Odear

Yep, Perez has to start. I assume he’s vice captain of the team too as he wore the armband in the only friendly so far when Lascelles was out. (anyone know why he was missing?)

At least with the Spurs game they are a known quantity. It was close enough last season until Shelvey fucked our chances. Even saying that, we lasted almost 15 minutes before they scored. And that was after Lejeune got done by Kane. Could be perfect way to get a point on the board. Then it gets ugly for a few weeks.. if we can scrape through that still breathing, then there’s a chance to start building points. We have a far better November and December than last season.

They already did what they set out to do, they got a trending twitter thing going. There’s absolutely no need to out themselves making media statements.. they have every resource they need for free. 10k? Cunts..

Cringe http://www.nufcblog.co.uk/2018/07/20/if-rafa-goes-we-go-release-official-statement-reveal-major-plan-to-get-rid-of-mike-ashley/ It would have been better if they’d not released that. It has the dainty hoof prints of someone like Mick Martin all over it.

Considering what he did for them for a small loan fee, it hardly seems like an excessive amount. We should have been looking for another 5m, might seem like buttons but not with what Rafa is dealing with. Why were no other clubs in for him though?

?

There’s no way of knowing what state the club was in.. we're going by ASHLEY’S WORD that there was this massive debt. Let that sink in because that’s been a major part of the narrative that the club would be fucked without his investment. We believe him on that and nothing else? Personally I think it was a load of bollocks. Do you think Chris Mort or Freshfields who brokered the deal, would be that incompetent to not check over the accounts and sponsorship contracts to see what was coming in or out.. But.. Shepherd would never have sacked Allardyce so soon. So hypothetically, the club would have been in a fucking mess either way.

“I was told that the man behind the deal was Mike Ashley and I sat with his representatives over 3 days thrashing out a deal. I was keen to know why they wanted the club and they were quite honest. They wanted to market their sports goods in the Far East and would use the club to help do this.” Sir John Hall. Cheers to him for looking after out best interests, eh? I knew that, he said those things much later though. In an interview, things had already gone to shit. At the time of the takeover it was only Freddie Shepperd who called him out for being a snake. And for the most part I remember we were so excited about a “billionaire” buying the club we laughed off his comments. I never subscribed the notion the club would have gone the way of Leeds, we never spent as much as them. We had one marquee signing each summer, or as good as. In 2000 Robert was only 9.5m and Bellamy about 6, did we sign Carl Cort that summer too? (That one always baffled me) Hall took the money and ran in the end. He had an obligation to do due diligence on the buyer..

I think once he’s gone he’s gone as far as this club is concerned, Rafa I mean. Ashley is here for the long term. This club is the vessel for everything else he has to make money. Maybe it’s naive to think he had good intentions from the start, but I really think he wanted to be liked.. it was more of a popularity move than a business one.. then once Keegan walked, he never got over the abuse he got. It was his biggest mistake. He could have done that to any other manager and gotten away with it. Not KK though. Beginning of the end really, once he became emotionally detached this club has just been his play thing ever since.

Of course it will be. Every team have spent but us. But we should still be ok, if the team at the second part of the season turns up..

Just wait until the club sell Lascelles for 35-50m on deadline day..

NUFC and all of his shitty tat and struggling brands he has are 100% linked. If anyone looked deep enough into his finances you’d find the breadcrumbs. It never made any difference before, when they were doing well he still wasn’t spending money here.. so maybe this might encourage him to sell. But.. this club is probably his most stable asset right now. Why would you sell a sure thing? He’s playing Moneyball with the Premier League and has been for some time.. spend more money on a manager, less on the squad. He knows Rafa won’t let us go down despite virtually no financial input of any meaningful way. His objective is mid table, anywhere from 17th to 7th.. just enough to avoid having to play in Europe. So with that in mind, you can see why he isn’t afraid of losing Rafa. There are many lesser managers out there who could achieve 17th...

Not a transfer as such but Zola back at Chelsea as assistant manager. What a player he was right up to when he called it a day

It was sort of middle of the 2nd half, he was drifting between the right and left side for a while when he came on first. I’d guess maybe around 60 mins onwards?

Few points from the game, it was fairly pedestrian for most of it. St Pats surprised me, played it out from the back the whole game. So.. Aarons is done and dusted. Worst player on the pitch.. wouldn’t get into the St Pats team based on what I saw. Was right in front of Rafa for the whole of his wretched 45 minutes so won’t have gone unnoticed. Longstaff is the business. Can see what people were saying, he’s very thin but apparently was far more skinny last year.. if he puts on some muscle he’ll be a great addition to the first team. Was Lascelles injured? Worrying as nothing was mentioned to best of my knowledge beforehand. On the flip side of that, Yarney looked a very good prospect. Barely put a foot wrong and looks like a big strong fucker. Played in the centre of defence all game. Fernandez also looked a handy backup to Yedlin. Good to see some young talent stepping up. Best moment of the match, some St Pats fan shouted at Kenedy who was about 10 feet away from us beside pitch “you’re just a shit Neymar” to which he turned around to look at who said it.. then moments later totally rinsed one of their players just outside our box. When the play moved on he looked back over towards the St Pats fans with a huge smile ? was worth the price of admission just for that

Black Lion is black and white! In full voice ?

The Black Lion - I’ve been warned not to wear my colours in there but I suspect a wind up.. it’ll be grand, it’s one of those piss head old men who live in the bookies type places for most of the day. Short walk to the ground from there.

Bunch of us going. My missus’ family (6 uncles) are all St Pats supporters.. Everyone will be in the same stand according to them so it should be rowdy. They fancy their chances ? even though they’ve been well off the pace this season (think their league is still ongoing) I don’t follow it, but I know Dundalk are walking the league. When we played Bohs, they were on the downgrade too so we really haven’t had a decent test playing over here. They also have a game on Friday so they won’t be taking any risks to get one over etc..

Even over here in Ireland he’s been spending loads of time meeting fans, especially the younger ones.. he knows well that’s how you keep future generations hooked. I see more black and white (and away shirts) here now than at any point in the entertainers years or before that. So there’s still an appeal to the club obviously even though the younglings know nothing of Mike Ashley yet.. They’re training about 5 mins from me so I’ve been seeing all the goings on over the last week. There’s been quite a few comings and goings in fancy executive cabs. The airport is only 15/20 mins from where they are so you wouldn’t know who’s been there apart from the team and the media don’t give a shit so there’s no rumours whatsoever.

It’s not even certain we did make an offer of 20m.. they just reported we did, like reported interest.. all bullshit most likely. It’s fairly safe to say that if we are to break out transfer record, it will only be the once, possibly twice.. depending on what happens with Ritchie/Townsend situation..

Probably a bit of the aul racism.. Anyway, back on point, he didn’t add much last year. Out of his depth at the higher level.. he might get there, just not right now which is what we need..

In talks with Liverpool over a potential return to the club here. Whether it's a loan or permanent deal, i have no idea. Strange one this, he was part of the problem of being relegated but with proper coaching who knows what would have happened. Ideal no.10, Perez to play more of a forward role this season. He can finish if given chances..

Yeap. All the arrogance was starting to show when they hadn’t really played anyone of note. No creativity in midfield. But they looked wrecked. I’d wonder how this could effect a number of the top teams for the first few months of the PL, they’ll have a number of so called top players underperforming. Could give clubs like us a chance to get a solid start.

Lascelles wont want to leave, not yet at least. Unlike many of his fellow professionals, this lad is highly intelligent. He knows he’s on to a good thing here, especially while Rafa is manager. He’s proud to wear the jersey and represents us better than any player since Shearer probably. He’s by no means a world class player, but it’s his overall leadership and way he commands his troops which make him so valuable to us. It may not happen like that for him at another club, I keep thinking back to the career Joleon Lescott could have had if he made better career choices..

Chelsea are in the driving seat so fuck knows what will happen. Some news shitehawks are claiming that they are stating they just want to sell him now, so why not just offer what they want and defer the payment until next summer (if they can agree to that) They can afford it.. although more signs that Abramovic is going slightly the way of Mike Ashley in his running of the club.. sell to buy etc. Could complicate matters. I’d bet on the Russian in that stand off..