Strawberry

He’s better than what we have, sure. Still pointless. Wake up the takeover is over. We cant get anyone NICE.

Stunning people dont think Wilson is a huge upgrade on what we got. He was also on Stavely list if the takeover go ahead.

The players have the final say in this situations.

Hendrick?

Agent of Callum Wilson suggesting his preferred move is #NUFC From the Atheltic today. Beyond the usual stuff like making the team better and providing competition, there is one prevailing theme in Steve Bruce’s approach to the present transfer window and the players he is targeting. No more gambles, no more throwing of the dice at Newcastle United; not now, not this summer, not with finances so tight and the jeopardy so great. Not in the teeth of yet another storm. The success of no new player is guaranteed — how long will he take to settle, to gel with his team-mates, to get up to speed? — but Bruce wants the tried-and-tested. Traditionally, this is not what Newcastle’s owner Mike Ashley does. That shifted a little under Rafa Benitez, when the manager had the final say on who came in and out, and a solid team was built to escape the Championship and then establish itself back in the top flight, but there was a reversion to type following the Spaniard’s departure last summer. Jeff Hendrick has arrived on a free transfer at the end of his Burnley contract. They have been “close” to signing Ryan Fraser, also on a free after his Bournemouth deal expired, and Rob Holding, on loan from Arsenal, for quite some time; Fraser (above) flew to Tyneside on Friday to speak to Bruce face-to-face. The Athletic revealed this morning that they have bid an initial £15 million for Norwich left-back Jamal Lewis. Their interest in Callum Wilson, the Bournemouth and England striker, is well-established and sources now claim Newcastle have submitted an offer of £17.5 million, with another £2.5 million in add-ons. Aston Villa are reported to have had a £15 million bid for the same player rejected. Separately, Bournemouth have offered Newcastle £2.5 million plus the same again in extras to re-sign Matt Ritchie. Behind the scenes, there have been flurries of frustration, as there are at every club. At Newcastle, they have historically been frequent. The pace of their business can be interminable. They can identify players, approach them, set out the framework of a deal and then see the trail go cold as the chain of command grinds to a halt. Lee Charnley, the managing director, does not have a reputation for swift action but he also has Justin Barnes, Ashley’s lieutenant, and Ashley himself to answer to. It was something Benitez railed against. Bruce wanted Wilson and Fraser through the door by now; the start of the new season is one week away. Others inside St James’ Park are confident both will still sign. What all these players have in common is that they are Bruce’s choices. And there is something else: “they’re not a risk,” as one senior figure put it. In other words, they have experience in the Premier League and understand the demands of the division. Acclimatisation should not be necessary. With a busier schedule, less time to train and work on things, more uncertainty and less optimism, you can understand this approach. Like many of his peers, Bruce is working under restrictions. Because of coronavirus and the lack of crowds in the stadium, the Newcastle head coach has around £30 million to play with — around half of what he initially anticipated. That makes things difficult. He is desperate for goals, for a proper centre-forward, and they cost big money. He is also working under a different sort of restraint, because Ashley’s Newcastle is forever riven by contradiction and complication and delay. On occasions under Ashley, there has been a half-plan. Like self-sufficiency. Or signing young players, available for limited fees with the prospect of selling them on, often at the expense of team-building (Alan Pardew complained about Newcastle signing too many “rascals”). Benitez had a plan to get the club back into the top eight; much good it did him. There are also sporadic spikes of misplaced enthusiasm, like the £40 million splurged last summer on Joelinton, the non-scoring scorer. Benitez had turned Joelinton down, even when Ashley offered to invest £20 million of his own money to acquire the Brazilian forward. When Bruce came in last July, he had no choice but to rubber-stamp a deal which was already done. They had better luck with Allan Saint-Maximin, whose fitness problems and character quirks had put off richer clubs, but Newcastle do not have the luxury of dabbling in that market now. This is what Bruce believes, anyway — they are on quicksand. With Ashley more emotionally removed than ever, with the club still up for sale and with the takeover not wholly finished but lingering in the background, what is the big idea? Bruce wants to improve, naturally. “The aim has to be to get into the top 10 and then see what happens,” he says, and he does not want to be scrabbling about for survival, but this is not a hierarchy operating to a long-term strategy, even if you believe it ever was. It is not particularly glamorous and it may not make supporters salivate with anticipation but Bruce’s first priority must be to shore things up. The theory with Fraser and Wilson is that they would both get straight into Newcastle’s team and make it stronger. It is a stark, bare necessity. Bruce understands that they will not get away with another season like the last one, when they eked out results without a regular, fit goalscorer. He also wants a left-back and Newcastle have made Norwich an offer for Lewis, the 22-year-old who was wanted by Liverpool earlier this summer. Bruce was understood to favour alternatives to Dimitris Giannoulis, of Greece’s PAOK, who has been scouted extensively by Newcastle and would cost in the region of £5 million. The manager wants strength and power as well as purpose in that position and is fighting his corner. “I’ll always try and break down the door to try and make Newcastle better,” he says. “If I don’t, I’m not doing my job properly.” One little side-note: in January, Newcastle agreed a deal worth around £30 million for Boubakary Soumare, the Lille midfielder, who rejected the move. Perhaps that was a good thing; “if we’d gone through with it, there’d be nothing to spend now,” one source says. In any case, the players Bruce really fancied when he watched that Lille side were centre-back Gabriel, who has just joined Arsenal, and forward Victor Osimhen, who has since become Napoli’s record €70 million signing. And, of course, this is the other dispiriting narrative of a draining summer when it comes to transfers. Newcastle have had not one but two lists of targets, because when the consortium fronted by Amanda Staveley had a £300 million deal to buy the club accepted by Ashley, there were frequent discussions with her football advisors about who they might sign. As random examples, they thought they had a chance with Nathan Ake and Ferran Torres, who have both since joined Manchester City. Back in April and May, there was regular dialogue between Barnes and Staveley’s group, which was majority-funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), over contracts and transfers and everything else. That dialogue has not stopped; as Newcastle said in a statement when the consortium withdrew from the Premier League Owners’ and Directors’ Test, they are still “100 per cent committed” to the deal but time has ticked on and players have moved on. Nobody now doubts that Ashley is a keen seller but Bruce cannot afford to wait; Newcastle fans have been waiting for this owner to go for well over a decade. Just as he was required to do last summer, Bruce must attempt to galvanise a deflated club; then, it was Benitez going and now it is a drawn-out and unfulfilled takeover. The club’s future, short-term and beyond, is uncertain but he must fight for it, whatever it is, and fight against apathy. No more gambles. No more risk.

Exactly. He told the trust it is to protect us. How idiotic.

If any statement comes now from them it is about the deal is dead. For positive things to happen it needs to have more time. So I would say November December for any positive news.

This is good what he says we dont need to hear anymore detail.

GC just tweeted. the next thing we should hear from Amanda is if the thing is completely off or it is happening. So right now it is in between lads I am not sure how many of you guys like him.

But but but it's all gone quiet which means it's happening. Remember. Exactly clutching the straws for the Saudis and then dismissing the Singaporean as tire kickers is another matter.

Our Saudi prince seems to be on some sort of trouble...... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/international-condemnation-rains-saudi-arabia-telegraph-investigation/

I thought it was common knowledge that this was dead and buried? This is Ashley saying hurry up. This leak makes absolutely no sense if all parties have already moved on after the Saudi withdrawal. Think it's also interesting that it's come from the PA and not one of the National rags that Ashley usually leaks to. I sometimes wonder how people here feel Ashley is evil and the Saudis angel. This people pull out cause they disrespect them by not automatically approved them. They dont give a s*** if Ashely say hurry up or whatever. Learn about the MBS before commenting idiotic Ashley said hurry up. No one can tell anyone to MBS. The point being, why leak/release something like that if it was dead as is the wide held belief? Doesn't make sense. The rest of what you put is probably accurate but not the point I'm making, I'm not even sure why you're making that point tbh. Depends if he has released/leaked it or it's just made up paper talk. All made up based on inf.ormation he instruct Lee to plan for a season ahead.

I thought it was common knowledge that this was dead and buried? This is Ashley saying hurry up. This leak makes absolutely no sense if all parties have already moved on after the Saudi withdrawal. Think it's also interesting that it's come from the PA and not one of the National rags that Ashley usually leaks to. I sometimes wonder how people here feel Ashley is evil and the Saudis angel. This people pull out cause they disrespect them by not automatically approved them. They dont give a shit if Ashely say hurry up or whatever. Learn about the MBS before commenting idiotic Ashley said hurry up. No one can tell anyone to MBS.

Amanda Staveley’s PCP Capital Partners group are seemingly unwilling to reignite their failed takeover bid. #nufc [Northern Echo]

If you hear GC on the Athletic podcast it seems like there will be some sort of government involvement in this. He said it is important there is no leakage like last time.

You should be banned from this forum for playing people feelings constantly. Eh? I’m one of the least of members who play people’s feelings and when I do spout s****, as tiresome as it may be, the older members will know at least not to take anything seriously enough and nor should anyone else. Anyway, if it doesn’t go through soon, I predict another takeover saga in January! I know you since your Hitzfeld for toon campaign. I use to respect you a lot but I think you lost the plot. This takeover really twists our hearts and feelings like no other. No one knows when it could or not end in anyway or another. So better not wind people up and get reaction you know better.

You should be banned from this forum for playing people feelings constantly.

Political knots bind sovereign funds trying to beat the market Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund walked away from buying Newcastle United after struggling to win approval from the Premier League © Andrew Arash Massoudi AUGUST 21 2020 Nicolai Tangen and Yasir al-Rumayyan have had tricky summers for different reasons. Mr Tangen, a successful hedge fund manager in London, is hoping to take over as head of Norway's $1tn sovereign wealth fund. But a big political row has broken out over his alleged conflicts of interest. Mr Rumayyan, who runs Saudi Arabia’s $300bn fund, walked away from a deal to buy Newcastle United football club from the British retail tycoon Mike Ashley after struggling to win approval from the Premier League. It turns out that years of brazen Saudi pirating of televised football was not the way to win hearts and minds everywhere. Both men’s experiences have a common thread. While state-run funds are becoming more influential, managing them remains riddled with complexity. That will always be the case where statecraft is mixed with money management but it adds a massive headache to what is ostensibly their day job: generating returns, which is difficult enough already even for investors who don’t have to worry about politics. From risk-hungry gurus such as SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son to more conservative ones such as Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, some of the biggest names in finance this week gave a glimpse of how their portfolios have changed from earlier this year. SoftBank, which has spent the past four years extolling the virtues of investing in private start-ups through its $100bn Vision Fund, revealed that it had begun pouring its spare cash into shares in Amazon, Google and Netflix, following the investing herd. As the US benchmark S&P 500 hit a record high, Mr Buffett’s Berkshire struck a bearish note. The Oracle of Omaha offloaded some of its bank stakes and bought shares in a gold miner. More than 40 per cent of Berkshire’s equity portfolio, or roughly $90bn, is sitting in shares of Apple, whose value briefly passed the $2tn mark on Wednesday. Although they have the same pressures of having to juggle high politics and big money, the Norwegian and Saudi wealth fund approaches to investing could not be more different. The Norwegian fund largely eschews active management in favour of something that looks a lot like an index approach. Thanks to a market rebound from the panic-stricken drop in the first quarter, the fund recovered from its worst quarter on record to report its second-best one ever. Recommended Markets InsightHenny Sender Bringing sovereign funds into Covid fight would be misguided But the fund’s leadership added to the chorus of voices who have warned of a disconnect between financial markets and the real economy. It owns, on average, more than one per cent of every listed company worldwide and is very aware of how damaging a huge market correction would be to its performance. How to navigate that risk could soon fall to Mr Tangen, who has built AKO Capital into a leading equity hedge fund with $20bn in assets. If he survives the row about his appointment, any changes in investment strategy will be closely scrutinised. The Saudi fund, meanwhile, is a relative newcomer to playing the markets. As coronavirus fears gripped markets in March, the PIF took the rare step of buying a near $8bn portfolio of US and European blue-chips from Boeing to BP, saying it was a “patient investor with a long-term horizon”. This week, however, it revealed that it had sold some of these holdings and moved into a few sector-specific tracker funds. Saudi Arabia’s opportunistic approach, which in some lights looks more like the sovereign equivalent of day trading, contrasts sharply with the methodical, careful investing preferred by Norway and most of its peers. But in other ways, its choices are clearly marked by the political considerations that underpin everything it does. The few companies where the PIF increased its stake, cruise operator Carnival and concert organiser Live Nation, have been explained as strategic for the development of the country under Mr Rumayyan’s boss, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Newcastle United was meant to be part of that grand plan.

It means if it does happen you know about it when you wake up in the morning without any speculation.

Exactly

So happy they have this page now tiring to hear Wraith and the other two pests.

At the end of the day it is sad PIF decided to pull out. Stavely was mad at that fact so she muttered lots of things. As high as my hopes were for this takeover it is dead. Let's move on there is no point now to even slaughtered the PL. PIF couldnt even wait to fight they pull the plug.

Does this help in anyway or form? Why can't she ask for compromise ways to revive the deal?

He is on vacation for God sake.

Are we that desperate for the Saudis? The bid is for BG why are we so mad about someone bidding at this time. Isn't it better than MA?