Happy Face

When are renewals being sent out for those not on a Direct Debit scheme? I got one in Feb 2011, March 2012 (I think) and April 2013

You're so precious.

Just being into football is a childish pursuit we don't ever grow out of. Grown men spending our time posting on a football forum would be cringe inducing to the more pompous arsehole. "Plastics" "Glory hunters" "Fairweather" "Your support is fucking shit" "Where' d'you park your minibus" "Sell all your tickets, you couldn't sell..." Supporters have more ways of baiting each other than eskimos have words for snow. It's half the fun. Anyone who takes that stuff seriously is a wanker, but no fan should ever give it the Billy big bollocks that all that shite is beneath them, like they're a more enlightened supporter.

And to "shake your booty" means to wiggle one's butt. Permit me to demonstrate.

Quality.

Didn't he buy mandmdirect?

Well it was such a patronising post i couldn't help myself, the first sentence is insulting. It was genuine. Telling that you assumed otherwise.

Yeah, big banners are a hiding to nothing. I was thinking how good it would be if Banksy did a funny little drawing outside St James' to draw attention to the plight Daft idea, but I think if people want to engage in protest then it's better to not have poorly attended marches or ill-subscribed boycotts. But to do little things themself. For the price of one match ticket, if someone is going to stop going they can produce a thousand stickers and just hoy them all about the town/stadium. Standing on public ground outside a Sports Direct or the club shop with a "Golf Sale" style sign a few times would probably get you in the paper. I wouldn't break the law myself but anyone wanting to do a banksy copy at the stadium would have my utmost respect.

Spot on. That's good. I'm sure if any opposing fans tried to rub your noses in it you'd make mincemeat of them by educating them in the intricacies of our situation as well. I had only made the point to someone who was saying that supporting through thick and thin didn't cover the current situation. As if there's some caveat about our situation that doesn't apply elsewhere. It's actually exactly the sort of time that "thick and thin" refers to. A phrase that makes no allowances for the nuanced context we can see.

I was careful to be specific... "If our crowds dropped to 20,000 off the back of being 8th" Not finishing 8th. You also misread what I said, or took at face value what others suggested I said. I never said it would be wrong to pack in when we're 8th, nor would it be if we were 10th. But that the media and supporter perception that lasted in 10 years time, would be the same as the myth that has built around us booing Bobby Robson and wanting him sacked for finishing 5th. No context or understanding would be afforded of any frustration the fans had been feeling after years of mis-management. The headline would be that we got half the crowd Sunderland did after finishing (say) 8 places above them.

Yeah, like .com do to other fans on that page I linked to. Kinda making my point for me again. What? Attendance through bad times is a badge of honour and a stick to beat you with, regardless of context. Our attendances have increased year on year for the past 4 years by the way. You've lost me. When did I make your point for you? I don't place any stock in what other fans say about us, I don't care. I can hold that view and still think the proposition that people are walking away now because we're 8th is the theory of an uneducated person, ie a fan of another club who has only a passing interest in our affairs. I said You said it's something you'd expect to hear from fans of other clubs with little clue about what's actually going on. Agreeing with me. Good for you that you don't care about other fans yourself, but on the whole, fans take pride in their own club's attendance and use those of opponents as criticism. I have Man U supporting mates on my facebook page right now having massive long arguments with Man City fans about attendances from 1974, because that's where the shift in power currently happening leads fans...to their history. That's not why I'm necessarily going to keep my ticket if it happens, but it plays into your thinking.

Spot on. We will of course though see in this thread the vacuous argument that being a supporter means going to matches regardless of any circumstance and that it is even somehow admirable to actively enable those who take the p*ss out of you. Which is akin to some sort of retarded old military romanticism like charging at machine guns. Nice analogy. Supporting through thick and thin captures a lot - being f***ed over by refs, blowing your last chance at silverware or success for what you expect will be an unforeseeably long time etc... but it doesn't include funding/supporting a management structure which seeks to deny you the opportunity to even feel such nadirs/injustice or makes you ashamed of the club. Summed up nicely. Now HF am I right in saying that you think it does include these circumstances? If your answer is yes the fair enough. But you should at least be man enough to admit that it is a romantic, backwards, unproductive and Mike Ashley enabling viewpoint to hold. Do you admit this? Try and be straight with your answers, avoiding the issue and launching off into romantic gibberish is tiresome. That's the very definition of it. I reject your view that it's Ashley enabling for the reasons I've already laid out. Our attendances have been growing for 4 years. Not shrinking. Any fans that were angry enough to stop going have either returned or been replaced by the offer of cheaper tickets. Tickets that will only continue to get cheaper the more people refuse to pay top whack. The financial impact of cheaper tickets is negligible given the new TV deal this year. Football supporting is a romantic, backward life. People spend decades looking forward to they day they have kids and can take them to the game. People have bairns who love Ben Arfa, Remy, or Cabaye and love going to watch them, irrespective of Mike Ashley's profit margin. Groups of lads have entire relationships with each other built around the shared act of going to the football and moaning about the shite on show. Not winning owt in 40 years and only reaching a handful of finals has never changed that. I'm not even someone that would make the argument that you MUST always go. Said earlier that my 3 year deal ends this summer so I'm giving serious consideration about what I do. If someone wants to cajole and convince me not to renew with reasoned argument then I'm already inclined to go along with them. Any fucker that goes to 2 games a year who tells me I'm a cunt for giving it a second thought is more likely to get my back up though. I repeat, nowt but respect for people giving it up on principal, but think those who are still too tied into the club to do that should get the same respect rather than being told they're Ashley apologists & enablers.

Yes So he was a willing patsy? Is that what your trying to suggest? f***ing hell man What are you on about. Willing Patsy? If Pardewsaid on the loss of Cabaye... 'I'm not interested in profit. But it's a huge offer, which we have to consider. I don't want to lose him but it's a huge sum of money. 'It's also a huge opportunity for him. Do we deny him that opportunity? There's a moral issue here.' He'd get a helluva lot of stick because of who he is, but that's what Robson said when we sold Woodgate. It doesn't make either of them a willing patsy it makes them professional managers. Woodgate was almost finished, we did fantastically well to get that money for him, are you for real? And Carroll hasn't hit double figures in 3 yeas since we sold him. So we did fantastically well there too. The argument isn't about the players ability or what we recouped or what we re-invested. Just the way a manager will respond to losing an important player. It's rare for a manager to lay into the owner/board. Fergie never had a pop about Ronaldo, Wenger merrily gets on with having Fabregas, Nasri, Van Persie, Henry etc sold. But Pardew's held to higher account and expected to express honestly fan resentment of boardroom decisions. Yes, those are all succesful managers and Pardew is shit, but he's supposed to be emulating them.

Interesting summary at the top considering most of your posts suggest anything but disillusionment. Been saying for years how sick I am. I could see with my own eyes from late last season we were playing less long balls and produced a graph to show it because people wouldn't have it. Seems my pursuit of facts has left me to forever be a Pardew/Ashley sympathiser. Oh well.

All done http://nufc-ashlies.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/alan-pardews-ten-worst-quotes.html Feel free to share

I've got 6 so far... Need another 4.

The 'war chest' bit doesn't ring true for me. The club doesn't sign players that suit Pardew anyway. But Pardew has to struggle with a wafer thin squad in the meantime and is less likely to succeed, which will mount pressure on him to quit sooner.

...and I agree with Tron, the article itself is spot on. The suggestion that Ashley remains unhappy with Pardew and trying to force a resignation is one I had not even considered. Makes perfect sense that installing Kinnear was supposed to weaken him, and leads naturally to a refusal to sanction any investment in players, while building up a war chest for the next man.

Is Douglas not just phrasing things to say "We can't trust a word they say, but apparently...." As i read it, i don't think it contradicts anything announced previously, which was that we chased Genier on the Wednesday and then from Thursday pretty much said "no more bids for anyone".

I tuned in but they made no mention of it and i couldn't stand the presenters for more than half an hour.

Because I'm not a gormless twat that just shouts at the sky over anything and everything. Raging at EVERYTHING leads to the likes of other gormless twats like Garth Crooks popping up on my telly saying he can't understand what Newcastle fans are moaning about, they're in 8th!! Those other ones Interpolic has mentioned are real cringe inducing fuck-wittery and should shame him. Anyone else have any others? Got an article idea based on his top ten.

Aye, stuff like that I can understand being criticised.

He barely sold anyone in 3 years or summat tbf. Domi and Goma. Nowt to get worked up over. Never got any time to reinvest the Woodgate money, that went to Souness. But then Pardew has had almost £50m of investment too. People keep saying the one thing he should be thankful for is his team full of internationals that he's been provided to save his skin. So what point are you trying to make here? How is Robson a front for an owner draining resources out of the club? Robson was backed heavily in the transfer market and (according to transfermarket) spent an extra £50-£60m or so in excess of any money he brought in through transfers. In a similar time frame Pardew has made a £45m profit or something daft like that. The 2 situations are wildly different. And Pardew should be happy for his "team full of internationals that he's been provided to save his skin," he has a very good set of players as we've made some very astute purchases. The squad as a whole is still wafer thin and he's still talking utter shit in defence of the man who has the power too, but flat out refuses to spend the funds we're generating from player sales on replacements/squad improvements. The Shepherd's took money from banks to give to Robson to spend. They loaned that money off the back of our full stadium. Then they paid themselves tens of millions in dividends for doing such a great job as they extended the debt year on year, posting losses most of the time. That debt remains. There's was an even sneakier ponzi scheme than Ashley's. I don't know what was intended by whoever called Pardew/Robson a "front" but I just took that as being manager at the time and not criticising the owners as what they were doing was ruining the club. Like I said, I don't see what it is in these quotes that is utter shit. I'm always on the lookout for lies that I can add to my blog if anyone can explain it to me. He just refused to be drawn into criticising.

Put half of Pardew's quotes in another managers mouth and you would think nothing of them. What Robson said about the Woodgate sale could have come from Pardew about Cabaye 100%, but if it had he would get a much harder time than Robson ever did for playing the game. People (perhaps correctly) see Pardew as a slimy, despicable, spineless, prick and (correctly) as a shit manager. They project that view onto whatever he says. Rather than actually read what he says and then judge it without the baggage. People (correctly) saw Robson as an honourable gentleman and a more than capable manager and they project that view onto the exact same sentiment when expressed by him. It might not be worth worrying about, that we're being unfair to a slimy, despicable slimy prick of a shit manager. But I personally like to be fair to everyone.

He barely sold anyone in 3 years or summat tbf. Domi and Goma. Nowt to get worked up over. Never got any time to reinvest the Woodgate money, that went to Souness. But then Pardew has had almost £50m of investment too. People keep saying the one thing he should be thankful for is his team full of internationals that he's been provided to save his skin.