leffe186

I’ve been the same. Accepted it and been looking at what we have to do next. My memory of your relegation in 2009 was that there was plenty of shooting yourselves in the foot but also for weeks and weeks almost nothing went right for you. Managing to get relegated behind that Hull team was quite an achievement. This has felt like a very similar situation, and the sides at the bottom are much stronger now so there’s less margin for error. The Brighton match was encouraging because of how we played and what that says about De Zerbi, but ultimately it feels like another kick in the teeth. Putting the equalizer to one side, part of us looking more balanced and effective was Udogie coming back and whaddya know, he’s out injured again. We still don’t have a penalty all season, we still have the lowest amount of tackles per card in the league etc etc. From having nothing going our way, we now need everything to suddenly move in the opposite direction. It’s not very likely. I do think our squad and De Zerbi is capable of keeping us up but we need to start getting some luck. That said, I fully expected West Ham to beat Crystal Palace, so who knows?

It’s so unbelievably frustrating to me that despite these players coming back out of the blue from injury and Maddison apparently not counting as injured despite the manager saying he’s basically a mascot, we are STILL top of the bloody injury table

Pity Joelinton’s suspended. Any of your forwards capable of shithousing Gabriel until he pops?

It’s the Epstein-QAnon thing that’s most frustrating. Like, there’s a far-reaching paedophilic/power conspiracy going on in the open over decades and instead they make up/glom onto their own bullshit and pin their hopes on a guy in with Epstein up to his neck. Not talking about the grifters - I get that, sadly - talking about the common clay of the New West. If we want to talk about MK Ultra we can pivot to one of the grifters, Alex fucking Jones. He’s been wittering on about it for ages but he’s so immersed in his own grifty bullshit he’s been counterproductive.

Yeah, didn’t see the original post saying they were a nothing club and missed that stage of the ritual Edit: or mediocre, whatever . We’ve seen this little movie on a pretty much annual basis. Honestly it feels like it tends to be me and you playing the same roles.

In the years just before Abramovich Bates had basically thrown money at Chelsea on and off the pitch and had overreached. They were losing money hand over fist. They weren’t nothing and were far more successful than they had been at any time during my lifetime - top 6 five seasons in a row after years of finishing in the bottom half - but it was built on sand and we were waiting for it to all come crashing down. Then Abramovich came in and spent an unprecedented amount of money from Russia’s his own pockets. I feel like we do this on a regular basis. Someone pops up to point out that actually they were fairly successful at the end under Bates, then someone else qualifies that by pointing out it was achieved unsustainably and then Abramovich coming in was a complete game-changer. For Chelsea and the rest of us. I’ve said ad nauseam that Abramovich was the point when football was broken for me personally, and IMO was the key step in breaking football in this country and Europe. Ken Bates - who it absolutely bears repeating was willing to install electric fences in the grounds and areas I personally stood in - and that little period of top six finishes pales into insignificance next to what happened next.

I mean, he’s Trump’s envoy to Italy, it’s sort of his job. I’m way more concerned about the enormous extent of his ties to Epstein and the implications behind Trump giving him the job in the first place:

He’s got the stench of Epstein all over him.

The envoy in question is apparently Paolo Zampolli. Notice anything interesting about him in his Wiki? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Zampolli

Yeah, like I say, I think if De Zerbi stays and our contract situation isn’t too messy we’ll go straight back up. The income will help (although I haven’t got my head round the Football League rules at all, they seem really strict) but the fact we have such a large, deep and young squad should generate some money too. I still worry about our apparent lack of competence and experience behind the scenes.

Kinda looking forward to it tbh. Main concerns are if De Zerbi stays and if we’ve protected ourselves with the player contracts. And if we get the pricing model right for fans next year - both us and the opponents.

Right. I mean, I’m not a Bournemouth, Palace, Brighton or Brentford fan, but I’ll stick up for them, since they have “no real fanbases”. Maybe there’s a reason why you said “up until recently there were more fans of clubs like Man Utd, Liverpool, and Arsenal than those clubs [in those areas]”. I hope that did change.. And those teams that don’t try to compete did all right in your last two games, no?

I mean, I get it, but you know what the acronym PIF stands for, don’t you?

I appreciate people at least mentioning that’s where they heard it, so I don’t need to think about it . Blows my mind that people take it seriously.

So proud of our football pyramid and the fact that York are getting 8000+ fans…and have the third highest average attendance.

Maybe you’ll get the “make-up” decision for the Gabriel non-red? If you go full shithouse there’s a chance the fans lose their shit and that transfers to the players.

@St. Maximin Also - do you really think Newcastle Utd fans dislike those three clubs disproportionately more than other fans? Other than the baseline hatred of other teams’ success that all fans share, in my experience you hate Man U primarily because of the Keegan-Ferguson years. There’s a particular hate for Liverpool’s sanctimoniousness and the fawning press coverage (and refereeing) they have always had that is shared by all fans, older fans hate Liverpool because we all did in the 70s and 80s, middle/aged Newcastle fans will have had them as a rival in the 90s (the 4-3s) and young fans have had Klopp and the Van Dijk affair. Do you really hate Arsenal disproportionately more than, I dunno, Villa fans? Genuine question. My gut feeling is that it’s because you don’t hate them as much as other Newcastle fans, and if that’s the case, maybe you could explain why. Is it something to do with growing up in Kent, or your age? Edit: I hasten to add, that’s not a dig, just a genuine question.

I mean, Liverpool had the Pools money. Most successful clubs have had one time or another where they were helped by a massive cash injection to get where they are. Literally in Arsenal’s case - the Chairman of Fulham bought shares in Woolwich Arsenal and tried to merge the two clubs because he thought other London clubs were getting too good. When the Football League told him to fuck off he used his friendship with the Archbishop of Canterbury to buy a new ground in North London and then bribed his way into the First Division. They were called the Bank of England club, throwing money at Herbert Chapman and loads of players to build their foundations. A lot of it is just banter, but that falls away when you can just spend silly money (or taxpayer money). There is no “fair and square” and never really has been, but I think I do have a line that Man City and Chelsea very obviously crossed. Crucially, they crossed it during my lifetime. I love football, and I love English football, and that’s part of the reason I’m on here. As a fan you’re constantly faced with these little contradictions and hypocrisies. I love chatting to other fanbases and representing my own, but all fanbases are populated by cunts of all descriptions . There are just differing proportions. I understand the relative merits of how Man U, Man C, Brentford, Liverpool etc got and remain successful but it doesn’t affect the bottom line that I want to win all the things all the time. That would ruin football, and I’d bite your hand off for it.

I get it, I really do. I absolutely detest what’s happened to Chelsea and Man City and I fervently wish it had never happened to them and the game. I hope that if they broke the rules they get the book thrown at them. If I’m blunt, I’d be happy for it to come tumbling down and for them to fold. Sad for the fans, but they had a great decade or two. I think I just see football support through quite childish, unreconstructed eyes. Is there any way to look at this league that isn’t disappointing? I’m nearly 53 and for me Liverpool have been really annoying for about 48 years. I envy you only feeling that post-Isak. That’s less than one. I’ve said this before, but growing up in the late 70s/early 80s in North London my schoolmates were essentially Spurs, Arsenal or Liverpool. They were effectively the big local rivals. The way I feel about most clubs was established in the first 20 years or so. They do exist as peculiar entities in my mind, intertwined with local identities as well as people I’ve known in the past who were fans. I kind of like that. So yeah, childish me wants the fans of the clubs who were my rivals at school in particular to feel pain and anguish - that schadenfreude has always been there. I also on an individual basis love interacting with fans of other clubs, because we all share something quite deep. But I think when you say “these teams aren’t our rivals” - Arsenal, Man U, Liverpool - do you mean on a competitive level? Or a local level? Aren’t all teams supposed to be our rivals? Ideally we’re all at a similar level competing for the same trophies. I suspect the reason I care less about Chelsea and Man City was because they’re the teams I don’t see as rivals on any level and again, that’s not a conscious decision I made or copium. It’s just how I felt when Abramovich and the UAE bought them and started throwing money at them. To an extent it’s how I felt when West Ham moved to the London Stadium. And I’m pretty confident it’s how I’d have felt about us if we’d moved too. Something intrinsic to their previous character has been lost, or thrown away.

Speaking for myself, it’s because they don’t mean anything to me as clubs any more. When I was a young fan it was Arsenal, Liverpool, Man U. Chelsea were a Second Division club when I started going to games and Man City became a yo-yo club. Both pretty inconsequential. Then when Abramovich and the UAE came they became nothing clubs to me. Not a conscious decision, I just didn’t really care or think about them in the same way. Somebody has to win each trophy each year, and on the rare occasion it isn’t us I’d rather it was a team I didn’t care about or even think of as a normal club any more.

It’s not just that most other CBs in the league would see a red card there, it’s that we all know Gabriel would have gone down like an absolute bitch if it was the other way round…and Haaland would have got sent off.

I think that would contravene the Geneva Convention.

Yeah, would be tough for Arsenal if they had a crucial player susp-oh, never mind.

Quite. I can see why the push on Dragusin might not be given a month ago, but then you have to let the less obvious Kolo Muani challenge on Gabriel go. It was the next game. So infuriating.

This is the crux. It’s not as simplistic as “big club rules” but it’s very obviously “narrative rules”. Still think Arsenal’s run-in is easier and Arteta’s low-risk, low variance style is more likely to prevail, but it’s lovely to see them both lose the game and any last semblance of sympathy some people might have dredged out of somewhere.