AyeDubbleYoo

The best thing about this season is Big Sam getting relegated. Can’t wait for the interview.

Positive v negative as some sort of battle is absolutely ridiculous, and makes everyone on both sides look stupid. Just debate the stuff like normal people FFS.

That’s the weird thing about football, we tend to reassess our predictions too often based on form. I thought we were going to go down at one point. But at the end of the day, if you get a point a game (which is really shit) you stay up. When Bruce trots out his appalling ‘accumulation of points’ line, that’s what he means. He knows how low his objective is, and he knows that it doesn’t really matter if you lose a hell of a lot of games. Sad but true.

I really envy players, how they don’t seem to to be bothered how shit a club is and how bad the owner is. He just enjoys his football and takes his massive pay packet, shame the fans don’t have that luxury.

Sub him at half time.

He gives his all and we desperately needed him in the relegation battle. He was probably responsible for two goals conceded as well mind.

Kind of, Leicester haven’t been that good but somehow they’ve created several chances.

Bring on Big Andy for the finisher.

Who's the headless ghost?

You can have two sitting midfielders, they just can't be the ones we have who can't run or retain the ball. The passivity of our play is also a major problem, more than any formation. Of course that's also related to the selection of players who can't press.

I wouldn't think so, or at least not at the direction of a pseudo-governing third party. That power they used to require KSA to be named as a director is very strange. I know they have that O&D test line about people who are acting as representatives etc, but it's confusing either so.

Pick up a calorie-controlled light beer, watch Newcastle get bummed. It's a dream Friday night.

I guess we'll park the bus from now until the end of the season, to the extent we can. Might limit their counterattacking threat at least.

With Arteta, at least you can be fairly confident that he has a lot of the right knowledge. The risk is that he’s never had to apply it as a number one. That’s definitely a risk but at least there’s some reason to think it might have worked.

I think we're in a fairly unique position where we know that the owner will make the wrong appointment 90% of the time, so it's a good bad that the manager will be shit. If he'd punted on someone like Scott Parker, it would've been more difficult to tell. Depends on those individuals, I doubt anyone could say with any certainty.

Definitely. Football is (or was) a weirdly old fashioned place based on who you know and what your name is. It's only fairly recently that managers like Tuchel etc have come through by actually being good.

But if that's the case, why didn't they reject it? They actually delayed it for as long as possible so the buyers would withdraw. I think we've said loads of times, it would be fair enough if they'd just failed the test. Then we could move on, or go to whatever the next legal step is. The problem is they've tried to avoid applying the proper process.

Yeah, that is possible I suppose.

Is that more likely than Ashley just not caring about who the manager is?

Who cares about all the personality shit anyway, it’s moronic. The case happening is interesting for sure, let’s focus on that.

Bit of a coincidence

I think it's big enough news, we just don't have a clue what it will mean.

Yep, I mean I don't doubt that KSA can make PIF do what they want. Guess layman questions would be stuff like whether that can be proven in law, or whether them nominating directors to the fund should mean that those people should be assessed instead. I don't even understand what gives the PL the ability to ask for other directors which the buyers haven't nominated themselves. Also I doubt whether that was the real reason for delaying the takeover, or just an excuse because of pressure from clubs and Qatar. They should just allow the takeover, it's a lot simpler

Is there? It has to be a bit of leap, from a sovereign wealth fund providing some of the money for a deal, to the country itself being ordered to be assessed as a director of the company. Very complex and strange at the very least.

At the same time, there might be some positive PR in being seen not to let another dodgy billionaire come in. I know that doesn't make sense with who they've allowed before, but still...