Andy

Would expect if KSA complain to government, Masters will be pretty quickly up in front of a Parliamentary Committee to explain why he's damaged their relationship. They pulled Mike Ashley up for suspect working conditions Doubt KSA are bothered enough to complain to anyone. They'll just invest in a different club in a different league, with none of the chew or concessions that this deal comes with.

Ran out of time and Ashley f***ed them by demanding more for the same asset is my guess mate. The Saudi will feel pretty insulted by the way they have been treated honestly. Everywhere they go, the red carpet is rolled out. They won’t take a private members club poking around in the countries affairs well imo They haven't exactly made it easy for the Premier League to accept it, like. We risk painting the Saudis as the plucky heroes who were fucked over by the evil Premier League here, whereas the reality is that they managed to do just about everything possible to shoot their own bid in the foot at almost every possible turn. It was an incredibly difficult deal to accept for the PL that not only ran the risk of alienating their long-term partners but was also seriously morally questionable from the start. I don't buy this "if it was any other club" stuff either. The only people that have been fucked over here are the fans, who have been dragged through this shite - not only by the Premier League, but by the consortium themselves who clearly weren't prepared or adequately positioned to go through the process of purchasing a club from the very start.

Ehhh, makes you wonder how committed to investing they were if they've pulled the plug anyway. Obviously the PL have been a disgrace in how long they've taken to make a call on this - but I can't help but feel that if these guys were going to push us on as a club, they would've stuck in there more than a few months. It's not like waiting it out was costing them significant money, so the "global uncertainty" line suggests that the desire to fund once the sale went through may not have been there anyway. They clearly didn't have the confidence that the deal would ever be approved either way.

Well that's very strange if the takeover is still on. Which if this news is anything to go by it may not be. All the news from the last week has been ominous, despite a section of fans wanting to spin anything as a positive. The fans who spin everything as positive are no more or less tedious than the fans who spin everything as negative, fwiw.

If it happens next week (and that's a big if, like every week) you won't have confirmed it ffs Unless he works for the FA

Well if piracy is the main issue with the PL you would have thought Saudi Arabia would have been working towards been more open to Bein Sports rather than fining them £2m. Unless the PL have already signed off the owners and directors test before this happened, and now the Saudis have nothing to lose

It's pretty obvious that there's a stark contrast between Fred and Jeff going halfies on a service they wouldn't otherwise have bothered with, and an IPTV service that splits that service down to tiny, minute fractions, far outside of the fair use on the account (ie 2 separate IPs at one time). Almost all streaming services limit by simultaneous IPs, since it's almost impossible to prove that Fred wasn't watching on one device while Fred's brother who lives in the same paying household was over at Jeff's watching on his own device. The fair use policies are set up like this deliberately, because sharing between two people is usually considered likely to incur a profit that wouldn't have otherwise existed, rather than a loss. The more fractionalised the one legitimate stream becomes, obviously the more severe the loss becomes. It's a conscious concession, and therefore treated differently by providers to large scale organised piracy.

What should I do about the other games that Sky don't show, which are the vast majority? Should I just not watch them even though I know how to and they're available for free at the press of a button on my phone? Or should I take the stance of "Well I've paid SOMETHING, so I deserve to pirate these ones?" Was just a response to people saying Sky Sports costs at least £33/month or £600+ a year, it doesn't. So without sounding thick, sharing the cost of SS on nowtv means you can use the account on multiple devices? And what do you get for 20quid exactly? Me and my Dad did things a different way, I dont have sky etc, just plusnet, so I purchased BT sport app for 10 and Dad bought sky sports Pl and sky sports football for 10, then we shared accounts, so we have all games covered at 10 each. By sharing accounts you're breaking the law too. I'm pretty sure that isn't true with Now TV? Unless it's changed, all their T&Cs used to specify was that you could stream a maximum of two devices from different IPs simultaneously. Yeah, for your own use. Not to share with a mate to split the cost. Does it now state this in the terms of service like? It's probably, at worst, frowned upon. Doubt anyone would be legally reprimanded for it in a million years. "Breaking the law" is a daft statement. Yeah, I've already acknowledged that. But yes, these things are clearly not designed to be shared around. Same as Netflix. Loads of people split the cost, but it's designed for a family with different viewing habits in the same house, not you and 4 mates just paying less than £2/month each. I just find the idea of people (Not saying you) abusing such systems then taking a moral high ground on piracy somewhat ridiculous. You can dress it up however you want but it's still - ultimately - the same outcome: The rights holder is being deprived of money that they're supposed to get. Just because you're using a legal login with someone's permission doesn't mean shit, because that person isn't allowed to let you use their login. I don't do this but I have when I was younger. It's certainly a better alternative to piracy either way, as the two people splitting would both likely turn to piracy if they didn't do it, meaning £0 income for the provider as opposed to at least one subscription... Which again, is why this sort of thing is not clamped down on. My personal take on the entire thing is a big "fuck them" to the providers anyway. Scummy corporations like sky bleeding money is fantastic, not something I'd ever take a moral high ground over and I'd be quire happy if the lot of them vanished.

What should I do about the other games that Sky don't show, which are the vast majority? Should I just not watch them even though I know how to and they're available for free at the press of a button on my phone? Or should I take the stance of "Well I've paid SOMETHING, so I deserve to pirate these ones?" Was just a response to people saying Sky Sports costs at least £33/month or £600+ a year, it doesn't. So without sounding thick, sharing the cost of SS on nowtv means you can use the account on multiple devices? And what do you get for 20quid exactly? Me and my Dad did things a different way, I dont have sky etc, just plusnet, so I purchased BT sport app for 10 and Dad bought sky sports Pl and sky sports football for 10, then we shared accounts, so we have all games covered at 10 each. By sharing accounts you're breaking the law too. I'm pretty sure that isn't true with Now TV? Unless it's changed, all their T&Cs used to specify was that you could stream a maximum of two devices from different IPs simultaneously. Yeah, for your own use. Not to share with a mate to split the cost. Does it now state this in the terms of service like? It's probably, at worst, frowned upon. Doubt anyone would be legally reprimanded for it in a million years. "Breaking the law" is a daft statement.

What should I do about the other games that Sky don't show, which are the vast majority? Should I just not watch them even though I know how to and they're available for free at the press of a button on my phone? Or should I take the stance of "Well I've paid SOMETHING, so I deserve to pirate these ones?" Was just a response to people saying Sky Sports costs at least £33/month or £600+ a year, it doesn't. So without sounding thick, sharing the cost of SS on nowtv means you can use the account on multiple devices? And what do you get for 20quid exactly? Me and my Dad did things a different way, I dont have sky etc, just plusnet, so I purchased BT sport app for 10 and Dad bought sky sports Pl and sky sports football for 10, then we shared accounts, so we have all games covered at 10 each. By sharing accounts you're breaking the law too. I'm pretty sure that isn't true with Now TV? Unless it's changed, all their T&Cs used to specify was that you could stream a maximum of two devices from different IPs simultaneously.

To be fair, he is very limited as a secondary left back.

The first half was shocking like, it wasn't disciplined or organised, we were just desperately throwing bodies in front of the ball which obviously isn't sustainable. Carroll being stood on the half way line by himself was a bonkers tactic, given that Almiron and ASM were basically full backs but were the closest players to him. Might as well have just stuck ASM up front, at least he might've been able to carry the ball or possess some kind of threat chasing after the hoofs. Second half was an improvement but that isn't saying much.

Possession football isn't working, time to start lumping it to Carroll I reckon

We don't have new owners yet though. Yeah that’s what the discussion is, is this a Ashley is staying decision or not. The club still has to keep going, offering new contracts isn't relevant to the takeover. It isn't in the interests of Ashley/Charnley to lose players they consider assets, when there's still the potential for this deal to later fall through and them have lost said assets.

The only way to eliminate piracy is to massively increase the value of the subscription. COVID-19 is the perfect excuse to get away from 3pm kick offs and look to broadcast every match on a permanent basis, if I could watch every match over the course of a season, I'd be willing to pay good money for it. Hand-picking games, however, devalues it for me since at least half of the choices are games I couldn't give a toss about.

Piracy won't destroy the game, like. These tv empires losing out on money is probably the best way of getting the game back, if anything, not that I'm condoning it or owt.

His end product is underrated, definitely made to look worse by the taties he's passing to. He's pretty good for getting his head up and looking for a team mate when he's in dangerous areas.

Decent performance. Looked a lot more comfortable in the possession than normal, probably due to the lack of fans causing the players to shit themselves less.

Denied a clear goal kick opportunity.

WTO have that right. PL just have their test, part of which is not having been involved with piracy, which imo this report is miles from proving as far as PIF is concerned. The problem is, from what I gather, the Premier league don't need watertight "proof" to reject it; if they think that the Saudis are responsible (either proactively or by turning a blind eye) or that they're not doing enough, they can reject the takeover on the grounds of reasonable belief. I've read plenty to contradict the above as well mind, and the money that's already been put down may well cause a legal shitstorm, so who knows. (Nobody, it seems) It's clearly up in the air, but at the stage we're now at I don't really understand those who are jumping on people with a more negative perspective, at the moment the takeover is clearly in the balance and could go either way. It's certainly not a cast iron certainty that it will go through and this place will be a mess if it doesn't.

Not sure how I feel about this at the moment. There's both negative and positive spin to take away from this report, and neither perspective is more accurate than the other. If it's a key factor in the premier league's decision I'd say this takeover is very much on a knife-edge at the moment. I wouldn't be surprised if they told them to go away and come back in a year when they've done more to crack down on piracy.

One of those players that might improve without the crowds.

We should, by default, be taking anything anyone says with a pinch of salt. All sources on this are reporting second hand information that was probably based on a lot of guesswork to begin with. Even information direct from the buyers and sellers isn't reliable. Turning on people because their information turned out to be off the mark is bollocks, this is such a volatile deal that it's likely the tide is turning constantly and what was accurate one minute may not be accurate the next. If you're getting your knickers in a twist over people's information turning out to be false, it's on you for pinning all your hopes on it to begin with imo.

No it's no conspiracy, but could potentially disrupt their cash flow for a few years and no business likes uncertainty in their figures beyond annual growth. If Newcastle got into the top regions of the league they'd probably suffer a drop at least initially, and this has the potential to disrupt their growth plans for the next few years. Would be interesting to see what kind of hit they took when Leicester won a few years back. Almost a pity it was pretty much a one off (despite this seasons good form). Football reputations and finances generally change pretty quickly barring some exceptions based on massively extended success. We're probably the best example, showing how quick and easy it is to fall behind. From being one of the biggest earners in mid-90's and a couple of years early 2000's we've gone to a club just making up the numbers. A few better decisions over the last 15 years and it could easily have been us sitting in the Tottenham/Arsenal/Liverpool situation. Doubt the idea of their league having the two richest owners in world football competing against each other would be seen as a negative like.

Nah, shows a complete lack of decency in the current situation to say something like that. You know that most likely there are people here struggling financially who could use the money yet you decide to write that instead of just keeping your opinions to yourself. Err, it was ManDoon making the comment not me, I'm saying why some of us can't stand sections of our support. And yeah, keep talking about 'decency' in a thread where everyone's frothing at the gash for their football club to be owned by baby bombers. My heart bleeds. I was only quoting you because you were defending him. The "you" was still directed to ManDoon if that wasnt clear. I have no idea what the rest of your post has to do with the original comment or mine. The rest of the post is implying that no one desperate for the club to be owned by the Saudi's is in any position to tell others what is and isn't decent. Not saying you're one of the former in this case, but those clapping are. I for one can't wait for my club to be owned by mass murdering baby bombers, it's been my number one criteria for years.