acrossthepond

Pound foolish and penny foolish as well. Let the best manager since Robson go for free having given him nothing to spend on players - pay 4m for Steve Bruce (and might as well earmark his severance pay now for when he's sacked in March) and fund his rebuilding of a depleted squad bereft of quality or leadership. This is 100% to spite us. There is no way even Mike Ashley thinks this is good business sense. It is purely to get one back at us for singing nasty songs and loving Rafa so much.

We turned against Peter fucking Beardsley when he became an Ashley arselicker, why in the fuck did this moron think Shola, Carver and Kevin Nolan would be more highly venerated than an actual club legend? Shola is employed by the club now, so he's tainted, and the chuckle bros Carver and Nolan are failed managers in giz-a-job mode so they'll also mouth anything that they think will get them work (not to mention, they probably both correctly reckon that this is the only PL club fucked up enough to consider employing them.) They can all get to fuck. It is impossible to be loyal to NUFC and defend Ashley. Anyone who purports to do so is lying.

Exactly correct. Fatass has a proven track record for giving shit managers loads of money to blow and letting talented managers starve. As you say, when Pardew was on a purple patch and we finished 5th, it would've been the perfect time to invest heavily in the squad. Some of the pain might've been alleviated. There might've been a road back for Ashley. But instead, we cut our own throat to stop the nosebleed of Europa League football. Of course, Fat Sam and McClaren, easily the worst permanent managers we've had in Fatty's time, had fortunes (comparatively) thrown at them to flood the squad with dross. I fully expect us to sign up to 50m of players this summer now that Rafa has gone.. But it would've been no net spend again if, somehow, he'd signed the extension and stayed another year.

I'm offended. You only included Irish people in your list of potential terrorists. You need to be more inclusive in your racist stereotyping.

Stay and get fucked around by Ashley for another year on the same terms and maybe finish 11th vs. leave honourably at the end of your contract and take up a new job on triple the salary. Very difficult decision. I'd have done the same and so would you, you self-righteous gobshite.

12m? Should be at least 25, he's better than Donkeyvic.

Owner renowned for fucking popular managers over fucks popular manager over. Without any hyperbole, it is entirely possible that we will never have a better manager from this point on. Goodbye Rafa, thanks for everything. Can't wait to see what clown the FCB will dredge up to replace him. Roy Keane just left Forest, maybe he's up for a challenge?

Where's the racism there? The alleged buyer's name is Khaled.

This was also the source of the legendary "do me fuckin garden lad" post, if I remember rightly.

I don't think his voter base is large enough to win re-election, and he's poisoned the well with most everyone else in the country. The former Obama voters he won over in 2016 ain't voting red again.

He might be slightly rattled

He forgot to mention Algerians.

Shocking refereeing and disgusting cheating throughout. An obvious dive from Fabinho brought the third goal - no replay at all, no scrutiny, nothing. Milner also should've walked - I guarantee you the ref intended to give him a yellow for the first challenge, and the second one was also a clear yellow for a professional foul. Come on City.

Agreed, and he's been dogshit all season, so ship him back and give our player a chance to shine.

That is the first time I have ever heard that particular cunt's voice, watched anything to do with him, or known what he looked like. I cannot believe he takes himself seriously. Is it possible that he doesn't? But then no, he wouldn't run for office. Do people actually listen to that voice coming out of that face and think what this fucking moron says has anything to do with their lives? I pictured him as more of a Tommy Robinson type, a sort of rabble-rouser who was more street thug/Aryan Brotherhood than anything else...but no, he's some sort of posh fucking twat who sounds like he delightedly breathes in his own farts and catalogs his every meal with a series of polaroids before uploading them to his blog. Fuck me senseless. EDIT: Is he supposed to be like an "intellectual" racist? Like alt-right for the bigot who's a cut above the common street filth and white trash? Is that his game? Doesn't much fancy holding tiki torches and doing Nazi marches, but he's happy to sit behind the safety of his screen and spout his shit?

Liverpool missing out on the title in agonising circumstances is always something I can get worked up about.

Agreed all around. Saved our season. Psychological impact of breaking the transfer record + he actually delivered on the pitch. If we'd signed nobody we'd be 17th right now and it'd be squeaky bum time every time Brighton or Cardiff scored a goal. Instead we're comfortably looking down on them. Fatass, of course, will not get the obvious message that spending money on good players and good managers keeps you in the Premier League.

If you could ban a player for life I would've for that foul. You'll never see one as despicable again. Keane's on Haland is up there too - what a surprise, what cunt side and cunt manager did they both play for?

Can you imagine getting humped 4-0 off that shower of shit we played at SJP? It's hard to tell who the bigger chancer is, Silva or Solskjaer.

To be quite honest, I'm struggling to find much supporting evidence either. This is all remembered from a paper I wrote on the topic in high school, before internet research really existed. I got it out of some books and monographs written about the conflict, but I may be misremembering the level of Palestinian support for the UN plan. It's plausible that I had it wrong - this is an area I've studied a lot, but it's not the area of my professional expertise. This book, which is partially available online, does include some evidence supporting a Palestinian acceptance of partition. Some wanted to maintain good relations with Jews for economic reasons and others, as I said earlier, wanted partition in order to facilitate union with Jordan. King Abdallah of Jordan had always been pro-partition, probably because he had ambitions of regional dominance.

Well, I want to clarify what I stated earlier. The official Palestinian position was to reject partition, which they did, but that was a political stance. Privately they were willing to accept the UN partition and live alongside a Jewish state in Palestine, if changes to the partition deal could be made. However, the decision was made for them by the Arab states' decision to invade following the Israeli declaration of independence, Jordan in particular, since some Palestinians envisioned a union with Jordan. The history of the Palestinian and Israeli conflict since then has been tainted by interference from the other Arab states, all of whom thought they were somehow going to destroy a state that had already trounced them in 1948 when they were barely even a country. The reason for the extended resistance now is failure to adhere to 1948 borders. After the Israeli War of Independence, they seized more land that had not been part of the original partition, and following the 1967 war they added even more land that had historically been Arab. For example, the city of Jaffa (part of Tel Aviv) was supposed to belong to Palestine in the original partition because it had such a large Arab majority - that was ignored when it was seized in 1948. So the Palestinian position is kind of "you were happy to adhere to international agreements that created a country for you, but then once you had a country, you stopped holding to anything that would limit its expansion or let us have a country, including the original agreement."

Well, hang on. The Palestinians did consent to the UN partition plan of 1948. It was the other Arab states that refused "on their behalf", which was really one of the great tragedies of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

What's really impossible to tolerate is that a modern left-wing party in a developed country is still having anti-semitism problems in the 21st century. The only logical explanation is that there is actual institutional anti-semitism in Labour and they have failed to stamp it out. That lands at the doorstep of leadership. Take the Democrats, for example. One of their representatives made a comment that wasn't even anti-semitic, but touched upon some tropes that are associated with anti-semitism (it was a comment about pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC.) Immediately, party leadership stomped on her and forced an apology before it could get out of hand. The Republicans are trying to fan the flames but really aren't getting anywhere (largely because the vast majority of actual anti-semites in America vote Republican, while Jewish voters overwhelmingly vote Democrat.) Of course, Judaism and especially Israel hold a different place in US politics than they do in UK or European politics. Israel is the sacred cow that can never be directly criticized, here. All the same, Labour have done a wretched job of managing the situation and that is squarely down to Corbyn. He still thinks he is a 70's revolucionista, fighting for Tibet and Palestine and all the other oppressed people of the world while his own country is getting fucked over before his eyes, with his party complicit in such. What a joke.

Very interesting article, had never heard of the bloke and certainly not of the prince either. There must be a dozen Prince Abdullahs in Saudi. Equally interesting was this one: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/47830726 Somebody posted not long ago about how Emre, at 38, is still playing internationally for Turkey. Looks clear now why that is - he's been rimming Erdogan. Plays for and captains his pet team, rubs shoulders with him at his mate Turan's wedding, and makes the same ridiculous political gestures he does. In 2013, the Egyptian military overthrew President Morsi, and Erdogan made a huge deal about how corrupt the coup was, and how it had been orchestrated by Israel, and he went around at rallies making a four-fingered gesture that was supposed to represent support for Morsi, who was Egypt's fourth president. Emre was playing for Konyaspor at the time and made the same gesture after he scored. Any respect I had for the racist little cunt evaporated instantly. I was in Istanbul at the time, as it happens, and as soon as any Turk found out that I was Egyptian they immediately started giving me a load of bullshit about how great Morsi was (he was an awful president, an Islamist in the thinnest of disguises), how terrible it was that the military had intervened (Egypt would be Somalia by now if they hadn't) and how their great president Erdogan had "evidence" that Mossad was behind the coup, which he was going to present in parliament any day now (obviously there is no such evidence.) It used to do my head in listening to this crap, as if anyone with even the barest capacity to think critically could believe the lies Erdogan tells. Of course, FIFA takes no action as the sitting president blatantly interferes in football. Basaksehir is owned by the fucking Ministry of Sports. It is 100% a government institution. It's as if the Crown bought Leyton Orient and pumped hundreds of millions into getting them to the Premier League title, bending the rules along the way. They have an average attendance of 5000, for fuck's sake. The entire club is tainted top to bottom by association with Erdogan and AKP. Sorry for the rant but any thought of Turkey leaves an awful taste in my mouth now. For decades Turkey was the model to follow for secular Muslim-majority states. Now the entire government has pretty openly embraced Islamism and chucked the Kemalist mentality which has sustained Turkey for almost 100 years. The ruling party lost local elections in Istanbul for the first time in decades. The next day they started putting up posters declaring they'd won and thanking Istanbul for their support. They've already overturned 7 electoral losses in to a Kurdish opposition party. It seems all but certain that they will try to declare the Istanbul election was rigged (in fact, government sources have already been unofficially calling it "the most stained election in our democratic history.") The place has turned into a banana republic in just a few years, and it makes me sad.

I think that's been the policy since long before Charnley, I remember some of the exposes that came out during the KK fallout outlining that transfer policy. It isn't sensible in any sort of financial way, so the only logical conclusion is that it was designed to provide excuses for when we don't spend money.