Rayvin

It does however occur to me that I'm probably not qualified to comment on it..!

Sorry but to be clear - he's a racist for observing that African players have a tendency to send money home, something which he has presumable observed directly and is therefore qualified to comment on.. and for an assumption that one guy came from a village? I'd call the latter ignorance, and possibly casual racism at the very worst. It's definitely not white supremacy If you said that kind of stuff in Sunderland, no one would bat an eyelid.

I appreciate the thought and introspection that went into this post. We're all struggling with it too honestly, but have broadly come to the same conclusion.

Fully understand your frustrations, seems hugely illogical to me. I hope one way or another you're able to get to see him at some stage.

Aye, why not. I've noticed that even the ones you've said were more sensible in the past have lost it over this though. 'grumpy man' or whatever his name was, the accountant, has looked just as hysterical as the others when I've dipped in an out. I don't know who it is you're getting some conversation out of but they must be real diamonds in the rough at this point.

I mean if you're getting something out of it then fair enough but I'd be close to power drilling through my own temple at this point is all I'm saying.

@The Fish. Mate. They're not worth it. All that is happening over there is the projection of their own inferiority and insecurities onto us, and then pretending to laugh about it (someone actually used "wahahaha" ffs) because they're actually deeply upset about this. You can't talk them around from that although I actually do have respect for your persistence because it's been particularly dismal this morning. Your time is worth more than this and its actually painful to watch you argue with these absolute losers man. They've got nothing, let them have their petty, delusional bitching. They know, and we know, that every single comment they make about Saudi is coming from a place of extreme jealousy, which actually when you think about it, would invalidate everything they're saying about Newcastle fans. It just means they think this is a good thing too. That said, the one post that amused me on there this morning was the guy who claimed maybe the thread on here isn't so long because they don't do anything mental so there's nothing for us to talk about Can only assume that guy doesn't actually follow Sunderland.

Aye, my bad. Sometimes just need to have these more challenging discussions to make peace with things myself but no need to put anyone else through the ringer. I'll quieten down generally.

Absolutely, it's shameful and horrific. I just don't think they're trailblazers in the atrocity stakes. Although I suppose it's not like many other governments own football teams. For what it's worth, if I thought that me not supporting Newcastle could end any of that, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But it won't. Maybe the whole league turning off it would. But probably not. Maybe the Western world refusing to deal with them? Doubtful, they'd just go to the Russians. We probably actually stand more chance of reining them in by engaging with them. EDIT - Also fwiw, you'll never catch me (or anyone on here I'd imagine) parading around outside SJP in a Saudi Flag. And should I ever have the opporunity to meet any of them, I'd be happy telling them what I thought about them (in the relative safety of Britain, not in Saudi). So I'm not going to be cheerleading this pack of bastards who have bought the club. I just also feel that there's a lot of the pot calling the kettle black going on in this furore.

I was basing it on death counts from the various wars we've waged - I do appreciate that there's some nuance to it but 450k people died for an illegal war in Iraq and I don't think the Saudis are up to that kind of tally yet in Yemen. I mean it's not a competition and I'm not really intending this as whataboutery, but let's not pretend that we aren't run by absolute psychopaths as well. The US killed 7 children in a "righteous" (leading US general quoted as saying) airstrike in Kabul a month ago if you want a particularly disgusting anecdote.

Honestly they're probably beheading political opponents as much as normal criminals. Treason is in their list of capital punishments, along with Blasphemy and homosexuality. So realistically, there's plenty in there that we should object to. And the Yemen state of affairs is also highly objectionable. Not up there with Western atrocities, but still highly dismal. But they're going to keep doing that whether we support the club or not. And they're getting their legitimacy from the PL, not us. So if this is our line in the sand, as a society (it isn't, not even close) then fans of every club in the PL should be dropping support of their team. I do struggle with this, honestly, but the hypocrisy from every other quarter is what's actually keeping me in it. We are not the gatekeepers of morality for football. Either the whole structure backs away from football to 'defeat' this, or none of us do. It's not just on us.

TBF he only publishes on Tuesdays each week - it's almost as if the announcement was timed to avoid him being able to get straight in there

It's almost like we'd have to be proving to the media, courtesy of being stuffed 5-0 by Spurs, that Bruce isn't good enough no matter who the owners are. And we don't need to prove shit to the media, they can get to fuck.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactive/2021/oct/12/david-squires-on-newcastle-united-saudi-takeover Squires. Was always going to be about us, and was always going to be grim. I do note with interest that the guardian has opted not to put comments up for this one, which is the first time one of his cartoons has been locked as far as I can recall. But there we are anyway. I also noticed some knacker who owns Grimsby town was telling us off yesterday too. He lived in Newcastle for about 10 mins, 30 years ago, and can't understand why more people aren't opposed to this. It's not the Newcastle he remembers, etc etc. He's a professor at Oxford or something, so he's obviously very well connected with reality. The Newcastle he remembers, I would argue, has been pummelled to within an inch of its life by southern voted Tory governments over the course of that 30 years - and any spirit of hope, optimism and human solidarity that did exist was then further trampled by an odious pillock who I have no doubt will end up buying honours for himself at some point to become 'Lord Ashley'. Moreover, and this is the really important bit which tbf Squires alludes to as well - this would have happened at ANY club in the football league pyramid. Any of them. Even motherfucking Grimsby. This is the society we have chosen to exist within. Fucking choke on it Southern England. And maybe stop voting for it.

Don't they want to keep Charnley on though? I'm sure I read something to that effect. I could maybe, just about, see the logic in that on the basis that I guess they do need some manner of continuity so that they can tackle the day to day operational challenges without needing to reinvent the wheel. I suppose we just have to hope that they know what they're doing, but Bruce being in charge for our next game would set off alarm bells for me. And we'd get fucking stomped as well, which isn't how I'd want to start the new era personally.

I guess it comes down to whether you think Bruce is adding any positives at all to the team. For me, he's taking a team of players and somehow managing to make them less than the sum of their parts. As such, getting rid of him means that we at least won't be any worse than we already are, and might even get a bit better. If he's managing the club and getting pelters from all angles of the stadium, he's going to start phoning it in more than he already is, looking for the sack. He just adds nothing, at least as far as I can see.

Yeah idk about this, I think they need to get rid of him. Nothing good is going to come out of him taking another game for the club, especially if we get smashed. Which we will because the man is fucking useless. What's wrong with just having a caretaker for a bit? Jones would be fine. Couldn't do worse.

Had no idea - agree entirely with what you've said there. Hope you feel better soon yourself though

Was trying to be charitable but yes, I think youre likely right

Also I'd wager that at least 50% of this thread is making fun of their forum, rather than discussing Sunderland itself. Whereas their thread is fully focused just on NUFC.

I'm not about to do the maths like but I don't think 800 pages in two months holds up favourably against 700 in 10 years even with a 1:20 ratio factored in.

I've seen some mixed info on this FFP stuff. So yeah a lot of people are gravitating to this 200m figure because that's the amount permitted as a loss over a three year period or something, but someone posted another video with a guy saying that we could more or less spend what we want since we're currently profitable. The logic I think was that if we front loaded the spending in year 1, the values of the players on the accounts would depreciate over 3 years and this would somehow modify our profitability. Not an accountant, don't totally get the argument, but is there any logic to that? The upshot was we could spend even up to 500m or so and still be fine.

This guy. If the Saudis came to him to buy into one of his "businesses", he'd never shut up about how great they were and how he had a special relationship with them and that they had understood his unique brilliance making them far more insightful than British investors etc etc. He'd probably convert to Islam for them ffs.

Amazing. The Times presumably being the left wing one? I mean it's centrist I suppose but still.

Despite being a long time reader of it, I agree. For this and so many other things, the Guardian can indeed fuck off.