The slippery slope

[LeazesMag 0]

Uproarious stuff and no mistake.

 

you will be disagreeing with me for the next 4 year again, until someone else says exactly the same thing and you pretend you have always thought this.

 

You're an utter idiot.

I agree with all of the stuff you put in that big post. All of it. I have to say though a lot of the time mancmag isn't disagreeing with you, and shares similar views it just gets lost in translation somewhere.

 

OK, but I can't help what he posts Stevie, it's up to him, if he wants to try and make constructive, intelligent comments about it.

 

It would appear he is incapable of it tbh, or just wants to make stupid comments to anything I say, but only he knows.

Edited September 9, 2011 by LeazesMag

[peasepud 59]

I could be wrong but is this thread now devoted to Team Delusional having a go at LeazesMag because he was right about Ashley, the only point in question seems to be exactly when he was right. Well before any other fucker it would appear; is that what is causing the outpourings of old quotes and attempts at hair splitting?

 

A truly pointless fucking thread this has turned out to be.

 

You've got to keep Leazes in check tbf.

 

One minute you can say Ashley deserved a chance upon arrival and the next he'll tell everyone you said "Anyone but Shepherd, I hated the 90's at NUFC".

 

This is the crux of it for me.

 

His recent digging up of old threads (in response to your posting that one where he predicts that Ashley will probably now go on to better Shepherd/Hall’s Champions League achievements) is a typical obsessive overreaction too. Digging them up to try and re-assert when he ‘first called Ashley’ or whatever misses the point spectacularly; he’s shown later to be saying he thinks we’ll be back on for Champs League under Ashley. Now only the other day he was agreeing with OBG that it was a Sports Direct model and this was all obvious to him from the start of his reign-well no it clearly wasn’t as he changed his prediction about Ashley’s ambitions when Keegan was appointed.

 

There’s nothing wrong with this per se (a shifting narrative where you constantly re-evaluate based on current information), in fact Chez does this and it stimulates good debate on here imho, but on the other hand if you’re Leazes and what you’re essentially doing is trying to claim some sort of clairvoyance it makes you look a tit- because what you claim you’ve always had some sort of intractable belief about is shown to be something that in reality you’ve also argued the complete opposite of at intervals. “Oh yes, I’ve always claimed he was doing this the Sports Direct way, and before anyone else might I add.....apart from the time when I thought he was going to beat our Champions League achievements to date. Can you just all ignore that bit please? Ta.” Classic cake-and-eat-it.

 

Going back to what you said above, that’s the essence of his “I was right you were wrong” nightmare patter. It involves re-inventions of the past both in terms of what he’s said himself and what other people have said about a subject. What’s even more tragic is that nobody else is arsed, and yet he’s been genuinely obsessed with it for 4 or 5 years now.

Have to admit I see it differently. The post from LM that keeps getting dragged up to me seems to be a potential admission of being wrong. ie it wouldnt read badly if it had started "well looks like I was wrong all along about Ashley...." yet people are pulling it out and using it as a "LM backed Ashley" type of post. tbh its exactly the same thing that LM does to the likes of yourself and Gemmill ie has a memory of a post or two from the past that show you to have one view and then uses that to say you were that way all along.

[Dr Gloom 20126]

Uproarious stuff and no mistake.

 

you will be disagreeing with me for the next 4 year again, until someone else says exactly the same thing and you pretend you have always thought this.

 

You're an utter idiot.

I agree with all of the stuff you put in that big post. All of it. I have to say though a lot of the time mancmag isn't disagreeing with you, and shares similar views it just gets lost in translation somewhere.

 

it doesn't get lost in translation; it gets lost in leazesmag's weird mind. the irony is leazes agrees with me, manc mag and the majority of the posters on here but it always breaks down into the same argument because he can't see beyond having to prove to everyone he was right about the old board and somehow the rest of us were wrong. that's why i have him on ignore. it's impossible to engage with him; every thread he posts in reverts back to the same argument and he constantly makes stuff up about what you said over and over again.

[Park Life 71]

Won't somebody think of the balance sheet?!!!

[JawD 31]

Manc-mag gave me grief for sitting on the fence when I said a new owner wouldn't necessarily be better than Shepherd iirc. Forgot about that That was more just me being cynical than being Nostradamus though. I also got some ITK about KK being well pissed off because Modric wasn't signed (he trained with us but Ashley wouldn't pay up). Tbh I brushed it off though and even that summer I thought all would be well. I also remember Craig Burley (in the build up to Arsenal away - KK's last game in charge, I think) saying that all was clearly not well at NUFC. I thought he was just being biased against us and (along with the rest of the press) was playing a guessing game / being mischievous. He was spot on though.

When Setanta won the rights to the Premiership they had a show on a Friday on for about 90 minutes previewing the next days game, and the star man was Sir Les Ferdinand. There was no massive indication things weren't generally ok at that point other than the Milner rumours, and he said things are about to get cataclysmic at NUFC, without saying he'd spoken to anyone directly, and at the time I thought pipe down a bit Les, he was sadly right.

 

LM is a much better bloke than people give him credit for, and this isn't a dig as he was right all along about Ashley, but I don't want to cause a row, I think his opinion was based on the fact he was fucking devastated FFS was no longer there, Ashley wasn't FFS, and a hunch, nothing else. I don't see how anyone could've known what a cunt Ashley would be in those very early days.

 

No probs Stevie mate.

 

Devastated ? No, not at all. I never thought that Fred was the sharpest tool in the box, but he/they backed their managers and understood how big the club is and how big it could be. McKeag was an intelligent man but was a pygmy in footballing terms. Maybe it depends how you define "intelligence". Solicitors don't necessarily understand fuck all about football.......

 

The thing is, people like me of my age, we spent nearly 30 years supporting this club, run by shit directors who had no ambition but were supposed to be "intelligent people" etc etc.....between the years of 1964 and 1992 I actively supported this club, completely, it all became a sort of underachieving limbo in the end. Then these blokes came along and said it all has to change, everybody has had enough. And after a hesitant start, it came, and Keegan made it happen, he drove the board and they allowed him to manage the club when they realised he was doing it right. We all know what happened, and what nearly happened from there.

 

When the club became a PLC I had massive reservations, not about the board because Keegan had showed them how to make NUFC work and, if they had had any initial reservations, they had been convinced that Keegans way worked [under his management because he bought and spent the money well]. But when they floated, I was bothered that the backing of the club as we had got used to, would stop. I know Shepherd was the front man for the board by the late 1990's and while he wasn't so media friendly as Hall Snr, it didn't bother me so long as the direction and ambitions of the board didn't change. After initial doubts, they naturally subsided when the club continued to bring top players to the club and expanded the stadium. I wasn't bothered in the slightest about this "dogs" business, which I maintain was a deliberate attempt by the ManU supporting press to scupper the main challengers to their darlings and they were quite happy to whip up the frenzy, which succeeded. A relation from Jockland on wifey's side, taken in by this bollocks, asked me on the phone what I thought of it all, I said that I don't give a shite. She didn't understand that given a choice between media friendly or "nice" gentlemen running the club without ambition and a group who showed ambition and wanted success on the pitch, was a complete no brainer. The absolute LAST thing I wanted, at any price, was to have small minded unambitious people running the club again.

 

This is the whole basis of my reservations about anybody taking over from the Halls and Shepherd, in the last few years, when people wanted rid of them. Having supported the club from 1964-1992 I knew exactly what I didn't want, and as the club had been in a position where only 4 clubs had done better [sorry but it's relevant] what were the odds on someone coming in and doing better ? Its simple maths, and betting odds, commons sense, what were the chances of it happening ? The odds were stacked against it. Apply any sort of betting logic and it is obvious.

 

I saw the quotes from Mort, Allardyce, the PR stunts from Ashley and the nagging doubts I had quickly surfaced about him. Everything I saw and heard just added up to someone who wasn't going to attempt to keep the club competing at those levels. Add to that, what I've always said about football, which is that football clubs just don't make profits in the normal business sense, and it stuck out a mile what was going to happen. The club was starting to behave just like it had done during those decades of frustration prior to 1992.

 

I am still amazed that long term supporters like myself, who witnessed these years, took so long to cotton on to Mike Ashley.

 

I posted on NO for all that time, mainly NO, and people accused me of winding people up, I knew I was doing it but I also knew that I believed what I was saying. I wasn't going to say what people wanted to hear. They banned me for going on about it so much, but I just replied to people, and gave them what I thought was the truth, its that simple.

 

I didn't want to sell my shares in the club to Mike Ashley, but I didn't want to sell them to anybody. I quite liked having shares in the club, so when I opposed that forced sale of my shares, it was nothing to do with Mike Ashley and nothing to do with backing the old regime either.

 

I wanted someone to buy the club who would do better than the old regime just like everybody else, I only realised the odds were stacked against it. They are also stacked against whoever buying from Ashley doing it too. It's obvious when there are only 4 other clubs to beat so to speak. Now, only getting someone who restores ambition and direction to the club will be progress, such is the level this club has dropped to.

 

I am now convinced Mike Ashley wants his money back, and he is selling players to do that. He might sell the club when he has done this, or he might keep the club and run it at low operating levels and make a small profit, whichever he chooses, he will NEVER get anywhere near the old regime now, because he doesn't have the will to do what is needed, and realises selling a player to make a profit is easier than speculating on reaching the Champions League places. Which is the only way he is going to make a profit from the football "as a business", and is the only ways any club can make a worthwhile profit "as a business".

 

I'm afraid we face years of mediocrity with him as owner, the likes of which people never dreamed of when they were dishing out flak to the old regime for not qualifying for europe or the Champions League. It could be decades before anybody matches them, people may realise by then that they were a lot better than they thought at the time.

 

See for me, LM can be a good poster when he puts his thoughts in to it like this one.

 

More of this LM and less of the bollocks

 

I dont see that there has to be a right/wrong stance from the start. Plus I dont see that under FS we had to be 100% behind him at the end. Fact is, no matter what club you are, you want to improve. You think Arsenal are happy right now? Or should they be content they are not going to languish in 15th? No, they want to improve so we hear some wanting rid of Wenger etc.

 

Under FS we had reach some heady heights and it's stupid to even suggest everyone here didnt enjoy it. But the wheels started to come off in my opinion with some knee jerk reactions and managerial appointments. Souness to be exact. So, are fans, including myself, wrong to want the club where it was there an then to improve? Course not, We were neck and neck with chelsea and they were bought. We had seen what was possible, so was it wrong to want the same thing for us? Or should we have just settled for finished lower mid table as we'd tasted the top 4 and should be content with that?

 

When MA came along, SJH stuck his neck out and said it was a good move for the club. That MA would take us forward. It even started with promise when the likes of Colo came in. At the time, I had said the grass isnt always greener but I was excited at the prospect of change. Who wouldnt be? You yourself said it was possible we could see the top 5 again (or CL at least).

 

So where did it go wrong? I think MA has changed him plans as time went on. More an more I think he slowly slipped into where he is now. I think with the stick we give him and the fuck ups he has made (under bad advice or not) he is at the "fuck it" stage. He wont put a penny in, wants the club to support itself and I think he'll sell it at the first opportunity.

 

Now, I really dont understand why MA bought the club. Any club. I'm not sure what else he expected.

 

I dont see what is a bitter relationship changing. No matter what all the fans groups try and do to build bridged of communication.

 

My biggest gripe with you on here is that you seem to need to pigeon hole people into either Pro Ashley, or not. Fact is everyone enjoyed time under FS, everyone wanted us to get back where we had been with him. Everyone was excited at the prospect of a new owner and most are now fucked off with it.

 

When you sit and construct a post with thought, you can be one of the best posters on here with the club knowledge you have. But it seems to be 1 in 10 or 1 in 15 as the rest are just bickering and point scoring.

[Happy Face 29]

I could be wrong but is this thread now devoted to Team Delusional having a go at LeazesMag because he was right about Ashley, the only point in question seems to be exactly when he was right. Well before any other fucker it would appear; is that what is causing the outpourings of old quotes and attempts at hair splitting?

 

A truly pointless fucking thread this has turned out to be.

 

You've got to keep Leazes in check tbf.

 

One minute you can say Ashley deserved a chance upon arrival and the next he'll tell everyone you said "Anyone but Shepherd, I hated the 90's at NUFC".

 

This is the crux of it for me.

 

His recent digging up of old threads (in response to your posting that one where he predicts that Ashley will probably now go on to better Shepherd/Hall’s Champions League achievements) is a typical obsessive overreaction too. Digging them up to try and re-assert when he ‘first called Ashley’ or whatever misses the point spectacularly; he’s shown later to be saying he thinks we’ll be back on for Champs League under Ashley. Now only the other day he was agreeing with OBG that it was a Sports Direct model and this was all obvious to him from the start of his reign-well no it clearly wasn’t as he changed his prediction about Ashley’s ambitions when Keegan was appointed.

 

There’s nothing wrong with this per se (a shifting narrative where you constantly re-evaluate based on current information), in fact Chez does this and it stimulates good debate on here imho, but on the other hand if you’re Leazes and what you’re essentially doing is trying to claim some sort of clairvoyance it makes you look a tit- because what you claim you’ve always had some sort of intractable belief about is shown to be something that in reality you’ve also argued the complete opposite of at intervals. “Oh yes, I’ve always claimed he was doing this the Sports Direct way, and before anyone else might I add.....apart from the time when I thought he was going to beat our Champions League achievements to date. Can you just all ignore that bit please? Ta.” Classic cake-and-eat-it.

 

Going back to what you said above, that’s the essence of his “I was right you were wrong” nightmare patter. It involves re-inventions of the past both in terms of what he’s said himself and what other people have said about a subject. What’s even more tragic is that nobody else is arsed, and yet he’s been genuinely obsessed with it for 4 or 5 years now.

Have to admit I see it differently. The post from LM that keeps getting dragged up to me seems to be a potential admission of being wrong. ie it wouldnt read badly if it had started "well looks like I was wrong all along about Ashley...." yet people are pulling it out and using it as a "LM backed Ashley" type of post. tbh its exactly the same thing that LM does to the likes of yourself and Gemmill ie has a memory of a post or two from the past that show you to have one view and then uses that to say you were that way all along.

 

Most people can show the nuiance of their position and LM ignores it, picking a comment to death and ignoring the rest. LM can't produce ANY posts to show he had Ashley pegged, because he didn't post on here in late 2007.

 

Having said that, by quoting Leazes from Jan/Mar 2008 ("We could push champions league"/"time will tell" respectively) I wasn't trying to show that he was fully supportive of Ashley and actually predicting big things. Just that he's lying when he says it was clear to him and should have been obvious to everyone from day 1 what Ashley was all about.

 

Not really any need for claims like that either, he WAS among the first to lose any faith in the bloke and was spot on, so he doesn't have to exagerrate his powers of foresight like that.

[Dr Gloom 20126]

Manc-mag gave me grief for sitting on the fence when I said a new owner wouldn't necessarily be better than Shepherd iirc. Forgot about that That was more just me being cynical than being Nostradamus though. I also got some ITK about KK being well pissed off because Modric wasn't signed (he trained with us but Ashley wouldn't pay up). Tbh I brushed it off though and even that summer I thought all would be well. I also remember Craig Burley (in the build up to Arsenal away - KK's last game in charge, I think) saying that all was clearly not well at NUFC. I thought he was just being biased against us and (along with the rest of the press) was playing a guessing game / being mischievous. He was spot on though.

When Setanta won the rights to the Premiership they had a show on a Friday on for about 90 minutes previewing the next days game, and the star man was Sir Les Ferdinand. There was no massive indication things weren't generally ok at that point other than the Milner rumours, and he said things are about to get cataclysmic at NUFC, without saying he'd spoken to anyone directly, and at the time I thought pipe down a bit Les, he was sadly right.

 

LM is a much better bloke than people give him credit for, and this isn't a dig as he was right all along about Ashley, but I don't want to cause a row, I think his opinion was based on the fact he was fucking devastated FFS was no longer there, Ashley wasn't FFS, and a hunch, nothing else. I don't see how anyone could've known what a cunt Ashley would be in those very early days.

 

No probs Stevie mate.

 

Devastated ? No, not at all. I never thought that Fred was the sharpest tool in the box, but he/they backed their managers and understood how big the club is and how big it could be. McKeag was an intelligent man but was a pygmy in footballing terms. Maybe it depends how you define "intelligence". Solicitors don't necessarily understand fuck all about football.......

 

The thing is, people like me of my age, we spent nearly 30 years supporting this club, run by shit directors who had no ambition but were supposed to be "intelligent people" etc etc.....between the years of 1964 and 1992 I actively supported this club, completely, it all became a sort of underachieving limbo in the end. Then these blokes came along and said it all has to change, everybody has had enough. And after a hesitant start, it came, and Keegan made it happen, he drove the board and they allowed him to manage the club when they realised he was doing it right. We all know what happened, and what nearly happened from there.

 

When the club became a PLC I had massive reservations, not about the board because Keegan had showed them how to make NUFC work and, if they had had any initial reservations, they had been convinced that Keegans way worked [under his management because he bought and spent the money well]. But when they floated, I was bothered that the backing of the club as we had got used to, would stop. I know Shepherd was the front man for the board by the late 1990's and while he wasn't so media friendly as Hall Snr, it didn't bother me so long as the direction and ambitions of the board didn't change. After initial doubts, they naturally subsided when the club continued to bring top players to the club and expanded the stadium. I wasn't bothered in the slightest about this "dogs" business, which I maintain was a deliberate attempt by the ManU supporting press to scupper the main challengers to their darlings and they were quite happy to whip up the frenzy, which succeeded. A relation from Jockland on wifey's side, taken in by this bollocks, asked me on the phone what I thought of it all, I said that I don't give a shite. She didn't understand that given a choice between media friendly or "nice" gentlemen running the club without ambition and a group who showed ambition and wanted success on the pitch, was a complete no brainer. The absolute LAST thing I wanted, at any price, was to have small minded unambitious people running the club again.

 

This is the whole basis of my reservations about anybody taking over from the Halls and Shepherd, in the last few years, when people wanted rid of them. Having supported the club from 1964-1992 I knew exactly what I didn't want, and as the club had been in a position where only 4 clubs had done better [sorry but it's relevant] what were the odds on someone coming in and doing better ? Its simple maths, and betting odds, commons sense, what were the chances of it happening ? The odds were stacked against it. Apply any sort of betting logic and it is obvious.

 

I saw the quotes from Mort, Allardyce, the PR stunts from Ashley and the nagging doubts I had quickly surfaced about him. Everything I saw and heard just added up to someone who wasn't going to attempt to keep the club competing at those levels. Add to that, what I've always said about football, which is that football clubs just don't make profits in the normal business sense, and it stuck out a mile what was going to happen. The club was starting to behave just like it had done during those decades of frustration prior to 1992.

 

I am still amazed that long term supporters like myself, who witnessed these years, took so long to cotton on to Mike Ashley.

 

I posted on NO for all that time, mainly NO, and people accused me of winding people up, I knew I was doing it but I also knew that I believed what I was saying. I wasn't going to say what people wanted to hear. They banned me for going on about it so much, but I just replied to people, and gave them what I thought was the truth, its that simple.

 

I didn't want to sell my shares in the club to Mike Ashley, but I didn't want to sell them to anybody. I quite liked having shares in the club, so when I opposed that forced sale of my shares, it was nothing to do with Mike Ashley and nothing to do with backing the old regime either.

 

I wanted someone to buy the club who would do better than the old regime just like everybody else, I only realised the odds were stacked against it. They are also stacked against whoever buying from Ashley doing it too. It's obvious when there are only 4 other clubs to beat so to speak. Now, only getting someone who restores ambition and direction to the club will be progress, such is the level this club has dropped to.

 

I am now convinced Mike Ashley wants his money back, and he is selling players to do that. He might sell the club when he has done this, or he might keep the club and run it at low operating levels and make a small profit, whichever he chooses, he will NEVER get anywhere near the old regime now, because he doesn't have the will to do what is needed, and realises selling a player to make a profit is easier than speculating on reaching the Champions League places. Which is the only way he is going to make a profit from the football "as a business", and is the only ways any club can make a worthwhile profit "as a business".

 

I'm afraid we face years of mediocrity with him as owner, the likes of which people never dreamed of when they were dishing out flak to the old regime for not qualifying for europe or the Champions League. It could be decades before anybody matches them, people may realise by then that they were a lot better than they thought at the time.

 

See for me, LM can be a good poster when he puts his thoughts in to it like this one.

 

More of this LM and less of the bollocks

 

I dont see that there has to be a right/wrong stance from the start. Plus I dont see that under FS we had to be 100% behind him at the end. Fact is, no matter what club you are, you want to improve. You think Arsenal are happy right now? Or should they be content they are not going to languish in 15th? No, they want to improve so we hear some wanting rid of Wenger etc.

 

Under FS we had reach some heady heights and it's stupid to even suggest everyone here didnt enjoy it. But the wheels started to come off in my opinion with some knee jerk reactions and managerial appointments. Souness to be exact. So, are fans, including myself, wrong to want the club where it was there an then to improve? Course not, We were neck and neck with chelsea and they were bought. We had seen what was possible, so was it wrong to want the same thing for us? Or should we have just settled for finished lower mid table as we'd tasted the top 4 and should be content with that?

 

When MA came along, SJH stuck his neck out and said it was a good move for the club. That MA would take us forward. It even started with promise when the likes of Colo came in. At the time, I had said the grass isnt always greener but I was excited at the prospect of change. Who wouldnt be? You yourself said it was possible we could see the top 5 again (or CL at least).

 

So where did it go wrong? I think MA has changed him plans as time went on. More an more I think he slowly slipped into where he is now. I think with the stick we give him and the fuck ups he has made (under bad advice or not) he is at the "fuck it" stage. He wont put a penny in, wants the club to support itself and I think he'll sell it at the first opportunity.

 

Now, I really dont understand why MA bought the club. Any club. I'm not sure what else he expected.

 

I dont see what is a bitter relationship changing. No matter what all the fans groups try and do to build bridged of communication.

 

My biggest gripe with you on here is that you seem to need to pigeon hole people into either Pro Ashley, or not. Fact is everyone enjoyed time under FS, everyone wanted us to get back where we had been with him. Everyone was excited at the prospect of a new owner and most are now fucked off with it.

 

When you sit and construct a post with thought, you can be one of the best posters on here with the club knowledge you have. But it seems to be 1 in 10 or 1 in 15 as the rest are just bickering and point scoring.

 

absolutely. for once i'm glad the ignore function doesn't block quotes. i agree with almost everything leazesmag has said in that. i guess my only difference is i was more hopeful that a new owner might come in and do a better job. we had good times under THE HALLS AND SHEPHERD but post the sbr sacking, things had got a bit shit. the ambition in terms of money spent on players was there but the decision making was poor - that's plain for all to see. the decision makling by the olds board contributed to our pre-ashley decline from top 5 to also ran. i guess i was optimistic (naively in hindsight) that ashley with his billions might combine financial backing with better judgement. it didn't take long mind to see him for what he was. the keegan debacle was the turning point for all of us.

[manc-mag 1]

I could be wrong but is this thread now devoted to Team Delusional having a go at LeazesMag because he was right about Ashley, the only point in question seems to be exactly when he was right. Well before any other fucker it would appear; is that what is causing the outpourings of old quotes and attempts at hair splitting?

 

A truly pointless fucking thread this has turned out to be.

 

You've got to keep Leazes in check tbf.

 

One minute you can say Ashley deserved a chance upon arrival and the next he'll tell everyone you said "Anyone but Shepherd, I hated the 90's at NUFC".

 

This is the crux of it for me.

 

His recent digging up of old threads (in response to your posting that one where he predicts that Ashley will probably now go on to better Shepherd/Hall’s Champions League achievements) is a typical obsessive overreaction too. Digging them up to try and re-assert when he ‘first called Ashley’ or whatever misses the point spectacularly; he’s shown later to be saying he thinks we’ll be back on for Champs League under Ashley. Now only the other day he was agreeing with OBG that it was a Sports Direct model and this was all obvious to him from the start of his reign-well no it clearly wasn’t as he changed his prediction about Ashley’s ambitions when Keegan was appointed.

 

There’s nothing wrong with this per se (a shifting narrative where you constantly re-evaluate based on current information), in fact Chez does this and it stimulates good debate on here imho, but on the other hand if you’re Leazes and what you’re essentially doing is trying to claim some sort of clairvoyance it makes you look a tit- because what you claim you’ve always had some sort of intractable belief about is shown to be something that in reality you’ve also argued the complete opposite of at intervals. “Oh yes, I’ve always claimed he was doing this the Sports Direct way, and before anyone else might I add.....apart from the time when I thought he was going to beat our Champions League achievements to date. Can you just all ignore that bit please? Ta.” Classic cake-and-eat-it.

 

Going back to what you said above, that’s the essence of his “I was right you were wrong” nightmare patter. It involves re-inventions of the past both in terms of what he’s said himself and what other people have said about a subject. What’s even more tragic is that nobody else is arsed, and yet he’s been genuinely obsessed with it for 4 or 5 years now.

Have to admit I see it differently. The post from LM that keeps getting dragged up to me seems to be a potential admission of being wrong. ie it wouldnt read badly if it had started "well looks like I was wrong all along about Ashley...." yet people are pulling it out and using it as a "LM backed Ashley" type of post. tbh its exactly the same thing that LM does to the likes of yourself and Gemmill ie has a memory of a post or two from the past that show you to have one view and then uses that to say you were that way all along.

 

I'm hardly claiming 'Leazes backed Ashley'! Come on! I'm saying that on his part, a long time ago now the whole thing has become this mad crusade about being proved right all along, for whatever reason that might be. Well it looks pretty obvious we're not going to be getting Champs League football again any time soon for several reasons that aren't going to change, so I think we all agree on that, what I'm saying is that's something we all have to come to terms with together, whatever the way forward is. Trying to set yourself apart as some sort of soothsayer though is something else altogether, when in fact you've made conflicting predictions based on information available at the time. What's the point...and worse, whats the point in pursuing that relentlessly for nearly 5 years?

 

Stevie, fwiw touching on your point, it's pretty obvious Leazes is passionate about the club, but without getting all amateur shrink about it, I think a lot of the time he projects his own frustration with the club's lack of ambition onto other posters so that in his eyes they then essentially become 'apologists' etc. if they don't instantly just agree with him 100%. As you say, theres probably an awful lot of agreement, and even where there isn't agreement, even then it doesn't necessarily amount to disagreement, it's often only eg people saying that something is a matter of opinion/a hypothesis until it is a proven fact and you have to wait and see. But I think Leazes is inclined to interpret that as disagreement when it's not. Also there's absolutely nothing wrong with asking for realistic suggestions/discussions about how we compete at the highest level given the clubs natural resources (both real and potential), because surely that's where the debate is at at the moment. Again, that shouldn't be a dirty subject and people shouldn't have words put in their mouths just because they want the debate rooted in reality. That doesn't make them less ambitious.

 

At the end of the day everything boils down to our ambition for the club.

[Happy Face 29]

Beautiful post Leazes...

 

Edited September 9, 2011 by Happy Face

[LeazesMag 0]

I could be wrong but is this thread now devoted to Team Delusional having a go at LeazesMag because he was right about Ashley, the only point in question seems to be exactly when he was right. Well before any other fucker it would appear; is that what is causing the outpourings of old quotes and attempts at hair splitting?

 

A truly pointless fucking thread this has turned out to be.

 

You've got to keep Leazes in check tbf.

 

One minute you can say Ashley deserved a chance upon arrival and the next he'll tell everyone you said "Anyone but Shepherd, I hated the 90's at NUFC".

 

This is the crux of it for me.

 

His recent digging up of old threads (in response to your posting that one where he predicts that Ashley will probably now go on to better Shepherd/Hall’s Champions League achievements) is a typical obsessive overreaction too. Digging them up to try and re-assert when he ‘first called Ashley’ or whatever misses the point spectacularly; he’s shown later to be saying he thinks we’ll be back on for Champs League under Ashley. Now only the other day he was agreeing with OBG that it was a Sports Direct model and this was all obvious to him from the start of his reign-well no it clearly wasn’t as he changed his prediction about Ashley’s ambitions when Keegan was appointed.

 

There’s nothing wrong with this per se (a shifting narrative where you constantly re-evaluate based on current information), in fact Chez does this and it stimulates good debate on here imho, but on the other hand if you’re Leazes and what you’re essentially doing is trying to claim some sort of clairvoyance it makes you look a tit- because what you claim you’ve always had some sort of intractable belief about is shown to be something that in reality you’ve also argued the complete opposite of at intervals. “Oh yes, I’ve always claimed he was doing this the Sports Direct way, and before anyone else might I add.....apart from the time when I thought he was going to beat our Champions League achievements to date. Can you just all ignore that bit please? Ta.” Classic cake-and-eat-it.

 

Going back to what you said above, that’s the essence of his “I was right you were wrong” nightmare patter. It involves re-inventions of the past both in terms of what he’s said himself and what other people have said about a subject. What’s even more tragic is that nobody else is arsed, and yet he’s been genuinely obsessed with it for 4 or 5 years now.

Have to admit I see it differently. The post from LM that keeps getting dragged up to me seems to be a potential admission of being wrong. ie it wouldnt read badly if it had started "well looks like I was wrong all along about Ashley...." yet people are pulling it out and using it as a "LM backed Ashley" type of post. tbh its exactly the same thing that LM does to the likes of yourself and Gemmill ie has a memory of a post or two from the past that show you to have one view and then uses that to say you were that way all along.

 

Most people can show the nuiance of their position and LM ignores it, picking a comment to death and ignoring the rest. LM can't produce ANY posts to show he had Ashley pegged, because he didn't post on here in late 2007.

 

Having said that, by quoting Leazes from Jan/Mar 2008 ("We could push champions league"/"time will tell" respectively) I wasn't trying to show that he was fully supportive of Ashley and actually predicting big things. Just that he's lying when he says it was clear to him and should have been obvious to everyone from day 1 what Ashley was all about.

 

Not really any need for claims like that either, he WAS among the first to lose any faith in the bloke and was spot on, so he doesn't have to exagerrate his powers of foresight like that.

 

I'm not lying. I had reservations about Ashley from day 1 [the same as I had reservations about going PLC and for EXACTLY the same reason, which is precisely why I made that comment in that post]. The difference being that my doubts about Ashley were quickly substantiated whereas the ones about going PLC were quickly dispelled. I saw, VERY quickly, certain comparisons between my perception of Mike Ashley and the directors of the club prior to 1992.

 

I was banned from NO for taking this stance, in a big way for a long time, there is no other reason I was banned. Can you think of any reason ?

 

I'm not exaggerating any powers of foresight, but it makes me smile when self proclaimed whizz kids claim they are "clever" etc when they could not see the obvious and argued with me that I was so wrong. When I wasn't anything of the sort. Who's stupid ?

 

The odds are stacked against ANY owner doing better than being the 5th best performing club over a period of 15 years. The odds were stacked in my favour when I kept reminding people of this, you do see that don't you ? It makes me wonder why people argued about it. The logic and common sense was overpowering, I knew it and that is why I kept repeating it, and didn't really see why people disagreed.

Edited September 9, 2011 by LeazesMag

[LeazesMag 0]

Manc-mag gave me grief for sitting on the fence when I said a new owner wouldn't necessarily be better than Shepherd iirc. Forgot about that That was more just me being cynical than being Nostradamus though. I also got some ITK about KK being well pissed off because Modric wasn't signed (he trained with us but Ashley wouldn't pay up). Tbh I brushed it off though and even that summer I thought all would be well. I also remember Craig Burley (in the build up to Arsenal away - KK's last game in charge, I think) saying that all was clearly not well at NUFC. I thought he was just being biased against us and (along with the rest of the press) was playing a guessing game / being mischievous. He was spot on though.

When Setanta won the rights to the Premiership they had a show on a Friday on for about 90 minutes previewing the next days game, and the star man was Sir Les Ferdinand. There was no massive indication things weren't generally ok at that point other than the Milner rumours, and he said things are about to get cataclysmic at NUFC, without saying he'd spoken to anyone directly, and at the time I thought pipe down a bit Les, he was sadly right.

 

LM is a much better bloke than people give him credit for, and this isn't a dig as he was right all along about Ashley, but I don't want to cause a row, I think his opinion was based on the fact he was fucking devastated FFS was no longer there, Ashley wasn't FFS, and a hunch, nothing else. I don't see how anyone could've known what a cunt Ashley would be in those very early days.

 

No probs Stevie mate.

 

Devastated ? No, not at all. I never thought that Fred was the sharpest tool in the box, but he/they backed their managers and understood how big the club is and how big it could be. McKeag was an intelligent man but was a pygmy in footballing terms. Maybe it depends how you define "intelligence". Solicitors don't necessarily understand fuck all about football.......

 

The thing is, people like me of my age, we spent nearly 30 years supporting this club, run by shit directors who had no ambition but were supposed to be "intelligent people" etc etc.....between the years of 1964 and 1992 I actively supported this club, completely, it all became a sort of underachieving limbo in the end. Then these blokes came along and said it all has to change, everybody has had enough. And after a hesitant start, it came, and Keegan made it happen, he drove the board and they allowed him to manage the club when they realised he was doing it right. We all know what happened, and what nearly happened from there.

 

When the club became a PLC I had massive reservations, not about the board because Keegan had showed them how to make NUFC work and, if they had had any initial reservations, they had been convinced that Keegans way worked [under his management because he bought and spent the money well]. But when they floated, I was bothered that the backing of the club as we had got used to, would stop. I know Shepherd was the front man for the board by the late 1990's and while he wasn't so media friendly as Hall Snr, it didn't bother me so long as the direction and ambitions of the board didn't change. After initial doubts, they naturally subsided when the club continued to bring top players to the club and expanded the stadium. I wasn't bothered in the slightest about this "dogs" business, which I maintain was a deliberate attempt by the ManU supporting press to scupper the main challengers to their darlings and they were quite happy to whip up the frenzy, which succeeded. A relation from Jockland on wifey's side, taken in by this bollocks, asked me on the phone what I thought of it all, I said that I don't give a shite. She didn't understand that given a choice between media friendly or "nice" gentlemen running the club without ambition and a group who showed ambition and wanted success on the pitch, was a complete no brainer. The absolute LAST thing I wanted, at any price, was to have small minded unambitious people running the club again.

 

This is the whole basis of my reservations about anybody taking over from the Halls and Shepherd, in the last few years, when people wanted rid of them. Having supported the club from 1964-1992 I knew exactly what I didn't want, and as the club had been in a position where only 4 clubs had done better [sorry but it's relevant] what were the odds on someone coming in and doing better ? Its simple maths, and betting odds, commons sense, what were the chances of it happening ? The odds were stacked against it. Apply any sort of betting logic and it is obvious.

 

I saw the quotes from Mort, Allardyce, the PR stunts from Ashley and the nagging doubts I had quickly surfaced about him. Everything I saw and heard just added up to someone who wasn't going to attempt to keep the club competing at those levels. Add to that, what I've always said about football, which is that football clubs just don't make profits in the normal business sense, and it stuck out a mile what was going to happen. The club was starting to behave just like it had done during those decades of frustration prior to 1992.

 

I am still amazed that long term supporters like myself, who witnessed these years, took so long to cotton on to Mike Ashley.

 

I posted on NO for all that time, mainly NO, and people accused me of winding people up, I knew I was doing it but I also knew that I believed what I was saying. I wasn't going to say what people wanted to hear. They banned me for going on about it so much, but I just replied to people, and gave them what I thought was the truth, its that simple.

 

I didn't want to sell my shares in the club to Mike Ashley, but I didn't want to sell them to anybody. I quite liked having shares in the club, so when I opposed that forced sale of my shares, it was nothing to do with Mike Ashley and nothing to do with backing the old regime either.

 

I wanted someone to buy the club who would do better than the old regime just like everybody else, I only realised the odds were stacked against it. They are also stacked against whoever buying from Ashley doing it too. It's obvious when there are only 4 other clubs to beat so to speak. Now, only getting someone who restores ambition and direction to the club will be progress, such is the level this club has dropped to.

 

I am now convinced Mike Ashley wants his money back, and he is selling players to do that. He might sell the club when he has done this, or he might keep the club and run it at low operating levels and make a small profit, whichever he chooses, he will NEVER get anywhere near the old regime now, because he doesn't have the will to do what is needed, and realises selling a player to make a profit is easier than speculating on reaching the Champions League places. Which is the only way he is going to make a profit from the football "as a business", and is the only ways any club can make a worthwhile profit "as a business".

 

I'm afraid we face years of mediocrity with him as owner, the likes of which people never dreamed of when they were dishing out flak to the old regime for not qualifying for europe or the Champions League. It could be decades before anybody matches them, people may realise by then that they were a lot better than they thought at the time.

 

See for me, LM can be a good poster when he puts his thoughts in to it like this one.

 

More of this LM and less of the bollocks

 

I dont see that there has to be a right/wrong stance from the start. Plus I dont see that under FS we had to be 100% behind him at the end. Fact is, no matter what club you are, you want to improve. You think Arsenal are happy right now? Or should they be content they are not going to languish in 15th? No, they want to improve so we hear some wanting rid of Wenger etc.

 

Under FS we had reach some heady heights and it's stupid to even suggest everyone here didnt enjoy it. But the wheels started to come off in my opinion with some knee jerk reactions and managerial appointments. Souness to be exact. So, are fans, including myself, wrong to want the club where it was there an then to improve? Course not, We were neck and neck with chelsea and they were bought. We had seen what was possible, so was it wrong to want the same thing for us? Or should we have just settled for finished lower mid table as we'd tasted the top 4 and should be content with that?

 

When MA came along, SJH stuck his neck out and said it was a good move for the club. That MA would take us forward. It even started with promise when the likes of Colo came in. At the time, I had said the grass isnt always greener but I was excited at the prospect of change. Who wouldnt be? You yourself said it was possible we could see the top 5 again (or CL at least).

 

So where did it go wrong? I think MA has changed him plans as time went on. More an more I think he slowly slipped into where he is now. I think with the stick we give him and the fuck ups he has made (under bad advice or not) he is at the "fuck it" stage. He wont put a penny in, wants the club to support itself and I think he'll sell it at the first opportunity.

 

Now, I really dont understand why MA bought the club. Any club. I'm not sure what else he expected.

 

I dont see what is a bitter relationship changing. No matter what all the fans groups try and do to build bridged of communication.

 

My biggest gripe with you on here is that you seem to need to pigeon hole people into either Pro Ashley, or not. Fact is everyone enjoyed time under FS, everyone wanted us to get back where we had been with him. Everyone was excited at the prospect of a new owner and most are now fucked off with it.

 

When you sit and construct a post with thought, you can be one of the best posters on here with the club knowledge you have. But it seems to be 1 in 10 or 1 in 15 as the rest are just bickering and point scoring.

 

ta mate. I'm not deliberately pigeon holing anybody. People pigeon hole me too, regarding Shepherd etc, but I've just tried to explain how I see him/them and whats more I have made posts saying exactly the same thing about Hall Snr being "media friendly" as opposed to Fred etc 4-5 years ago too. I just think its very sad that the club is taking this backward direction, and I'm only replying to those who can't see it or those who continue to seem to only want to disagee with almost anything I post.

Edited September 9, 2011 by LeazesMag

[manc-mag 1]

Who is a 'self-proclaimed whizz kid'? Bearing in mind self proclaimed means that they proclaimed it themselves, not you about them, and as such you'll be able to provide a quote of theirs backing this up?

 

This is the words in mouth stuff.

[LeazesMag 0]

Who is a 'self-proclaimed whizz kid'?

 

you.

 

Divvent deny it man, you KNOW it

 

PS....you also know you're giving me the solicitor jargon, but the inference is clear.

 

Edited September 9, 2011 by LeazesMag

[Happy Face 29]

I'm not lying. I had reservations about Ashley from day 1 [the same as I had reservations about going PLC and for EXACTLY the same reason, which is precisely why I made that comment in that post]. The difference being that my doubts about Ashley were quickly substantiated whereas the ones about going PLC were quickly dispelled. I saw, VERY quickly, certain comparisons between my perception of Mike Ashley and the directors of the club prior to 1992.

 

I was banned from NO for taking this stance, in a big way for a long time, there is no other reason I was banned. Can you think of any reason ?

 

I'm not exaggerating any powers of foresight, but it makes me smile when self proclaimed whizz kids claim they are "clever" etc when they could not see the obvious and argued with me that I was so wrong. When I wasn't anything of the sort. Who's stupid ?

 

The odds are stacked against ANY owner doing better than being the 5th best performing club over a period of 15 years. The odds were stacked in my favour when I kept reminding people of this, you do see that don't you ? It makes me wonder why people argued about it. The logic and common sense was overpowering, I knew it and that is why I kept repeating it, and didn't really see why people disagreed.

 

I don't think it's an accident you'll say "I had reservations" which I think almost everyone did to some extent and makes you look serious, and follow it with "they could not see the obvious" which makes others look ridiculous...despite it not being obvious, just something to have reservations about. Those are 2 very different things and you know they are.

 

Worst of all, your taking out your N-O arguments against people on here. It's a shame you can't rub their noses in it if you were telling people over there what it would come to in late 2007, but you weren't telling anyone on Toontastic that....by your own admission.

[manc-mag 1]

Who is a 'self-proclaimed whizz kid'?

 

you.

 

Divvent deny it man, you KNOW it

 

If you said that with even a shred of seriousness though, it just goes to show there's no hope.

 

Do you not think it's far more likely to be your own perception, bearing in mind you evidently don't like solicitors, accountants, teachers etc?

 

I couldn't give a fuck about my profession fwiw.

[LeazesMag 0]

I'm not lying. I had reservations about Ashley from day 1 [the same as I had reservations about going PLC and for EXACTLY the same reason, which is precisely why I made that comment in that post]. The difference being that my doubts about Ashley were quickly substantiated whereas the ones about going PLC were quickly dispelled. I saw, VERY quickly, certain comparisons between my perception of Mike Ashley and the directors of the club prior to 1992.

 

I was banned from NO for taking this stance, in a big way for a long time, there is no other reason I was banned. Can you think of any reason ?

 

I'm not exaggerating any powers of foresight, but it makes me smile when self proclaimed whizz kids claim they are "clever" etc when they could not see the obvious and argued with me that I was so wrong. When I wasn't anything of the sort. Who's stupid ?

 

The odds are stacked against ANY owner doing better than being the 5th best performing club over a period of 15 years. The odds were stacked in my favour when I kept reminding people of this, you do see that don't you ? It makes me wonder why people argued about it. The logic and common sense was overpowering, I knew it and that is why I kept repeating it, and didn't really see why people disagreed.

 

I don't think it's an accident you'll say "I had reservations" which I think almost everyone did to some extent and makes you look serious, and follow it with "they could not see the obvious" which makes others look ridiculous...despite it not being obvious, just something to have reservations about. Those are 2 very different things and you know they are.

 

Worst of all, your taking out your N-O arguments against people on here. It's a shame you can't rub their noses in it if you were telling people over there what it would come to in late 2007, but you weren't telling anyone on Toontastic that....by your own admission.

 

I'm not purposely "taking out NO arguments on here", generally speaking, the posters on here are far more knowledgeable and older than on NO, and the admin people approach the running of the site with far more maturity too.

 

I'm just responding, but while I'm aware that most of my posts are about the politics of the club, I'll repeat what I've said before, which is that it interests me, far more than playing pick your best team with the likes of deano for instance, or automatically declaring any old French player to be the next David Ginola just because we've signed him. People also still say "I don't reply to posts", when I DO reply to the vast majority of the ones I see. You can't have it both ways.

 

I didn't post on here between February and November 2007 because of something which happened that got sorted out in the end to the satisfaction - hopefully - of both parties. I don't know if I would have had the same sort of opposition to the views I had at that time too - well, I probably would, but not with so many people.

 

I don't disagree with YOU about football, do we disagree ?

Edited September 9, 2011 by LeazesMag

[Guest alex]

I'm not deliberately pigeon holing anybody.

As much as I've time for you, that is exactly what you do a lot of the time in all honesty. Unless it's an accident

[Dr Gloom 20126]

Who is a 'self-proclaimed whizz kid'?

 

you.

 

Divvent deny it man, you KNOW it

 

If you said that with even a shred of seriousness though, it just goes to show there's no hope.

 

Do you not think it's far more likely to be your own perception, bearing in mind you evidently don't like solicitors, accountants, teachers etc?

 

I couldn't give a fuck about my profession fwiw.

 

shut up man, you're always harping on about it. so called whizz kid

[LeazesMag 0]

Who is a 'self-proclaimed whizz kid'?

 

you.

 

Divvent deny it man, you KNOW it

 

If you said that with even a shred of seriousness though, it just goes to show there's no hope.

 

Do you not think it's far more likely to be your own perception, bearing in mind you evidently don't like solicitors, accountants, teachers etc?

 

I couldn't give a fuck about my profession fwiw.

 

I've no problem at all with those professions in themselves, only when they think they automatically know more than me about football or politics.

 

Particularly, when you know absolutely nothing about me too, what I done/have done in my life. In fact, only two people on this entire message board know this, and both of them hardly post.

[manc-mag 1]

Who is a 'self-proclaimed whizz kid'?

 

you.

 

Divvent deny it man, you KNOW it

 

If you said that with even a shred of seriousness though, it just goes to show there's no hope.

 

Do you not think it's far more likely to be your own perception, bearing in mind you evidently don't like solicitors, accountants, teachers etc?

 

I couldn't give a fuck about my profession fwiw.

 

I've no problem at all with those professions in themselves, only when they think they automatically know more than me about football or politics.

 

Particularly, when you know absolutely nothing about me too, what I done/have done in my life. In fact, only two people on this entire message board know this, and both of them hardly post.

 

That just a pure ego thing mate at the end of the day. I couldn't care less what you do or have done, as far as discussing NUFC goes. Surprisingly, that's the only relevant bit for me.

Edited September 9, 2011 by manc-mag

[LeazesMag 0]

Who is a 'self-proclaimed whizz kid'?

 

you.

 

Divvent deny it man, you KNOW it

 

If you said that with even a shred of seriousness though, it just goes to show there's no hope.

 

Do you not think it's far more likely to be your own perception, bearing in mind you evidently don't like solicitors, accountants, teachers etc?

 

I couldn't give a fuck about my profession fwiw.

 

I've no problem at all with those professions in themselves, only when they think they automatically know more than me about football or politics.

 

Particularly, when you know absolutely nothing about me too, what I done/have done in my life. In fact, only two people on this entire message board know this, and both of them hardly post.

 

That just a pure ego thing mate at the end of the day. I couldn't care less what you do or have done.

 

Not an ego thing, what I do/have done is my own business, but when it comes to football or politics, I have my views, and just like anybody I think I'm right - except in footballing terms over the ownership of NUFC and what has happened to it over the past 4 years, I've been proved right despite your assertions that you knew better and you have bickered the toss with me over that time.....which is precisely what irks you.

[manc-mag 1]

Ok then but I reckon it's an insecurity tbh. And I'll just reiterate, I know it's your business-it doesn't bother me because it's nowt to do with NUFC anyway, just like my job isnt.

[trophyshy 6442]

Ok then but I reckon it's an insecurity tbh. And I'll just reiterate, I know it's your business-it doesn't bother me because it's nowt to do with NUFC anyway, just like my job isnt.

 

nail on head, must be painful for him tbh. Quite painful for readers of this site too.

[Park Life 71]

I would bring my anti-Asley stuff over (early doors) if NO wasn't in maintenance.

[peasepud 59]

Has N-O been that way for a few days now?