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I don’t say this sort of stuff about many people but I genuinely hope I wake up one day to news the horrible bastard is bankrupt. He knows how much football means to the city and the people, to a lot of people it’s a massive part of who they are. Many people graft all week looking forward to the match day. This bloke has come in and pissed around with it, embarrassed it, soured local ties, cheapened it, and made the actual football side of the club a boring, half arsed shit show. It makes me constantly question why he fucking bought the club, he absolutely never intended it to be an Abramovic-lite play thing, and if he genuinely intended to buy the club as an investment then it’s a fucking miracle that he’s a rich man as it’s been run as if it had been owned by a man that simply hates the city of Newcastle for a decade (I mean could you fucking imagine a bloke as inept as Lee Charnley in a C-suite position at a top company ). Knowing stuff like how he pissed around the group that bought Man City just makes it even more galling. He had a chance to get out with a profit, when he has absolutely no right to do so, yet he did absolutely nothing but embarrass himself, the football club, and potentially ruin any hope of the club having a buyer from that region even. Against all the odds that has happened again, somehow the lightening has struck twice, yet the bloke somehow seems to think he has the strong hand here honestly they should do studies on this bloke as he is completely incapable of learning from his mistakes. Just sell us you absolutely fucking horrible fat, greedy, lying, conniving pig. Then please promptly go backrupt.

While getting beat 1-0 is the same result as getting beat 5-0, I actually came out of that thinking we could easily get the points we need if we play like we did second half. The goal was a moment of genuine quality that you can't whinge too much about. He'd have scored that goal past Man City, never mind us but we limited them pretty well. Other than that mental chip Lacazette tried, I can't remember them breaking our lines or forcing Elliott into decent saves and, it's clear now, you can put that all down to Lascelles coming back in. I thought he was excellent yesterday. Never missed a header, was stepping out to deal with danger well and continued to look a threat from set-pieces (on the odd occasion we actually put the ball in the box). I think, last 20 minutes, we genuinely had them rattled. All it needed was for Ritchie to connect with his effort better, Perez to steer his header on target, Cech done well to parry Murphy's shot away from Joselu. Basically, that terrible combination of luck and lack of quality that plagued us on Wednesday night. As it stands though, it's clear that we're in that dodgy middle ground between being too good for the Championship and not good enough for the Premier League. You can get away with a few players who are adapting to the leap in quality when you have 4-5 experienced heads guiding the team along. Unfortunately for us, we basically have a team full of them and they're learning pretty sharpish that one fuck-up or one moment of quality is enough to completely undo the organisation and game plan you have. I think this is a side working their bollocks off for the manager who, while not free from criticism (some of his subs especially), is probably getting the best out of them. You can see that he can expose weaknesses in the teams we play and the personnel are doing exactly what he's telling them to, they just don't have the consistent quality to pull it off.

If Palace can lose the first TEN games and get on a run of form, we can drag ourselves out of the shit with the right signings. Over to you, Mike.

PL hits the nail on the head imo. The only thing I care about at the moment is this take over going through, like PL says if it doesn’t and Ashley remains in charge it doesn’t really matter what happens. It’s crystal fucking clear he will never ever let this club do anything, he was in a position to really kick on this summer, genuine quality manager, a young squad that with a bit of quality here and there could have comfortably solidified a Prem position and then kicked on, and he purposefully avoided spending. As long as the takeover goes through relegation doesn’t matter, it’s just a 1 year setback. If it doesn’t go through I don’t give a fuck if we stay up as it’ll be more of the same. I struggle to remember having a side in the past 10 year that could pass the ball well, or where you could see where the next goal was coming from (short of the back to back purple patches of Ba and Cisse), and there’s one man to blame for all of that.

Just get the feeling that its a matter of when now, not if. All of the more concrete news (stuff from Caulkin et al, pictures of Ashley and Staveley leaving meetings, Staveley at the Liverpool game etc) has been positive and it's only been news outlets who normally don't report on us putting out the negative stuff. Apart from Luke Edwards of course, the arsehole. The silence hasn't helped either, nor has .com being negative about the whole thing since it all started.

They really won't. We need a little bit of surgery in January basically. A LB, a CM that can screen the back 4 and play a bit of football when required, a GK that isn't a complete retard, a ST and a creative midfielder who can play no. 10. The worry is the question of is Rafa actually going to get the funds he wants. He's reiterated in press conferences he doesn't know, that could be him staying quiet because it's daft to just reveal your budget publicly (which it is) or he actually just doesn't know.

Could be a blessing in disguise

It's been said for a fortnight it wouldn't happens before Xmas. There's a rumoured agreement that Ashley will buy players and Staveley will pay him back. its make or break in January. If we don't have at least 2 new players in the first XI after the window then we are as good as down. Ideally we need a GK, LB, CDM, no.9 and no.10 but that's never gonna happen. A goalscorer and goalkeeper are the most likely buys imo

My shares in Coca Cola have done alright....I've had them about 15yrs.

Would have thought by now they would have cooked up some new shit to add to the mix....Super Zombies or something...

Eh? but you just said her hand was strengthened. Way I see it Staveley and PCP want to buy the club and are happy to commit monies to help Benitez strengthen in the window. Ashley isn't. Ashley won't be able to sell us for anything like the ridiculous price he initially demanded, nor will another buyer offer the sums that've been reported this time. He might get less than the £350m he wants, but it's cashing out now for £300m or never seeing the likes of that again. I'm confident the deal with happen, I'm confident Benitez will get some money to sort out the squad as best he can in January, I'm confident we won't go down.

It’s simple for me, if the club is sold in the next 7 days we’ll get some players in January and will probably be ok. If it’s not then Rafa will jack at some point in January and we’ll be properly fucked and we’ll be staring at divi 3 this time next year. In a lot of ways if Ashley s still owner it doesn’t really matter. The club isn’t going to move forward in any way shape or form with him in charge so am passed fuckin worrying about the fat cunt. Next week for me is just a case of either who blinks first, failing that PCP will probably move on to another club. Likely to be Sunderland knowing our luck

Heard a great Ryder story the other day actually. Basically, he always has his predicted line-ups when he's doing match previews and for, I think, Watford or Man United, one of the two, he put Dummett in at left-back, even when Rafa had come out and said he wasn't fit enough to play. So, one of the junior writers changed it to Manquillo to avoid their chief sports writer looking like a buffoon and published it. Apparently when Ryder found out, he kicked off big style asking why they'd changed it until someone pointed out Rafa's pre-match quotes, which Ryder had quoted in his preview, that pointed to Dummett not playing I'll try and remember some more but that one is double verified.

4 relegations in our history before the fat fucking cunt got involved. Hope his heart explodes during his next coke binge tbh.

We were very unlucky yesterday. It was a good attempt to get back to basics, with a solid defensive shape and discliplne, and it almost came off. If we can take that into the West Ham game we have a real chance of ending this run and trying to shift momentum going in to the new year. It’s a huge game. Lose that, along with the inevitable loss to Man City and we may well be bottom at Christmas - most teams struggle to come back from that. There’s no question we’re in a relegation scrap, just as we all thought we would be after the summer transfer window. I have faith in Benitez. He’s the man to keep us up - if he’s given some proper backing in January. That’s what will decide it.

Master Blaster. Hard to argue with that, his playing style of course was much better than AB's. I guess I was more coming from the POV that Border began his career when Australian cricket was in the doldrums and he retired just as we had entered a golden era. His legacy was immense.

The bottom line is sagging somewhere to the south of his elastic denim waistband

Many things.

They’re just following the plot of the comics (pretty much).. think they need to start making up their own storylines or it’s finished soon.

Terrifying, isn’t it?