Chris_R

More like he couldn't afford the new one.

It is a sunderland shirt, you can tell by the badge. It's an older one, but it is theirs.

Let's not confuse PIF with Saudi Arabia- PIF is a company in its own right, much as BEIN is in Qatar. If you start liking them to their state then for me you start to question whether BEIN are fit to broadcast the Premier League. It is widely accepted that they bought the World Cup, corruption at the highest level. How is that a good image for the Premier League? Its not they've turned a blind eye for the ££££. The hypocrisy of it all is a ridiculous. The PL should treat PIF as it has BEIN a separate company and get this approved. The PL HAVE turned a blind eye for £s though. That's the entire point. This is all about money. About protecting their revenue streams which, although we don't like it, is BeIN. And others will be watching how they look after BeIN and if they are willing to put their nose out of joint to put the SA bid through, the rest will be almost as unhappy thinking they might be next to be cast aside. Whether it all fits in with the criteria of the O&Ds test is secondary, sadly. It shouldn't be this way, but it clearly is.

It's not about legal cases or who is responsible for enforcing rights. It's about what BeIN and other rights holders would think. If the PL allowed the Saudis in, then BeIN would rightly feel that the PL are not protecting their rights, supporting piracy, and would say "well why should we bid again next time round?". Not just BeIN, but others might think the same too in case the PL do the same to them.

#Wait

The £2.5m/year cap is equivalent to £100k/year average for a squad of 25 players. I realise that's just an average, but I doubt anyone is going to get more playing non-league and with a part time job, unless the part time job is a brain surgeon.

Really? Boris Johnson's actions have led to 46,000 (Lowest estimate) UK citizens dying in the last 4 months as he prioritised the economy over their safety. Can you compare that to MBS's record over the same period for me please? (For it to be a thousand times worse, I'm looking for you to catalogue 46 million deaths) What? I won't drag the thread down with politics because I guess nobody wants that so I'll leave it there, but everything I wrote is 100% accurate.

Really? Boris Johnson's actions have led to 46,000 (Lowest estimate) UK citizens dying in the last 4 months as he prioritised the economy over their safety. Can you compare that to MBS's record over the same period for me please? (For it to be a thousand times worse, I'm looking for you to catalogue 46 million deaths)

It's just such ridiculous logic, I hear it all the time and it relies on circular logic of you look closely. It boils down to "Your team finished 13th, therefore they're the 13th best club. So because the 13th best club finished 13th, you finished where you should so you have nothing to complain about and should therefore be grateful you finished 13tb" It works for any club who finish in any position as a way to tell them they shouldn't desire improvement, but looked at closely it's a bullshit argument

It's hard to complain at MPs sending stock replies when most of the fans are sending stock letters. I think the contribution from both sides is excellent, and long may the letters and the replies, stock or otherwise, continue.

To be fair, I don't think that makes him a tosser. Mind I'm not saying he isn't a tosser either, but every year my FB feed is filled with parents trying every trick they can to get their kid into whatever school they want. My sister is a teacher and has told me some of the shit parents pull. Him actually being able to do something doesn't make him any worse than the millions of parents up and down the country who desperately try to do the same thing but just can't. As I say, could still be a complete tosser, but that's not anything to get excited about.

What are the PL going to do, approve it less?

True, but on the other hand buyers could easily say theirs big uncertainty around when capacity crowds will be back inside stadiums affecting their future revenue. Of course. I'm not saying his new price was accurate or fair, simply that he had a right to discuss one and that in and of itself probably isn't wrong of him. Hence why PIF/Stavely were probably OK with it.

The new price was probably to take into consideration the extra costs Ashley had incurred for having to run the club for 3 months longer than he expected to during the pandemic, as the whole reason he'd agreed to the sale at the price he did was because he wanted to avoid having to do that. And much though I think he's an absolute cunt of a man, he probably has a right to some redress there once the exclusivity agreement ran out and such a renegotiation was possible.

Don't use Twitter myself, but probably this guy, Ben Robson. At least he was born in Newcastle and went to school here. Played Kalf, and got to get quite frisky with Lagertha, the lucky sod.

Qatar, involved in football-related bribery at the highest levels of the game? Come on, as if!

And it would've been, if PIF just done everything the PL asked of them and made the government a director so they could easily fail it. I don't see how this has a positive outcome unfortunately. They're not going to approve it considering the backlash, for the fear of looking even weaker than they do now. Who cares tbh? If the deal's dead might as well give the PL as many headaches as possible. Fuck them. Incidentally where are all those fans who didn't want the Saudi takeover? Seems now they've gone quiet about alternative US investors now that the danger of a Saudi takeover has passed. I mean Richard Keys has obviously tossed that angle and moved on - job done. But where do you go if you are a Newcastle fan? I mean I don't really care, even hearing stuff from Reubens/Newcastle racecourse or whatever barely musters anything. I'm just being real to myself in accepting it's probably fucked in its current makeup. I personally love the petty bombardment on Twitter etc. I think it hurts them a little more than some people like to think. They are reporting accounts for spamming (and having them banned) so yeah guess its getting to them. Can you do that on twitter like? Not something you could get overturned? 3 day ban from posting. They’ll be back and they can’t ban them all. I'm more than happy to make up accounts just to do this.

What does that mean? SEC Form D suggests their annual revenue is less than $1m? But more than $1.

And that's me done with football. Doubt I'll be back here for a long time, if at all. Goodbye all.

Didn't someone (Caulkin?) say the funds were sat in a UK bank? If so, the transfer would be instant. I can't see that they've got £300m sat in a Saudi bank and are happy to just wait another week for an international money transfer. That seems pointless. Especially as the Ruebens could pay £300m on their own to avoid the delay.

I just can't see him willingly turning down millions of pounds extra without checking every last way to ensure that he has no other choice but to do so, because of the kind of person he is. He's not the kind of person to say "No Mr Mauriss, a deal's a deal, I am a man of my word and cannot break that to these Saudi gentlemen".

He's probably not that stupid, no. He certainly wouldn't do that on his own. But he's probably got his best legal brains on it now (Hence why the buyers are not able to reach him), investigating if he can actually get anything out of this. Hopefully they tell him "no", and the Saudi deal goes through. Hopefully that happens soon and we have progress and good news. Worst case scenario is there's a loophole to cancel the Saudi deal and they manage to convince themselves that Mauriss is genuine. Which clearly he isn't.

Edit to your edit: I'm not utterly convinced of it myself either. I'm just putting a hypothetical scenario together as to what is happening with Mauriss and Qatar. I'm just trying to join some dots up. What is NOT happening is that Mauriss is not bidding for Newcastle with his own money, because he hasn't got any.

"It's a gift". "It's part of a business deal with ClearTV" Whatever. They could look to find a way round it. Aye the Premier League seem quite gung ho about the whole thing so I'm sure they'll just shrug their shoulders at that kind of answer and pass it no bother. The PL would probably fail Mauriss. I've already covered this. Qatar don't care, they just want to swat the Saudis aside. Once that's done, Qatar couldn't give 2 shits if Mauriss gets through the O&Ds' test and actually gets control of Newcastle or not. It's irrelevant because they'll have achieved their aim of stopping the Saudis getting us. The Saudis won't come back in because they'll be too angry at being fucked around and we'll be more months down the line.