ohhh_yeah

Mike Ashley has done some pretty diabolical things as Newcastle United owner, but the most depressing has been to turn a football club that almost every fan in the country had a soft spot for into one that most neutrals would like to be relegated. That is a tragedy for English football. Ashley has not only sucked the joy out of supporting the team, he has also drained it of its mass appeal. Newcastle are no longer a credit to the Premier League, they are an embarrassment to a competition that prides itself of being the most exciting, bold and unpredictable. Newcastle are the antithesis of excitement. They have become a bland football club run by bean counters. If people really do want Newcastle to be relegated, it is because they want Ashley to be punished for what he has done. Unfortunately, it will be the supporters who suffer the most. It will be the innocent minions who lose their job to cut costs in the Championship. Ashley will be hurt by relegation and he may well officially put the club up for sale again, but as a billionaire with other interests, he is largely immune. Even if he is forced to bankroll the club in the Championship, he will do so in the form of interest free loans, which remain on the clubs books indefinitely and will have to be repaid at some point. That, though, is of little concern to those who do not have an emotional attachment. To those outside, relegation will be seen as a fitting punishment for Ashley and his cohorts. You may mock the daft Geordies and I know many of you reading this will. You will scoff at their supposedly high expectation levels and smirk at their ridiculous loyalty to a team that never wins anything. Most of you will have taken some pleasure from a Newcastle meltdown in the past, but the sad thing is, all the Magpies provoke now is boredom, weariness and, I suspect, some sadness too. Ive even heard a Sunderland fan tell a Newcastle one after a fifth successive derby defeat that its a disgrace what Ashley has done to your football club. Of all the things Ive read and heard about Newcastles decline, those 11 words echo in my mind the most. Even Newcastles bitterest rivals recognise the damage that has been done. Newcastle have never been a successful big club, but they have always been admired, not just because of the loyalty and passion of their largesupport, but for the way they went about things. It was a proper football club. Self-destructive, perhaps, prone to emotional meltdowns and always likely to implode when the pressure was on in the pursuit of silverware, but they always generated excitement. When Newcastle rolled into town, they fired up atmospheres inside normally bland arenas. They filled away sections with colour, noise and gallows humour and the locals responded to their noise with their own. When Newcastle fans travel now they are shorn of hope and are more concerned with protesting against Ashley than supporting the team. Divided and depressed. Newcastle used to earn respect because they had a go. They were fascinating. They were a team that other fans, albeit begrudgingly, liked to watch. They played football in a manner that suggested they would always much rather attack than defend. If the truth be told, they were often a source of amusement, but there was always affection there, a recognition English football would be a lot duller without them. Newcastle, though, have gone from affectionate figure of fun to a club that people would like to see suffer. I do not say that with any pleasure, pride or satisfaction. I write it with a heavy heart, but what is the point of Newcastle under Ashley? That gripe has extended way beyond Tyneside. They bring little to the Premier League table. They are, at best, a solid mid-table club that does not try in cup competitions. They are a club that exists for foreign players to use as a shop window. For the second season running, the team have spent the second half of the campaign looking like manikins for a dubious internet loan company playing in front of billboards for a scruffy high street sport shop. Newcastle dont add anything special anymore. They do not help sell global television rights. They do not even make domestic ones appealing. What is the point of a football club that exists merely to promote other business interests? The Premier League is big business but, fundamentally, it remains a sport in which the glory comes from winning things and the enjoyment comes from trying to pursue that glory. Football is meant to be fun, not a monotonous annual procession towards a mid-table finish. Newcastle are a business where predictable outcomes ensure stable cash flows. Ashley has made that more important than sporting adventure. They have become tedious to watch and are in danger of becoming a toxic football brand, which could poison others. A quick glance at the list of remaining relegation candidates suggests the following: Leicester City deserve to stay up because they have been brilliant when they needed to be. Sunderland are not the most glamorous club and they always seem to be in this position at this stage of the season, but at least they try to be more than that. Hull City have their problems. They also have an unpopular owner who refuses to listen to the concerns of the supporters over his proposed name change. They have been poor for long periods of the campaign and are geographically difficult to get to, but Steve Bruce is a popular figure and, again, they have tried to do more than they have achieved. The point is, Newcastle have not tried and if you do not try you deserve to fail. It would be awful for proud supporters to suffer a second relegation in just six years, but even they do not like their football club at the moment because of the man who runs it. ::Luke Edwards::

Jack Charlton Luis Enrique Andrea Barzagli Jesus Arellano Terry Neill Metin Tekin Claudio Taffarel Maurice Norman and Lucio and myself was being snatched from our mother's vajayjay within hours of each other.

@LukeEdwardsTele: Coloccini's English has really improved since the last time I spoke to him. The club are scared now, from Ashley down. Desperate plea #nufc

Going out tonight to have pints with a few co-workers to celebrate my birthday a bit earlier. One of our stops will be to try this newly released ipa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USjtW4KWMbg

Sir Ricky Sbragia wrote: The zealot bowed to his audience for one last time; one last bask in the glory of the audience. To paraphrase Sir Harold Wilson, SAFC is nothing if not a moral crusade. The tenacity of the Mackem People's Alliance has stunned the english-speaking world over recent months. I come not to praise the preacher, but to bury him; come not to mourn his passing or attack those who lacked such foresight. Tonight Mackemdom stands on the brink. Stumble but an inch and we fall into nothingness. We have went through the preacher (PDC), the realist (MON), the Butcher's boy (SB) and the reluctant, noble hero (RS). What SAFC requires is the addition of strategic thinking to the boiling passion each member of mackemdom is ready to unload without restraint upon the milky skin of the EPL. Tonight, we ask Marcelo Bielsa and Jurgen Klopp this; just how much do you want your lives to mean something? Ricky

At least they are practicing hoofing it to Perez. Noticed Williamson did not participate as they were allowing the novices a missed opportunity.

An 85-year-old man says his suburban Cleveland home has been pelted with eggs several times a week for a year, and police haven't been able to crack the unusual case despite stakeouts, questioning neighbors, installing a surveillance camera and even testing eggshells as evidence. The homeowner and Euclid police suspect the eggs are launched a block or two away. Albert Clemens Sr. said whoever is responsible has "phenomenal" accuracy, launching five or six at a time and often hitting the front door of the green, two-story home that he and his late wife bought nearly six decades ago. The after-dark attacks sometimes sound like gunshots as eggs splatter on the aluminum siding, creating a residue that strips the paint, he said. He used to clean up each time but quit because it happens so often. His insurer won't settle a claim until police catch the vandal or vandals, so Clemens is waiting until then to make repairs. But he refuses to move from the home he shares with his adult daughter and son, on a corner less than a mile from the police station. "I would live and die in this house -- but it's been kind of a nightmare." Officers haven't determined a suspect or specific motive, though they have suspicions. "Somebody is deeply, deeply angry at somebody in that household for some reason," Lt. Mitch Houser said. Police traced the eggs to a local Amish farm, but fingerprinting shattered shells proved useless because egg proteins destroy DNA. Door-to-door questioning yielded no tips, and a $1,000 reward for information remains unclaimed. "The person or people who are doing it have remained very tight-lipped apparently," Houser said. "I would imagine it would be hard to keep a secret of something that had been done hundreds of times and for nobody to step forward to talk about it." Police have spent hundreds of hours on the investigation, but their involvement doesn't seem to be a deterrent. Once, an egg hit an officer in the foot as he took a report on the vandalism. The egging has been rarer during cold weather, but Clemens and the officers anticipate the attacks will increase with the temperature. "We're not going to let it go," Houser said. "We'll continue to put effort into it until we figure something out."

#keepcalmandhatemags #ftm

Just read that some bloke listened to 168 hours of nickleback continously. Can not help but think about the phrase of a rusty spoon and my ears. How would somebody cleanse themselves after listening to that tripe for any giving time?

Can imagine him sat there twitching and in immeasurable pain holding out for the transfer window to slam shut. "Give me an injection, there is still 3 weeks and 147 minutes to go."

Streete can not be excited with this move since he will not be able to receive match minutes. He has already been in the Port Vale side and our U21 squad.

Shantel : Disco Partizani