Thumbheed

With what scenario would they not be taking the piss?

Ground breaking stuff that.

To be fair there's 3 or 4 teams spending at similar levels. When was the last time a West Ham manager had more than a season AND investment? I can't remember such a good spread of top quality players outside the big guns within any league.

We haven’t made too many bad sales really. Just not enough signings. A sale is a bad sale if it's not adequately replaced. I'd say there's been lots of players during his tenure that weren't replaced with equal or better players. From what I've seen of Longstaff, I think he's actually one of the better players we've had during Ashley's time. Factor in the fact he's local and a youth product, plus the fact we don't actually know how good he is or could be amounts to this potentially being the worst of the lot.

Mad if we were to sell him. Would easily rank as the worst sale Ashley has made.

I think the attempt to buy is real, however, I think it's worth baring in mind that the money that's being spent to get this far is a drop in the ocean for these guys so not necessarily as significant for them, as it might be for some like us.

I read that the other day. If I was the owner of one of the bars prosecuted, I’d claim that the evidence was stolen and therefor invalid. Did you study Bird Law?

Would happily accept a Mexican Tacover.

There's not even a grey area with this situation, it's all or nothing.

Does nobody find it even slightly strange that as Rafa was refusing to sign the contract, a few days later this takeover gossip suddenly appears? I know lots will say its a conspiracy. Ashley has been trying his best to sell us for the best part of 10 years. Nobody has matched his value or if they did they didn't have the cash. Come on man Look at the bigger picture. Ashley has known about this 'takeover' since before April 17th (proof of funds supposedly sent), probably long before then, so why bother pretending to try to sign Rafa up? Surely at this stage we can discount Mike Ashley PR conspiracies? It seems like the only question here is whether the takeover goes through or not. I'd be far more inclined to believe this was a publicity stunt from BZG. There are far more signs pointing to this than there is it being an Ashley cuntcoction. It would make less sense for him to not offer Rafa anything, proof of funds or not. If this is the case, then you'd think Ashley would have come out and said so - unless it's nice and convenient for him to have these stories floating around? Anyway, for all we know the buyers may be for real, but Ashley leaked the interest to the press when he did. We don't really know anything concrete in regards to this wholly predictable affair this mooted takeover has become. If it becomes apparent that that's the case, I imagine he will, much like he did with Stavely and Kenyon. For what it's worth I don't believe it is a publicity stunt but of all the conspiracies that are out there, this ones the most plausible. The only consistency under Ashley's tenure has been that he does not give a single fuck about the fans; leaked stories to undermine detractors, yes. An orchestrated fake takeover including direct statements from the supposed buyer and many sources citing progress to some degrees so that he can mug Rafa off; I very much doubt it. My take was that the leak came from BZG and the follow up statements would back that view up. At a guess, I'd say it was to ward off other buyers by giving off the impression they're far further along than they actually are.

Does nobody find it even slightly strange that as Rafa was refusing to sign the contract, a few days later this takeover gossip suddenly appears? I know lots will say its a conspiracy. Ashley has been trying his best to sell us for the best part of 10 years. Nobody has matched his value or if they did they didn't have the cash. Come on man Look at the bigger picture. Ashley has known about this 'takeover' since before April 17th (proof of funds supposedly sent), probably long before then, so why bother pretending to try to sign Rafa up? Surely at this stage we can discount Mike Ashley PR conspiracies? It seems like the only question here is whether the takeover goes through or not. I'd be far more inclined to believe this was a publicity stunt from BZG. There are far more signs pointing to this than there is it being an Ashley cuntcoction. It would make less sense for him to not offer Rafa anything, proof of funds or not.

If the contract on offer amounted to not being backed then he'd have rejected by now, no?

Tl;dr: Rafa signs and works in less favourable conditions but has the safety net of compensation should there be new owners and leeway should other clubs show interest. Rafa doesn't sign and gets absolutely nothing.

First post. My take on the situation is that Rafa is very likely to sign. If he was to reject the offer (assuming it's there for him to reject) then he'd be walking away from a (potentially) ideal job which suits his personal circumstances, for no money, with no obvious job insight. I think there's clearly enough been offered for him to consider, but obviously not enough for him to sign on the dot straight away, so my belief is that there would be enough in the contract for him to tolerate knowing full well he does have the opportunity to improve (but necessarily how he wants to) but also knowing that if someone were to come in for him he'd also have enough leeway to orchestrate an exit should he need to. I know Rafa has usually honoured his contracts but this is a unique situation for him as it's probably the only role he's had where his actually over qualified for his job in hand. This leads me onto the second part, how the takeover affects his situation. Well in my opinion it's absolutely clear as day that Ashley has used this to his advantage and offered him terms that aren't ideal knowing that Rafa has his job security now threatened by a potentially new owner (who quite rightly) may want to have their own man. If Rafa rejects the contract, then there is zero guarantee that the potential new owners will offer him anything, Rafa walks away with nothing; no job no compensation and no immediate return to something he's clearly obsessed with doing. So the decision boils down to one thing - compensation. If Rafa is to sign under this stewardship he will guarantee himself compensation should the new owners not want him. The worst case scenario for Rafa in this, is he works for Ashley is less favourable conditions but conditions that ARE workable (if these conditions were unworkable we'd have known by now), the other scenario is he would sign and get sacked meaning he'd be due compensation. Best case scenario is that he signs and gets to re-negotiate his contract with new owners. The caveat to all this is that despite the general confidence around here, Rafa would manage ANY club in the world. Rafa is the ultimate professional and I don't believe club ties will mean anything to him. There are clubs like, Wolves, Everton, West Ham and Villa with whom he's been linked to in the past, who I believe would snap him up when their manager's role inevitably become available. Ultimately, I think Rafa will sign, but it will either be after the takeover gets a resolution, one way or another, or at the very last moment if the direction of the club is still unclear.