TheBrownBottle

Yep, doesn’t exactly pass the ‘smell’ test, does it? If I walk into a shop and offer £100 for an item I want, and the shop keeper says ‘it isn’t worth that, you can have it for £50’ my response isn’t likely to be ‘my money isn’t good enough for you? I shall take my custom elsewhere!’

It’s hard not to feel disgust for the KSA govt and the House of Saud tbf. PIF funded Musk’s Twitter buyout, one of the key vehicle’s undermining US democracy - and I don’t doubt that they knew what they were doing. They’re a delightful bunch.

Swinging his Big Horn around as usual …

The PL cannot block sponsorship deals which pass both the APT and FMV rules. Simply not true - ‘ties’ don’t matter. KSA has a significant private sector. The rules are absolutely clear - they are pretty much standard procurement rules for proving FMV; multiple quotes. Any idea that PIF couldn’t leverage this is daft.

Because they hate us too. And we hate them, the cunts.

Hard to see how that would or could’ve been blocked - if you don’t allow competitive market tenders what can you allow? Or bids from the same nation as the owners - can’t see that being popular. PIF haven’t even used their position within KSA to ‘encourage’ these kind of deals. Everyone seems to be waiting for the dominos to fall and then they spring into action. To date, that hasn’t occurred.

No, if there was no direct link to PIF (ie they are private companies) and / or there are multiple bids then there is no issue under the rules. KSA companies could have done this at any time.

Aunt Sally looking good

There was nothing stopping this from occurring previously.

You’re dead on - that’s precisely what it is. It’s not a payment - it’s the amount of the original cost of a property which is amortised for accounting or tax purposes across a fixed period (usually as a percentage of the original cost). Spurs’ actual repayment costs could be a different sum.

It’s a reasonable point, though I’d ask - who amongst our real competitors (Forest, Bournemouth, Villa, Fulham, Brighton) would you say has either a better first XI or squad than us? I don’t think we have a better XI or squad than Liverpool, Arsenal, Man City or Chelsea. But I think several of our competitors would swap their teams for ours - and given we’ve spent in some cases a lot more than them, I’d hope that would be true.

Spot on - I think you’re absolutely right re this. It really does boil down to how good you think our side / squad is - which is all opinion, of course. For me, I think we’ve got about four-fifths of a really, really good side, and an ok squad when fully fit. We’ve good options for some positions; less than good for others. Basically, I think we’ve got a talented side which should be comfortably top six / seven. Anything above that is overperformance. Which is why I think Howe is doing a good, not a great, job at the moment - but I do think he did a great job in his first season and a half. This last season and a half has been good, with some issues (some more serious than others - for me, the increasingly ‘streaky’ nature of performances is becoming a worrying trend - we jolt from looking invincible for long runs of games, to looking like the players have never met before for long runs of games). I think a side with the likes of Isak, Bruno, Tonali, Gordon, Botman (when fit) etc already has five or six players who would walk into any side other than two or three in the division (Isak into pretty much any side). There’s talented young’uns like Hall and Livramento who would walk into any team outside of the top six or seven sides. And then players like Joelinton and Murphy who are solid PL players who - thanks in no small part to Howe’s coaching - are playing well above their ‘level’. So I think that the talent is there to be doing what we’re doing, and I wouldn’t expect any half-decent manager to have that squad outside the top half of the table. I’ve no issue with folks who think Howe is performing wonders (I disagree at present, though I think his coaching of young players breaking in remains second to none). I’ve no issues with folks who think he should be doing much better (I disagree with this, with the caveat that the performances have been more poor than good on average this season). All eye of the beholder stuff.

Hang on, are we cloning Botman or not here? You don’t want to go too deep with the thinking, so you’re letting the rest of us get on with the science of cloning him?

Yep, it’s shite. Mind, ‘Gimme gimme gimme a striker from Sweden’ is right up there with the worst of them as well. Embarrassing stuff

The Mag was filled to the brim with articles in the mid- to late-‘90s complaining about the atmosphere, which definitely took a noticeable down-swing when we became all-seater after 94/95.

That ‘Bruno in the middle’ chant is the only ‘regular’ chant I can remember in NUFC that makes me actively cringe. It is fucking dreadful - I’ve no idea why anyone is happy to sing it.

In the first Judge Dredd movie, they speed up the ageing process of Rico’s clones to just a few hours to get them to adulthood. That’s science for you.

If Dubravka let that in I’d be pissing blood. Dogshit goalkeeping

They had - and a have - a consensus. The vast majority of clubs backed the previous and current rules. The ‘minnows’ of the PL gain just as much as the ‘cartel’.

I feel really sorry for the lad. There’s real talent there, and he’s shown it for us in the past. He’s had so many injuries that it could be combination of those taking their physical toll, and a mental toll as well - his game is about his combination of technical and physical attributes. The lad might be constantly worrying about another injury. Total guesswork, of course. But the current situation can’t go on forever.

Fair dos, I think it’s probably my misreading. PSR has knacked us more than anything else - there shouldn’t be any doubts re that. Howe was chasing Guehi in the summer - he knew we had an issue at RCB. The man knows what he’s doing, and it is a shame that there’s no headroom left.

That second half of the season was incredible - we hit CL form when we looked stranded at Xmas. He galvanised what he had and added steel at the back.

That was a tactical masterclass by Howe. He really does have Arteta’s number. Not so much that first half vs Man City, but it is still Man City away. Personally, I think Man City away can still be chalked off to experience.

I agree, and I’m very much in the ‘Howe is doing a good job’ camp. I’m just not in the ‘he’s performing miracles’ camp.

Here’s the quote I replied to: ’Still don’t think you can overstate how not being backed for 3 windows in a row has made his job that much harder’ Nothing re PSR there.