Stal

Proper chortled at that

I love this forum and the posters are generally superb and even the ones I don't always agree with have something to bring to the table that educate me or make me think. Although I've felt the exact same way recently, only problem is, I cant work out how to do it Edit: I worked it out.

https://theathletic.com/podcast/147-pod-on-the-tyne/?episode=25 Thank you!

Has there been one of those podcasts with Caulkin on this week? If so, can I be a pain and ask for the link please? Not even for the updates, I just like listening to it as I work.

I wonder if it's not so much an actual hold up on the PL's part, but the staff there who work on takeovers (I know they'll have other jobs too but bear with me) were maybe going to be furloughed and so they are dragging this out so they don't go onto 80% pay once it's done? Yep, I am well aware I am clutching at ever diminishing straws but need something to try and remain positive.

BSK for me like.

Going to do my list with things I liked and things I didn't like about them. I may be hard pressed to find nice things as I get further down my list. A lot of this is just my recollections of feelings and I haven't gone back and fact checked so I will naturally accept any corrections ( but not about my ordering ) 1. Keegan (1st time): A magical time as this coincided with me falling in love with football. He has such charisma and we played such amazing football. I feel privileged to have had this as my introduction to football. Downside was I always felt he would try to shoehorn his new buys into a system that worked. EG; playing two right wingers at the expense of the left side, 3 centre midfielders making us wonky, 3 centre backs when that didn't really fit our style etc 2. SBR: After Keegan's departure we went through Gullit and Daglish who on paper should have been great but ended up being bad fits for us. SBR picked up us and the players. Downside was I never felt he beefed up our defence which would have taken us to the next level. 3. Rafa: Picked us up not only with his meticulous methods with a below average team, but his reconnection with the fans that had been eroded and destroyed by the ashley regime. My downside with Rafa is not his fault, it's he couldn't take us to the next level because of ashley. My love of football started to rekindle under his reign. 4. Keegan: (2nd time) After the garbage football served to us by a con artist who has stolen a living as a football manager, Keegan was the tonic we needed. Downside was really the players we had, which wasn't his fault. My hate here also isn't his fault. His leaving the club started my falling out of love and interest with not just NUFC, but football. 5. Roeder: Did a solid job as caretaker and I felt fully deserved the job. Nice guy from all accounts too. Weird dislike, but he spent an absolute age going on about Dirk Kuyt, who went to Liverpool and all of a sudden that courting of Kuyt never happened and it was always Obi Martins that was first on his list. 6. Hughton: wasn't expecting much, did very well with what he had and such a decent fellow. But I was already well on my way to losing interest. 7. Dalglish: Should have been a great appointment and historically a natural successor to Keegan. Didn't feel right though and I have memories of him just buying a load of left backs. 8. Gullit: Again, should have been a good appointment. The derby debacle was a disgrace, he dropped Rob Lee from the squad and started to remove people who I had seen progress from young lads into developing pros such as Steve Watson. 9. Bruce: I very much dislike this prick. No good anywhere he has been, screws over every team he has worked for. A yes man for our regime, a less odious pardew and a less competent mcclaren. Whilst I hated man u, I always rated him highly as a centre half but I have nothing good to say about him as a manager. Especially OUR manager. 10. Kinnear: what even is this disgrace? Sweary and incompetent. Might have been an alright fit for Wimbledon, but he had no business at our club. 11. Allardyce: Did a good job at Bolton, fucked us over a few times when they really had no business beating us. He was THE name that folks would mention to be our next manager but I never liked him. I just had a gut feeling about him when I heard his name and he was managing (I think) Notts County. When we dropped points to a very underwhelming Derby he absolutely deserved the chants of "you don't know what you're doing". Only good thing ashley did was get rid of this knobhead. Also, I like hippos and his hippohead nickname kinda ruins my liking of hippos. 12. McClaren: lee effing ryder kept pushing this blank, empty, soulless nothing of a manager on us constantly until it was clear it was happening. He kept knocking us back until he could get Derby to sack him so no love for the club, or a brilliant challenge he wanted to take on. It was all about the money. Sure, people wanna get paid but there has to be more to managing a football club than just money for simply writing names on a teamsheet and laughing at mega-losses. 13. Souness: Replacing SBR with this? Really? And nobody ever brings up with buying (I think his name was) Ali Dya after a bloke claiming to George Weah claimed his was the next superstar. He put him on as a sub at Southampton, realised he was shit and then subbed him off. Every time he is doing his bitter punditry this should be brought up and rubbed in his face. Also, I always felt his buys were very dodgy. Boumsong ffs. So, so bitter because of his own failings with us too. 14. Carver: We had the chance to move on and remove the stain of pardew. We had so many options yet that utter shitfiddler charnley managed to remove his lips from ashley's skidmark maker to promote this cowardly liar to "head coach". His lies? One stands out for me; the FA cup match where he claimed throughout his interviews he would play a strong side, which would have included Sissoko. He then didn't play him, pretending like he was injured and I think everyone saw through this total bullshit. Also, and possibly the most egregious thing, the Jonas situation. 15. Pardew: I hate this cretin so much. We had had some crap managers during my time, but this was the epitome of utter despair. At least the managers (who did not work out here) who went before him had some credibility from managing elsewhere or doing a good job here. This failure hadn't had any such success and should never have been mentioned in the same breath as us. A liar, a yes man and all round slimebag who shagged his player's wives elsewhere, was so influential in lowering the fan's expectations and then becoming seemingly untouchable. He has zero good points and I wish nothing but the worst for him. He made me WANT to see my team lose. Oh yeah, did he ever do the self imposed community service he said he'd do for the headbutting incident? Such a waste of oxygen.

I've felt like that too, but Tsunami's information certainly gives me positive vibes.

What would be a wonderful gesture from the new regime is if those folk who gave up their season ticket because of ashley are given priority if they reapplied after he leaves. How would they know Ashley was the reason though ? If the ticket was relinquished during ashley's tenure, they were long serving fans, said fans say they gave up because of ashley. I dunno, something like that? There would have to be a structure in place for it. I just think it would be a nice idea and haven't gone into the ins and outs of it so don't rip me apart for the details on how it could be run

What would be a wonderful gesture from the new regime is if those folk who gave up their season ticket because of ashley are given priority if they reapplied after he leaves.

Brilliant to read, great post

I think I have an idea who that might be. Soopafans gutted they weren’t involved. I thought it was great tbh - a farcry from the Twitter gobshites I have in mind. I don't tend to get into Twitter properly. If someone is involved in a subject I am interested in then I will check their tweets (eg Caulkin, Douglas etc) but I don't tend to get into any deep discussions on it so only have fleeting interaction with other twitter users. I'm totally shite at twitter

On a Mark Douglas tweet I read this morning about the digital town hall, one bloke was quite angrily dismissive of it, essentially saying it wasn't a true cross section of fans, it was just folks whose telephone numbers are known. I personally thought it was respectful and well done (albeit there was no actual debate or way to answer questions) and thought on the whole it captured the thoughts of some decent folk. The rest of my fellow forum members are way more knowledgeable than I am, did this Angry Twitter Random have a point? If so, which aspects of the fan base were not represented?

Or murdered. "in the Game of Goals, we win or you die"

I think it probably will go through, but until it does I will be a little restless. That I think is totally understandable and even those who have nerves of steel on here can probably appreciate that. Mind you, it will be joyous when it does happen. The thing about the PL blocking the takeover though; it would be entirely our luck if they suddenly decided to take a stand and fuck us over. And as for the ramifications? Probably the same ramifications as our fans who still hand over money to mike ashley after every action he takes to damage the club. A wall of silence until it all blows over and everyone forgets after a while. Maybe they will add in an extra part of the test to make it more difficult for future owners but that'd be it. Calls for anything else to be looked into will fall on deaf ears and the status quo would continue. But, as I say, I think it will but I'm just antsy and a little desperate for us to be finally rid of that fat parasite.

Clearly said tongue in cheek to avoid any misinterpretation Yeah, he's a gods awful speaker (first time hearing him) but what I think he meant is that we could perhaps start a discussion and a change once they are in charge. The same point was made much more eloquently by other fans who followed him later on the stream.

It's been enlightening, but when people are coming on with specific questions, due to the format no one is able to put forward an opinion on what the answer might be to their questions.

So, what time today do you think it will be announced and when it isn't which arbitrary timescale should we then aim for?

Thank you, totally appreciate this and it might chill me a little so cheers for that. But I have follow up questions; where did this Saudi tradition come from? That's a pretty specific thing to have a tradition about. I mean, I get ones about hosting a guest for three days or similar but has anyone got another example of this 'tradition'? It sounds like it was just something someone wrote on Twitter and just got accepted as true. Was the "checks finished yesterday" just an example or has something been confirmed? Pretty sure I've read that they were done at least a week or more ago, but who knows what is correct?

I'm starting to feel like this has hit an iceberg. All of these suggestions that it's all done, but they're dragging out the announcement for...what exactly? I think I've tipped from the elation of getting rid of that parasite, past the plateau of positive anticipation down the slope of (possibly/probably) paranoid cynicism. For a month it's been "very close" with whispers that it's done but every day comes with an expectance of an update yet nothing happens. We are hanging on to every word from Caulkin's tweets, in some case analysing them for cryptic meanings that may or may not be there. All of these hopes for an announcement, countered with "it's Ramadan" or "it's the Saudi weekend" etc or (as has been in every takeover story we've been fed) "in the next X hours/days/weeks". Bollocks, If it's done just announce it FFS. Sorry for the rant, but I guess my legitimate question in all of this is what is to be gained by not announcing it? Just do it. It gets older than those awful dragged out Family Guy scenes that go on for far too long (like Peter's sore knee).

Not older, just thicker. The sort who believe whatever the media spoon feed them.

Pretty easy to narrow down a list of suspects, you'd have to have a fucking sizeable haulage fleet available to tally up £1m of Donnay and Slazenger gear. Anyone know what Mr Stobart was up to that night? Getting into Templar-related international escapades with Nico? Horse-shit I'm sorry, I have no idea what I was thinking when I stuck in a hyphen.

Pretty easy to narrow down a list of suspects, you'd have to have a fucking sizeable haulage fleet available to tally up £1m of Donnay and Slazenger gear. Anyone know what Mr Stobart was up to that night? Getting into Templar-related international escapades with Nico?

It's basically all financial criteria I think. Have they ever been bankrupt, have they got any fraud convictions etc? Thank you

Apologies if this has already been asked or covered, but does anyone know what is covered in this "fit and proper" owner's test?