Unbelievable

Good article that

I can understand young uns who may not have been around during the first 10 years of Ashley’s tenure being in shock, but any older fans? Howay man, this is text book Ashley, fucking text book. First KK, then Shearer, then Hughton, now Rafa. We can’t have someone decent and competent in charge of this club. Ashley will just lie to them and fuck them over until they fight their corner in the interest of the club and its fans, at which point the vindicative man child will put them in their place.

Feel sorry for you and don’t take this the wrong way, but apparently knowing full well the extent of Ashley’s cuntishness, why did you get drawn back in? Surely you must have know that yesterday’s events were bound to happen sooner or later? A leopard doesn’t change his spots, sadly. Also can’t quite understand your contempt for other fans who decide to still go considering your own earlier conscious decision to go back despite being apparently aware of the club’s predicament.

That article man

Good point. They have declined to comment on everything lately, so why the official confirmation now whilst they could have worked on some kind of plan for a week in relative peace and quiet. Together with the “and will not be” from the statement it smacks of Ashley pulling the plug in a huff at Rafa not moving from his demands. And rightly so. Hope they pannick and appoint some hopeless donkey and end up understanding how special Rafa was for keeping us up with relative ease on a shoestring budget. Fully expect Ashley to pull the plug on any takeover too, the little vindicative cunt.

"The saddest thing about Rafa is he has given people hope, because now they feel even worse"

Can't say I'm overly surprised Rafa has decided to walk once his deal runs out. I'm still, to this very day, more surprised that he even joined us in the first place. Back in March 2016 he took on a rudderless shambles of a club, apparently having approached the club himself as he considered us an interesting project. I remember all too well the elation a year and a bit earlier of Alan Pardew finally fucking off to Palace on the back of fierce supporter protests, followed by the disbelief and anguish at the appointment of the utterly clueless John fucking Carver almost taking us down. When that experiment predictably failed miserably, Ashley's next genius move was to appoint Steve McClaren who had failed almost everywhere he went for the best part of the preceeding decade. And lo and behold NUFC once again was nothing more than relegation fodder. Until March 11th 2016 when everything changed. What made Rafael Benitez knock Ashley's door down to come and manage this fucking tragic excuse of a football club? An owner who was well known to fuck over managers and players alike, whose only ambition was to hang on to the gravy train. He saw the potential that is here obviously, but most managers of his level and reputation would have given us a wide berth when contacted, let alone would have reached out to Ashley to act as a helping hand. Rafa has not put a foot wrong throughout these three years, taking and keeping the club in a league it had no business being in based on its mediocre squad, lack of inverstment and run down facilities. Perhaps he backed himself to be able to convince Ashley to loosen the purse strings, buy into his vision of what Newcastle United could become if it was allowed a modicum of backing from its owners, or even to be able to re-invest all the money the club could generate as a stand alone entity? Alas, Rafa was a fool for ever believing that he could change Mike Ashley's vision for the club. We are a glorified SD billboard and will remain so for however long he owns us. He will go down as the manager who came and gave us hope only to prove once and for all that the club is destined for never ending nothingness. Mike Ashley kept him sweet then fucked him over, like he always does. I admire Rafa's constraint in what must have been a very difficult final year for him, knowing that his dream would end in tears yet never skipping a beat in the name of professionalism. No more. Next week he is free of the shackles of Mike Ashley. We will never witness him taking off his glasses and stowing them away in his Newcastle United jacket ever again. I am as happy for him as I am sad for us who remain in the shadow of our dead football club. One day we may follow in his foot steps. In the meantime I dread to think who will replace him as our manager - a tumble down the leagues no doubt awaits unless... Nah, who are we kidding? This is Mike Ashley's Newcastle United Football Club.

Wow. Well played Ashley, well played

And so he should be. Unless Ashley sells up he's wasting his time here, sadly.

Well, Rich asked what we think will happen, not what we hope. On past performance chances are Ashley will just piss off another buyer or randomly pull the plug as he has done so many times before. Regarding Rafa, I think he’s had enough of Ashley, so if the takeover doesn’t take place he does a runner.

No doubt Ashley would love to hold on to NUFC for a lot longer but unfortunately for him he has painted himself into a corner whereby he simply has to sell this summer. The reasons for this are two-fold....firstly he is haemorraging cash from his other business interests and secondly he has a manager of NUFC who cannot be replaced without the whole club imploding in a manner not seen before in its entire history. If Ashley is a smart gambler then he knows all of this and also realises that now is the time to walk away from the table. He has got his money back, made a tidy profit and had 12 years of exposure for his tatty brand. If he stays at the table then his asset will turn to dust over the next 12 months and wont ever recover while he is the owner. Is Ashley a smart gambler though? Would a smart gambler have even bought the club in the first place without doing due diligence and finding out there was £110m worth of debt he knew nowt about? £70m actually, which he knew about. What has been claimed though is he didn’t know the £57m with Barclays for the stadium expansion was repayable immediately upon a change of ownership, something that is neither uncommon nor something he couldn’t have easily found in the debt contractual documents if he had bothered to do some basic research.

Its definitely takeover or bust for me. Benitez staying with Ashley changes nothing for the direction of the club other than reapplying the plaster on the axe wound. Rafa staying with either owner or bust for me. The club will drop down the leagues like Sunderland otherwise. The takeover is the absolute most important thing by an absolute mile. We have had 12 years of the club being totally devoid of basic investment and improvement. No person manager or player is more important than the future of the club. How can you know that when you have absolutely no idea what the new owners will be like The man that can offer Newcastle the most guaranteed security for the future of this football club is Rafa Benitez. Enjoy Tim Sherwood and dropping down to League 1 then. You think the new owners are going to hire Tim Sherwood? The stupidity amazes me A lot of our fans are in for a reality check. The same ones that wanted Sir Bobby out for 3rd, 4th, 5th probably Have we really not realised managers like Sir Bobby and Rafa Benitez only come round once in a blue moon have we really not realised that yet?

Good article that

Lad did well in those big games towards the end of their season obviously, but it smacks of a temporary rich vein of form and some high profile goals painting a rosier than accurate picture to me. I think you could have snapped him up for a few mill this time last year. Would want to judge over a longer period before splashing the cash. Ajax will want to cash in now with his stock so high though if they feel the same. So hes like Sean Longstaff then?

Lad did well in those big games towards the end of their season obviously, but it smacks of a temporary rich vein of form and some high profile goals painting a rosier than accurate picture to me. I think you could have snapped him up for a few mill this time last year. Would want to judge over a longer period before splashing the cash. Ajax will want to cash in now with his stock so high though if they feel the same.

He’s not that good like. Wasn’t even a starter for them at the start of last season. I don’t see any outstanding attributes that make him stand out as a low risk option. Depay would be a much safer option if we were looking at Dutch forwards who like to run things down.

I wouldn’t call 3 PL titles and 7 FA Cups “didn’t lead to them winning anything” like. He faded badly near the end obviously, but should be remembered as the brilliant manager he was.

Get in Kaiz mate

With every passing day Rafa’s position strengthens while Ashley’s weakens. My take on it all is that the Sheikh has agreed terms and sent Ashley all the required paperwork, but Ashley is dragging his feet trying to drum up interest from elsewhere and drive the price up whilst he’s not officially committed. Rafa has told Ashley that he will leave at the end of his contract unless he gets what he wants from him (to which Ashley won’t commit) or the club is sold and the new owners have a chance to negotiate an extension (which they probably have already done informally). The ball is in Ashley’s court (again). We just have to hope the petulant child plays ball this time rather than picks it up and heads off home with it.

Leave is the default option, and no deal would be catastrophic. This has a familiar feel to it, no idea why...

Make or break time for Ashley. We’ll soon find out how serious he is this time about selling up.

Rafa as ever holds the power now. Tell Mike to fuck off with the constant lies and let it be known you would love to continue work at this club under new, ambitious ownership. That will get things moving one way or another. This could be just the push the fat cunt needs to stop fooling around and send in the takeover paperwork to the FA rather than spread lies about other interested parties to drive the price up.

Again, how can an offside goal be perfectly good attacking play. By how far offside do you draw the line if not by even a marginal call? It's a sliding scale. But let's move away from the VAR element of it and assume the linesman got the decision right and put up his flag. Would that have been more acceptable for you or would you have argued that although he did get the marginal decision right there was no way for the linesman to be certain at the speed it happened?

The "clear and obvious error" reason for VAR is incomplete: I would suggest an offside position from which the player scores a potential game deciding goal and that was missed by the linesman and referee is such a serious missed incident.

That said, ideally offside would be tracked real time somehow and a decision made immediately and send to the linesman’s watch to put their flag up. Maybe it can be like that in the future with more advancement in camera and body tracking technology.