TheBrownBottle

Agreed re an element of vanity, but this is still a different beast. This doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that they’re aiming high; but I don’t think it will be by just directly chucking money at it True, and I think the likeliest large direct cash input by PIF would be a new ground. I don’t think they’re simply going to pour money in directly generally - that doesn’t mean they’re not aiming to be number 1; the money is far more likely to be coming from more ‘indirect’ sources

Yep, fair enough.

Let alone NUFC, who have consistently messaged that they will remain within FFP rules. At some point the message will become clear. I also don’t think that everyone has quite sussed what PIF is - this isn’t a Man City / PSG style takeover being blocked by perfidious forces in UEFA or the PL. There isn’t an unlimited funding bucket, and KSA isn’t a tiny city state - it’s a decent sized country, and this is a sovereign wealth fund. They’re unlikely to be looking to spunk billions on NUFC. It’s an investment, not a vanity project.

19 of the 20 PL clubs backing the changes to mirror UEFA’s doesn’t exactly suggest that a rebellion is in the offing to me.

It’s tougher on FMV than the old rules.

I can completely understand Feyenoord fans being pissed off with just assisting with another club’s youth development. Feyenoord loaning prospects from us is a sign of just how utterly fucked football economics are.

I broke a seat at Highbury that night - I jumped for Robert’s third at the same time that a mate bear hugged me. I landed awkwardly and snapped the seat right down the middle

Not sure giving the team and manager pelters for 90 mins every week is helpful or useful mind.

Yep, all atrocious signings. Poor Des Hamilton mind, poor sod just wasn’t good enough and you could visibly see the confidence drain from him match by match. One of the most pitiful sights I ever saw in the flesh was seeing Hamilton through on goal away to Derby on Boxing Day 1997, only to trip over his own feet before he could take a shot.

Sacking Robson so late was a bigger problem, making it harder to appoint a successor. Robson should’ve been walked in May.

Good shouts, especially White If we’re going back before I was born - Charlie Wayman finds a peg in the dressing room, doesn’t throw a strop and remains as our centre forward, with Jackie Milburn remaining as a right winger Jimmy Richardson is ruled to have crossed the line before his cross for Jack Allen in 1932 The final day hammering off Luton in 1938 is much worse and we drop to Division Three on goal average

Gates and Gabbiadini plus the shittest pitch invasion in football history see us lose in the playoffs in 1990 (if we go up that season, there’s a high probability that there is no KK rescue) Ned Kelly’s goal vs Portsmouth 1992 Cantona’s mishit volley vs us in 1996 Gullit dropping Shearer and Ferguson for the derby before blaming them for defeat in 1999 Iliev levels the tie for Partizan in 2003

I haven’t seen a single club who benefits yet

It’s a 152 year old competition, it works and has always worked. Home ties aren’t ‘rewards’. This is the motherlode of shite ideas. Leave it alone.

I don’t think it’s an invalid position to hold mate - honestly, some will take your view re attachment to players / managers and some might be more in line with my view. Just the way these things normally work - I think they’re both defensible and normal positions to hold. I think your view is completely relatable - but for me, the badge is all that really matters.

Not sure who the source or hack behind the story is - very annoying when they don’t just link to the article. I mean, there could be some truth in it, in terms of the club would be ridiculously naive and ill-prepared if it didn’t have an ongoing shortlist of replacements for all positions at the club. That doesn’t mean Howe is on the verge of the sack.

Yeah, it could be either, couldn’t it. I think Howe is clearly an excellent manager - no idea if he’ll be able to take the next step. Happy for him to get some more time to show if he can.

You’re right, he definitely wouldn’t have survived in the present either - and he wouldn’t deserve to in the present era. But there wasn’t a great gulf in quality between England and Scotland in football terms in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. It wasn’t a great ‘step-up’. They were major achievements to do what he did with Aberdeen. Most football fans in the UK back then were as aware of Scottish football as they were English football. Having a track record of winning major trophies as he had at Aberdeen absolutely bought him time - as did the common knowledge that Man Utd’s squad were a bunch of pissheads. Winning the Scottish League wouldn’t buy you time today.

Aye, I was probably underplaying his other attributes tbf. But I like having two very different players for the same position.

I remain a Barnes fan. I think he offers something different from our other wingers - he’s the most clinical finisher we have on the flanks, and is very direct. With a fit squad, he’s an excellent Gordon back-up; he’s not as talented as Gordon, but he has two excellent feet for finishing

Famously saved by winning the FA Cup when they finished 13th, of course - no small feat, to which he added English football’s first European trophy post-Heysel the season after, again an impressive feat for an English club at the time. Ferguson also had an extraordinary track record at Aberdeen, so he did have something to point to in terms of quantifiable success - no-one outside the Old Firm has come close since in Scotland, and no Scottish club has won a European trophy post-Ferguson (and Aberdeen beating Real Madrid in a European final was a genuinely impressive achievement).

The genuine belief that the FA Cup draw is rigged is proper tin foil hat stuff mind lads. It obviously isn’t

Yep. They’ve meddled enough with the removal of replays etc. I’d still have multi-replay epics if I had it my way The notion of seeding or rotating home rounds can get knotted

We don’t know if Howe will become an ‘elite’ manager or not - we can hope he will, and there are a lot of positive signs that he can, as well as some negative signs that he won’t. The point seems moot to me until he joins that bracket - and we’re the best chance he’s likely to get of breaking into it. He could well ‘grow’ with the club, so I totally understand fans being attracted to that as a notion. I honestly don’t care too much either way - if Howe is here in five years’ time, it’s because he’s successful and won things. If he isn’t, it’s because he wasn’t. I just want to see us win things, and I don’t really care about the narrative around it. My dad is 70 soon and he was a boy when we last won a trophy, and wasn’t born when we last won a domestic one. That’s a ridiculous state of affairs, frankly - Howe has the chance at the moment to write himself into our history books forever (the manager who breaks the duck will always be remembered, whatever follows it). I hope he takes it - I do like him as a person and as a football man. If he doesn’t, he doesn’t.

Yes