D. Yimentov

Has there been any word from Lee Ryder on whether or not Mohammed Bin Salman is related to Salomon Rondon?

Only because the seller was confident he could take the painting to next level.

I wish I cared. It's shit or bust with Mandy.

I think he would. He has the same childlike enthusiasm as SBR and such an opportunity would reignite the fire.

Just say it, man. You want him back as manager. It'd be like Rocky 6. "Yo Mandy, I still got stuff in the basement."

Aye . He milked it for the first year before everybody knew what he was about, but once it became clear he just saw us as mugs to build his brand, he keeps a tidy distance and leaves his lickspittles like Charnley to deal with the fallout. I don't think it's that simple. He genuinely enjoyed being popular with the fans and probably thought we could go places under his business model. If I'm not mistaken didn't Ashley finance all or most of hippo head's signings? Smith, Beye, Barton, Cacapa, Faye, Enqriue, Viduka, Geremi... That was Mike's most generous time since he's been here. Once his incompetence and deceitful ways became too much for Kev everything changed but I don't think he set out with wholly ill intent. As Alan Pardew once summarised: "Mike doesn't always understand football. It confuses him."

His wild-eyed ambition makes me all giddy.

Derek Lambeezy once said "You don't know how nasty we can be". The truth is though Mike has never realised how nasty he could be. He could change the club emblem to Richard Keys' face betwixt two turgid willies and the fans would still turn up. Either that or spiting the fans isn't really that important to him. The statement will have no bearing on anything. He cares about making money. We're an afterthought.

thats not an unreasonable point considering ffp was brought in pretty much to try and stop a repeat of a man city/psg and anything else that might threaten the current big clubs lofty perch Football is corrupt to the core and FFP will go out the window if these blokes start chucking money around.

We've more or less broken even on player transfers for the last 10 years or so. Some years it's up a bit, some years down. For simplicity you can call this number zero. Then do the maths on the sponsorship and tat money coming in vs the wages and overheads money going out. I'm sure some sperg on here could get us at least a rough estimate of what he's making.

Literally nothing happens in Saudi Arabia on a Friday, except prayers. Whole country shuts down. The chance of any business being done then is 0. They're about as likely to work on a Friday as we are on Christmas Day. Staveley would be willing to work though, no? Assume the money is already in her account, all she needs to do is arrange the transfer of funds if Ashley agrees to sell. Halifax said some people's cards might not work on Friday so I hope she's not with them.

Make it so. It would be a good early PR move for the Saudis to be honest. Even Amnesty International would let that one fly.

I believe its simply - The club isn't for sale and never was. Said that as far back as Barry Moat but am on the record of going with that one through the last number of fakeovers. Not being for sale doesn't stop interested parties contacting him. It really is the only logical explanation for all of this. Everything else feels like a stretch for a reason. It never steered anybody wrong yet. Even if one day that's wrong it will still be 50-1. He likes playing people also, Keegan, Shearer, Rafa etc. I believe some have actually tried to buy the club from him (Staveley), some have been pure bullshit (Kenyon and BZG with their love letters to Ashley before disappearing being fairly obvious jokes). In that case Stavely's involvement might be reason for a bit of optimism.

Does Mike realise he doesn't need to do this to sell tickets? He doesn't need to spend money on PR gurus and he doesn't need to pay the hacks to write stuff for him. He could change our shirts to red and white stripes and personally kick every fan in the goolies as they clicked their way through the turnstyles and the super fans would still go. You're wasting your money, Mike.

What do we believe here? - The club is ostensibly for sale, Mike does enter into negotiations with genuine would be buyers and then breaks it off at the last minute knowing all along that was never going to sell. - The club is really for sale but Mike just keeps moving the goalposts once negotiations have begun and buyers just get sick of him. - The club is not for sale at all and there never have been negotiations but Mike has buttered up the media to run these stories. I see all three of these possibilities thrown about but they're mutually exclusive. It can only be one of them.

Money is everything. No way are the PL knocking back this kind of wealth.

well they are kinda brainwashed, absolute dictatorships control the media and employs heavy censorship and in saudi arabias case arrest people who dare criticise the regime or how things are run First, I don't think our media is as free as people like to believe it is. As soon as Corbyn had a sniff at Israel his party were anti-semites. That's just one example. Secondly, authoritarian states are typically crime free and drug free and the people often have less to worry about in terms of housing and employment - even if it's shit. It mind seem like a banal and even impoverished existence to us but the countries function and people find things to make themselves happy. There's a trade off and it really just depends on the history and culture of the place, the temperament of people etc... I'm not defending big Kim and his labour camps but not every group of people needs or wants Western democratic (are we really?) liberalism.

What about murdering journalists? Is that fine as well because its a different culture? nope. didn't say it was

I've worked with quite a few Saudis over the last year or so and shit ton of other Middle Easterners. It's true that a lot of them would like more freedom of the press and suchlike but there are a lot of things that they wouldn't want to change. Absolute gender equality, enforced by quotas, LGBT stuff, abolition of the death penalty... etc All of these things were implemented yesterday in the grand scheme of things. It is in my opinion both erroneous and arrogant of us to assume that today's liberal paradigm is the be all and all that every culture should aspire to. When you get deeper into, even things that we've been taught to hold sacred like freedom, equality and democracy can be argued against. I can tell you from the Iraqis that I work with that Saddam was very popular with a lot of people. Ditto in China. Xi is super popular. "Ah, but they're brainwashed. Not like us. We really know what is best."

Getting moist. "Lee had info today" Dry now?

Football crowds will never be what they were but we'd still be much better than City's fans.

he looks business Bushy frowning eyebrows, a purple complexion and thin stoical lips all indicate the man can get violent when needed. He'd be just what we need to see transfers through.

Did the Michael Dell thing just fizzle out Bin Zayed style?

I ask myself, "What would be Mike's motive to stage a fakeover at this point in time?" We're in a safe league position and the manager is adored by the Geordie faithful. If he's got a fakeover in his locker surely he'd hold it back until we need distracting again. But it's Mike. Maybe he lost a bet and has to do a fakeover every window until we win a league game at Anfield.

Just been on Soccer AM. "The fans who go to the games are behind me... I'M ONE OF THEIR OWN... They come up and shake my hand in Tesco. But there are some nasty pasties on twitter who aren't representative of Newcastle fans." He also told us how, as a die hard fan, he watched the 1974 Newcastle vs Liverpool cup final in 1973!