It has to be said...

[polpolpol]

 

 

Mashleys first goal is stopping the club losing money and bringing financial stability (he's well on the way) to his investment (otherwise selling is a lot harder). With respect to this he is looking for a low maintenance squad that has enough about it to survive in the PL this season. The problem with this strategy is that it is high risk with no long term benefits as such (mainly if your rivals continue to spend, you continue to fall behind competitively).

 

 

With guys like MA you have to look hard for clues and they tend to come in two forms: Ego defence (hiring and sacking KK, buying beers, wearing the Smith shirt). Business instinct (cutting costs, looking for players with contractual issues, re-writing the rulebook regarding managerial contracts and going against precedent).

 

 

If I was a business competitor of MA I would always keep one eye on him, cause although he comes across as furtive and reckless he has a strong survival instinct and isn't interested in playing by the rules (he's laid waste to the sector in which he does his core business and made a lot of cash out of just being ultra destructive to his competition. These kinds of guys are always dangerous and when things go for them the are often unstoppable.

 

 

But........What has happened here is that he has entered a buseiness arena (football) which he had no clue about (but shows of being a slow learner/stubborn). He made two catastrophic erros ie no due dilligance and underestimating how much football is a good will (customer led) market. That it thrives on expectation and is one of the sole outlets left in England of true male identification with himself, his surrounding and his peer groups. The latter is the hardest for Mashely to understand because he is a true loner, a renegade who has by his own guile made good.

 

 

It is a real tragedy for our club that Ashley has the wrong character traits for football, but the right ones for pure business. He has failed to understand his public and this will be his ultimate downfall. Because he can't change.

 

Agreed about his business instincts. And the due diligence, which blew up any chance of doing a Lonsdale / Slazenger / Karrimor on an undervalued brand. But the even if that was the plan it has changed now; I don't think that a sale is any kind of priority.

 

I think you underestimate the sea change in his personality since he took over the club. Remember, he went from being a recluse of whom there was not a single photograph, to milking the adoration of a 50,000 crowd in about a week. If it was purely a case of buy to sell, why the big introduction of himself in the set-up? Appoint a chairman and stay quiet. It is only in that kind of context that the souring of his relations with the fans here make sense. His early statements about the club are full of words like 'enjoyment', 'fun', stuff you wouldn't expect from a man whose interest in the business was purely mechanical. No, this was an investment of pure Ego.

 

The fans, who were the object of this investment, have shifted position from being this object of adoration whose demands he thought he understood and could meet (have you ever seen a more naked appeal to 'love me' than that pint in the stands?) to a position in his old dualistic world-view of a lazy establishment when compared to his savvy.

 

I still maintain that money is a very short lever for driving him out. If the value of the club was ever going to appreciate, it would only do so marginally through business acumen and understanding the customer base, in the North East at least. The core of the business is in broadcast deals. You don't need 50,000 fans to be a Blackburn or Stoke. We can see his fixation on this income in one of the latest revelations, his getting rid of Hughton to be more 'Hollywood' and get TV matches... this is where the money is now, more so into the future. And if our club doesn't become the Hollywood club, the ones who do inevitably drag the league's TV windfall up.

 

Worst of all, I believe he genuinely thinks he can run the club from a football rather than a business perspective: these revelations about fantasy football, this cult of the outsider he has in his appointments, the refusal to go in the boxes with other chairmen, his alienation from other professionals in the industry. The dark hints from ex-staff. You can see it in the sackings. I'm sure he expected Keegan was somewhere between the Lone Ranger and Stanley Kowalski from his reputation, another rebel for his cause, and was dismayed to find that he was as much a part of the football old-boys network as Allardyce. He is an ex-England manager after all. Hughton went the same way, his crime seems to have been siding with tradition against Ashley's imagined insurrection.

 

I'm all for a boycott, but I think its usefulness derives more from the disengagement of fans from any relationship which involves Ashley than cutting income. You're right about him being a dangerous competitor in the sportswear market, but remember when he was most dangerous: when he would charge himself up by making it personal (see Wheelan, Dave). I am sure it is now personal for him against whoever he imagines we, the fans, to be. Our response should not escalation, which fits perfectly into his world-view. I'm reminded of line in Seinfeld: “The best revenge is to live well”. How do we achieve that?

[Mr Logic]

The voice of sanity is rarely heard amidst a cacophony of madness, just as todays peaceful protest will probably get hijacked by others with less brain cells than amoebas. Those that have succumbed to emotion fueled rage have lost the capacity to reason and are deaf to intelligence in any shape or form.

 

I digress from topic I know, but it always fascinates me to see people driven by their emotions. They even call them 'their' emotions.. yet clearly, demonstrably, it is the emotions that are controlling them. It's why rhetoric is so succesfully employed by so many with agendas, they know people who are slaves to their emotions (and it is the majority) are just marionettes waiting for direction.

[Guest BooBoo]

Oh for the love of God, shut up.

[cp40]

The voice of sanity is rarely heard amidst a cacophony of madness, just as todays peaceful protest will probably get hijacked by others with less brain cells than amoebas. Those that have succumbed to emotion fueled rage have lost the capacity to reason and are deaf to intelligence in any shape or form.

 

I digress from topic I know, but it always fascinates me to see people driven by their emotions. They even call them 'their' emotions.. yet clearly, demonstrably, it is the emotions that are controlling them. It's why rhetoric is so succesfully employed by so many with agendas, they know people who are slaves to their emotions (and it is the majority) are just marionettes waiting for direction.

 

 

 

:angry:

 

 

Fuck off you Hom, i will fking kill you.

 

Ashley cockney wankers must die

[Mr Logic]

Wahey.

[buzza]

Some excellent posts in this thread!

I agree totally that Ashley now feels he has to prove his business acumen with or without us. His pride has been damaged and he perhaps enjoys playing with the fans feelings but I think there is very vindictive side to this man.

His business competitors seem to "fear" him, he doesn't mind taking on the broadsheets or the markets, a mark of a ruthless, and most depressingly a dangerous man.

My self medicating (neanderthal) sentiments at this moment: Could somebody just stick the nut on him once and for all...

[quayside]

 

 

Agreed about his business instincts. And the due diligence, which blew up any chance of doing a Lonsdale / Slazenger / Karrimor on an undervalued brand. But the even if that was the plan it has changed now; I don't think that a sale is any kind of priority.

 

I think you underestimate the sea change in his personality since he took over the club. Remember, he went from being a recluse of whom there was not a single photograph, to milking the adoration of a 50,000 crowd in about a week. If it was purely a case of buy to sell, why the big introduction of himself in the set-up? Appoint a chairman and stay quiet. It is only in that kind of context that the souring of his relations with the fans here make sense. His early statements about the club are full of words like 'enjoyment', 'fun', stuff you wouldn't expect from a man whose interest in the business was purely mechanical. No, this was an investment of pure Ego.

 

The fans, who were the object of this investment, have shifted position from being this object of adoration whose demands he thought he understood and could meet (have you ever seen a more naked appeal to 'love me' than that pint in the stands?) to a position in his old dualistic world-view of a lazy establishment when compared to his savvy.

 

I still maintain that money is a very short lever for driving him out. If the value of the club was ever going to appreciate, it would only do so marginally through business acumen and understanding the customer base, in the North East at least. The core of the business is in broadcast deals. You don't need 50,000 fans to be a Blackburn or Stoke. We can see his fixation on this income in one of the latest revelations, his getting rid of Hughton to be more 'Hollywood' and get TV matches... this is where the money is now, more so into the future. And if our club doesn't become the Hollywood club, the ones who do inevitably drag the league's TV windfall up.

 

Worst of all, I believe he genuinely thinks he can run the club from a football rather than a business perspective: these revelations about fantasy football, this cult of the outsider he has in his appointments, the refusal to go in the boxes with other chairmen, his alienation from other professionals in the industry. The dark hints from ex-staff. You can see it in the sackings. I'm sure he expected Keegan was somewhere between the Lone Ranger and Stanley Kowalski from his reputation, another rebel for his cause, and was dismayed to find that he was as much a part of the football old-boys network as Allardyce. He is an ex-England manager after all. Hughton went the same way, his crime seems to have been siding with tradition against Ashley's imagined insurrection.

 

I'm all for a boycott, but I think its usefulness derives more from the disengagement of fans from any relationship which involves Ashley than cutting income. You're right about him being a dangerous competitor in the sportswear market, but remember when he was most dangerous: when he would charge himself up by making it personal (see Wheelan, Dave). I am sure it is now personal for him against whoever he imagines we, the fans, to be. Our response should not escalation, which fits perfectly into his world-view. I'm reminded of line in Seinfeld: “The best revenge is to live well”. How do we achieve that?

 

That's a great post and I take on board the Ashley as an outsider/maverick concept however I'm not convinced there is that much going on inside his head. I see a man who has a blueprint for running a business and a contempt for any other vision or model. He clearly wants people around him who he feels comfortable with and will create havoc if necessary in order to achieve that.

 

Pardew is in fact the first manager Ashley has chosen purely out of of choice. He inherited Allardyce, Keegan was because Redknapp wouldn't, f*ck knows where Kinnear was on the wish list but it certainly wasn't top, Shearer was because Kinnear fell over and Hughton was the assistant who filled in the gaps until he was the only one left standing. Pardew has been selected but he is pretty much part of the football establishment and I think the appointment is down to 2 things - he feels comfortable with Pardew and he believes his investment is in better hands with him as manager. Whether he's screwed up again remains to be seen but his track record of decision making in this industry is pretty shyte tbh.

[Parky]

Yeah I was thinking that. Pardew is a bit Redknapp lite.

[OzzieMandias]

Sorry but that's just bollocks.

 

1. The worse state the club is in, the less likely that a buyer will be interested.

 

2. We've already been through one period of major fan unrest. Did it dislodge Ashley? No.

 

3. We've already been through one relegation. Did it bring loads of buyers out of the woodwork? Of course it fucking didn't.

 

No, that's bollocks.

 

1. Basic economics - price also alters buyer interest. Offer me a 1996 BMW 5 Series diesel with 200k on the clock for £15k 'because that includes how much you've spent to keep it running over the years' and I'm not interested. Offer me it for £500 and you're on.

 

2. The unrest was fleeting, bewildered, confused and ultimately docile. As I've effectively argued over and over again here, a repeat of that truly will be worthless at best. It was nothing like what I now advocate.

 

3. Take your head out of 2005's arse and you'll read better. Predication - IF we act as I say we should, Ashley's priorities will have severely changed and a future relegation would be quantitatively different to the last one where we DID NOT act as I say we now should. No one would try and draw lessons from one experience and apply them to a totally different one unless they don't know what they're talking about. Buyers will buy at the right price, and this is fundamentally a much fitter company now.

 

Funnily enough I started to write earlier today that you're so overcommitted to the 'Anyone But Shepherds and Halls' brigade it's embarrassing, but had to go out and abandoned the post. You invested so much of your life in groundhog day internet arguments with NE5 about why they had to go that you're afraid to let yourself think there might be someone else as bad if not worse. So you don't think, you don't actually engage with anything anyone says, you just post smart, trite shite and punch straw men instead.

 

The weakness of your argument is evident to the degree that you resort to personal attack.

 

OTOH, if you can get the club down to, say, League Two, maybe there will indeed be someone willing to shell out a couple of bob for what's left of it.

[JH]

Sorry but that's just bollocks.

 

The worse state the club is in, the less likely that a buyer will be interested.

 

We've already been through one period of major fan unrest. Did it dislodge Ashley? No.

 

We've already been through one relegation. Did it bring loads of buyers out of the woodwork? Of course it f***ing didn't.

 

'Major fan unrest'? The majority of it lasted about a week and then we all went back to 'supporting' the team and Ashley was let off the hook (bar a couple of nasty songs sang about him. Oh no!). And where did it leave us? Oh yes, just over two years later and we're back exactly where we fucking started. Good to see that supporting the team works

[80]

Sorry but that's just bollocks.

 

1. The worse state the club is in, the less likely that a buyer will be interested.

 

2. We've already been through one period of major fan unrest. Did it dislodge Ashley? No.

 

3. We've already been through one relegation. Did it bring loads of buyers out of the woodwork? Of course it fucking didn't.

 

No, that's bollocks.

 

1. Basic economics - price also alters buyer interest. Offer me a 1996 BMW 5 Series diesel with 200k on the clock for £15k 'because that includes how much you've spent to keep it running over the years' and I'm not interested. Offer me it for £500 and you're on.

 

2. The unrest was fleeting, bewildered, confused and ultimately docile. As I've effectively argued over and over again here, a repeat of that truly will be worthless at best. It was nothing like what I now advocate.

 

3. Take your head out of 2005's arse and you'll read better. Predication - IF we act as I say we should, Ashley's priorities will have severely changed and a future relegation would be quantitatively different to the last one where we DID NOT act as I say we now should. No one would try and draw lessons from one experience and apply them to a totally different one unless they don't know what they're talking about. Buyers will buy at the right price, and this is fundamentally a much fitter company now.

 

Funnily enough I started to write earlier today that you're so overcommitted to the 'Anyone But Shepherds and Halls' brigade it's embarrassing, but had to go out and abandoned the post. You invested so much of your life in groundhog day internet arguments with NE5 about why they had to go that you're afraid to let yourself think there might be someone else as bad if not worse. So you don't think, you don't actually engage with anything anyone says, you just post smart, trite shite and punch straw men instead.[/b]

 

The weakness of your argument is evident to the degree that you resort to personal attack.

 

OTOH, if you can get the club down to, say, League Two, maybe there will indeed be someone willing to shell out a couple of bob for what's left of it.

 

See bold. And you've helped prove my point yet again.

 

I've thought this for a long time and the first sentence of the last paragraph literally contains a cut and paste of the tab I'd left open from earlier that day. You're the one who had the temerity to just dismiss everything I'd said offhand and tried talking down to me despite not having understood what I'd said because you didn't want to. You still haven't even attempted to deal with any of the points I've made with anything other than jokey or abusive comments. 95% of what I wrote is just a statement of the truth as I see it, and I think I'm not alone. If that looks like an attack, that's because the truth's cutting - I'd have to lie to not attack you.

[TRon]

NUFC fans are in danger of earning a reputation of fans who throw the baby out with the bathwater by refusing to accept Pardew!  I mean come on, Hughton has gone and he won't be coming back period.

 

 

 

This sort of slur on NUFC fans really winds me up because you hear it so often. |I'm sick of hearing from other fans and all these pundits on tv and radio how we are too demanding. You can bet your bottom dollar that it was these same pundits who were howling with indignant rage when Ashley refused to give Hughton a new contract, now when we object to the manner he was sacked suddenly we're throwing the baby out with the bath water.

[80]

Agreed about his business instincts. And the due diligence, which blew up any chance of doing a Lonsdale / Slazenger / Karrimor on an undervalued brand. But the even if that was the plan it has changed now; I don't think that a sale is any kind of priority.

 

I think you underestimate the sea change in his personality since he took over the club. Remember, he went from being a recluse of whom there was not a single photograph, to milking the adoration of a 50,000 crowd in about a week. If it was purely a case of buy to sell, why the big introduction of himself in the set-up? Appoint a chairman and stay quiet. It is only in that kind of context that the souring of his relations with the fans here make sense. His early statements about the club are full of words like 'enjoyment', 'fun', stuff you wouldn't expect from a man whose interest in the business was purely mechanical. No, this was an investment of pure Ego.

 

The fans, who were the object of this investment, have shifted position from being this object of adoration whose demands he thought he understood and could meet (have you ever seen a more naked appeal to 'love me' than that pint in the stands?) to a position in his old dualistic world-view of a lazy establishment when compared to his savvy.

 

I still maintain that money is a very short lever for driving him out. If the value of the club was ever going to appreciate, it would only do so marginally through business acumen and understanding the customer base, in the North East at least. The core of the business is in broadcast deals. You don't need 50,000 fans to be a Blackburn or Stoke. We can see his fixation on this income in one of the latest revelations, his getting rid of Hughton to be more 'Hollywood' and get TV matches... this is where the money is now, more so into the future. And if our club doesn't become the Hollywood club, the ones who do inevitably drag the league's TV windfall up.

 

Worst of all, I believe he genuinely thinks he can run the club from a football rather than a business perspective: these revelations about fantasy football, this cult of the outsider he has in his appointments, the refusal to go in the boxes with other chairmen, his alienation from other professionals in the industry. The dark hints from ex-staff. You can see it in the sackings. I'm sure he expected Keegan was somewhere between the Lone Ranger and Stanley Kowalski from his reputation, another rebel for his cause, and was dismayed to find that he was as much a part of the football old-boys network as Allardyce. He is an ex-England manager after all. Hughton went the same way, his crime seems to have been siding with tradition against Ashley's imagined insurrection.

 

I'm all for a boycott, but I think its usefulness derives more from the disengagement of fans from any relationship which involves Ashley than cutting income. You're right about him being a dangerous competitor in the sportswear market, but remember when he was most dangerous: when he would charge himself up by making it personal (see Wheelan, Dave). I am sure it is now personal for him against whoever he imagines we, the fans, to be. Our response should not escalation, which fits perfectly into his world-view. I'm reminded of line in Seinfeld: “The best revenge is to live well”. How do we achieve that?

 

That's a pretty excellent post in my view, though there are some bits and bobs I disagree with. Your first post was interesting too - I reckon we could write something decent together about this situation and the strategic manipulation of cognitive narrative, but it'd probably be a bit esoteric, eh...

 

There's one important area I wanna pick up where I have some disagreement though - the bolded paragraph. You say that the money's now in the media, and that you don't need 50,000 fans to be Stoke, but I'd point out that a chairman does need 50,000 fans if he doesn't want to wake up in a cold sweat every night thinking about relegation from the Premiership. It's traditionally terrified all teams, but it's the Boltons and Blackburns who know for sure they're really in no way different to the Charltons and Huddersfields. In contrast, I now believe Ashley is far less disturbed by the prospect than he was.

 

The truth is that while media money is potentially hugely lucrative, it isn't and shouldn't be assumed to be the core of a football club's business - ticket money remains by far the largest secure source of income for all football clubs at present, even moreso for those with big fanbases. Ashley, from experience, now thinks he's got a large one of those - one that means that if his company is efficient and never stretches itself, it will never make a distressing loss and will always be in with a shot of obtaining those bundles of media cash if its fortune is better than terrible.

 

This is what makes our ticket money the key to destabilising him - take that away and you take away the shelter his ambitions now rely upon. You're right that we can't really stop him earning good media money in the Premiership if the club's in the Premiership, but he knows better than us that NUFC is a far riskier asset if relegation from it guarantees an implosion instead of just a reduction in profits. He can't control his media income, it's conditional upon onfield success - he's at the mercy of his footballers' talents. As a result he wouldn't be able to run the club in the 'efficient' way he wants to which will on the one hand make relegation tolerable but on the other make it much more likely, and will always allow him to take satisfaction in dominating the interests of his personal enemy, us. This is the piece of his soft-underbelly that we definitely have control over.

 

Looking to the future, I will say one thing. I do have concerns that the balance of power between us and him might shift. There is the possibility that media/international income really does become more important - that the Premier League cuts away from the Football League and embraces the '39th game' - and the 40th, and the 41st... I predict it won't happen successfully, but I can't be sure and I don't want to risk letting him stay here for five or ten years only to find out I was wrong and that we really do become irrelevant. But in the mean time it's not true, we do have power. The sooner we guarantee our control the better.

[Guest neesy111]

Well said TRon.

 

If we win today we'll hear "See Pardew is good...you've all been wrong". Lose and we'll hear "it's the fan's fault".

 

It's fucking hideous bullshit to blame the fans for anything at this club. Those who wish to take the passion out of being a NUFC supporter need to jog on and find a new pastime.

 

The worse fans are the ones who constantly patronise their fellow supports with the bollocks of "the team needs you", "support the team".

 

How many people turned up to the 1st home game in the Championship just months after being relegated? Nearly 37K...that's how many. NUFC fans don't need to be told to support their team. They've been doing it their whole lives. Even after the huge sage of relegation.

 

And to those who think protesting, or making your voice heard, doesn't work...wake up and smell the liberty you've been basking in your whole lives.

 

:clap:

[polpolpol]

That's a pretty excellent post in my view, though there are some bits and bobs I disagree with. Your first post was interesting too - I reckon we could write something decent together about this situation and the strategic manipulation of cognitive narrative, but it'd probably be a bit esoteric, eh...

 

There's one important area I wanna pick up where I have some disagreement though - the bolded paragraph. You say that the money's now in the media, and that you don't need 50,000 fans to be Stoke, but I'd point out that a chairman does need 50,000 fans if he doesn't want to wake up in a cold sweat every night thinking about relegation from the Premiership. It's traditionally terrified all teams, but it's the Boltons and Blackburns who know for sure they're really in no way different to the Charltons and Huddersfields. In contrast, I now believe Ashley is far less disturbed by the prospect than he was.

 

The truth is that while media money is potentially hugely lucrative, it isn't and shouldn't be assumed to be the core of a football club's business - ticket money remains by far the largest secure source of income for all football clubs at present, even moreso for those with big fanbases. Ashley, from experience, now thinks he's got a large one of those - one that means that if his company is efficient and never stretches itself, it will never make a distressing loss and will always be in with a shot of obtaining those bundles of media cash if its fortune is better than terrible.

 

This is what makes our ticket money the key to destabilising him - take that away and you take away the shelter his ambitions now rely upon. You're right that we can't really stop him earning good media money in the Premiership if the club's in the Premiership, but he knows better than us that NUFC is a far riskier asset if relegation from it guarantees an implosion instead of just a reduction in profits. He can't control his media income, it's conditional upon onfield success - he's at the mercy of his footballers' talents. As a result he wouldn't be able to run the club in the 'efficient' way he wants to which will on the one hand make relegation tolerable but on the other make it much more likely, and will always allow him to take satisfaction in dominating the interests of his personal enemy, us. This is the piece of his soft-underbelly that we definitely have control over.

 

Looking to the future, I will say one thing. I do have concerns that the balance of power between us and him might shift. There is the possibility that media/international income really does become more important - that the Premier League cuts away from the Football League and embraces the '39th game' - and the 40th, and the 41st... I predict it won't happen successfully, but I can't be sure and I don't want to risk letting him stay here for five or ten years only to find out I was wrong and that we really do become irrelevant. But in the mean time it's not true, we do have power. The sooner we guarantee our control the better.

 

Good points. I agree with your analysis if Ashley has an absolute ambition for the club. What worries me is that it is relative. I think that what he wants is to perform better than he is expected to do, and this level downsizes if the club does. Losing a few of the big wage players if fewer people attend games just lowers his objectives. In his tenure here he has said very little about his goals for the club. Most of the information about future objectives has been about models that they want to emulate (variously Arsenal, Villa and now, laughably, Barcelona) rather than fixed ambitions for the club (Europe, a cup, whatever).

 

The danger is that the dynamic we are in now doesn't have any criterion for success beyond his success despite conventional wisdom. As this level is subject to revision based on the status of the club, so long as any deflation happens slowly – and I don't think the fans have the cohesion to ensure a big bang – there is no lower limit to it.

[OzzieMandias]

Sorry but that's just bollocks.

 

1. The worse state the club is in, the less likely that a buyer will be interested.

 

2. We've already been through one period of major fan unrest. Did it dislodge Ashley? No.

 

3. We've already been through one relegation. Did it bring loads of buyers out of the woodwork? Of course it fucking didn't.

 

No, that's bollocks.

 

1. Basic economics - price also alters buyer interest. Offer me a 1996 BMW 5 Series diesel with 200k on the clock for £15k 'because that includes how much you've spent to keep it running over the years' and I'm not interested. Offer me it for £500 and you're on.

 

2. The unrest was fleeting, bewildered, confused and ultimately docile. As I've effectively argued over and over again here, a repeat of that truly will be worthless at best. It was nothing like what I now advocate.

 

3. Take your head out of 2005's arse and you'll read better. Predication - IF we act as I say we should, Ashley's priorities will have severely changed and a future relegation would be quantitatively different to the last one where we DID NOT act as I say we now should. No one would try and draw lessons from one experience and apply them to a totally different one unless they don't know what they're talking about. Buyers will buy at the right price, and this is fundamentally a much fitter company now.

 

Funnily enough I started to write earlier today that you're so overcommitted to the 'Anyone But Shepherds and Halls' brigade it's embarrassing, but had to go out and abandoned the post. You invested so much of your life in groundhog day internet arguments with NE5 about why they had to go that you're afraid to let yourself think there might be someone else as bad if not worse. So you don't think, you don't actually engage with anything anyone says, you just post smart, trite shite and punch straw men instead.[/b]

 

The weakness of your argument is evident to the degree that you resort to personal attack.

 

OTOH, if you can get the club down to, say, League Two, maybe there will indeed be someone willing to shell out a couple of bob for what's left of it.

 

See bold. And you've helped prove my point yet again.

 

I've thought this for a long time and the first sentence of the last paragraph literally contains a cut and paste of the tab I'd left open from earlier that day. You're the one who had the temerity to just dismiss everything I'd said offhand and tried talking down to me despite not having understood what I'd said because you didn't want to. You still haven't even attempted to deal with any of the points I've made with anything other than jokey or abusive comments. 95% of what I wrote is just a statement of the truth as I see it, and I think I'm not alone. If that looks like an attack, that's because the truth's cutting - I'd have to lie to not attack you.

 

Well, I'm certainly not going to engage with this ad hominem drivel. Sue me.

 

Nor will it change my honest opinion that "protesting" a decision that I'm 100% sure won't be changed can only have a negative effect on the club's immediate future. I realise that we're about to get a mass exercise in dummy-spitting anyway. Doesn't mean I have to pretend I think it's a good idea, nor that I don't have plenty of anger of my own at the recent turn of events.

 

Over to you for some more personal attacks.