How do you know none of the Watford purchases were super expensive? In Ashley's World it's not just the fee which is relevant. It's also the wages. They may not have cost much by way of fee but they could be earning a good bob or two on the wages front. Rafa is not just hamstrung by the size of the fee that's payable he is also hamstrung on the wages we offer. I find it somewhat bemusing that Rafa is receiving severe criticism (he deserves some but not to the extent that is being handed out from all quarters) when he is severely restricted in how he is operating in the transfer market and getting probably 3rd or 4th desperation choices as opposed to first or second choices. I would also imagine his "want" list is also prepared n the basis of not going for absolute first choices (and I don't mean the Messi's etc of the world) but for first choices which he thinks would be sanctioned by the Club. The reasons we are not flourishing is all and I mean all down to one person, Ashley and no-one else.
As an eternal optimist, here are some positives to take away from this result: 1) Rondon has got off the mark. Strikers score when confident. Confidence comes from goals. And heaven knows we need someone who can score! 2) We're out of the cup early on, which means it won't be a distraction when we need it least. 3) We blooded some youngsters, who don't look terrible. Given we haven't brought through an academy player in donkey's years, that is an improvement at least. 4) Some of the players, e.g. Perez, seem to care - and maybe this result will be a kick up the backside for them. Unity in adversity and all that. 5) It was a close run thing. We're a Championship outfit playing in the Premier League (last year's finish looks more and more a testament to Rafa's brilliance), and NF are a solid Championship outfit. We played an understrength side, changed tactics to score an equaliser, and then should have had a stonewall penalty. It would feel very different if those had gone our way.
Forest's players won't be on high wages yet can move the ball about well, they played out of their defense around our players several times yesterday with lovely one touch football and triangles. Obviously what they work on in training where as we just kept pumping it long every time we had the ball. I know Rafa will be practicing defending in the opening weeks because of the first 5 fixtures we have but equally there is no way we shouldn't be able to match the quality of football on offer from a championship team (even though that's what we have) - no disrespect to Forest - who were really impressive for me. Yesterday was God awful and I don't think you can blame Ashley solely for what was an abject team performance and I include the staff in that. Darlow was the only player on the pitch who was there before Rafa out of the starting XI yesterday + the 2 young lads, bar that they are 8 Rafa signings and none of them were good enough. Atsu, Clark and Joselu shouldn't be at the club, Ki offered nothing, Muto looked lost, CB's were average, Kenedy need to be taken out of the starting XI for a while.
Those positives sound fine. But we played awful, lost yet another game, tactics where basic and far too rigid and the players are fighting amongst themselves. This does not bode well. Of the signings we have made I don’t think any are improvments on what we had and that is shocking. The whole club is messed up. Our scouting network is a shambles. Our owner is a prat. Our ceo is incompetent and now Rafa will be gone by the end of the season. It’s all a right mess!
I stopped watching at half time. Probably the most insipid 45 mins I've seen in years. We should be used to the reserves being used for cup games, but it never stops irritating me. If this is the 'modern way' for NUFC then i'm pretty much done. We get a first team that MIGHT survive in the PL and the rest of the below average squad get wheeled-out for the shameful cup 'performances'. Ashley's reign will now last as long as he wants and I'll have no further part in it. Disgusting that Toon fans get ripped-off this way, year upon year. No value for money, but as long as they turn up en masse, then Ashley stays. Enough is enough.
Any other club would have seen support dwindle, rather than consistently hosting 50k fans, the vast majority of which are season ticket holders. It's a strength, but also an incredible weakness. I think we have had so many low points, it would take something of unbelievable proportions for supporter disruption. I'm talking about Ashley castrating Shearer with his teeth, groping Maggy the Magpie, or kicking a cute dog square in the face.
Take relegation and Rafa going and that will make or break the club. This is what will happen this season. Either Ashley goes as a result and then we restart or he stays and we become a mid championship club. Maybe a relegation and Rafa leaving would devalue the club enough for someone else to take a punt and then maybe Rafa would come back. Rafa is clearly just playing the cautious card atm. He is also not stupid. He can manipulate a takeover by basically sabotaging things by basically doing what he is currently doing. The **** is going to hit the fan end of this season one way or another. I just think Ashley’s skin is thicker than most and if he is not seeing it or feeling it he does not care. It’s going to take a massive collapse for this to become better.
For most of us Mike Ashley selling up is the be all and end all at the moment and the only way that is happening is if we are a stable Premier League club with which he can find a generous buyer. We want to be staying up if we are wanting him to **** off.
I disagree. That’s the complete opposite of what is needed. He needs to feel threatened with losing money. That is the only way he leAves. If he feels his net worth is going down he will sell. If we keep surviving by minimum spend he will just keep using the club like a spent prostitute who has its regular customers.
We need to go down, and stay down. Fans leaving will help that cause. Rafa should walk, I hate the football but do believe he would keep the club up. Quid pro quo I want Rafa out too!! Look what it took for Sunderland. The clues are there.
You're both totally wrong of course. We are not financially ****ed like Sunderland and we certainly don't have an owner who would give the club away and wipe the debt. Ashey would allow the club to spend to get us back up again. If we go down we have tens of millions sitting there in the bank. Plus this years TV money and parachute payments the next season. Get this into your heeds lads: Mike Ashley will not sell this football club for a loss. Period. He will hang onto it until he gets what he wants. People are staying away already, right? People have been saying this **** for about 10 years now. Remind me of the attendance at the last home game.
The fat idiot has lost around £70m on his Debenhams shares. At some point he's going to have to cut his losses with NUFC. The share price of SD has been wiped enormously this past year - not much to do with NUFC, per se, but the negative press isnt helping. He's losing millions upon millions and at some point has to be realistic and say "I bought it for £134m with £76m debt. By relegation that "debt", which I owe myself, is £140m. I've had 11 years of enormously beneficial advertising, so let's break even the debt and call it a round £200m just so I can get out of this crap and rebuild the reputation". Tarnishing HoF, Debenhams, etc., with the same brush that's causing SD to spiral downwards is not going to help. Debenhams adverts around SJP aren't going to do anything. Relegation is a very real threat once again, the cost is something he will not want to shoulder - which probably explains the massive contingency plan we have in the ****ing bank. He's very, very close to being in a weakened position with NUFC, and must realise it. If he has a brain anywhere in that play-doh head of his, he will want out of this club before Xmas and turn his limited attention to the pile em high/sell it cheap high street he's used to. Like Richard Keys, he loves any press. He loves being a villain, I think. If the fans just don't bother, if the press dwindles, the ire fades and Sky stop picking the games, it loses the appeal. He loves being the binge drinking office drunk, he loves the fact people know he vomits into a fireplace at a board meeting. This **** is his jam, man. What he hates is apathy, slow death, nothingness. People - all people - should stand together and not go to SJP. It's a ****ing **** tip anyway - what kind of PL stadium has damp on the walls caused by piss? 20 minutes to get a portion of chips, ffs. EFL signs up over the ketchup. I've seen more attractive car parks, and better games of football played in those car parks. Sometimes true pride isn't going blithely along with things. Sometimes it's about making a tougher choice.
Has he sold those shares? If he has then he's lost money. If he hasn't, then he hasn't lost anything. You really think Mike Ashley talks to himself like this? Sounds more like a Newcastle fan's perspective to me. These protests are making no difference to SD's performance. Fantasy land if you believe that's true. Probably but his play-doh head has brought us to a position again where we are at risk of relegation and any reasonable prospective buyer will hold fire in case we go down. Just like Staveley's consortium last season. Then he bumped the price up. I'm not defending the bloke. The complete opposite in fact. I'm just saying MIKE ASHLEY WILL NOT SELL FOR A LOSS. Yes, he's letting it decline. He is a tight fisted ****. No argument. I've said before that people arrogantly think they have some control over the situation. If they do it is negligible.
Thing is, if you’re a better team in lower division you can play that way all season so are used to it, where as you guys don’t play that way so having to or being able to switch style all of a sudden isn’t going to be something that can easily be done (not unless you have very high quality’s players etc)
Yup but If Rafa tried to get you guys playing nice attacking open football, in the short term with players then might be disastrous and end up getting relegated. It’s certainly a tough balance. Rafa has always been first and foremost a solid defensive manager and win games tactically rather than with brute force like say Klopp. That’s why he was a genius in Europe. In the lesgue, problem is that often leads to a few too many draws.
Disagree with the first point, stringing 5/6 passes together shouldn't be a problem for a professional football team. Second point, I'd say we should be doing the opposite of what Rafa is doing, we didn't sit in vs Tottenham or Cardiff, we just played shockingly. Then we've tried to defend vs Chelsea and agree with most we were unlucky not to get something but from these first 5 games (including today vs City - who we will lose to heavily if we try and sit in against and Arsenal after the international break) why not throw caution to the wind and try and attack teams - get an attacking style of play starting to sink in when in reality we were only ever likely to get points of Cardiff from our first five games this year. After that we have 2 of the top 6 in our next 14 fixtures before the midway point and could have started to play attacking football while not being further behind than what was expected after 5 (6 including the cup) games of the season and 33 games left of the season to play well and try and beat teams. With Palace, Leicester then Man U after Arsenal we could well end up on 1/2 points after 8 games with players who are trying to scrape a 1-0 win against teams who we should be attacking thereafter. Proof will be in the pudding at the end of the season but I feel sitting in trying to snatch points early doors is going to prove to be problematic when we need to start winning games later on in the season after a bad start - which we/I are/am expecting.
