oldtype

I just refuse to believe that Pardew, McClaren, and Bruce all managed this club at some point. It feels like a bad dream now.

I somehow love the Tiote and Jonas goals even more in retrospect than I did in the moment. A reminder that even during the Ashley years, there were moments to be proud of.

only thing missing is Shola

Extended local hero intro (never rush straight into the climax!), Tiote, Jonas. Some mf’er at Adidas marketing knew exactly which buttons to push.

Jesus Christ Adidas. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be buying yet but please take my money. That token Asian dude is my spirit animal

It’s going to narrow our transfer options by a lot if we’re only willing to sign players who don’t like getting paid more money.

Yet another anti-competitive aspect of PSR is that it effectively gives the non-cap teams veto power over transfers from any team subject to a cap (i.e. us), since they can so easily outbid on fees and wages, even if they don’t actually want or need the player as much as we do.

People shit on the American salary cap system but PSR is basically just a salary cap for some clubs that the richest clubs are exempt from. Don’t see why anyone would prefer this over the same rules for everyone.

Frankly enjoyed Kuqi for NUFC more than I enjoyed Ki for NUFC. Ashely hadn’t broken my soul yet.

I'm long past the point where I actually care about Koreans playing for NUFC. Ki was one of my favorite players ever and that was... not a good experience so I've kind of soured on it all.

These days, European teams have genuinely reached FM-levels of foreign prospect scouting (i.e. they have folks looking at 15 year olds in obscure foreign leagues in Asia or Africa). It seems like we have people over to scout the Korean leagues periodically and he just happened to catch our eye. He has been capped at U-17 and U-20 level but so far has not stood out in either (to be fair, he just turned 18).

Based on what's being reported in local media it sounds like he's definitely signing with us FWIW. He's very young and barely gets playing time in the Korean second tier, so probably one for the far future (or never). Also, fuck off with all of your racist Korean jokes they have not improved in quality one bit in the twenty years I've been on this forum.

If we do ever win the league, it will have been over a century since the last time (I'm assuming it's not going to happen within the next two seasons). Imagine how ridiculous that would feel. A euphoria that fans of certain teams will never even have the possibility of experiencing.

Now that we’ve finally got the trophy monkey off of our backs I care less about advancing in the Europa League. It would be nice, but the CL money moves us closer to our next long term goals (winning the league or the CL).

It’s all relative, but I think the club had functionally ceased to exist for a lot of people notwithstanding its league position (myself included)

Would have been a footnote for Liverpool even if they had won. Our players knew they were competing for immortality.

Given the low point we were at pre-Howe you could just as easily argue that there would be no club without him either. Although I realize that the new owners coming in at the same time obfuscates that a little. (And I think I’ve stumbled upon the topic this forum will spend the next few years bickering needlessly about )

Howe is also just four seasons into what may end up being (knock on wood) a 10+ year tenure so I wouldn’t quite say “forever”.

Local Hero was grown in a lab to make fans weep. Absolute gem of a song and we’re lucky to have it. And utterly Kafkaesque that Ashley tried to get rid of it.

We were absurdly lucky that almost every big name player we spent our (in retrospect, surprisingly limited) PSR budget on turned out not only to be good footballers, but also perfect cultural fits for the club. This man most of all.

Just based on achievements, is it even arguable at this point? Keegan and Sir Bobby had great results and obviously were very influential in building the culture around the club but Howe has silverware and arguably has been just as influential turning the culture around from an absolute low point.

This is my twentieth season supporting the club from abroad, and I am proud to announce that I am finally an actual glory hunter.

My entire identity as a fan was being the idiot who chose to support the team that never wins anything. What do I do now.

We’re all taking shots to this picture tonight.

I cannot believe the black and white ribbons on the dingy little trophy is what makes me cry.