Unbelievable

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.

The offside rule is there for a different reason now? I don't think so. It's just policed far too rigorously, and that is solely because camera technology has improved and TV now controls the game in a way it didn't before. TV used to be there to show the game, not to referee it. I probably didn't phrase that well or expand on what I meant enough. I agree that the overall point of the rule is to stop goal hanging. However, I think that it has to be policed rigorously because defenders and coaches work so hard on their defensive line and it would be unfair to them if there was leeway given to attackers when they were offside. It seems very unfair when you get a decision like last nights but I just think that's the way it has to be I also think the full body having to be past the last man for offside to be called would lead to much deeper defensive lines which would be a step backwards IMO In this case, with the advance of technology objectively fairer decisions can be made. I’m far less sold on the use of VAR for penalty decisions for minor infractions like ball to hand or a small tug on a shirt though, as there is (still) too much subjectivity involved. But if we must have VAR to then decide to discard it for such black and white easy decisions seems well odd to me.

That was before VAR. Why give benefit of the doubt when you can check and remove all doubt?

wasn't he like literally a hair offside though? That's precisely what I'm saying. Is being 'a hair' offside really an infringement? I don't think it is. He hasn't gained an advantage on anyone. I'm not saying the goal should have stood for the reason that 'it looked pretty'. I'm saying the use of VAR is overzealous in that situation because - with it being so inconsequentially marginal - there isn't sufficient enough reason to disallow it. We used to go by 'giving the benefit of the doubt to the attacker', which had largely worked for over a century. If Newcastle had lost to a goal like that I wouldn't be crying injustice. Surely this is black and white thing, like goal line technology? You wouldn't say it would be alright to count as a goal a fantastic shot that just didn't completely pass the line because the goalkeeper would have never been able to get to it either way? Lindgard was offside, fractionally, and the goal was correctly ruled out. I would be crying my eyes out if Newcastle ever lost a final to a fractionally offside being allowed because the player in an offside position "didn't gain an advantage" by doing so. They would have to change the rules for that argument to hold, and rather than becoming an objectively measurable thing it would become completely subjective as to what constitutes an advantage and what doesn't. The argument makes no sense to me. As for "advantage to the attacking player", that never worked before VAR either, and has essentially been replaced by the much more accurate VAR for instances like these. I still despise VAR as a concept, but for offsides, comparable to binary true or false decisions like goal line technology, it works as intended and actually makes the game a bit more fair.

Maybe, but during an international tournament games come every few days as well. Van Dijk and Wijnaldum managed 120 minutes without issue. I think it was the wrong decision in hindsight to exclude those players who contested the CL final unless they were carrying knocks or requested to be rested themselves.

I've been thinking this. I'd never happen under Ashley obviously, but with the Sheikh who knows? He's a very hard working forward who would fit perfectly in Rafa's system.

Any attackers coming through? None that I'm aware of. Kluivert junior was a good prospect but went to Roma and barely played. In any case, this side looks solid with one world class centre back and one very promising one, but we're lacking a forward player that can make the difference in any game. Those players don't grow on trees sadly.