Newcastle til salgs

[Tommyok]

Dette er bare trist, ufattelig trist! PL må ta sin del av skylden her, det var nok dette de ønsket! Men nå er det nok lett å få pirat streams i fremtiden, blir nok fri flyt!

Nå kommer det vell inn en ny fattig stakkar som skal prøve å tjene noen kroner på klubben våres!

Dette er en trist dag for Newcastle! Vi kunne ha vært med å kjempet om ligagull innen kort tid, nå blir vi å finne blandet nedrykks kandidatene.....

[snkz]

Ikke mye annet å si enn, fitteklubb.

Best å ikke bry seg.

[TooN]

Skjønner enda ikke hvorfor de trakk seg. Staveley mener det er pl sin skyld og at de andre klubbene i pl ikke ville overtagelsen skulle skje. At de hele tiden fikk nye ting de skulle endre/svare på. Og de hadde svart på alt.

Er jo noe som skurrer her. Om jeg har lyst til å kjøpe meg en is så kjøper jeg den isen selvom kassadama er treig og hun Stiller masse spørsmål..

[Kristian T]

AS har sagt dette til the times:
Amanda Staveley speaks

Staveley, speaking to the Times of London, was asked if she blamed the Premier League and replied: “Of course we do.

"They had a chance, they say we have not answered all the questions and we have done so. But the other clubs in the Premier League didn’t want it to happen.

“We are so heartbroken for the Newcastle fans as the investment that was going to go into the club, especially with everything happening with Brexit and Covid, would have been so important.

“It has been going on for so long and the opportunity was there.”

Staveley was also asked if the piracy storm surrounding the deal was a big factor.

She said: "The piracy issue was not an issue but we tried to resolve it anyway.

“They [the Premier League] tried to make the state of Saudi a director. The PIF had agreed to become a director.”

Whether Staveley comes back with a bid to buy Newcastle a third time, after being unable to buy the club in 2017, remains to be seen.

Staveley said: “Do we give up now? I don’t know, there may be a way forward, but we have had to put a statement out.

“I’m trying to deal with the facts and we had to make a decision today.”

#NUFC

[navimer]

Skjønner enda ikke hvorfor de trakk seg. Staveley mener det er pl sin skyld og at de andre klubbene i pl ikke ville overtagelsen skulle skje. At de hele tiden fikk nye ting de skulle endre/svare på. Og de hadde svart på alt.

Er jo noe som skurrer her. Om jeg har lyst til å kjøpe meg en is så kjøper jeg den isen selvom kassadama er treig og hun Stiller masse spørsmål..

Tja, ikke hvis kassadama hele tiden spør om nye ting og bruker timesvis før hun slår inn isen..

Forstår de godt egentlig, det er sikkert mye som har skjedd i kulissene med nye krav om innsikt og granskninger av regnskap o.l.
I tillegg har det vært en dobling av Corona worldwide de siste 6 ukene, så den økonomiske situasjonen globalt til fondet er meget usikker..

[TooN]

Skjønner enda ikke hvorfor de trakk seg. Staveley mener det er pl sin skyld og at de andre klubbene i pl ikke ville overtagelsen skulle skje. At de hele tiden fikk nye ting de skulle endre/svare på. Og de hadde svart på alt.

Er jo noe som skurrer her. Om jeg har lyst til å kjøpe meg en is så kjøper jeg den isen selvom kassadama er treig og hun Stiller masse spørsmål..

Tja, ikke hvis kassadama hele tiden spør om nye ting og bruker timesvis før hun slår inn isen..

Forstår de godt egentlig, det er sikkert mye som har skjedd i kulissene med nye krav om innsikt og granskninger av regnskap o.l.
I tillegg har det vært en dobling av Corona worldwide de siste 6 ukene, så den økonomiske situasjonen globalt til fondet er meget usikker..

Syns det høres merkelig ut.. og Er veldig skuffa, kanskje mer skuffa enn om pl hadde sagt nei. Nå stikker de jo med halen mellom beina.

[lgrinde]

TooN, dette er PL sin feil. Sjefene der har tydlegvis stukke hovudet i sanden og klubbane har vore i mot det. SA, Reuben-brødrene og Staveley er ikkje vorte so rike utan grunn. Er vel måte på kva dei finn seg i. Dei er ikkje akkkurat lokale fans heller, dette er business for deiras del.

Kan ein løysing vera å håpa på nedrykk og at dei kjøper oss opp der? Eg gir meg 3 innlegg til og so må eg ta pause. Dette går so mykje ut øve humøret og det daglege at eg orkar ikkje meir. Må få det på avstand. Hugsar ikkje sist eg gadd sjå Newcastle-kamp med drakt på, so det skal ikkje verte for vanskeleg holde seg vekke.

[Rudi]

Strålende nyheter!

[Tommyok]

Nå vet jeg faktisk ikke hva jeg skal gjøre som supporter, uaktuelt med ett år til med ashley

[TooN]

Nå vet jeg faktisk ikke hva jeg skal gjøre som supporter, uaktuelt med ett år til med ashley

Har det sånn selv. Holdt med denne klubben siden 1992.

[Faustino]

Vurderer å følge mer med på Bundesliga. Engelsk fotball orker jeg ikke mer.

[Thomas Beckheim]

17-18 uker med forhåpninger bare helt knust av dagens pressemelding.

Veien videre nå med Ashley, Bruce og co virker bare helt meningsløst. Hva er poenget med å bruke tid på denne klubben lenger? Er jo bare tortur og smerte.

15-17 plass i PL er målet.
Bruce er en manager som ikke kan utvikle klubben/spillet videre.
Kan ikke konkurrere med mindre PL klubber om spillere.
Neppe noe særlig med midler til spillerkjøp.
ASM, Almiron her på lånt tid.

Neste sesong er nok nye klubber forbi Newcastle igjen som Villa, Leeds og sikkert WBA også.

Har ventet 13 år nå på å bli kvitt Ashley og det kommer ikke til å skje no heller.

Kan bare rykke ned til championship og bli solgt for en lavere pris der nede, samtidig som alle ekspertene som trykker gode, solide og snille Bruce til sitt bryst kan få se hvor ubrukelig han er.

[Pontare]

Tvers igjennom deprimerende alt som skjer om dagen. Jeg klarer ikke å bli skuffet over at vi ikke får den Saudi Arabiske stat som eier. Samtidig er det nærmest garantert at vi rykker ned neste sesong uten ny trener.

[Pontare]

Her er artikkelen i fra The Athletic for de som ikke har abo:
On Tuesday, the consortium attempting to buy Newcastle United were close to releasing an explosive statement. After 16 weeks of inertia, of the Premier League sifting through their Owners’ and Directors’ Test, of the club’s supporters stewing and fretting, the gloves would come off. Enough is enough, they were going to say; enough time, enough waiting. Make your decision.

By the time the statement came, less than 48 hours later, there was no decision left for the Premier League to make. It had been taken for them, bringing to an end the most contentious and wearisome takeover in the history of the division. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Amanda Staveley’s PCP Capital Partners and RB Sports & Media announced their withdrawal from the process “with regret”.

That regret reverberates around Tyneside, where most Newcastle fans were longing for an end to Mike Ashley’s 13 chequered years of ownership, even though the prospect of the club being propelled by Saudi riches had been tempered by wave upon wave of controversy. First, it was human rights, then it was television piracy. Finally, it was the basics of ownership and the drip, drip of months elapsing.

During detailed conversations with The Athletic, multiple sources connected to the consortium have claimed that:

The Premier League gave them “private assurances” before the deal was signed and again in mid-April that “approval would be forthcoming soon” before the mood music changed in June
After being asked by the Premier League to provide information about PIF’s independence from the Saudi state, there were guarantees “from the highest possible levels that there would be no state interference in the running of the club”
They believe the Premier League has been “unduly influenced by politically motivated attacks from third parties” and “repeatedly moved the goalposts and the process was devoid of transparency or objectivity”
They suspect some of their top-flight rivals, believed to be Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur in particular, were strongly against the takeover and made their opposition evident to administrators
The “final straw” was the Premier League’s refusal to put a timeline on a decision, whether rejection or approval
The decision to pull out was agreed by all parties but led by PIF
Ashley asked for more money after the June 26 completion deadline had expired, raising the £300 million price, although Staveley told The Athletic “that is absolutely not the issue”
The Sports Direct retailer is now “distraught” that the deal has collapsed
According to their business plan, which was submitted to the Premier League, PIF had committed to investing an initial £250 million directly into the club, plus more into the city and region, including infrastructure projects
Henry Mauriss, the American chief executive of ClearTV Media, is not understood to be a serious rival to buy the club
Staveley was so convinced that a deal was imminent she took media training lessons, while members of her football operation house-hunted in the region
The consortium has lost their deposit, believed to be around £17 million, which would have been refunded had the Premier League rejected the deal
There is still a slim possibility the takeover can be revived. “I don’t know if this is the end of it,” they said.
So where did it go wrong?

A deal, worth in the region of £300 million, was signed and agreed on April 9 between Ashley and the Staveley-fronted consortium, at which point, as per Premier League procedure, the club themselves contacted top-flight administrators to begin the test, which started 16 weeks ago.

The group was made up of PCP, Staveley’s own venture capital and private equity firm, the Reuben family, headed by billionaire brothers David and Simon, and the Saudi Arabian PIF.

While Staveley was very much the public face and chief architect of the bid, having made three previous offers for the club in November 2017, her company would only have taken a 10 per cent stake. So too would the Reubens, who were joint-second on the Sunday Times’ Rich List 2020 with an estimated worth of £16 billion, and who boast a significant property portfolio in Newcastle.

It was the proposed 80 per cent majority shareholder, the PIF — widely recognised as one of the wealthiest sovereign wealth funds in the world and with reported estimated assets worth in excess of £260 billion — who were the controversial partner.

The Athletic understands that, as part of their submission to the Premier League, the consortium named the directors they would appoint to the board.

Among them were Staveley and her husband, Mehrdad Ghodoussi, from PCP. The Reubens were to be represented by Jamie Reuben, the son of David and a director at Championship club Queens Park Rangers, a position from which he would have needed to resign. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the PIF, was to be the principal Saudi representative.

Al-Rumayyan would have been named chairman, reflecting PIF’s majority control, but it is understood that Staveley would have been responsible for managing the club on the group’s behalf. But the structure, as well as the Saudi appointees to the board, failed to satisfy the Premier League.

Sources close to the bid insist the issue which “kept being raised” by the Premier League and which it “became impossible to offer any further assurances on” was the separation between the PIF and the Saudi government, and whether Newcastle would have essentially become “state-owned”.

Human rights issues, including the war in Yemen and the murder of Jamaal Khashoggi, the journalist who was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, were cited repeatedly by Khashoggi’s fiancee, Amnesty International and politicians. Concerns over the pirate broadcaster beoutQ and its alleged links to the Saudi network Arabsat were also raised in conversations with the Premier League.

Of course, all three matters are interlinked and, when the World Trade Organization (WTO) issued a ruling on June 16 which determined that the Saudi state had effectively supported the beoutQ operation, negative reports surrounding the fate of the takeover began to emerge.

The Premier League’s official broadcast rights holder in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), beIN Sports, has opposed the deal throughout and remained adamant it will not and should not go through, insisting it has lost hundreds of millions in revenue due to piracy in the region.

According to sources in Riyadh, the Saudis understood that rival Premier League clubs feared the Newcastle takeover could lead to a loss of collective earnings if beIN Sports decided they no longer wanted to show English top-flight football. The existing beIN Sports deal cost £500 million over a three-year period and runs until 2022. One way to negate this fear would be for the Saudis themselves to buy the rights and therefore guarantee that Newcastle’s gain would also enrich the other 19 top-flight clubs. Yet it is unclear at this stage how seriously the Saudis considered investing themselves.

Earlier this week, Richard Masters, the Premier League chief executive, said in a response to a letter demanding clarity from Ian Mearns, MP for Gateshead and a Newcastle season-ticket holder: “I do hope that we will have a resolution to this matter soon but cannot commit to a specific timeline at this stage.” Just a few days later there was a resolution, but not one reached by the Premier League, who declined to comment on this latest development.

What now for Newcastle United?

The process has been torturous for all involved, as well as those at the club, one of whom described it as “like a boa constrictor around our necks” while it dragged on, but it has been most punishing for supporters. Already fatigued by Ashley’s contentious tenure, the majority have waited anxiously for the start of a fresh area. #cans was trending on Tyneside in April and May, with fans ready to toast the arrival of new custodians, but they remain stuck with an unloved owner, who himself is desperate to depart.

Instead, the retailer’s decision-making over the course of the next few weeks will prove crucial to the club’s fortunes.

Last month, a first-team source declared: “There’s no way back for Mike Ashley after this. There can’t be… can there?” Now, with Ashley having “firmly moved his focus away from the club” months ago, according to some at St James’ Park, another first-team source admits: “It’s going to be messy, it’s going to be toxic.”

Regardless, the club somehow has to pick up the pieces — and quickly.

The transfer window opened on Monday and, with their three loanees — Nabil Bentaleb, Valentino Lazaro and Danny Rose — set to return to their respective parent clubs, and the contract of Matty Longstaff, the North Shields-born midfielder, about to expire, Newcastle need to conduct significant business during the off-season. Pre-season training is due to begin around August 17, ahead of the 2020-21 season kicking off on September 12, and Steve Bruce, the head coach, has already admitted reinforcements are needed. A striker is the priority but a left-back, a midfielder and a wide forward are also being sought.

Ashley was due to speak to Bruce this week about off-season planning but, with reports claiming Newcastle’s coronavirus-affected transfer budget could be as little as £30 million, resources will be stretched in what already promises to be an extremely difficult market in which to operate. The Athletic made attempts to contact the club on Thursday to ask for comment but, by the time of publication, had yet to receive a response.

The limbo which the club has found itself in led to internal transfer meetings between Bruce, Lee Charnley, the managing director, and Steve Nickson, the head of recruitment, as well as shadow conference calls between the football advisers of the consortium, who had an alternative list of targets. While a director of football model and an overhaul in the club’s recruitment structure would have followed a takeover, it is instead Charnley and Nickson, along with Bruce, will lead this summer’s transfer business in a collective approach. Bruce claims that Newcastle already have “a couple of deals” lined up, but rarely have the club acted swiftly in the market during the Ashley era.

Those at St James’ Park have preached that it has been “business as usual” throughout but the prospective takeover has affected everything. Contract negotiations with first-team players have been placed on hold, with the agent of one squad member saying it had been “chaos” when attempting to deal with the club, and strategic long-term decisions have been deferred, with the expectation a new owner would soon be in place to make those calls.

Mauriss has been heavily linked with a takeover, while The Athletic has been made aware of at least one broker claiming to act on behalf of another potential American bidder. But the past 13 years have featured prospective buyer after prospective buyer and yet the club remains unsold, so cynicism is understandably the default reaction of most Newcastle fans.

In a statement, released shortly after 3.30pm on Thursday, Staveley’s consortium, in their first on-the-record declaration throughout the entire saga, confirmed that they had “formally withdrawn their interest”, citing the economic uncertainty caused by COVID-19 and the “prolonged process” as the reasons behind their decision.

“With a deep appreciation for the Newcastle community and the significance of its football club, we have come to the decision to withdraw our interest in acquiring Newcastle United Football club,” it read. “We do so with regret, as we were excited and fully committed to invest in the great city of Newcastle and believe we could have returned the club to the position of its history, tradition and fans’ merit… We are sorry it is not to be.”

Former Newcastle striker Mick Quinn summed up the mood of many supporters when he said “it’s the fans that get the shit end of the stick once again”.

The Newcastle United Supporters Trust (NUST), which sent a letter to the Premier League in June on behind of their 10,000-plus members, 96.7 per cent of whom declared they were in favour of the takeover in a poll, tweeted: “The supporters of Newcastle United have been treated with contempt by large parts of the football media & the Premier League during this failed takeover process. It’s been made clear that we are the least important people in a decision which affects us the most. We need answers.”

Chi Onwurah, MP for Central Newcastle who hosted a “Toon Town Hall” during lockdown to garner fans’ opinions on the prospective takeover, said: “I know that many constituents will be disappointed & frustrated by the withdrawal of the latest #NUFCTakeover offer. I will be writing to the @premierleague to ask why they took so long & gave so little clarity to #nufc fans.”

As for truefaith, the Newcastle fanzine, their reaction was simply, “Jesus Fucking Christ man.”

[Faustino]

17-18 uker med forhåpninger bare helt knust av dagens pressemelding.

Veien videre nå med Ashley, Bruce og co virker bare helt meningsløst. Hva er poenget med å bruke tid på denne klubben lenger? Er jo bare tortur og smerte.

15-17 plass i PL er målet.
Bruce er en manager som ikke kan utvikle klubben/spillet videre.
Kan ikke konkurrere med mindre PL klubber om spillere.
Neppe noe særlig med midler til spillerkjøp.
ASM, Almiron her på lånt tid.

Neste sesong er nok nye klubber forbi Newcastle igjen som Villa, Leeds og sikkert WBA også.

Har ventet 13 år nå på å bli kvitt Ashley og det kommer ikke til å skje no heller.

Kan bare rykke ned til championship og bli solgt for en lavere pris der nede, samtidig som alle ekspertene som trykker gode, solide og snille Bruce til sitt bryst kan få se hvor ubrukelig han er.

Problemet er ikke hvem som er trener, men den håpløse mangelen på satsing. Vi har en sjettedel av lønnsbudsjettet til topp 6, treningsfasiliteter som holder championship-nivå, og et akademi som ikke akkurat er kjent for å produsere spillere som er aktuelle for førstelaget.
Fotballen i dag er slik at sluttabellen stort sett samsvarer med hvor mye penger som blir brukt.
Jeg er sikker på at med selv vår våteste trenerdrøm ved roret hadde vi forblitt et lag som kjemper på nedre havldel av tabellen.

Det eneste vi kan håpe på er at Ashley virkelig vil selge denne gangen. Da er det kanskje et lite håp om at han amerikaneren eller noen andre klarer å få i stand et oppkjøp.