oldtype

I think I might have drawn the most boring group possible No real elite teams. Porto would be fun I guess. Napoli okay. Belgrade meh. Would fancy us to advance, at least.

Less than three points would probably send this forum all the way back to the Ashley era. Just waiting for somebody to bump the relegationometer thread.

One of those “let’s forget that football exists for two weeks” losses

Desperately unlucky bounce off Botman

Fuck

Brighton match will kick off ten minutes after stoppage time in this one ends.

Holy shit where did that come from

Subs probably should have come on earlier but that’s what I think about basically every game

Anthony Gordonaldo is going to have a big season.

I'm pretty confident that none of the shit that goes on in the California prison system, utterly deplorable as it is, is nearly equivalent to the sort of abuses that occur in whatever excuse for a penal system the Saudis have.

I would say the proportion of the NUFC fanbase that doesn't care about human rights abuses by the Saudi regime is roughly similar to the proportion of the general public that doesn't, so I don't see why anyone is surprised. It's an unfortunate reality of the world that for the vast majority, immense human suffering in a faraway land just doesn't register. I could easily see myself boycotting the club had the Saudis had come in to replace a relatively "normal" owner who I had no trouble supporting. As it is, they are replacing Mike fucking Ashley, so my discomfort with Saudi ownership is drowned out by the sheer relief and euphoria of having the club being run with competence and good intentions (in a footballing sense) after fifteen years of pure pain. I will allow myself a few years of enjoying having a football club again before I allow my concerns about our new owners to come to the fore. It's a human failing on my part and I acknowledge that. The most cynical part of my brain even wonders if this was part of the calculus when they targeted us as the club to buy. We are the one fanbase among Premier League clubs that has suffered too much at the hand of our past owner to ask too many questions about our new ones.

Once we've got good players sorted at every position is when we can afford to start splurging nine-digit transfer fees on the Mbappes and Haalands of the world imo. ...My God, what am I even saying I can't believe I just typed those words out completely unironically.

I'm sure they are lining up a big splashy CB signing as the long-term Schar replacement, it's just going to cost a lot of money so probably can't be done FFP-wise until either this winter or next summer. I think the Livramento signing is a good sign of the way these people think: bring in replacements for aging key players a year early, rather than risk being a year late. That way they have some time to acclimate themselves to the squad before they have to step up as first choice.

Understandable. If football became my job starting at age 13 I certainly wouldn't want to be watching it in all my spare time.

Yeah as I said in my original post, I suspected this was why. It doesn't make sense for them to omit basically any mention of the club or city's history though. Could have done plenty without actually mentioning Mike Ashley.

Is any of this history explained in later episodes?

Another thing that annoyed me to no end: the constant invocation of the Carabao Cup and “going to Wembley” without pausing for even a second to explain what those words mean and why it’s significant, especially for us. Do they even want anyone outside of existing NUFC fans to watch this?

It’s absolutely bonkers to me that they introduced our brush with relegation as pretty much the only source of “threat” or “drama” in the first episode, and then… 1) gloss over the whole thing in the space of ten minutes 2) fail to mention the fact that WE’D BEEN RELEGATED TWICE IN RECENT MEMORY, so this is not some pie in the sky thing. We know it hurts. 3) failed to explain what the financial consequences of relegation are or EVEN WHAT RELEGATION IS. Isn’t the point of this doc to bring new fans into NUFC, many of whom come from cultures where relegation in professional sports doesn’t exist? You can’t cut 10 seconds out of the PowerPoint presentation in the board meeting to explain what the stakes are? I literally had to pause the episode and explain the concept to my wife. It’s nonsensical how badly put together the narrative is.

Started watching this with my wife as a way to maybe get her into NUFC since she likes sports documentaries. We've only got through the first episode but she remarked that it was hard to feel any emotion about the club because the doc made it look like we'd just lucked into mega-rich owners and our only worry in life now was to figure out where to spend our tens of millions of dollars on while getting around whatever technicality that "financial fair play" is. I think that's a fair comment. It really does hurt the product that the first episode is centered around the ownership group and posh boardroom meetings in freaking castles rather than starting with the city, the fanbase, the pain we all went through, and then moving into the new era. A layperson could turn on episode one and watch the whole thing without realizing pretty important basic facts like... Where in England Newcastle is, where in the city the stadium is located and why that is special, and why fans were so happy that the previous owner left, or who Alan Shearer is and why he's narrating the documentary etc. etc. You could get all of this out of the way by putting in the typical "five-minute montage of unending pain" at the very beginning, just to establish a baseline emotional connection. It's puzzling to me that they didn't do that. Maybe this changes in later episodes, but just seems like poorly constructed narrative. Almost made me wonder if there was some kind of non-disparagement clause in the sale contract with Ashley and they were advised to not mention anything pre-takeover in the documentary to avoid potential liability.

It seems like standard operating procedure for the new regime to have players visit the stadium and take their photoshoots in full kit before the formal announcement is made. That always seems to result in a delay of a few days and a tiny bit of panicking on here.

It's weird when you think about it. Since childhood, I've always enjoyed both Mens' and Womens' events at the Olympics, more or less equally. The fact that the Women's 100m is always going to be run a few seconds slower than the Men's didn't make it seem any less interesting. But for the longest time, I wasn't applying that same standard in any context other than the Olympics. Womens' events always seemed trivial relative to the Mens'. In retrospect, perhaps it was because I had just been conditioned to feel that way because of how our society treats Womens' sport in general (with the Olympics being the one exception.) Obviously the pinnacle of football is always going to be the mens' Premier League and the mens' World Cup. But that doesn't mean that the womens' counterparts can't be enjoyable and a good product in their own right, especially now that more money is starting to flow into those events. The fact that they maybe kick the ball a bit less well than the men doesn't matter at the end of the day. They still kick it plenty well enough for the matches to be entertaining for a lot of people.

Uncharacteristically amateurish of them to let that make it to air, mind.

Can’t believe Rolando Aarons turned out shite. Was unreasonably excited about him after that game.

This club employed Celestine Babayaro

Oh great, jammy 1-0 home loss to Luton nailed on now