Takeover Thread - July 1st statement, Staveley letter to Tracey Crouch (and response) in OP

Game over?

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/19/biden-administration-to-declassify-report-into-khashoggi

 

It'll have no impact on the outcome of the takeover.

I wouldnt bet on that mind

Game over?

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/19/biden-administration-to-declassify-report-into-khashoggi

The O&D test doesn't actually preclude someone who has been convicted of murder in a foreign country (or in the opinion of the PL board would have been in this country) from becoming a director. Other than UK convictions with a sentence of a year or more, the test only relates to acts of criminal dishonesty and other specific stuff such as ticket touting.

Game over?

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/19/biden-administration-to-declassify-report-into-khashoggi

 

It'll have no impact on the outcome of the takeover.

 

I wouldnt bet on that mind

It's got zero relevance to the O&D tests.

Sick of this shit!

This chap goes into more detail of what the Turks knew about what happened.

They say the only time where they weren’t able to listen in to what was happening was when they went into the video conferencing room. Which was a direct line to Riyhad, so did they behead the guy and then show it to MBS?

Several years ago i was once called into a meeting to provide some information affecting a change in social security benefits in the upcoming Chancellors budget.  I was advised that only 6 people knew about this and I was warned to not even discuss it with my wife.  Any leak would be easily traced.  Needless to say I kept quiet until after the budget!  The reason I post this is I cannot understand why anyone in the position I was in with confidential information would risk losing their job just to pass this information ergo I conclude that these itk's are just making it up as they go along!!!

Several years ago i was once called into a meeting to provide some information affecting a change in social security benefits in the upcoming Chancellors budget.  I was advised that only 6 people knew about this and I was warned to not even discuss it with my wife.  Any leak would be easily traced.  Needless to say I kept quiet until after the budget!  The reason I post this is I cannot understand why anyone in the position I was in with confidential information would risk losing their job just to pass this information ergo I conclude that these itk's are just making it up as they go along!!!

However talking about a legal case is different to talking about government policies/documents.

Good old luke reckons there’s another takeover bid

Supposed used, won’t read 

There’s not even anything about another supposed takeover in there. No detail whatsoever. Absolute bollocks piece.

Nobody believes this is true but i'm writing about it anyways just if by some miracle it happens I've been the first to report it.

Nobody believes this is true but i'm writing about it anyways just if by some miracle it happens I've been the first to report it.

Journalism at its finest

So for past 11 years NUFC fans have been protesting that Ashley is asset stripping, using the club as a billboard, and has no intentions of competing.  For 11 years, the MSM have told us to shut up and stop having lofty expectations.  Now the MSM are saying we have become boring, just an advert for Sports Direct and the club is basically a shell.

If we do get a takeover the fans should become hostile to MSM when they all start licking our hoop!

Can anyone post the Telegraph article here?

Good old luke reckons there’s another takeover bid

 

The main message I took from reading this is that of all the managers who have been employed by Ashley, Bruce has been dealt the shittiest hand so can't really be blamed if we go the journey. 

Can anyone post the Telegraph article here?

If it had been any other club than Newcastle United, the conversation about an impending takeover would have been enough to write a story predicting the Mike Ashley era could be soon be over.

There were phrases like “the money is there.” Followed by “due diligence is complete.” The buyers are ready to go and it is potentially just “days away” from going to the Premier League for approval. The new owners will hopefully be in place sometime in February. Ashley will be gone and the club can change…

Sounds exciting doesn’t it? But why should anyone believe it will happen when so many others have failed? If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting a different outcome, Newcastle takeover claims will drive you insane.

I have not kept a precise record of how many times I have been told things like this about interested buyers since Ashley first put the club up for sale in the summer of 2008. But it is a lot and the regularity with which it comes round has increased.

Newcastle has been a club “for sale” on and off, for most of the 13 and a half years Ashley has been owner.

According to those who work for him, it should be the easiest deal to do in the history of easiest deals. All you do is show Ashley the money and he will be gone. However, given the easiest deal in the history of easiest deals has never been done, it suggests it really is not easy at all.

Maybe it is the asking price – back up to £340 million – or perhaps it really is down to the fact every potential buyer has been a time waster, could not get the money together, were blocked from taking over by the Premier League or simply changed their mind.

But this is not really about takeovers, it is about how boring Newcastle have become. A club where the one thing you could always rely on was entertainment, good or bad, has become dull, insipid, listless. If Newcastle were once a soap opera, they are now the advert for a sport shop in the commercial break.

They are predictable, monotonous and repetitive. It is a club trapped in a death spiral, a club operating in an echo chamber, with the same conversations, controversies and complaints replayed year after year.

Managers are sacked or quit and are replaced. None have been able to bring any meaningful improvement in results or league position with the budget they are given. None could change Ashley or persuade him to be more ambitious, but if they look like they will fail to do the one thing he needs them to do – stay in the Premier League – they are removed.

The average league finish under Ashley is 13th, but one top six finish artificially lifts that. The reality is Newcastle have been a bottom half or the Premier League side for more than a decade. Or they have been in the Championship.

Newcastle United manager Steve Bruce on the touchline during the Premier League match at the Emirates Stadium, Londo

Steve Bruce has guided Newcastle to more lower-table mediocrity CREDIT: PA/Adam Davy

Every season, other than the first in 2007/8 and a freak year under Alan Pardew in 2011/12, Newcastle have been, to varying degrees of threat, in a relegation battle. Two of them were lost, with promotion from the Championship the following year providing a brief respite from the toil and misery. At least supporters remembered what it was like to win more games than you lose.

That is where we are again. Newcastle are in danger of going down and another manager is under pressure.

We are all wondering when Ashley will decide it is too much of a risk to rely on Bruce to keep Newcastle up. Alan Shearer came in with eight games of the season left and could not save them. Rafael Benitez had nine games, but also failed to keep them up. Both had superior squads to the one Bruce has now.

So, will the change come? Will Ashley sack Bruce and find another manager, not because he wants to give the supporters what they want, but so he can continue to ask for £340 million to sell and protect the £100 million plus profit he intends to make on the deal.

For nearly 14 years, Ashley has done nothing for Newcastle other than control it. He has not improved one aspect of its performance, on or off the pitch. There has not been any investment in infrastructure, no transformation of the academy, no modernisation of the training ground.

It has been stripped back, hollowed out, living off the television money, filling out the stadium with cut price season ticket offers and 10,000 free ones last season – existing, surviving and that is about it.

The supporters know all this. They know what, or rather who, the real problem is, but they cannot force Ashley to sell. They have tried and failed. But they can call for a manager to be sacked; a change that can be made in the hope it reverses their current downward trajectory. It may make watching their team a little more enjoyable at least, the whole sorry mess vaguely more tolerable.

Newcastle United are a futile football club but the fans still want Steve Bruce sacked

Whatever progress Bruce imagined he could bring in the summer has not materialised. If anything, things have deteriorated. Newcastle have rarely been fun to watch since they returned to the top-flight in 2017 but had a resilience and spirit that got them out of trouble. They were grim on the eye, but strangely commendable despite it.

That has gone and if Bruce does not find it again, somehow, he is doomed. Newcastle have gone nine games without a win in all competitions and have scored only one goal in the last seven. Whatever way you look at it, this is clearly not good enough.

If Bruce does not win one of the next three games, against Leeds United, Aston Villa and Everton, even Ashley will panic. When he does that, a change in manager is inevitable.

If there were fans inside the stadiums, there would be an angry, seething chorus of calls for Bruce to go. There would be no hiding place.

But there are not, and Newcastle remain seven points clear of the bottom three and their points tally at this stage of the season compares favourably with previous years.

They are in trouble, for sure, but Ashley may well only see league position as important. And why would he want to sack a manager who has diverted criticism away from him, pay out millions of pounds in compensation and then find a new man to take over, who knows they will be joining a club that is up for sale and could have new owners in a matter of weeks not months?

It always comes back to this. There always seems to be a takeover in the background, normally when the transfer window is open, but nothing happens, so nothing changes.

Bruce may well lose his job, but you suspect it is only a matter of time until we are back here again, with a different manager in charge and with all the same arguments being made.

For once, let’s hope the new takeover talk is real or the Saudi Arabian led consortium that has been stuck in a legal wrangle with the Premier League since April can find a breakthrough and that deal – the one Ashley seems to want – can be revived. Somehow, you doubt it.

Hard to argue against most of that .

Hard to argue against most of that .

 

 

That's because we know it already, there's absolutely nothing of any insight there.

So for past 11 years NUFC fans have been protesting that Ashley is asset stripping, using the club as a billboard, and has no intentions of competing.  For 11 years, the MSM have told us to shut up and stop having lofty expectations.  Now the MSM are saying we have become boring, just an advert for Sports Direct and the club is basically a shell.

 

If we do get a takeover the fans should become hostile to MSM when they all start licking our hoop!

Even got the nerve to say we've been making the same complaint for years.

Hard to argue against most of that .

 

 

True - shame he's not man enough to row back on his relentless support of the moron in charge of coaching the team though.

Also, he's not very explicit on this 'new' takeover.

Is he inferring that there's ANOTHER takeover party interested and could potentially do the deal in February? Or is referring to the Saudi deal being done then?

Exactly. There’s nothing in any coherent English about it in the article. Makes no sense whatsoever.

And?

Money money money? Took a long time but worth it?