa targets (i.e. players not many people will have heard of) would be big for us. We're not that far off from the pack of European hopefuls (Leicester/Evert/Wolves/etc).

If the deal is done and dusted pending PL approval, as it's likely to be given the nature of the stories we've had (The Sun never ran an article outright stating "club sold" during the Kenyon/Staveley bids) there's probably no reason not to make statements to reassure fans, the manager, players, etc. They also probably didn't anticipate the amount of made up shit being thrown around by clueless journalists completely in the dark. And because it's Mike Ashley there's probably people within the club who have no idea what's going on. I imagine Charnley is shitting bricks at the moment as he's about to be unemployed, and I can see Ashley not bothering to give him a call.

Fit and proper test: No chance he fails this.

I like Kidwai's LinkedIn. As with Staveley and even Chris Mort, seems to be the type of person you want associated with NUFC. Qualified accountant, MBA, has been in senior executive positions of several presumably big Middle Eastern companies over many years. Speaks well too from the youtube interviews.

Lets clutch at straws and assume the paperwork was sent via mail. As it was a bank holiday the posties weren't working so noone to sort or deliver the mail, so maybe it's still on it's way. Or maybe it was out for delivery but Janice the secretary was on the bog so couldn't answer the door, so the postman left a missed delivery note. Or if we want to consider emails, maybe the Bin Zayed group sent the scanned documents to the FA instead of the PL, an easy error to make. Remember when Freddie Shepherd forgot to register a player for European competitions? These mistakes are easy to make.

Looks plausible atm, my subjective reason for thinking this being: - Someone on here said half a season ago that they'd heard from someone close to the club that a sale to an Arab buyer was likely/agreed in principle if NUFC remained within the PL. - Mike Ashley has taken a huge hit on Debenhams, he's having problems with landlords who aren't taking his shit re: House of Fraser, SD shares have absolutely tanked compared to 5 years ago, he's sold and leased back SD's home to inject capital into the business. Looks like he has alot on financially and selling NUFC would free up cash and time for him to focus on his main love which is retailing tat to charvers. - The Sheikh who has allegedly bought us tried to buy Liverpool last summer for £2bn. For £350m and with serious investment NUFC makes total sense - decent stadium, huge fanbase, large catchment area, world class manager already in charge. How much money would it even take to catch up to a team like Spurs or Arsenal? Certainly a hell of a lot less than £1.65bn (the difference between buying us and buying Liverpool), especially with Rafa in charge. - On the Rafa contract front things have been are eerily quiet, unusually so. We know for a fact Rafa has been meeting with Ashley for a few days so to not hear anything is strange. This is Mike Ashley, if he wanted rid of Rafa he'd be giving him the cold shoulder and would not bother speaking to him let alone meeting with him. - Rafa not saying anything when normally he'd be laying his cards out on the table in the media to put pressure on a Board - it indicates something is up...almost like the club is on the verge of being sold and there's NDAs in place meaning Rafa has to keep stum. - Yesterday the Sun claimed NUFC had already been sold. - Yesterday a host of one of the Middle East sports channels, someone with supposed links to the Emirati royal family, tweeted that the sale has been agreed. All makes sense. Obviously could all be nothing too.

One of the few potential benefits of being owned by racist, murderous, brutal, greedy lovely Middle Eastern "monarchs" is they'd probably want to turn NUFC into an advertisement for an airline or something and wouldn't blink at paying up whatever the penalty is for removing the SD advertisement. That or they'll have Ashley accidentally fall off a balcony whilst on holiday.

It's happening and I won't listen to a word otherwise.

Tissues n tadpoles for me too.

Quite a few Spanish restaurants in London. Maybe Rafa is waiting at them.

So? He always sees out his contracts. We know this about him.He could have walked away at any point for a fee, maybe from February for no fee. But he would never do either, it's not what he does. He was always going to be our manager until the day his contract expired, unless he was sacked. That remains the case, and he'll conduct himself with the utmost decorum and professionalism until that day comes. If that includes going to pointless meetings with fatso, then that's what he'll do because that's the man he is. To attempt to read anything in to him continuing to do what he has always done at every club is to completely missjudge the entire essence of Rafa Benitez. That said, I get why people are doing that, we all want to believe. Me included. But let's be realistic here, Rafa is just being Rafa here, there's nothing we can read into his continued attendance of meetings and failure to say "fuck it" and stomp off. That's a very specific set of (what I presume to be) assumptions though given this scenario is very specific. I've always thought that the whole "seeing your contract through" concept in football related to finishing the season as opposed to working right up until the actual date on the contract. Unless they're not assumptions, and in the past Rafa was at a club where the season has finished (i.e. "job done" from his viewpoint) just before his contract expires, and the Board had said they didn't want him to stay because they didn't share his vision, and his contract still had a few weeks remaining, and the same contract allowed him to walk with no fees/penalties from that point onwards, Rafa had stayed regardless till he had hit that original expiry date in the contract? If so, or if there's a quote from him saying "I won't leave a job till the contract date has expired no matter what, even if they want me to go", then fair enough. If there's nothing of the sort from Rafa's past, and you are just assuming based on his character, then just to clarify I'm not stating your argument [that these talks could be worthless and he's just seeing the contract out because he's a man of principle] is wrong. I'm saying maybe it's 50% likely that you're right, but that there's a 50% chance that you're not, i.e. Rafa views it as "job done", he's seen his contract through in terms of the spirit of the contract, and he'd not be hanging around meeting with a filibustering Ashley if his time was being wasted. There's also the possibility that if Ashley was wasting Rafa's time, Rafa could just head back up to his office in St James' (as opposed to quitting) because it's not like he'll have a contract clause saying "if the owner wants to meet with you in X location for X days, you must always attend, or else". This is a multi-millionaire widely respect/experienced/successful football manager, not your average office lackey who'll jump if the boss tells him to. He's a headstrong and confident man who is also on a contract that is about to expire where (presumably) both parties can terminate with no cost, so heading back to the club instead of staying in pointless meetings would have no actual consequences (at worst Ashley would terminate Rafa's contract). I'm not quite sure he'd just put up with Ashley pissing him about for 4 days straight in an office in London just because he's a nice guy who won't walk away from a job. Maybe he is, I just don't see it as a certainty. And yes, this does give some hope.

Why do people persist with this? Things we know for certain: - Rafa's a consummate professional who always honours his contract - Rafa is presently under contract Given the above, if you're employed by someone and they ask you to go to a meeting, you go. If they ask you to come back tomorrow, you come back tomorrow. Anything else is breach of contract and Rafa will not do that, we know this. He'll go to every meeting he's invited to, he'll listen to everything said to him. That doesn't mean for one instant that he'll sign anything at the end of it. He'd be mad to, and another thing we know about Rafa is he's clearly not mad. He will continue to attend every meeting the club ask him to, because that's his job and he's been asked to attend these meetings by his bosses. To read anything more in to that is crazy, to suggest that him still attending meetings is a positive is just delusional. I absolutely hope I'm wrong, Rafa is the best thing about the club at the moment, the only thing that keeps me even remotely interested. But he will leave this summer, I'm as sure as I can be about that. His contract allowed him to walk away for free some time after February I think it was. Or at least that's what was reported.

Imagine it's Rafa needing 3-4 days to explain to the dimwit how football works and the differences between a football club and a tat shop for charvers.

Thank fuck we never had to go through promotions .

SHIRT OFF PLEASE LAMPARD. COME ON PRETTY BOY.

They belong in this division. Keeper also. Ashley will be praying for this lot to come up, easy 6 points, only need another 34 to survive.

Berardi staring intensely at the Lord of VAR. But no second life for you, peasant.

Pards is lovin' it.

Oh yeah. Now I want Leeds to win so we can buy some of them when they're stuck in the Championship for at least another. Oh wait, we have Mike Ashley. We aren't going to be buying anyone. There's no point in Leeds going up, they're shiite. But if Derby get to the final and win then there's going to be a massive wankathon over pretty boy Frank "sex tape with fat hooker" Lampard, the coming of the next Chelsea and Engurland messiah. Who do I support ffs?

Take back what I said about Leeds. If these bunch of soft as shiite fanny hipsters are in the PL they'll stink the place up with their shitness.