I honestly don't think so... It seems more likely the club will eventually be relegated and that post brexit/covid that Newcastle will struggle and follow boro and Sunderland... It's a sad sad end to north east football on the horizon. I found myself checking newsnow for news on takeovers as much as I did for potential signings over the last decade and I find it depressing that's become our only hope of survival let alone competing for top half and an unlikely cup.. Without a takeover I don't see any light at the end of this. Is anyone genuinely still positive about or looking forward to this season.?
We've spent 14 years looking for some "excitement", time to call off the search. Personally I think there's an end in sight for football as we know it. Sky/BT are not going to pay the same amounts again and once the TV rights start to decline everything will follow. Almost every club has built its business on TV revenue believing that income stream is bulletproof, but the Chinese have put paid to that in their assault on capitalism. It feels to me like there's nothing like the same appetite for football that there once was. I don't really see as many kits as I used to - and I spent the weekend on a caravan site - nor do I hear kids bleating on about it. There's a hardcore selection who will still go, but part of the problem is football no longer connects to these people, the working man (and below). It doesn't even TRY to connect with them because it knows they don't have any money. A good indicator of the importance of fans is matchday revenue - proudly, NUFC are 4th and the North East is as poor as anywhere. Bournemouth and the like barely have any fans and don't have any money outside of TV income, they're amateur, college sides masquerading as PL clubs. Man City & Chelsea haven't won trophies through canny commercial deals or expanding fan bases, it's all based on advertising and rich people feeding money into it. The post-Covid world won't sustain that model. Once TV revenues drop so will the value of the club, so will the advertising deals, and so on. It's a slippery slope with only one solution - another reinvention of the format. It will not be long at all before plans are afoot to create an elitist club, an NFL-style European league where the same clubs keep playing each other over and over and over. Under that will be "regional" championships This may rescue the game, it may kill it, time will tell. It's telling that Sky are endlessly running programs reflecting on the glory days, but they're long gone. Aguero banging in a PL winning goal on behalf of the State of UAE's and all its billions was the final nail in the fairness coffin. The creation of the "Big 6" and the elitism has destroyed a lot of the soul of football. None of it is helped by the advent of Twitter and thousands of forums where the immediacy of news and information makes following a black hole club like Newcastle even more depressing and leads to more and more feelings of an absence of excitement. The takeover has revealed the corruption and we're now stuck in a limbo of "what is the point". At least 12 games a year are played as such massive underdogs that it's back page news if you scrape a draw - what the **** is that about? Home games should be winnable for every club, and they're just not. 14 clubs are faced with almost certainly losing at least 12 games before the season even begins, so why is there even one league when it's split so spectacularly in 2? Excitement died for us and others many years ago. When your best times are in the division below, there's something badly wrong. Football itself is really, really boring. This idea that fans just want to see good football is pathetically stupid and it doesn't matter how many times "pundits" repeat it, it's not going to happen - could any Man U fan give a toss how good the football played by Liverpool is? Or vice versa? Of course not. Football's tribal and we're supposed to forget that to keep paying our Sky subscription to watch Kevin De Bruyne, when in reality most fans are sick to death of the best players playing for the same elite clubs and never their own. Many of us here have gradually receded back from Sky Sports and season tickets to illegal streams when we can be bothered. Football is on life support and I'm personally keeping fingers crossed that it becomes another victim of Covid-19.
I'd rather have golf membership than a season ticket for NUFC. I get much more value for money and crucially, I can do something about my performance whereas in football, I can do bot all and end up as frustrated as the rest of you. Fook football and the hugely overpaid players.
I am looking forward to the season. Wouldn’t matter whether we were in The PL or the Northern Premier League the start of a new season starting never fails to get me excited. Just hope I will be able to catch a few live games this season but I suspect it will be season ticket holders only. Might buy one once they start offering them.
And then of course there will be the next takeover bid, just before the opening of the January transfer window.
True but I don't expect anyone being mad enough to buy the club that will at that point be right in the mix of a relegation battle.. It'll be next summer before the next fruitless takeover attempt
I heard a cheeky little rumour doing the rounds - apparently they're planning on painting some rooms soon.
I don't doubt his business credentials for a moment me. He's built a giant ****ing company while all his competition went bust. He did it through balls, he snapped up percentages of his competition, cut employee costs. He's brutal.
Yep he's the type of guy that if you stuck a piece of coal up his arse in two weeks you'd have a diamond
