Transfer Window January 2022

I was hoping it is a joke tbf. Worrying that there are actually people out there who think like this...

 

It's the prevailing opinion amongst Newcastle fans, Newcastle legends, local journalists, national journalists, international journalists, financial experts, pundits, and even Mike Ashley himself. They all say he was bad for Newcastle United, so why is that?

Well, the club he bought was regularly in Europe, the club he sold was regularly courting relegation. The club he bought could be proud of it's facilities, the club he sold couldn't. The club he bought filled the stadium more often than not, the club he sold had to give away 10,000 tickets. The wages under Ashley have been brought in line with bottom half of the Premier League, where our erstwhile rivals have surpassed us entirely. The debt didn't go away, it was just owed to him. £111m of it. That's no small sum, even if it less than clubs like Man Utd. Especially when you consider that the club he bought had comparable commercial revenue to Spurs, the club he sold has less commercial revenue than Brighton (who came up from League 1 during his tenure).

The data backs up that from where we were, to where he left us, was a decline.

 

See, you've done it again. You're looking very silly here.

Either
a) You genuinely believe that by being a Newcastle fan someone must be in favour of barbarism. If so, that's infantile. Or,
b) You're being a troll. Which is also infantile.

 

Who am Iooking silly to? You? Gazza? Spuggy? Mohammed bin Saud?

I don't care.

 

Yes, a decline. Didn’t say he was a good owner, did I? But he was not uniquely awful either - just a below average owner whose tenure saw you fall behind other clubs who became far wealthier during the period (eg Leicester, Everton, Man City).

It seems that most Newcastle fans are willing to look the other way and ignore Saudi atrocities and justify it in part based on how awful the experience with Ashley was. But it just wasn’t that awful.

 

It’s amazing you guys stayed so silent over him being such a bad owner for so long, I guess there would’ve been no point making your feelings clear because it wouldn’t have made a difference.

 

So what you're saying, is that we're allowed to be disgruntled with the owner, but just not as much as you perceive we are? How come you're the arbiter of how disgruntled a fanbase can be? Do you also police the disaffection felt by Arsenal fans at how they're run? Or Man Utd fans? Why do Geordies have to know their place and be happy with what they had? Why now are they forbidden from being excited about the future of their club, their region when such restrictions are not placed on Man City, or Chelsea fans?

There are few things running concurrently here
Ashley was almost universally disliked by the fans because of the neglect and disdain he showed as owner and the Newcastle fans wanted change.
The only change that was available was the Saudis.
The takeover was finally approved by everyone with power to stop it, but the fans are the ones being blamed for it?

I have no poll to back it up, but anecdotally every single fan I've spoken to would rather it was a different owner, even if that meant we were run on a similar budget to Ashley.

Now, because a takeover that was out of our hands was celebrated, we're painted as terrorist sympathisers and supporters of a brutal regime? Just scrutinise that for a second. The position that an entire region, an entire fanbase has fundamentally changed their beliefs because of a football takeover? That is patently absurd.

I also think it's entirely disingenuous to suggest that other clubs' fans would walk away from their boyhood club if they were taken over by the Saudis. That Newcastle fans are somehow unique in this.

 

Is this satire? I can’t tell if you’re joking or not now?

If not this is possibly the funniest/least self aware statement I’ve ever read.

 

I think he probably will

 

Yeah, I'm guessing that these few are fixed on disagreeing despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, maybe for sport or because of entrenched beliefs. Either way it's pointless, so I'll stop trying, as I'm sure that would be entirely tedious to everyone else.

Apologies to everyone else.

 

To be fair, I’d convert to Voodoo if it meant a billionaire bought out Pozzo and got rid of Sema and Cathcart.

 

Owner sells giant mugs and is a cockney - terrible bloke, protest!

Owner directly involved in the starvation of nearly 100k children in Yemen - yeah but he’s promised us Mbappe. What can we do?

 

You repeatedly saying “we don’t like it but we can’t do anything about it” is not “evidence”.

 

You're conflating different topics.

 

To be fair, it cured Sarr. I’m hoping we can get all of the witch doctors in.

 

First of all, if Arsenal fans came on our forum complaining about a former owner or whatever I don’t think they would get a good reception here. I am not ‘policing’ anyone but sharing my views on another club on my club’s forums. Do you go to every PL club’s forum to advocate for Newcastle? If so, that’s a bit odd.

Secondly, I don’t know how you can call me disingenuous for saying something I haven’t said. I agree that I think most clubs’ fans wouldn’t walk away. I’d like to think I would but can’t honestly tell you that I can.

All the Newcastle Twitter accounts with large fan followings tweet regularly about how much they love the owners (think Mouth of the Tyne, NUFC360 and the like) and how they are the best owners and how it is a dream etc. Maybe your anecdata is a different part of the fan base from these accounts’s tens of thousands of followers but I find that level of sycophanty and celebration uncomfortable.

 

If Putin bought us and made us Champions League, I'd live with it, but I'd not go on other team's fora to squirm and pretend like I still had some moral high ground for supporting it.

 

Stockpiling weapons > Stockpiling players

Putin > Gino

 

Firstly, I talked about the transfers and relegation, until it was suggested that 'most Newcastle fans will twist themselves in knots to defend their owners' which I disagreed with. It then became the usual nonsense. I reserve the right to defend my fellow Newcastle fans from ill-informed criticism.

Secondly, I was saying that your fellow Watford supporters who did suggest that were being disingenuous.

Mouth of the Tyne is an object of ridicule, but has a large following, very similar to Steve 'Sell his own granny' Wraith. Doesn't mean they all share their views on everything. Just as Arsenal Fan Tv's followers don't necessarily share their views either. Hell, I follow James Blunt, but I hate his music...

I don't see NUFC360 regularly tweeting about how much they love PIF, can you show some of these tweets?

 

I recognise this most recent Tweet is just parroting a news report but I find the replies especially quite revealing about fan sentiment. Not seeing much discomfort/criticism for Saudi Arabia there are we? But they are not representative of the fan base I’m sure.
https://twitter.com/nufc360/status/1489252422635507715?s=21

 

You were expecting the replies to be "Down with Saudi Arabia!!"?

Come off it.

 

No, I wasn’t. But you are still yet to show much proof of introspection/discomfort from Saudi atrocities among the NUFC fan base. There’s just delight at the mountains of blood money being spent on the squad. Which is to be expected, I guess, but don’t come on and say that most fans are ambivalent and would prefer any other owner etc. Fans at the ground in headscarves waving Saudi flags aren’t representative, fans on Twitter with Saudi flags in their account names aren’t representative. Where are all the representative fans then? At the Stadium of Light!?

I guess we’ll just have to take your word for it and close our eyes to all evidence to the contrary.

 

83% of those surveyed by the Athletic were concerned about the Saudi human rights violations.
The handful of fans in headscarves at the announcement of the takeover are exactly that, a handful.
The morons on twitter with Saudi flags do not make up the majority of Newcastle fans on twitter, let alone the majority of Newcastle fans in actual real life.

It's like believing that all Man Utd fans are from Essex, or all Chelsea fans are racist. Judging a large group because of the behaviour of a minority is narrow minded.

 

There’s another thread that branches off that with comments such as ‘perfect owners’, ‘best owners’, ‘we are going to kill football’.

But they aren’t representative of the support. Nor are the ones at the stadium giving the new owners a standing ovation. Nor are the ones that dress up in Arabian garb. I’m not quite sure where they are, the ones who aren’t happy with the new ownership.

Maybe they all popped into a consulate in Turkey?

 

It'd be funny just to see the reaction of the press. You think they don't like us now...

 

Never met a bearable Arsenal fan in my life. I always try with them, but their arrogant **** nature soon shines through.

Two not-as-interesting-as-yours major events I can think of, I was on the train and was passing by their morgue of a stadium just after they drew with West Brom. A couple got on and I got chatting to one of them, we talked about football for a bit until the other half pipes up and goes on a tirade about Watford, Elton John, Graham Taylor, homosexuality. The lot. He drunkenly passed out and she apologised for him. Clearly it wasn’t new behaviour.

The other being my friend who’s married to an Arsenal fan and he’s the worst of them all. The sort you’d see on AFTV, lives in the past, thinks they’re a big team still and all that. I hadn’t seen them for a while, and he turns up for a dinner and says ‘aren’t you supporting a proper team yet’ in a completely deadpan serious way.

Suffice to say, I hated the arrogant **** before and my opinion has never changed.

Every moment they spend being **** is a moment of my life that’s enjoyable.

 

I like the Athletic but I think fans on Twitter and at the stadium are a more representative data set than those subscribers to an American long-form sports media outlet. In the same way a Sun poll of Newcastle-supporting readers would result in a different outlook from an Economist poll of Newcastle-supporting readers.

 

I believe that most Man Utd fans are from Surrey, most Chelsea fans are racist and most Newcastle fans would happily see Yemeni children piled live into furnaces, if it meant they could win some silverware.

 

‘Concerned’

FML.

 

Liverpool fans. Every single time. For me anyway. Never, ever, ever….and I genuinely mean ever, have I met one I can even tolerate.

 

Game, set and match.

 

Agreed. Never met a Scouser I didn't loathe.

 

Fabulous post in so many ways. One of my favourite ever.

 

From my experience Scousers are usually ******** merchants

 

Yep. Like someone flying a kite on a breezy day.