Rafalove

We can.

Even if (and it’s a gigantic if), we were able to obtain £350m to fund the sale of the club. How would we fund it moving forward? If you think it’d become self-sustainable, you’re deluded. How am I deluded? some of the most successful clubs in the world are fan owned. In Spain it just so happens that the three most successful clubs are all fan owned(Barca, Madrid, Bilbao). Clubs that have all never been relegated. Fan ownership is the norm in Germany where fans feel a deeper connection and pride to their club, with I imagine greater satisfaction. Where would the millions (and millions) of investment needed in the facilities come from? Would we have another 20 year whip round? We could take out a loan, which is not uncommon. Personally I feel owners putting money in to clubs is bad for the game anyway, and reduces football to a "who has the richest billionaire game". It will also be the case that whatever happens we certainly wouldn't own 100% anyway certainly not for a long time so if we decided we were okay with owners putting money in, Perhaps whoever owns the remaining %would want to invest. We could fund part of the improvements through sponsorship. perhaps the "insert sponsorship" academy. We're already underperforming commercially so there is a lot of scope for improvement. being a fan owned club would give us a unique selling point, while I hate to use such corporatist language and perhaps slightly cheapen a supporters connection to said football club, it's true. We would gain more fans from oversee's and within the uk, because people would see us as a club with real identity, something that means something. So we would benefit from both more fans and a more profitable image. What about the initial investment in players that’d be needed? Shall we buy players on tick like Man Utd where they pay a tenner a month? We would struggle initially I think, but by running the club well we would gradually claw our way upwards. I mean imagine if we owned our club now, imagine how much better off we would be simply by getting rid of Bruce. Then imagine we kept Rafa, imagine we kept Rafa and we didn't spunk 40 mil on Joelinton. Then imagine better comercial interests and ab etter atmosphere within the club and from the stands. We're allready miles better off right there. You don’t honestly think owning 1% of the football club would secure any of that, do you? Yes. It offers transparency. it's much harder to bullshit fans if you have sort of liaison sitting in watching what happens and reporting back to fans. Having a fan representative at the club relaying back and forth between supporters and club I am sure would make even this grubby regime a much better one. We might think we can ‘run the club’ better than Ashley. But 1% won’t achieve that. 1% won’t get us any more say than we already do have. None. Like i've said 1% would hopefully be the start. If Ashley (or the next owner) wants to run the club like a sack of shit, having Alex with a toenail in the door won’t prevent that. See my reply above the last one @Fantail Breeze

excellent post

@reefatoonI share your concerns about our fanbase, but onceover, we had a very active, vocal and militant fanbase. I think what changed this is the lack of engagement from the club and the media smearing us as deluded, entitled and a "poisoned chalice". If we felt our voices would be heard I think we could re-ignite that. Even more so if we actually owned the club or at least part of it. I am absolutely positive we would run our club better than Ashley. You think the likes of Wise, Kinnear, Pardew, Bruce would have been our club if we owned it? You think the likes of Keegan and Rafa would have been treat so poorly? You think we'd be happy, with 17th and not giving a fuck about cups? You think the corpse of the pigeon would still be in the upper netting of the Gallowgate roof after four years? Even if we spent most of the time languishing in lower league football, it would be better than what we have now. We would actually be apart of our club. We would have to engage with our club and it would have to engage with us. Doesn't fan ownership mean even more when success does come about? The likes of Manchester United and Liverpool, have been very successful, but how much credit can fans of those clubs really take for that? They have been lucky too have fantastic owners of their club. There's no guarantee the next bloke to own us, won't be another Ashely. If he is, we need fan representation on the board to keep him/her/them honest. During Ashley's ownership their have been attempts to smear Keegan, Shearer, Given, Rafa, probably more but those are the names of the top of my head. Imagine if those smear attempts had been successful, imagine we fell out of love with Keegan and we had been duped in to thinking Dennis Wise was the saviour of our club. It might have happened and it wasn't for a lack of trying on the club's part. Look at Given, for a number of years his name had been tarnished, with some sections of our fanbase seeing him as someone who deserted us in our relegation season. Moving on I would hope 1%, Would just be the start. We should be aiming to take full control of our club it's a process that would likely take decades, but would be completely worth it and is completely achievable if the fanbase as a whole get behind it. Just think, we'd be the envy of the Premier league. We would increase our supporter base abroad, as we would have a unique "selling point". The only major fan owned club in English football.

Messi is just silly.

The fuck is a loan team coach?

Even if they have £10m in the pot, can you see Ashley selling a % to the fans? maybe, though the pledge would most likely just be one party within a consortium No point planning to buy anything from anyone else, as Ashley isn’t going anywhere. If Ashley got the offer he wanted I think he would sell.the fact he accepted an offer from Staveley and the Saudi’s prove this. Their membership have already been clear that they don’t want to engage with Ashley, so I’m unsure why they’d go against that as the voice of the fans and want to fund him with this further money. Not sure what you mean? Any attempt to buy the club will be funding Ashley. He’s not giving the club away for free, unless the club is in serious financial shit, in which case that’s even more reason to support the pledge. Even in the unlikely event of a sale and the new owners unexpectedly allowing the sale of 1%. What will NUST achieve with that 1%? They’ll have as much say and input as they do now. None. They’ll have a voice in the boardroom, can put there opinions forward, and increase communication and transparency between club and fans. Treating clubblegends with the disrespect they have would have been far more difficult. The only way it’d work is if the club were worth fuck all and they could buy the club with the fund. Which isn’t going to happen. Or, somehow the fund is backed way beyond the realms of possibility and ended up with £300m+. Which also isn’t going to happen. It’s made even more unlikely by the fact they published this grand idea with such little detail (like what they’d do with the 1%), that people are not going to get behind it. I do think they could promote this idea better. We’re also talking about launching a project of getting people to part with their hard earned money during one of the biggest social and economical challenges the world has ever seen. Its still completely feasible to raise a large amount of money Hearts have priven this. Perhaps not in a pandemic but equally Hearts don’t have a fanbase as large as us. That’s even before we get onto the fact the club is currently burning to the ground and they’re more bothered about planning for this than taking appropriate action now. he fans in general don’t want to take action. This has been tried multiple times. ”Give us your money each month so we may or may not buy 1% of the club to do something we’ve not yet worked out in 10 years.” So aye, in a nutshell, it is Alex’s impossible dream. Nah. It’s difficult but not impossible by a long stretch And anything worth doing is going to be difficult.

of they’ve said that that’s disappointing and would explain why they haven’t done nearly as much as they could/should to promote the scheme. Still didn’t make it impossible though.

Stop calling it an impossible dream. It’s only impossible because Newcastle fans aren’t backing it.

That training complex might be the best in the world

Hope Bellamy gets the support he needs.

Joe injured now. Oh no.

why?

Oooooooohhh fuck off

Dafuq we scored?

really?

joking if the admin staff at nufc Twitter don’t promote his tiktok, he’s gonna get them sacked

Okay just seen it. I think he’s joking but he needs to be careful as it really is ambiguous. He’s exactly the type of player people would believe to be a prima-donna

What?

He played for us? Sounds plausible

Iniesta morphing in to Karl Pilkington

Didn’t watch the game, but fuck those fascist cunts.

On the theme of English players going abroad, Jack Wilshere has signed for Cuomo. Could have done worse

Good on them for trying, but do we really need ANOTHER protest group? Can we not just have one big one?