Chris_R

Jimmy Hill, surely? He had dementia and is hated enough that they still feel the need to fight his statue.

I mean rather than guessing where they play he could, oh I dunno, maybe ask them?! Or is that a bit controversial? Or ask the coaches? It's such blatant bullshit. He played them there because he's an egomaniac and thinks he's a tactical genius. Same reason he played Cisse and Ameobi on the wing. Tosser.

'no more excuses' Oh, the poor fools. Excuses are literally all he offers. We had years of them.

Hopefully Ashley. Beyond that I don't give a single shit.

I think the motto is something like "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me for 8 consecutive transfer windows, and I'll buy a season ticket."

Home v Liverpool was the one which got to me the most. From memory, for the first 70 minutes we didn't have a single shot on or off target, or force a corner. I've never before or since seen a team set up to offer that little going forward.

Never have I known so many people seemingly be interested in something yet all fall to buy it. It's almost as if everything they say is complete horseshit.

I believe it's directly proportional to the cuntiness of the present owner.

This club jumped the shark a long time ago. Now we're into season 13 and we're introducing these ridiculous and implausible characters whilst our viewership figures tumble and those of us that once enjoyed the shows in the good old days just hope they cancel the whole thing, and we look on in bafflement at the few who still manage to eke any entertainment out of the shambolic husk of a club.

As long as it's not a Siemens.

Pardew is a slightly better manager but an infinitely worse human being. I don't want either to manage my football club, but at least if I was stuck in a lift with Bruce I'd have decent odds of the floor not being covered with his entails when the doors finally opened.

Well yeah. The real stumbling block to any sale has always been that Fat Mike doesn't really want to sell. I think he'd sell, but not cleanly. He'll want to keep advertising his tat emporium around the ground for free and keep the club shop. When the other party refuses, his 'clean break' price becomes prohibitive and the deal collapses as he places such a disproportionately high value on those things and the buyer does not.

I've given up on hoping he sells, I'm just concentrating on outliving the cunt now.

So if he's keeping us, he can put that money into Newcastle now?

Literally nothing happens in Saudi Arabia on a Friday, except prayers. Whole country shuts down. The chance of any business being done then is 0. They're about as likely to work on a Friday as we are on Christmas Day. Staveley would be willing to work though, no? Assume the money is already in her account, all she needs to do is arrange the transfer of funds if Ashley agrees to sell. If the deadline's from them for Ashley to sell, sure, I guess. Though it really wouldn't be their preference and would mean they'd have to give her sole autonomy to conclude everything. If the deadline's from Ashley for them to buy, then if they haven't decided by Thursday then you're waiting until Saturday. I don't know which it is as I missed this deadline chat.

Literally nothing happens in Saudi Arabia on a Friday, except prayers. Whole country shuts down. The chance of any business being done then is 0. They're about as likely to work on a Friday as we are on Christmas Day.

The box could well be the issue. Honestly, I doubt the Saudi's are that interested in Ashley's mum's box.

Any contract can be bought out or cancelled if both parties agree. It should be especially easy to agree the cancellation when he's in charge of both companies.

As opposed to the UK where the people are brainwashed by the Murdoch media. FWIW you are not going to get arrested for casually criticising the regime here. I've had some intense debates with locals and nobody has batted an eyelid, and some of them have been openly critical of some things themselves. You just can't organise proper full-scale protests against the government or go publishing dissenting articles. Private free speech is fine. Not saying that the above is great, but it's not as bad as is often portrayed. Guy who was driving me home tonight got pulled over by the police and happily got out his car to remonstrate with the officer. Still got fined, but you clearly don't have to act all meek to anyone in authority. I accidentally drove across a parade ground in an airbase in Dhahran last year during an actual parade (Thanks Google maps! ) and despite the military police coming screaming out after me in a pickup truck, it was all laughed off in the end. It's not some totalitarian hellhole where you'll end up in jail for nothing.

Let's not big up democracy too much - This is a process which has brought us Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Brexit. FWIW the Saudis are making bold steps to modernise. Look up their "Vision 2030" if you want to see what they're planning on doing, but you cannot do these things overnight. I've spent a lot of time in the country over the last 7 years and indeed I'm in Jeddah right now. I've been talking to the people here about the modernisation and even the young people who do want change are worried that things are happening too quickly. Like any people, they're proud of their culture and worry about its loss and dilution. These things simply cannot change overnight, but the crown prince is determined to do as much as he can and seemingly wants to do things quicker than most of the populace are comfortable with, which tells me things are going absolutely as fast as they can. I'm not suggesting it'll be some paradise in a few years or that it'll be a free and open society, and I'm not sugarcoating the obvious horrific things which have happened and continue to happen here. But it is definitely changing and it can't change any quicker.

Looking at the state of the fat mess, I imagine lots of leaks come from Ashley's end.

Doesn't matter how willing the buyer is, the seller is a cunt and doesn't want to sell. However much is offered, he'll always want £1 more. And for that reason alone we'll never be sold.

Thing is, and you might not like it, but when you buy from those places you very literally DO support kids working 18 hour days in factories and slaves picking coffee beans. That's exactly what you do by patronising those places. You might do it with regret. You might pretend it's not happening. You might hate that they do the bad things they do. But you support them continuing to do those things nonetheless. I think the word you should have used was that it doesn't mean you agree with them. But you quite definitely support them. You're just putting yourself ahead of others, like the vast majority of us do - myself included - because we're too weak, poor, lazy and selfish (in different percentages for each of us) to do anything else. It would be impossible for people to fully look into which company is doing what on a level for people to exclude any company as somewhere they shop. It would be impractical, not impossible. Plus, whilst I could grant people unknowingly buying from a company who do shady things, you were explicitly talking about people shopping at places Primark. You can't play the 'oh I never knew' card on those transactions. I get that not everyone can invest time and effort into checking everything, but if you knowingly shop at shit places or don't even do the most basic of checkpoint because you'd rather live in ignorance and pretend you could never have possibly spent 30 seconds googling a company's ethics, then you're supporting what they do. And as I say, I'm as guilty as most in that regard. Some places I do avoid because their just too blatantly awful, and I look for ethically reared, free range meat and eggs, but I could do a hell of a lot more. And where I don't do enough, I'm supporting those bad practices. We all are.

Thing is, and you might not like it, but when you buy from those places you very literally DO support kids working 18 hour days in factories and slaves picking coffee beans. That's exactly what you do by patronising those places. You might do it with regret. You might pretend it's not happening. You might hate that they do the bad things they do. But you support them continuing to do those things nonetheless. I think the word you should have used was that it doesn't mean you agree with them. But you quite definitely support them. You're just putting yourself ahead of others, like the vast majority of us do - myself included - because we're too weak, poor, lazy and selfish (in different percentages for each of us) to do anything else.

Given how the last 472 takeovers have gone, you might want to plug the toaster in next to it.