Chris_R

It's symptomatic of club policy and needs to be stamped on. I'm not in the mood to cut them any slack just because the shit thing they said could have been worse. As far as I'm concerned, this is a war.

It's not innocuous though. If you constantly tell your partner / kids that they're not good enough, they'll eventually start to believe you and will achieve less. He's telling a whole city they're not good enough. He wants us to want less for ourselves. That's the club policy - Accept less. It starts from what the manager says, he's the mouthpiece of the club. Everyone should have aspirations. You should always try to get better, to improve, to be the very best you can. None of us should accept mediocrity, because the moment you do you're condemning yourself to just that. What constantly telling? He said we can't win the league but we might be able to get a cup. What do you disagree with in his statement? The "might be able to get a cup" comment. I disagree with that. Our cup win chance is 0% as the board have stated we don't want to be in them in case we get relegated. Secondly, I disagree with him downplaying the club's ambitions. Doesn't matter what we can or can't do, there's no value in saying to people that they can't. If you have kids and they come to you saying they want to be Prime Minister, the odds may be a million to one but you don't tell them they can't. You help them be the very best they can be, and push them to improve all the time. Just because little Johnny is currently only looking at getting C-D at GCSE doesn't mean you sit him down and tell him he's going to be flipping burgers for the rest of his life, even if it is accurate. And if someone did do that, you don't say "But tell me where I'm wrong?". You're probably not wrong factually, but you're wrong in how you're dealing with him as a person. You're downplaying his expectations, telling him he'll never amount to anything. Sound familiar?

I'm struggling to take the first part of that seriously enough to even dignify it with an answer. He's clearly not in charge of transfers and if he says he is he's a liar. As for the second part, the club themselves have repeatedly said that during fan forums. They then published the minutes themselves with their own words in, saying the cups are of no interest because they increase our chances of being relegated. They even gave percentages ffs.

It's not innocuous though. If you constantly tell your partner / kids that they're not good enough, they'll eventually start to believe you and will achieve less. He's telling a whole city they're not good enough. He wants us to want less for ourselves. That's the club policy - Accept less. It starts from what the manager says, he's the mouthpiece of the club. Everyone should have aspirations. You should always try to get better, to improve, to be the very best you can. None of us should accept mediocrity, because the moment you do you're condemning yourself to just that.

He won't be allowed to. His bosses won't let him. He can say what he wants, but he's either mistaken or he's lying. He also said he was in charge of transfers yet he seems to be primarily interested in all the players we'd already scouted and been linked with. On that score he's already proven himself a liar, and the club are already on record as saying they don't want to compete in the cups.

I disagree with it. You just don't need to say the first bit. Why downplay the club? By saying something obvious yet indisputable like "we can't compete with Man City", what he's tacitly alluding to is that we can only expect to try to avoid relegation. He's not saying we'll be just behind Man City in a UEFA cup spot. His unsaid message is "expect a long hard season in the league." A good manager would say we want to build on what we did last year, to improve our league position. To try to break into the top 10. You don't do that by running us down. Rafa would doubtles say we beat Man City last season and so with the new signings we've made we should fear nobody this year. Obviously we're still not going to win the league, but you simply don't need to say that. It adds nothing unless the intent is to downplay the club via an implicit undertone. As for the cup thing, well we all know our cup participation will be finished before February starts, as per Mike's orders.

This. We're not capable of winning the league and the club actively try to get out of the cups as soon as possible as the board believe they're a distraction. To suggest that our 0% chance of winning a cup is somehow more alluring than our 0% chance of winning the league is preposterous. Bruce has played down our ambitions as a club in the league in order to reduce fan expectation, whilst simultaneously throwing false hope to the fans about a cup run which, when looked at rationally, we know simply won't happen because the powers that be won't allow it.

Would Rafa have said that? The manager can determine the ambition of the club. Pardew and Bruce spend all their time telling us to look down and fear the teams below us. The likes of Rafa, SBR and KK would tell you to look up and try to catch the clubs ahead of you. It's a mentality thing. It stinks. I'd rather try and fail than not try at all. And by try, I'm still talking of the mentality, not of throwing money at it. Rafa wasn't given a penny yet still kept trying to make us better in every aspect of what he did. Bruce is setting his stand out as just accepting where we are.

It's not self-defeating. Its a fact that 15 or so teams have to deal with. 14 of those 15 teams will be trying to haul themselves, slowly or otherwise, into higher positions though. They'll think that gradually they can push on, get better. They always aim to finish higher than they did last year. If any other team finished 13th last year, they'd be aiming for 12th or higher this year. They can't all finish higher, some will fail, but all of them want to improve on what they did last year. Sometimes a club will hit a good patch and manage to consistently improve. That's how a "Big 4" becomes a "Big 5/6". Or how some teams no longer get talked about as relegation fodder, how there's a divide between,say, the top 6, the next 6, and then those fighting relegation. Leagues within leagues, that kind of thing. One club does not look at last year's finish and try to aim higher. They think "It doesn't matter what we did last year, 17th or better is fine this year". That's us. We have no aspirations. Rafa did. He wanted us out of that bottom group. And he achieved it. Had Rafa stayed and been given the same budget Bruce is looking likely to receive, not a single pundit would tip us for the drop. We'd have made it up into the next "league within a league" and away from the relegation fodder. Give Rafa a few more years of constantly trying to improve, which he would have done, and who knows what might have happened. However now Bruce has come in and - no doubt at the behest of his boss - reset the dial back to "let's just try and stay up". It really doesn't have to be that way though and the last 2 years have shown us that. It needn't even cost any money, just the will and the right manager prudently backed with what the club generates itself. Accepting mediocrity is not compulsory, it isn't for other clubs and it shouldn't be for us.

But nobody is even debating that, but to have your manager come out before the season starts to remind us of it (adding the, great day out comment) just takes the piss. Part of the reason we can't compete in this league is the fact that we have the worst manager in the league now. Nar, it's not. He's come out and said exactly the same as us for the last ten years which is a pretty realistic assessment of our situation. If he'd said we were going to compete with the big boys this season he'd have got slated for that too. What he's said isn't particularly unreasonable considering our ownership situation, it seems no matter what he says he'll get stick. Fair enough, you might say but attacking him for a perfectly reasonable view on our prospects diminishes the effect of the actual bad stuff like attacking the fans protest. Crucify the man for attacking the fans, for the shite way he's treated a decent club who gave him a chance. Crucify him when the season starts and we're adrift before Christmas, for taking Ashley's money to help run his boyhood club into the ground. For saying our best chance of a trophy is a cup? Just pettiness. The difference between Bruce and Rafa is that Rafa would always say what a big city this was, what potential the club had, how he wanted to build something and that he did believe that, given the right resources and backing, the club absolutely COULD compete in the league. Then Bruce comes in and immediately declares a complete lack of ambition, no intent to build anything, and that the best we can hope for is a cup run in competitions the ownership of the club have publicly disdained for over a decade. It's shit. You've got one person looking at last year's 13th place finish and saying we can push on into the top 10, and you've got another looking at it and saying "look, we finished 13th, therefore we're 13th best and should just avoid relegation.

It doesn't always work like that with goalkeepers. Even the most mediocre 'keeper can look good when getting peppered with shots, even if you let enough of them in that you get relegated without even som much as a whimper, and you can then still sell them for a fair old whack. See Pickford, Jordan.

Norwich is awful to get to mind, it’s a fucking hike but even so it’s poor, the Spurs game will be a good marker, we get 3000 . 1594 still available at 60 points as it stands. Norwich sold out. Well, it didn't. We sent 700 tickets back. But maybe we sold the ones we didn't fail to sell.

Can't bring myself to watch anything with him on, but it sounds like classic Pardew. "We really don't want to sell Cabaye. No, not at all. But if someone did make a bid it would be really hard to keep him, so I really hope that doesn't happen, oh no, not at all. That would just be soooo bad if someone bid for him right now." "Alan, I only asked if you thought Shola was offside there?"

Yeah it's pointless talking about a hypothetical world where the leopard which is Mike Ashley changes his spots. He's had 12 years. Twelve fucking years. He has neither the capability nor the desire to change.

My boss is a Norwich fan. He's just forwarded me an email from Norwich City saying there's more tickets available for home fans as Newcastle have returned some of their allocation. The relevant bit of raw text is as below:

My top 3 would be: Joe Kinnear John Carver Alan Pardew Then quite a gap to: Steve McClaren Steve Bruce Sam Allardyce Tony Pulis But then I'm in the "let it burn" camp, and I'm picking those who would be best suited to facilitating that. I think Bruce could keep us up. I don't think he definitely will, but he could. As could any of the bottom 4, though McClaren had a damned good go at not keeping us up. Allardyce and Pulis, whilst serving up footballing AIDS, would almost certainly keep us in the league. Kinnear and Carver would be guaranteed relegations, and Pardew would galvanise the fanbase against him so those 3 would be the standout candidates for me.

can't understand anyone wanting us to lose. boycott yes but still support the team. Because for alot of us, it isn't our team anymore. And us losing, and therefore getting relegated, will get us a step closer to getting our team back if we believe that depriving Ashley of funds will drive him out of the club. that won't get rid of him. he will do what he has done before and put the funds in to blow the championship apart. then revert back to square one. only thing to get rid of him is to revert to the west ham approach. no-one including you is prepared to that. That's why I want us to go down and stay down. Promotion is not a certainty, even if you spend a lot of money.

can't understand anyone wanting us to lose. boycott yes but still support the team. Because for alot of us, it isn't our team anymore. And us losing, and therefore getting relegated, will get us a step closer to getting our team back if we believe that depriving Ashley of funds will drive him out of the club.

Utter guff. Nobody has to shop at SD. Nobody has no other choices. Anybody can avoid shopping there if they so wish. yes they can, but if they're not interested in nufc, why should they? Indeed. But I can and will criticise their lifestyle choices. Doesn't matter how dirt poor I am - and I've been dirt poor - I'd not let me or my kids dress like utter scranners. There's other options for the same price than cladding yourself from head to toe in Lonsdale ffs.

Utter guff. Nobody has to shop at SD. Nobody has no other choices. Anybody can avoid shopping there if they so wish.

I don't think anyone can even be bothered to do that anymore.

its the working classes, people with little money and kids to clothe etc. not everyone can afford to shop at JD. they're hardly going to boycott SD because Ashley's fucked our club. and I dont think we should criticise them because of it. That's nonsense, there's a load of cheap clothes shops people can go to. Plus why does anyone have to clothe their kids in Donnay or Lonsdale from head to foot? Surely even things like Asda's George range is just as cheap and doesn't make you look like complete chav scum. Or Primark. Or anywhere. There's maybe a want or a desire to shop in SD from some people, clearly, as they have massive revenues. But there's not a need. It's still a choice which can be avoided by literally anyone.

I think this too, and it's an important point. The overwhelming majority of those who have packed it in this year won't be back next year if things are the same, yet more will reach their tipping point and join them. Eventually it'll be an empty, soulless ground with just a few happy-clapper morons. It'll take time, but it'll happen. We just need to keep plugging away at people.

No massive objections to fan attending away games, the club doesn't get a penny from that. I'd say it's fairly pointless in that you're cheering for a non-entity in sporting terms and one that personally I hope gets beaten every week but I can't bring myself to have the same level of derision for them as I hold for ST holders or day trippers.

I'm normally happier at parties than at work. Guess where I'm more productive though?