The English Football Thread

[Laylabelle 9,296]

Both level on points.. watford have the +1 better goal difference...

Then Bournemouth still could...intresting final day!

Must be such a horrible position to go in. Know being relegated in general is shit but least Norwich know..going down to the last kick though.

[LAM09 6,545]

Both level on points.. watford have the +1 better goal difference... Then Bournemouth still could...intresting final day! Must be such a horrible position to go in. Know being relegated in general is shit but least Norwich know..going down to the last kick though.

 

 

If Bournemouth win (say 1-0), all three teams will be level on 34 points with Villa & Bournemouth on -26 GD and Watford on -27.  

 

 

Things could even go down to goals scored.

[Vesper 27,307]

The limbo takeover: A boa constrictor around Newcastle’s necks

https://theathletic.com/1938941/2020/07/21/newcastle-takeover-ashley-staveley-saudi-premier-league/

The fun stopped a long time ago; the games of fantasy football, the jokes about signing Neymar. As one season limps to a close and the next looms into view, what should have been the most exhilarating episode in Newcastle United’s recent history has become both exhausting and debilitating. “The takeover is like a boa constrictor around our necks,” a senior source at St James’ Park tells The Athletic.

This is how many people feel about Newcastle’s summer of creeping frustration, whether they are already working there, trying to buy it or watching on from home. With the Premier League now in the 15th week of their owners’ and directors’ test, the uncertainty which is always a feature of life under Mike Ashley is now a straitjacket. They are so close to something and yet, it remains out of reach.

Existence carries on. On Monday morning, Newcastle announced a “long-term agreement” to continue their sponsorship arrangement with Fun88, the betting company. Their kit deal with Puma has been extended. They have already signed Mark Gillespie, the goalkeeper, on a free transfer. These are decisions which simply could not be delayed any longer.

The same applies to the new contracts handed out to Javier Manquillo and Andy Carroll, shoring up positions in the squad which otherwise would have needed filling over the next month or so. It is less about strategy or the long term than getting by, with Steve Bruce, the head coach, acting to cover himself in the event of the takeover being blocked or dragging on indefinitely and then funds being restricted.

“We can’t plan anything,” the source says. “It’s just horrible.”

Emotionally, Ashley has gone, agreeing to sell to the consortium led by Amanda Staveley, the financier, and 80 per cent funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and signing all the necessary paperwork. If the Premier League give the go-ahead, the transfer of money becomes a formality and a £300 million deal will be complete. But because they have not, he is still there.

Limbo feels more like purgatory. The high-level agents from Italy and Spain who were bombarding Staveley’s camp with telephone calls are now ringing less regularly; so much is unknown. Less than a week before the transfer window opens, some early targets have moved on. Staveley has always wanted to hit the ground running but the resolution is now a matter of urgency. The wait is impacting on everybody.

Agents who are used to dealing with Newcastle’s present hierarchy are similarly torn. “Who are we supposed to be offering players to?” one asks The Athletic. “Is it the current people in charge or is it someone else? You can speak to Lee Charnley (the managing director) and you just aren’t sure he can actually give you any answers with any certainty.

“But it’s also players at the club at the moment. Do they push for new contracts? Do they wait and see? Do they demand an exit? As their representatives, uncertainty makes it almost impossible to try and negotiate because you’re essentially having several different conversations based on several different scenarios, with none of them providing any sort of clarity.

“I’ve heard of agents and clubs adding a premium to their clients if there’s interest from Newcastle because they think the club could be backed by very wealthy owners soon and they don’t want to be short-changed. But, equally, if the takeover doesn’t happen, it’s the opposite scenario at Newcastle, so then they risk becoming priced out of signing players they’d normally have been able to comfortably afford.”

Matty Longstaff, the young midfielder courted by Udinese, signed a short-term contract extension thinking that fresh conversations with new owners could have taken place by now. Valentino Lazaro, the on-loan winger, is set to return to parent club Inter Milan due to a lack of game time if the current regime continues. Both of their futures now appear inextricably linked to the custodianship of the club.

For supporters wearied by Ashley’s toxic 13 years of ownership, excitement about the approach of a new era has been tempered by months of waiting and the public nature of the bid, with concerns about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, wider geopolitical issues and the future of Middle Eastern television rights leading the conversation a long way from sport.

While Staveley’s group have always been confident that their bid will be passed — a confidence that has barely flickered in spite of the relentless grind of the news cycle and the months ticking by — those who oppose it, including beIN Sports, the Qatar-based broadcaster, are equally adamant it should fail and will fail. It is a basic contradiction. All nuance has been lost and so has objectivity. Everybody just wants a decision.

Competing agendas have filtered into the mainstream media and on to Twitter, where bot accounts promote misinformation. There have also been “rival” bidders, like Henry Mauriss, the CEO of US media company ClearTV, who continues to be talked up (and down) behind the scenes. In recent days, The Athletic has learned of a fresh broker, who claims to be acting on behalf of yet another potential purchaser, reaching out to prominent figures.

In the middle of it all; an underachieving football club in the north east of England and a weary fanbase crying out for change, desperate for better, bouncing between daily updates both positive and negative, and wondering what it all means.

This is not about takeover good or takeover bad. And this is not about takeover on or takeover off — for all the talk of “green flags”, “red flags”, “imminent” and “close”, the Premier League are the only arbiters who matter — and despondency could be swept away at any moment. This is about how it feels at Newcastle at 8pm on Monday, July 20, 2020, moments after the Brighton result. This is about how liberation can also feel like the boa constrictor, whose grip is tightening.

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Whenever Newcastle players are asked about the takeover, their stock answer is that they “can’t affect it” and “have to just focus on the football”. But, privately, is it really the case that they have been entirely unmoved by the noise surrounding the club?

“Whether you’re on £100 a week or £100,000 a week, these things affect our lives,” Jay Spearing, the former Liverpool midfielder, who went through takeover sagas at both Bolton Wanderers and Blackpool, tells The Athletic. “The players will say it doesn’t play on your mind but of course, that much uncertainty does. We’re human beings at the end of the day.”

Takeover is the only topic of any significance on Tyneside. Yet, as has so often been the case throughout the Ashley era, Newcastle have failed to communicate.

Charnley has not spoken publicly about coronavirus, the furloughing of staff or the prospective sale since football was paused in March. His first utterance came on Monday, accompanying a press release about Fun88’s sponsorship renewal, yet another development which brought with it more questions than answers.

Instead, for the past few months, Newcastle have left Bruce to face queries about a takeover he has repeatedly admitted he is “in the dark” over. At first, Bruce claimed his squad were conditioned to takeover talk, given that it has dominated the agenda for years now, and insisted it would not affect them.

Last month, however, following the pitiful performance against Manchester City in the FA Cup quarter-finals, his facade finally slipped. Bruce demanded that the Premier League provide “clarity” on the status of the takeover, stressing the situation is “not healthy for anybody”, a plea he has since repeated on several occasions.

After the 2-2 draw against West Ham United, he snapped at a reporter over Zoom, replying: “I am asked about this (the takeover) every press conference. I am bored and fed up of answering it. Can we move on?”

Then, earlier this month, he said the takeover is “hanging over” the club and a decision is “certainly needed”. “Why don’t you guys get stuck into the Premier League?” he told reporters. “Get stuck into them and demand a decision — that would give us a bit of clarity.”

Spearing certainly has empathy for Bruce’s position. He has experienced the anxiety an unpredictable future brings at Bolton and Blackpool, both of whom changed ownership while he played for them.

At Bolton, Spearing was club captain when Eddie Davies decided to sell the Championship club “almost overnight” in late-2015. Players were left “worrying about their mortgages” when wages went unpaid one month. Even though the Newcastle squad are on Premier League salaries, he believes they will have justifiable concerns of their own.

“Every interview for those six weeks at Bolton, all that we were asked about was the ownership situation. Newcastle players and Steve Bruce are facing the same thing now,” the 31-year-old says. “You can’t escape it, yet you don’t have the answers and that can’t help but affect you. It did play on our minds at Bolton and it will at Newcastle, albeit for different reasons.

“At Bolton, we were worried about paying bills and putting food on the table. At Newcastle, the talk is that the owners coming in will splash the cash and buy players. That will be affecting players, who’ll be thinking, ‘Do I really want this to go through as it may put my position at risk?’ or, ‘Is there going to be a new manager?’ and, ‘Will this be the end of my time at Newcastle and do I need to think about moving my family?’.

“All sorts of things, positive and negative, will be going through their minds and they’re all distractions from just concentrating on football. We’re all human beings with families and we all want certainty, no matter what level we’re at.“

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Protracted takeover sagas are nothing new at Newcastle. There has been speculation about Ashley selling for a dozen years but ownership battles predate the retailer’s involvement with the club.

From 1988 to 1991, the “share wars”, as they became dubbed, raged on Tyneside between the historic shareholders, led by chairman Gordon McKeag, and the Sir John Hall-fronted “Magpie Group”. During that three-year period, the club almost ceased to exist — with off-field affairs influencing on-pitch matters, just as they are now.

“As a business, you’re paralysed if you can’t make decisions for the future,” Sir John, Newcastle’s former owner, tells The Athletic. “That was part of the problem when we were trying to wrestle control from the old shareholders in the early 90s. Then it was because decision-making was fragmented. It was only when we got control that things changed and we could plan. If you don’t know if you’re going to own a business, you cannot plan for the long term. That is the issue facing Newcastle again.”

The current situation is exacerbated further by COVID-19. The financial impact of the pandemic and the short period between seasons, with the 2020-21 campaign expected to begin around September 12, means genuine forethought is unfeasible.

“As a business owner, with coronavirus and everything that’s happened, you’re looking not one year ahead, but five,” says Sir John. “You can’t take a short-term view if you want to succeed but, if you’re at Newcastle at the moment, how can you take a long-term view?

“The prospective owners will have identified players, managers, personnel for all levels of the club. They want to sweep in with a new broom and set out their five-year programme. But they can’t act because they don’t own the club. And, as the current owner, you can’t allow them to make those decisions yet in case it doesn’t get approved.”

When Ashley bought the club in 2007, the deal took two months from the start of negotiations with Sir John, the majority stakeholder, to the day he assumed 100 per cent control. That is less time than it has taken the Premier League to merely conduct their owners’ and directors’ test, which started on or around April 9 in 2020.

Nobody involved on either the buying or selling side expected to reach the final week of the restarted top-flight season without clarity on who would own the club going forward, particularly considering they were advised the checks normally take around four weeks.

“There’s nobody there in command by the looks of things because it seems that, as far as Ashley’s concerned — and most people in this situation would feel the same — the deal is done and he’s moved on,” Sir John says. “Once the contract was signed, that’s the deal done, but the Premier League’s test has complicated things.”

Internally, “business as usual” remains the message — but this is an anything-but-usual scenario. Planning for the long term is practically impossible.

“It’s damaging the club,” says Sir John. “Steve Bruce is in a terrible situation because he knows he needs to improve the squad but he doesn’t know if anyone is going to give him any money, nor indeed how much.

“The Premier League needs to put the purchaser and the club out of their misery as soon as possible, with either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. Then, the purchaser can move on and, more importantly, the club can move on. From the fans’ point of view, it is excruciating and every passing day leads to greater uncertainty and more missed opportunities.”

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On Tyneside, Newcastle fans are craving their #cans moment, desperate to celebrate the end of Ashley’s 13-year-and-counting tenure.

During his time at Blackpool, Spearing experienced the transition from a despised regime — supporters even led a four-year boycott of the club’s stadium in protest against the Oystons between 2015 and 2019—– to fresh ownership and the transformative effect that has.

“It was incredible,“ Spearing says, recalling the 2-2 draw against Southend United on March 9, 2019, which saw thousands of fans finally return to a sold-out Bloomfield Road for the first match since Owen Oyston was removed as owner. “As players, we’d kind of felt like middlemen previously, between the fans and the owners.

“So when supporters finally came back, it was like a breath of fresh air. It was like the club had a new lease of life. Everything just changed overnight. Everything just seemed to get a lift. It was madness. It’s hard to explain that change in atmosphere. It’s just really, really positive when you have the players, fans and owners all on one side and it feels like the club is healed.”

That is where Newcastle want to get to but they are not there yet. Their matches mirror the takeover. After three consecutive defeats, their goalless draw at Brighton was 90 minutes of nothing. As @NUFC360, the Newcastle fansite put it, “This is limbo football. A representation of the club’s current state. There will be no end.”

For now, the boa constrictor continues to squeeze at Newcastle’s neck. Only when, and if, takeover certainty arrives will it ultimately relinquish its grasp and finally allow the club to breathe again. To move on.

[Strike 6,960]

5 hours ago, Vesper said:

ermmm

 

Just like last year's Europa League final which Arsenal needed to win to qualify for Champions League 

[Jase 43,479]

7 hours ago, LAM09 said:

If Bournemouth win (say 1-0), all three teams will be level on 34 points with Villa & Bournemouth on -26 GD and Watford on -27.  

Things could even go down to goals scored.

Is it even possible to go down to goals scored? Would require some crazy scorelines for that to even happen. 

[Special Juan 27,099]

I'm sorry but if we can't beat that Arsenal side there is something wrong. Last night confirmed that City result was a complete and utter fluke.

We battered them in Baku and we should be doing the same at Wembley.

 

[Puliiszola 519]

50 minutes ago, Special Juan said:

I'm sorry but if we can't beat that Arsenal side there is something wrong. Last night confirmed that City result was a complete and utter fluke.

We battered them in Baku and we should be doing the same at Wembley.

 

Nah. Not a fluke. Both city and liverpool.

I guess it was the way they set up. Ultra defensive, to be fair, even chelsea-esque. And simply countered those teams with pace. Could not even dream to do that against villa.

It was a completely different ball-game. 

But I do agree, we should beat them.

[Vesper 27,307]

David Squires on … Dirty Leeds Leeds Leeds being back in the Premier League

Our cartoonist looks at the return of Leeds to the English top flight, after years of Bates, Evans, Hockaday and many more

https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactive/2020/jul/21/david-squires-on-leeds-leeds-leeds-being-back-in-the-premier-league

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Ole Gunnar Solskjær refuses to talk about David de Gea’s erratic form

Solskjær will not say if goalkeeper will play against West Ham

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ says Manchester United manager

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/jul/21/de-gea-mentally-strong-job-to-perform-solskjaer-manchester-united

Ole Gunnar Solskjær has refused to confirm whether David de Gea will retain his place when Manchester United host West Ham on Wednesday.

The goalkeeper is again under scrutiny after the error that allowed Mason Mount to score Chelsea’s second goal in the 3-1 FA Cup semi‑final defeat on Sunday. This followed other mistakes from De Gea; Bournemouth’s Junior Stanislas and Tottenham’s Steven Bergwijn beat him with shots that could have been stopped since the Premier League’s restart.

Solskjær was asked to confirm De Gea would start against West Ham. “No, because I don’t want to talk about it,” the manager said. “We stick together as a group. And he’s mentally strong. We’ll stay together and we’ll see the team on Wednesday night.”

snip

 

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Premier League | Manchester United vs West Ham United

http://hdstreams.club/hd/ch5.php

http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/premier-league-manchester-united-vs-west-ham-united-s1/

https://www.totalsportek.com/manchester-united-football/

[Vesper 27,307]

Tomas Soucek is a beast

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HANDBALL

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pen on Pogba!!

it HAS to be

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if they do not give this I am going to RAGE

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woot

now make this shit!

[NikkiCFC 7,579]

Clear pen. 0-1!!!

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hell YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

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GOAL