Newcastle United now owned by the PIF | PL receives "legally binding assurances that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will not control NUFC" ;)

WeePat

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Not sure which dictator it was, I think Saddam, that used to personally beat the national team with a wooden stick for not qualifying to WC. So "brutal within scopes of football" has a certain ambivalence to it as well.
I know what you mean, but come on mate, you're being difficult for no reason here :lol:
 

Foxbatt

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It is rumoured that Ralf Rangnick is being offered a top job at Newcastle. He would bring in a top coach. They will pour a lot of money into Newcastle.
 

golden_blunder

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To me it's silly. Newcastle has hit the jackpot. It's absurd for a lot of newspapers and journalists to froth at the mouth as lots of them encouraged the illegal invasion of Iraq. An invasion that has destabilised the whole world.
No reason to blame the fans and to be honest it's hypocritical for fans of other clubs to blame them.
2 seperate wrongs don’t make a right.
 

Infra-red

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A lot of whataboutism in this thread
Threads on this topic never get very far on here without some moron bringing up Tony Blair, 18th century imperialism, the Crusades or some other ludicrous non sequitur.

These threads all went the same way when people asserted the perfectly reasonable opinion that they'd rather not see Manchester United owned by a murderous regime of human rights abusers:

https://www.redcafe.net/threads/wou...rs-sell-to-saudi-arabia-backed-owners.462371/
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/sau...es-update-on-buying-club-from-glazers.452145/
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/the-saudi-takeover-rumor-thread.442894/
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/could-utd-be-sold-soon.442209/
 

Hansa

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Haven't really followed this thread, so just a couple of random thoughts:

I cancelled my PL subscription this summer, and I'm glad I did. This takeover wiped out the last bit of enthusiasm for the English game (my interest in the Champions League waned a long time ago), and the PL deserves every bit of bad publicity coming their way. I will obviously still keep an eye out for United's results, read a few articles and watch the odd game if possible, but in the grand scheme of things, I'm not too bothered about the outcome anymore. With me being an armchair fan who's getting a bit too old to buy the latest home kit, I don't think United will lose too much sleep when people like me find other things to do. German football with its ownership model and fan involvement would have been the logical replacement, but it's hard to whip up enthusiasm for a one-team league.

As for the takeover itself, there isn't much to say. The PL has invited the lions into the house, so don't be surprised if they start nibbling away at the owners. And while I'm normally not a fan of "my morals are better than yours" type of discussions, I think Newcastle fans who support the takeover should be forced to defend their stance in every discussion with every other football fan for years to come.
 

KiD MoYeS

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I'm enjoying the international break and am apathetic to the Premier League returning this weekend.

I do hope Spurs smash these human rights abusers on Sunday though.
 

the_cliff

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It has got nothing to do with Saudis buying. It is the hypocrisy of the white man can do anything but others can't do it. The Saudis are a nasty lot but so have the British and the Americans too.
I'd agree with you, but the British/American Governments don't own football clubs. When the Democrats or Republicans decide to buy Southampton I'm sure the uproar would be the same.
 

UTD_Since_1978

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I was just thinking, if this had happened about 2 or 3 years ago would we have seen both Messi & Ronaldo sign for NUFC the summer just gone because let's face it Messi only went to the crappy French league because PSG were the only club willing to pay his huge wages?
 

Lash

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It is rumoured that Ralf Rangnick is being offered a top job at Newcastle. He would bring in a top coach. They will pour a lot of money into Newcastle.
Interesting, where did you see that? He'd be a very astute recruit, got experience for implementing a top to bottom system at a club.
 

SCP

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Interesting, where did you see that? He'd be a very astute recruit, got experience for implementing a top to bottom system at a club.
His profile doesn't seem the type of short term building wasting tons of money on inflated transfers really.
 

Lash

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His profile doesn't seem the type of short term building wasting tons of money on inflated transfers really.
Good job we've got some great deals going on down at Old Trafford's discount player emporium.
 

redshaw

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I was just thinking, if this had happened about 2 or 3 years ago would we have seen both Messi & Ronaldo sign for NUFC the summer just gone because let's face it Messi only went to the crappy French league because PSG were the only club willing to pay his huge wages?
Not sure about that, he has a lot of friends at PSG. Pretty sure he'd pick PSG again.
 

ariveded

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That's why the ESL protests were misguided and stupid, as the rot is already at the top level.

On topic itself, one should not make too much of political positions of owners or players. It will only be miserable, and many disgreements. There is BLM, but will these players stand up for LGBT rights? Espeically, it is banned in some nationalities and religion.
 

UTD_Since_1978

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Not sure about that, he has a lot of friends at PSG. Pretty sure he'd pick PSG again.
They might've signed his mates too especially Neymar, I'm pretty darn sure Neymar would swap playing in the French league with playing in EPL.
 

Thømas

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Not english so wouldn't call myself a fan of any english club, but I have had a lot of symphathy for NUFC, and here (Denmark) it's not uncommon to see NUFC supporters, so they do have quite a foreign following, this mainly due too the Keegan era and, obviously, them having a nice Kit.

Over the last 10 years My interest in the Premier League has waned completely, it's all about money now, and obviously the Saudis buying Newcastle, is not going to change that, rather accelerate that tendency.

What is hypocritical is supporters of big clubs, now, all of the sudden, taking an interest in who owns the club, i dont think that there is a major european club that isn't entangled with autocratic dictatorships, on Man Utds web page, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is praised. Look at the name of Arsenals stadium. Real Madrid was Francos toy for decades and Barcelona has PR tours to dictatorial regimes as a way to recruit new fans for the club. All to increase revenue, Because the biggest clubs in Europe thought that it would give them an edge, a way to make their club the top dog, if they could legitimize their economical muscles as part off the game.

Instead leagues are in ruins all across the continent. PSG has won "trebles" three times in the last five years. Ajax is taking a massive pis§ on the dutch league, Bayern is completely dominating the German, and so on.

The only way to get football back to it's passionate roots is to create national leagues, that operates with set budgets, for each club that is equal. So every team has an oppotunity to win the league or get relegated, enough with the insane capitalism deciding who has the best side of athlethes.

I dont see it happening in the bigger leagues as investors has to much money on the line, i think they will move to some sort of european super league, i wouldn't even be surpriced if clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus and a handfull og other big european clubs joined the premier league and had it as a replacement for the national leagues and the champions League, a product that could be sold in the US and Asia, and possible even to some europeans, that way the bigger english clubs wouldn't have to worry about reaching an ever increasing difficult top 4, the money from the CL would already be in the league.

Hopefully it would mean that some of the leagues could go back to being about, pride in ones city, passion for the sport and kids playing football for the city to make their people proud, if something like that, making the game equal for all in the league, dont happen, then football is a done for sport, at least for me, then it has been reduced to Wrestling, where the outcome is planned beforehand, which is not a sport, but a spectacle.
 

adexkola

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Not english so wouldn't call myself a fan of any english club, but I have had a lot of symphathy for NUFC, and here (Denmark) it's not uncommon to see NUFC supporters, so they do have quite a foreign following, this mainly due too the Keegan era and, obviously, them having a nice Kit.

Over the last 10 years My interest in the Premier League has waned completely, it's all about money now, and obviously the Saudis buying Newcastle, is not going to change that, rather accelerate that tendency.

What is hypocritical is supporters of big clubs, now, all of the sudden, taking an interest in who owns the club, i dont think that there is a major european club that isn't entangled with autocratic dictatorships, on Man Utds web page, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is praised. Look at the name of Arsenals stadium. Real Madrid was Francos toy for decades and Barcelona has PR tours to dictatorial regimes as a way to recruit new fans for the club. All to increase revenue, Because the biggest clubs in Europe thought that it would give them an edge, a way to make their club the top dog, if they could legitimize their economical muscles as part off the game.

Instead leagues are in ruins all across the continent. PSG has won "trebles" three times in the last five years. Ajax is taking a massive pis§ on the dutch league, Bayern is completely dominating the German, and so on.

The only way to get football back to it's passionate roots is to create national leagues, that operates with set budgets, for each club that is equal. So every team has an oppotunity to win the league or get relegated, enough with the insane capitalism deciding who has the best side of athlethes.

I dont see it happening in the bigger leagues as investors has to much money on the line, i think they will move to some sort of european super league, i wouldn't even be surpriced if clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus and a handfull og other big european clubs joined the premier league and had it as a replacement for the national leagues and the champions League, a product that could be sold in the US and Asia, and possible even to some europeans, that way the bigger english clubs wouldn't have to worry about reaching an ever increasing difficult top 4, the money from the CL would already be in the league.

Hopefully it would mean that some of the leagues could go back to being about, pride in ones city, passion for the sport and kids playing football for the city to make their people proud, if something like that, making the game equal for all in the league, dont happen, then football is a done for sport, at least for me, then it has been reduced to Wrestling, where the outcome is planned beforehand, which is not a sport, but a spectacle.
Surely you jest. Football was awesome before the big bad wolves in Chelsea, PSG, City and Newcastle came along. And any monopolies in talent and resource were earned, just like they teach you in Econ 101
 

Thømas

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Surely you jest. Football was awesome before the big bad wolves in Chelsea, PSG, City and Newcastle came along. And any monopolies in talent and resource were earned, just like they teach you in Econ 101
Surely.

Nothing as exciting as a nice monopoly. Actually, why dont Saudi Arabia just buy all the other Premier League clubs, with transfer fees and wages going though the roof, they might even spare some money, then simply hire 12 year olds to play for every other team than the toon. They wouldn't need to strengthen the current squad much to finish top 4 in such a league.
 

Wolf1992

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Not english so wouldn't call myself a fan of any english club, but I have had a lot of symphathy for NUFC, and here (Denmark) it's not uncommon to see NUFC supporters, so they do have quite a foreign following, this mainly due too the Keegan era and, obviously, them having a nice Kit.

Over the last 10 years My interest in the Premier League has waned completely, it's all about money now, and obviously the Saudis buying Newcastle, is not going to change that, rather accelerate that tendency.

What is hypocritical is supporters of big clubs, now, all of the sudden, taking an interest in who owns the club, i dont think that there is a major european club that isn't entangled with autocratic dictatorships, on Man Utds web page, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is praised. Look at the name of Arsenals stadium. Real Madrid was Francos toy for decades and Barcelona has PR tours to dictatorial regimes as a way to recruit new fans for the club. All to increase revenue, Because the biggest clubs in Europe thought that it would give them an edge, a way to make their club the top dog, if they could legitimize their economical muscles as part off the game.

Instead leagues are in ruins all across the continent. PSG has won "trebles" three times in the last five years. Ajax is taking a massive pis§ on the dutch league, Bayern is completely dominating the German, and so on.

The only way to get football back to it's passionate roots is to create national leagues, that operates with set budgets, for each club that is equal. So every team has an oppotunity to win the league or get relegated, enough with the insane capitalism deciding who has the best side of athlethes.

I dont see it happening in the bigger leagues as investors has to much money on the line, i think they will move to some sort of european super league, i wouldn't even be surpriced if clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus and a handfull og other big european clubs joined the premier league and had it as a replacement for the national leagues and the champions League, a product that could be sold in the US and Asia, and possible even to some europeans, that way the bigger english clubs wouldn't have to worry about reaching an ever increasing difficult top 4, the money from the CL would already be in the league.

Hopefully it would mean that some of the leagues could go back to being about, pride in ones city, passion for the sport and kids playing football for the city to make their people proud, if something like that, making the game equal for all in the league, dont happen, then football is a done for sport, at least for me, then it has been reduced to Wrestling, where the outcome is planned beforehand, which is not a sport, but a spectacle.
Ajax has always been the biggest club in Netherlands, where is the surprise that they are dominating dutch league?

If anything, big money screwed dutch football in Champions League, same with Portugal.
Now the best dutch and portuguese players are strengthen english,spanish, german and italian clubs instead of their own.

Modern football is completely imbalanced, with rich clubs gathering at least 90% of european talent, and giving just residual players for non-rich clubs.
Just imagine that a super talented Zico played for small italian club in the 80s, that would be like Benzema or Modric at their peak playing for Granada or Real Sociedad.
 

Thømas

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Ajax has always been the biggest club in Netherlands, where is the surprise that they are dominating dutch league?

If anything, big money screwed dutch football in Champions League, same with Portugal.
Now the best dutch and portuguese players are strengthen english,spanish, german and italian clubs instead of the
Ajax has always been the biggest club in Netherlands, where is the surprise that they are dominating dutch league?

If anything, big money screwed dutch football in Champions League, same with Portugal.
Now the best dutch and portuguese players are strengthen english,spanish, german and italian clubs instead of their own.

Modern football is completely imbalanced, with rich clubs gathering at least 90% of european talent, and giving just residual players for non-rich clubs.
Just imagine that a super talented Zico played for small italian club in the 80s, that would be like Benzema or Modric at their peak playing for Granada or Real Sociedad.
ir own.

Modern football is completely imbalanced, with rich clubs gathering at least 90% of european talent, and giving just residual players for non-rich clubs.
Just imagine that a super talented Zico played for small italian club in the 80s, that would be like Benzema or Modric at their peak playing for Granada or Real Sociedad.

PSV could give them a run for their money, i would say. Although Ajax is a very big club in The Netherlands.

Of course the smaller leagues are being completely wrecked by the influx of money at the top of the league, because the money(From Champions League and television) obviously has a bigger impact, in leagues operating on smaller budgets. The problem is it has become completely legitimate to spend 5 - 6 times the budget of the competitors.

Without football having a culture that seems capable to agree on the fact, that, that is a bit like winning the Tour De France on a motorbike, it really isn't that impressive, furthermore it does take the sport out of football.

And yeah today my club is struggling to keep talented players long enough to even make it to the first team, because larger european clubs has decided to become talent factories and strives to snatch up every 16 year old with a dream, Because they saw that they would never be able to compete with the bigger clubs anyway, they would never come close to their budget, so might as well try and make some money.

I dont think football will be relevant for many decades if the sport isn't turned back into being a sport and that involves something football fans alike dislike, loosing, but you really can't have a sport where everyone knows who is going to win before it's even started, that is to turn football into wrestling.

And I dont see how that can be countered without some cross league agreement on what the max budget is clubs are allowed to spend on players, salary and staff, so you compete on equal economical terms and not on some weird agreement that takes your revenue into account because that is the root of all these nations states buying up clubs, weird companys buying several clubs, Even renaming them and giving them New Kits, selling the right to name your local stadium etc etc. Generating an ever increasing amount to become competetive, at least competetive enough to get into the Champions League so now a 4th place in the premier league is significantly better than a 5th, when in reality it should be about being the best team.
 

Conflicted

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This is my first post on here, I'm a Newcastle fan and have been for years. My username is how I feel about this takeover.


Firstly, I'm absolutely delighted that Ashley has gone, he is up to now, the worst thing to happen to the club in my lifetime. For most of his time at the club we've been used to advertise the tat his shop has sold and nothing else. He bought a club which had a 52,000 seater stadium and in that time the ground has been allowed to rot. Our training facilities are an absolute disgrace, again, Ashley has done nothing to update the facilities since he came to the club. Ashley basically finished the career of Jonas Gutierrez over the phone, the season when he had just recovered from testicular cancer and scored the winning goal that kept us in the Premiership on the last day of the season, I hate him. I've heard how he's spent his money on the club. He bought the club, paid off our debt (he had to because there was a change of ownership clause which he didn't know about) and has given us interest free loans when we've been relegated due to his ineptness, he's also taken the loans back and he's sold land that belonged to the club and has personally profited from that.

My views on the takeover and being owned by PIF are mixed, I don't mind oil money, we were never going to be able to compete without it. I do mind being associated with bin Salman for the obvious reasons. He has made some positive changes in Saudi but his brutality can't be defended and shouldn't be defended by anybody, no matter what other regimes do or what other football club owners are associated with. At the minute, I don't know how I feel about the takeover now that the initial relief of Ashley leaving has worn off, I'll give it time.

What I think will happen now for the club is that we'll struggle through to January and it's now a case of damage limitation. Steve Bruce isn't up to the job and should go, I would have him out by the weekend if I could but some of our fans reactions towards him are pathetic, he doesn't deserve the personal abuse that he's having to put up with just because he's not a good manager, he didn't put himself into his position.

I've seen people in this thread asking about Bruce V Rafa stats. Rafa had a record of 1.48 points per game overall and 1.19 points per game in the Premiership only. Bruce has a record of 1.08 points per game. Rafa made a transfer profit of around £5,250,000, Bruce has spent £91,800,000 (net) so he can't claim to have not been backed financially and he can't claim to have had a level playing field with Rafa because he's almost had £100 million more to spend, whether they were the players that he wanted or not is another thing.

If we keep Bruce then we might win the odd game here and there if we can keep our best players fit but we'll not do anything other than that and we will have to hope that others struggle more than we do. Get rid of him and we could remain in a position to bring in new recruits in January and finish away from the bottom 3.

It will take years for Newcastle to threaten anybody other than the bottom 5 or 6 clubs, we can increase our income massively because right now we're probably the most talked about club in football so increasing commercial income should be easy and justifiable when it comes to FFP. Whether we can attract a decent manager could be a problem, we'll attract garbage easily but garbage will not attract players who we need to take us forward. It's a shame that Rafa went to Everton because he would have been the ideal person to take us forward, even if you don't like him, he's a big name and players would want to work with/for him and I do believe that he can build a club given the financial backing.

I would love for us to go all out for Conte but I think that's unlikely to happen. I think the managerial appointment will give everybody a clear signal of how we are going to be working over the next few years and I don't think anybody at the club knows where we're going on that front yet.
 
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Dancfc

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Hes done a shite job and they're rightly fecking him off at the first opportunity
I swear everyone's either moaning about these "dinosaur managers" constantly getting jobs or moaning about how "poorly treated" they are when they're fired for a more modern thinking manager :lol: