geordiesteve710

The FA/ organising committee properly ballsed up the ticketing for euro 96 mind. Unrealistic prices and iirc swathes of tickets were allocated to travel agents to force foreign fans to buy as part of a (even more unrealistically priced) package if they wanted to guarantee a match ticket. I was at Romania-Bulgaria and there seemed less than 15k there. Crowd included sunderland and boro fans wearing colours but very few fans of either of the teams playing. I think the France games were better attended and had a better atmosphere as at least some came over. You'd get a lot more attending if the same fixture took place at SJP this summer with more enlightened ticketing policies, budget airlines, romania/bulgaria having freedom of movement and being economically stronger than they were then etc.

Typically the kit manufacturer takes about 90% of the revenue from shirt sales. Bloody hell, I didn't know that. I'm surprised Mike hasn't set up some NUFC sweatshop in Thailand to produce kits in-house.

not sure what happened to the other 9 paragraphs of this post but it's absolutely spot on!! In 3 years time the 10-year deal runs out. I'm assuming there will be further increases in the meantime too, meaning it will be a sharp increase. I would be gobsmacked if Rafa is still here by then and if he goes the ambition goes too. I can tell you now I'm not fucking paying what's likely to be £700+ to sit in the Gallowgate and watch Ashleys version of NUFC fight for 15th and financial respectability every year. For a team with a good manager continuously improving the playing staff towards ultimately competing at the top end I'd pretty much consider it a bargain.

to me that just shows how soft football has got as a sport. There's only one remotely "dirty" player in that whole team, Shawcross, and even he kept his nose relatively clean last season!!

One golden cup, one furry. Or not, as the case may have been.

Off the top of my head they used to hire the Olympic stadium for big European games? A bit like Dynamo Kiev do/did.

Given that it's the 1st of the month presumably they've had to fund payments for wages, including Rodwells from somewhere over the last few days. "Debt-free" no longer me thinks!!

I reckon watford is a good shout tbf. They ended last year in freefall and their business model of picking managers at random is bound to throw up a duckegg at some point.

Both good chances he missed yesterday he took two touches whereas the level of striker we should* be looking at would be taking those chances on first time. I like Mitro and wish him well for the future but if Rafa doesn't want him I haven't seen enough glowing potential to get too upset about it. In all likelihood we'll probably pocket £20m from Fulham then p*ss about all summer not getting a striker "over the line." Or he'll get injured in Russia, we won't be able to shift him and that'll be the excuse for not buying a new striker. * when I say "should", clearly I'm talking about a hypothetical parallel universe in which Newcastle United proactively try to better themselves as a club and improve the playing squad accordingly.

That's so transparent it's almost like a parody. You'd think they'd be seeing straight through that but nope, blinded by someone telling them everything they want to hear. Also, might as well rename the club "We hate Newcastle United FC"

Brilliant read. Just saw on twitter. First letter of each paragraph spells out Mike Ashley is a fat cockney w*****

Ritchie vs Man Utd - most important win of the season and really turned the tide. Perez vs Arsenal. Quality finish and the ball from Shelvey to set the attack up was absolutely world class. Doesn't really come across on tv where it looks like he's just hoofed it, but was right behind it in the strawberry corner and the swerve and dip to pick his man (gayle??) out behind the arsenal defence was just arousing. Lascelles at Swansea. IIRC it was first win or first away win of the season or something. But more importantly it won me a shitload of cash on a 175/1 scorecast.

I liked this, anyway

Did you have 1-0 coloccini on that day as well? Because I did and it properly pissed me off

If my understanding is correct that would our 09/10 championship season when they were living it up in the premier league as well would it not?

Also, I think members should be able to accrue loyalty points when they buy tickets for away games, although I understand why season ticket holders with no points may disagree with that!

Some clubs work on a set basis, ie: Tues 1 May @ 10:00 - 100 points Tues 1 May @ 14:00 - 90 points Wed 2 May @ 10:00 - 80 points Wed 2 May @ 14:00 - 70 points etc. etc. They release the dates for all of the point drop thresholds, including member and general sale and it’ll either get that far or it wont. Allows people to plan ahead too, rather than waking up randomly to see it’s dropped to 0 points. That's a good idea. Also, it really doesn't need to be on for a week or two before the points required drops. I'm on over 130 pts and have got to know a lot of others who go regularly. Most either go to them all and religiously buy as soon as they go on sale or have planned in advance which ones they're going to and buy as soon as they're on sale. Dropping the requirement just a couple of weeks or less before the match just creates other problems for those on less points in that trains, hotels etc are likely to be more expensive, it's harder to get time off work at short notice etc which isn't really fair. If you can't get organised to buy a ticket in the first 2 or 3 days (given it's generally advertised another day or two in ahead of sale), you don't really deserve another week headstart on someone else even if you do have more loyalty points than them (sorry Greg!) Apart from that the loyalty system is fine the way it is. If we ever got to the point where there were no games going to 0 points then I'd look to make some changes (maybe 10% of our allocation distributed via ballot as opposed to loyalty pts.) The reason is I'd be concerned about the younger generation of fans getting discouraged which would be bad for the long term future of NUFC as a club.

Note use of the word 'still' (italicised twice to emphasise their incredulity) for an event that occured less than a week ago. Yeah, ok. For reference, beating Everton to send us down was 2016, 6-in-a-row was 2015, horse puncher 2013 and 'Boycoutt' 2008. All brought up on a daily basis by the brain-donors on Ready to groom. Christ, they still bring up a score from when Queen Victoria was still warm. Still. Cretins. My personal favourite is phone boxes. Especially considering it was over 20 years ago and it's not as though you never saw any others smashed up around the place in the 90s. Fwiw, two of the crowd who were smashing up the phone box after the cup final in 99 were sunderland fans who went to my school and were quite clearly identifiable in the chronicle on the Monday morning.

The only thing I can think of is it's up to the end of the accounting period ending 2016. That would mean it would include the £80m spend in 2 windows under mcclaren but not the £40m net profit of the summer of 2016?!? Still seems a little high mind.

I'm fucking sick of watching a game with bobby madley reffing and hearing the commentator saying something along the lines of"well that decision probably should have been given Newcastle's way and on another day it might well have been." With another referee it would have been, he's a cheating cunt.

it's bizarre, i mean if you were 6/7/8 years old or whatever when the keegan era kicked off and were brought up in the vicinity of newcastle more than likely you'd have got right into the toon...i mean that's the very nature and basis of supporting football teams really had we never gone up and took off but they did their little reid period a lot of kids would have naturally gravitated to them i'm sure (which obvs happened anyway)....we then had the SBR time which was also good they act like every adult just suddenly decided to switch allegiances from another club in 1992 dumb as rocks It's really weird crack as well from a club that found an additional 20k of fans out of nowhere in 1997, yet who are now nowhere to be seen. Pretty much the dictionary definition of gloryhunters.

Cewkie must have not got that message- in his post-relegation interview he said something along the lines of "I'd like to apologise to our fans- the ones who have stuck with us anyway."

Think the same happened with Les Ferdinand when he played for Leicester And Beresford with Southampton. He got the joke and started pissing himself laughing.

"Well strictly speaking, AJ had Epibeliophelia, or at worst Hebpobephilia, either way it's nothing more than a natural urge in adult males towards a younger group, and can't be classed as dirty noncing. I just burst out fingering a 14 year old (which is fine - see previous caveats)" Dangernons, 2015 - present Epibeliophelia. Trying to imagine this in their accent has just given me nausea and a headache. Ta for that.

If you bounce back first time, I'm sure you get the parachute payment for the season you're in the championship but not for the second or third season as you're back on the gravy train at the point of promotion? As an aside on this point, I was told yesterday that there is actually a small "parachute payment"-type package to lessen the financial impact on clubs relegated from the championship to league 1. Ergo, our mates from down the road will be in receipt of two lots of parachute payments next season if as expected they go down. Which will probably account for about 80% of their turnover. Which it's hard not to laugh at!