Honey Honey

The clubs official twitter have been blocking fans who tweet #AshleyOut at them

Two new reports this weekend after we failed to score for a 3rd friendly in a row. The times claims the reason we aren't providing the funds for transfers is down to Mike Ashley refusing to buy players in installments (as per the normal way) because it will effect the club value and profit he makes from selling the club. We are only allowed to buy using cash reserves and first installments from player sales. We can't spend the Mitrovic money until it is in the bank account over the next couple of years. Lmao. The other report is from the local press who say the hierarchy is listening after we lost 4-0 to Braga and have promised Rafa 3 more players through the door. Not pricey ones though, just bodies.

I'm not saying he would or wouldn't be good. Fact is he doesn't come in as a first XI signing. He starts life as 4th choice. We don't have a problem with that. Lejeune's injury means he's likely to get an early shot but he's going to have to take it straight away. We are not asking for an expensive centre half. We had one of the best defences in the league last season, particularly the Lascelles - Lejeune partnership. We have a problem scoring goals. We need solid investment in attack and have done for some time. Squad players are all well and good but we need to be improving on our weak points in the first XI as well.

You're complaining about dressing up when you've just called a £3.5m centre half "a previously highly touted CB with experience in Germany and Spain". I heard you were after a quota filling first team centre mid, would you like former England international Jack Colback? The transfer argument is really quite simple, fans want to see solid attempts to improve that starting XI. The anger is the result of a culmination of important questions we are simply not being given the answers to. We are not emotionless lemmings who are just going to say oh you won't give us answers, that's ok, we'll assume the best despite history. We want to know where the money is going, we want to know why a club with our revenue is buy to sell, we want to know why the last set of financial accounts contain financial engineering that neutral football finance experts cannot fathom. We want to know why the club has made a £23m profit in this transfer window with press reports saying we can't afford the £6m asking price for a left back. We want to know where did that money they told the local press we offered for Jorgensen in January go? Was that a lie? Which is the lie? What has happened? Why won't you bring clarity so that we don't live in perpetual fear and expectation of being misled. Bringing a couple of last seasons loans back are stand still moves. The only new addition with any liklihood to go straight into the team without the helping hand of injuries is Muto, but even then it depends what he looks like in training compared to Gayle as on paper there's little difference. Ki and Schar start at the back of the queue needing to earn a place over others. That is not normal procedure for signings that are about the intent of improving your starting XI, that's just a hopeful squad numbers game. Cheap hopefuls that's what we got. Mbemba is also not a loss of any note under Rafa. He was 4th choice centre half. You might need to download the latest patch on FM.

Wum. As if all that matters is that you sign someone with a pulse

Players refusing to talk to the media as bonuses for the new season still haven't been agreed. Such a poorly run club.

Rafa after tonights 4-0 defeat to Braga “Am I optimistic? Thinking that in ten days we can do what we didn’t do in two months? “I don’t think so. “I think it’s obvious we need people, we need (more) bodies. “I said two months ago what we needed and 10 days before the start of season we still are where we are. “There are four or five players we thought we could bring in…but we haven’t.”

I had to factor in that we will be taking 3 points off you at St. James' Park as per usual

We just got beat 4-0 off Braga 10 of the 11 starting players from the Championship side. First half 0-0, couldn't do shit going forward as per usual. Half time Lascelles is subbed off for new boy Fabian Schar and the defence collapses, could have lost 6 or 7 nil. With our horrendous fixtures this could all be very ugly within 6 weeks.

I saw a stat today that made me think of your comment. 132 players have been signed by Premier League clubs for over £20m since Newcastle spent £16m on Michael Owen. I saw another that also calculated that Newcastle's most expensive signing under Mike Ashey is in inflation terms the equivalent of spending £115,000 on a player in 1996, the year we bought Shearer for £15m. The whole record signing stuff is disingenuous anyway. If we break it it wouldn't negate the decline, we'd have to buy someone for at least £40m for it to be anywhere near the equivalent of signing Michael Owen for £16m when we did.

Boris Johnson would have faced a similar problem though, the majority of the Tory party voted remain, there are various differing remain and leave factions within the party. The outrage towards him from Tory party members/MP's who were remain was and still is palpable. The name Boris Johnson triggers some the way that the word Mozambique triggered Johnny English. How can power be maintained and stabilised in light of that? An election wouldn't rid this problem. It is not utterly pointless to try and pull amenable people back and convince them of something else. You say good faith but it's about good quality. Not only is the equivalence you gave a bit weak, but throwing "remainers" in there was utterly pointless and tone deaf. You are not arguing to convince those we have to pull away or keep away from Jacob Rees Mogg, you are just trying to go around the choir getting high fives.

You must piss like a horse

It wasn't possible for May to do that without facing down the majority of her own MP's and probably losing. There's no consensus for no deal and that is very important. We are not a dictatorship. It is the nature of the makeup of parliament that is the stalemate and the weakening position. Hitchins was right from the start, Brexit by referendum rather than by general election can't be done well due to our specific parliamentary system.

I'm not sure I'd call anything proving people wrong. They have to win detractors over and no they won't do it moving further away. As I've said before there is no parliamentary or electoral consensus for that type of leave. Jacob Rees Mogg has no power. Boris Johnson has no power. If those supporters were here I'd be telling them of that flaw in their argument, but they're not, I can only talk here to what we have here. Historically only 2-7% of the active electorate are those irredeemable types based on party support. 52% voted to leave. I don't know how many Brexiteers and what variety you know if you even know any at all but the bogeyman view of many is problematic. I have witnessed (and it is confirmed to exist widely by other research) that post referendum swing voters started moving toward harder Brexit concepts. It looks as if this is the result of threat and stigma. Those are completely false analogies though. You can't compare surgery and mechanics to economics and political philosophy. That only one of all the economic models was able to correctly forecast what would happen after the vote so far reiterates where the sentiment comes from. Economics is known as the humpty dumpty of the sciences for a good reason. If you listen to the various factions within leave you will find virtually unanimous opposition to the way the government has handled it. Some of them will say because of the remain establishment just like you say it's all because of leave. Tedious new tribes. There is no consensus in parliament for no deal. It's not even the position of the remain heavy cabinet. If there's no deal based on this current point in time then it's not because of what the government want. Unless they change their tune (highly unlikely) it will simply be because the government couldn't come to an agreement with the EU. Blame whoever you want for that, deluded demands, Blair backed EU attempts to topple May, whatever your tribe tells you to blame go with that.

There is such a thing as a badly executed argument. The whole purpose is to change someone's mind. Case and point how my argument here was so brash as to render you sarcy and defensive. Perhaps if I was more tactful I could enter a proper discussion with you to try and change your mind instead. This sort of stuff is precisely the cause of post Brexit hardening of leave factions. The more certain people were told they were uneducated racist duped morons the further they got from the centre.

Because my full point is about pulling people back from his grasp. Even you've now added "stagnant" and "bleak" to a subjective implication. Can't you see what is wrong? That is your language, the interpretation you want to enforce on it all instead of you know, getting a journalist to ask him properly and not a shoddy journalist who thinks getting a powerless backbench MP to resign in 1 year is actually a good use of a question. Adding a subjective implication is not a good move. Especially an ecomomic one like that given the context of economic bollocks from those associated with remain, it strengthens his hand and is tone deaf to those who may be amenable to him. Quality political arguments are about winning people over. This thread is more about getting upvotes from inside the bubble.

Nothing to do with my point at all. Although perhaps indicitive of why my point exists in the first place. You can't hear anyone else for your own screaming.

Jacob Rees-Mogg said we might not see the economic benefits for 50 years. He never said anything about having to suffer for 50 years. How can we pull people back from Jacob Rees Mogg when you are not even listening properly to what your opponent is saying. The quality of public argument isn't good enough.

We are not asking for his money, we are asking where our money is. The latest furore is that in the public eye backed by football finance experts and Rafa is that money promised to us is missing, unaccounted for. We are asking why when revenue is at an all time high are we scraping the barrell in the transfer market and are sell to buy.

There's no evidence available. The last accounts released were 2016/17 and they were bizarre and littered with confusing financial hocus pocus. No football finance expert could make sense of it, something is afoot, we just don't know what. Our revenue is at an all time high. £126m in tv money alone. So where are the funds? Will we ever get to know? Transparency is the starting point. It's jumping the gun to say cash reserves are being taken out.

Jacob Rees Mogg and Boris Johnson can't get their approach (which is slightly different to one another) through the commons or the lords anyway. They get great traction publicly by spouting their view in order to gain leverage behind closed doors but they have reached their limit in reality. Parliament is having to find compromise on grounds of its own composition. That's a fairly normal practice of democracy maintaining social order, if not the cornerstone of it. Parliament is playing the games that parliament always has in order to reach an end result. It is fairly organic. MP's test the boundaries of their power among one another, they suss each other out, they manipulate each other, try to bring them down or under their spell. Theresa May hasn't been able to find compromise as a leader. It is probably the result of both her character and the immense stubborness of some MP's which can also be seen in the public too. I've heard from the ITK's I drink with around Whitehall that internally in the conservative party they are all mourning the loss of their hero David Cameron, that May can't work a room which makes for a flat atmosphere and an inability to unite.

The Remain campaign on the whole was nothing like what you portrayed. It was heavily fuelled by a gross exaggeration of the danger and the shouting of over the top economic forecasts. That is what made the news. There was also a leaflet from the government through the door of every household in the country with assertions designed to worry. The bus was exposed before the referendum and by leave figures after it. Despite that the polls didn't move. The crazy economic forecasts were exposed. Despite that the polls didn't move. That is because this was a referendum about values and the slogans are largely noise. Research of both gen pop and graduate students, highly intelligent and educated people (I know some people are obssesed with those labels as approval of opinion), show that once people have identified a side they feel they belong to they will judge what they say to be true and repeat it if it is a topic they have no prior knowledge to know any better about. When the topic is ambigious and there is no right answer they will give a more favourable rating to a policy if it has their sides name attached to it and a more negative rating if it has their opponents name on it. You will see immigrant haters suddenly portray themselves as democracy lovers for example. Or you will often see those who are anti-Farage suddenly become worried about the current formation of the economy but then vote for John McDonnell 6 months later. The core of politics has never been about reason, the trick is to find out what people really value and appeal from there.