Rayvin

Love the anger in this thread title.

...Southampton?

Reading?

Portsmouth

Wolves?

Cardiff..?

Have West Ham been relegated more than once?

Fucks sake man, imagine having to look at that for the rest of your life.

Bradford City

Oldham Athletic? Coventry City? Sheffield Wednesday? Sheffield United? Manchester City? Wimbledon?

Southampton do have a strong model and we do seem to have taken steps in this respect; wasn't our academy upgraded recently? Or we're attempting to get the highest classification or something? The thing is though, while I think a lot of us would be on board with this thinking if they came out and said it was to build a platform for success in the future, the reality is that it's just as likely that Ashley will pay his debt back to himself and then just continue taking money out of the club as a dividend, doing just enough to keep us afloat.

Unlikely as that was, it's a fucking stupid bet.

wtf

Wait what?? After all the Guardian's celebrations they can't possibly have brought it back?

Revenue isn't profit mind... if we're run really badly then we could quite easily be spending all of that just keeping afloat. Of course we know that Mashley is looking at taking about £50m out of the club this year in dividends, so... Is it naive of me to think that this is just our 'Arsenal phase' and that in years to come once the debt is paid off we'll be bringing in players like Ozil and Sanchez?? I think I know the answer to that.

What was the bet?

It was. He confirmed via his preferred medium of communication - gifs

Being honest though, the bookies clearly have no idea what's going on.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/jan/21/the-strange-world-of-professional-footballers-websites This link is a page of the Guardian's favourite footballer websites. Some are quite bizarre. Tom Cleverly had one back in the day when he was trying to make himself a brand (like Beckham, one assumes). The site has closed down now, for some reason... Andrei Arshavin has one where people apparently were able to ask him random crap and he'd answer. Someone asked him if he liked bears. Apparently he thinks bears are pretty good.

Understandable. Without hope there's no conceivable reason why any of us would continue with this I suppose.

He's probably rich enough to be one of the first people to benefit from life extension technology, knowing our luck.

He did state in there that Ashley selling up wasn't on the cards at all...I know that doesn't necessarily mean anything but even so.

This is what gets me. Man Utd fans were flying fucking planes over old trafford to get Moyes out, Arsenal fans wait for Wenger at train stations in order to abuse him personally (and throw wine at people, of all things), Villa are organising protests and demonstrations, Chelsea fans hounded Benitez on a hugely personal level despite him doing a good fucking job for them, and Man City fans don't even fucking turn up; and yet we still get all the shit about being abusive and impatient.

Yeah but Pardew just came out with any old bollocks as long as it took the heat off him a bit. There does need to be communication from Charnley or his appointed representative about what's going on, and this interview at least represents a step in the right direction on that front. Has it changed any of our views on anything? No. Has he mentioned any sort of ambition or concept of where we want to be in the next few years? No. But he's at least said something, and for once it hasn't been done by an underinformed manager who doesn't have a fucking clue what's going on above his head. As for relegation - yeah we'll get sucked in, but Ashley and Charnley might take the view that they can pull Garde in at any time if things start going really pear shaped. Whether that'd be enough to save us, I don't know. EDIT - I'd like to stress that I can quite readily believe that they'll relegate us through incompetence. I'm just hoping that they'll do a good job to protect their investment more than anything.