TheBrownBottle

My old man played for centre-half for Walker Central as a young'un. His claim to footballing fame is that he was tasked with marking Peter Beardsley in one schools match. Beardsley bagged a hattrick after about ten minutes, and his coach moved him to fullback so that my fatha could stop being utterly humiliated - you can tell the humiliation hasn't quite left him 50 years on ...

Yep. Just the words ‘Ashley’ too close to ‘Newcastle United’ makes me jumpy. Wish the fat cunt would just disappear.

You’re right, it’s in Woolsington. I probably wasn’t clear - when the Mackems call it ‘Ponteland Airport’ it presupposes that if that were the case it would illegitimise the idea of it being Newcastle Airport. Which it wouldn’t.

Don’t they sometimes call it ‘Ponteland Airport’? As if Pont is a million miles from Newcastle - and as if every single city’s airport has the airport within city limits. You name an airport after the city you’re travelling to so that the person flying there knows that they’re buying a ticket to the right place. Barcelona’s airport is miles away from Barcelona, but they still stick Barcelona’s fucking name on it, because ‘El Prat’ most would probably think it is what the Spanish called Michael Owen during his brief stay at Real rather than the name of the small town where the airport is. I learned where Barcelona’s airport is due to one of our Champions League visits there; you’d think the Mackems would actually have played in Europe within most people’s lifetimes by the way they go on about the name of a fucking airport.

I still find all of this odd. 10m+ of legal costs in the takeover, for which only Staveley (a minority shareholder) is responsible? Why wouldn’t PIF be the primary debtor for legal costs? And why wouldn’t they just pay them in any case? More concerning - if it isn’t true, then surely there wouldn’t even be a case to answer? What exactly was the nature of a financial agreement with Ashley? And if he is owed money (and the argument appears to be when he’s owed it not if) why not just clear it? There’s a rabbit off somewhere - the ‘no comment’ to their pal Caulkin is unusual too (albeit this is an ongoing legal case). Some clarity on this would be good - it does look to me like Ashley wants a slice of the club back.

We don't actually know very much about what the plans are generally, tbf - Staveley had said 250m investment over five windows had been the plan - but that was after the original deal 'collapsed'. Most of it has been vague (and I suspect speculative) and PIF has said almost nowt since buying the club. The club needs a proper CEO, that's for definite - it does feel a bit rudderless at the moment. I think the decisions re manager and DoF have been spot-on, mind, so what I've written isn't unnecessary panic - and I like the obvious passion Staveley, Reuben and Ghoudoussi have for their roles. But it would be good to see a first-rate CEO join the board to really drive the club.

Daniel Sturridge played for all three recently

Got to say, I’ve always assumed he is an investor - the fact that Rangers & NUFC were the first big clubs signed up with them spoke volumes. Castore has that cheap tat look which sits well with the other SD brands It would be nice for that contract to end sharpish - though like all Ashley deals negotiated a year before the takeover, I’ll bet there is no break clause - and we’ve probably been signed up long, long, long term. He’ll still be wringing out what he can from the club, don’t worry about that.

I read it as implying the opposite - they’re already run by a oil state in the gulf, why would they need to be taken over by a different one?

Tap player up and unsettle them, offer half of market value, cry ‘foul’ when another club actually offers the money. It’s not a great look, tbh.

Contract extensions affect the amortisation - you can reduce FFP this way. Quick example: you sign a player for 100m on a five year deal. So that’s 20m per year for FFP After three years, you give the player a player a two year extension. The sunk amortisation fee is deducted from the transfer fee at registration, and the remainder is split over the length of the new (extended) contract. So: 100m (fee) - 3 x 20m (three years amortisation) = 40m 40m / 4 (four years for new extended contract) = 10m per season amortised for FFP edit: you can ‘pay off’ the fee by sticking the remainder in your FFP books so that you don’t keep splitting the original fee - if you don’t want to that is. This is an ‘impairment charge’ in accounting terminology

I was a 13-year-old kid on that coach back from Forest in ‘96, no doubt looking utterly forlorn when a couple of older blokes noticed and told me not to worry, ‘we’ll win summick next year’. Canny blokes, but not exactly Nostradamuses I still haven’t been able to rewatch Woan’s goal. In my mind’s eye he was just past the halfway line. Didn’t pick up the end of season VHS review - couldn’t bear it. Would kill to finish 2nd now mind

It would be nice, not sure I share your confidence, but fingers crossed. It does appear that AC are waiting for the player to effectively force the move to them rather than paying the asking price - though this is entirely inferred from back page tittle tattle, so fuck knows if that’s actually the case. I’ve never liked big clubs doing that - deliberately unsettling a player to get them cheaper than they should. They’ve got away with it for decades, of course.

Yep - if we buy a 100m player on a five year contract, the transfer fee impact would only be 60m during any FFP three year period (20m per season)

I reckon that’s pretty well explained tbf

It's amortised, so it doesn't matter if you have a 100m transfer with the player on a five year contract and you've agreed to pay 10m upfront and 90m the year after - it is 20m each year over the five years which counts towards FFP

What about the one I saw Gazza play in? That was a side filled with mediocrities and a footballing genius. ASM is exciting in a shit team because he can beat a man. Playing in a shit team has potentially helped not hindered him - his worst excesses have not been curbed. If NUFC becomes the side we hope in the next couple of years he’ll have to either improve massively or be shipped off. ‘Bruce-ball’, if it has skewed anything, is to make people forget what really good footballers actually look like. ASM is more Ketsbaia with Twitter nous than a footballing genius.

Nowt to do with Bruce-ball whatsoever. The most naturally talented players I’ve seen in B&W - Beardsley, Ginola, Robert, HBA - didn’t hold on to the ball like ASM because all of those players had footballing intelligence. ASM, to date, has shown few signs that he has it - and I’m hoping some can coached in. Better players around you help, yes. No good team - or manager - would have put up with play that shite for any length of time.

Yeah, it’s really good that one. It feels borderline bad taste to say this, and there are of course far more important things to think about, but what a side Yugoslavia would have had in the ‘90s without the civil war and break-up. There is a really good chance they would have bagged a major tournament.

Make or break season to me - if the lad can look up more often and release the ball just a little earlier he’ll be a cracking footballer. I thought the last two or three games of last year were the best ‘all round’ games he’d played for us - if we can get a better player on the other flank to take the pressure off his side it could make a massive difference. Plus Howe has a full pre-season to work with him. If next season is all running down blind alleys and shooting tamely from ludicrous angles then that’ll be it.

He put it horrifically because he’s a cunt, and he’s lacking in self-awareness and forgets that Birmingham is a city that no fucker would ever willingly live in, but there is some truth to what he said. It would be a difficult sell, and there’s a premium attached to getting a footballer to live in a provincial city. If I’m Ekitike and I’m offered Paris or Newcastle, I know where I’m going. As would most people if we’re being honest.

I had genuinely forgot about the lad over the last few days. I think I sort of thought it wasn’t happening. Whether he signs or not, still think the YouTube clips are a bit ‘meh’ - there is a lot of the Ayoze about the lad; the finishing looked more luck than technique. He’s more than young enough to develop, and the clubs being linked are European heavyweights, so obviously there’s more to him than the clips suggest. I wouldn’t be excited by his signing nor disappointed by his non-signing to be honest - couldn’t say that for Bruno or Trippier.

I remember James Richardson saying that ‘Golaco’ was used because it sounded like ‘gol Lazio’ or ‘go Lazio’, because loads would have been watching just to see Gazza play for Lazio

Spot on. Remember getting thumped at home off Fulham under Souness, after he chucked on a load of forwards?

I completely agree that's where the bile comes from - personally, I just think he's an inoffensive but thoroughly mediocre manager. I like the fact he isn't a Allardyce-style wanker, and I think he's a positive force for good with his statements on issues like racism etc. Just think he's a bit crap at football management.