[Football] Rafa gone..

Next Newcastle Manager Odds:

Garry Monk – 11/2
Eddie Howe – 7/1
Mikel Arteta – 15/2
Gennaro Gattuso – 10/1
Jose Mourinho – 12/1
Chris Hughton – 14/1
Patrick Vieira – 16/1
Steven Gerrard – 20/1
David Moyes – 20/1
Marcelo Bielsa – 20/1
Arsene Wenger – 20/1

Not the most inspiring list. Can't see Howe going there, he gets a nosebleed north of Watford.

Bielsa would be fun there, him and Ashley would be fighting in the car park by the end of his first week.

Ashley will want a yes man.

Mark Hughes
Pardew
Monk

No top rated man will go there IMHO

I always feel for the fans. I loved our trip there last season and Newcastle is a great place. That said, this can only give other teams likely to be fighting relegation a huge boost!

Don't they effectively need a youth team manager or have Newcastle changed their policy of not permitting the signing of players over the age of 26

Postman Pat said:

Next Newcastle Manager Odds:

Garry Monk – 11/2
Eddie Howe – 7/1
Mikel Arteta – 15/2
Gennaro Gattuso – 10/1
Jose Mourinho – 12/1
Chris Hughton – 14/1
Patrick Vieira – 16/1
Steven Gerrard – 20/1
David Moyes – 20/1
Marcelo Bielsa – 20/1
Arsene Wenger – 20/1

Not the most inspiring list. Can't see Howe going there, he gets a nosebleed north of Watford.

Bielsa would be fun there, him and Ashley would be fighting in the car park by the end of his first week.

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What odds on Benitez being next manager I wonder. Worth a punt? Take over completed and straight back in?

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Roy Hodgson to move upstairs with Rafa as his replacement. Maybe this was the exciting times Dougie was alluding to?

Tony Pulis odds slashed from 40/1 to 16/1.

Davy Moyes looks a big price @ 20/1 also could see someone like Alan Curbishley turn up there.

crodonilson said:

Davy Moyes looks a big price @ 20/1 also could see someone like Alan Curbishley turn up there.

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Newcastle legend Ruel Fox surely in the frame ?

Lower West Stander said:

Has he?

They are profitable and finished mid table in the Premiership last year. He also got a Champions League winning manager to manage them for three seasons.

I think we are only hearing one side of the story.

Ashley is only interested in Newcastle United as a vehicle to make money. Football is totally secondary to its value and is just another retail outlet for him.
Good time to be remind ourselves of the way he does business.


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The high court has been given an extraordinary insight into the working practices of Mike Ashley, the controversial founder of Sports Direct, who it was claimed would challenge subordinates to extreme drinking competitions that once ended with the 52-year-old billionaire vomiting into a fireplace.

The “unconventional” working life of Ashley, who controls the Sports Direct retail chain and Newcastle United football club, was laid bare in evidence on Monday in a case alleging that the retail tycoon reneged on a £15m deal with a banker. The lawsuit claims the agreement was sealed during a boozy session in a London pub.

Ashley allegedly held regular senior management meetings during “lock-ins” at the Green Dragon pub in Alfreton near Sports Direct’s warehouse. During other meetings Ashley is alleged to have expressed his “boredom and frustration”with City figures by lying under the table to “have a nap”.

On one occasion Ashley, who is estimated to be worth £2.2bn, is alleged to have challenged a young Polish analyst to a drinking competition at the Green Dragon in which they drank a dozen pints followed by vodka chasers. Jeff Blue, a former banker and colleague who is suing Ashley, said the rules of the drinking game were that whoever left the room first was to be declared the loser.

“After approximately 12 pints and chasers Pawel [Pawlowski] apologised profusely and had to excuse himself,” Blue stated in written evidence submitted to the court. “Mr Ashley then vomited into the fireplace located in the centre of the bar, to huge applause from his senior management team.”

Blue’s multimillion-pound legal claim stems from another boozy meeting at the Horse and Groom pub near Sports Direct’s Oxford Street store in 2013. Blue claims that Ashley agreed to pay him £15m if he could help double Sports Direct’s share price within three years.

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Ashley has dismissed everything discussed in the pub as “banter”, denied that any such deal existed and refused to pay up.

Blue, a former Merrill Lynch banker and strategic development director at Sports Direct, claimed that Ashley said: “If he [Blue] can get the stock to £8 per share why should I give a **** how much I have to pay him? I will have made so much money it doesn’t matter.”

Ashley, who munched on Polo mints while listening to Blue give evidence in the high court, is said to have initially offered the banker £10m if Sports Direct’s share price hit £8 per share but raised it to £15m after he said it was a “high target” and pointed out that the retailer’s Sports Direct stake would be worth more than £1.6bn.

The retailer is alleged to have said it would be “****ing unbelievable” for Sports Direct’s shares to hit that level, which would have meant the group was worth as much as Marks & Spencer.

Sports Direct’s shares hit the £8 price target in February 2014. The shares have since collapsed below £3, in part because of reputational damage caused by a Guardian investigation that revealed the retailer was in effect paying staff in its warehouse less than the minimum wage.

Blue said that in December 2013, when Sports Direct’s shares were approaching £8, he approached Ashley, who referred to him as “Jeffis”, for confirmation of the claimed agreement. Blue said that Ashley replied: “Jeffis, I’ve got it, I’ve got it. We’re cool, we’re cool.”

Shortly after the shares hit £8 at 1.04pm on 25 February 2014 Blue’s wife, who was also in court, texted him to say: “It’s hit 8!!!!!”

Ashley paid Blue a £1m bonus in May 2014, but said this was discretionary and not a downpayment on the alleged £15m deal agreed in the Horse and Groom. Ashley denies that any deal was made. Blue’s lawyers said the payment was “only explicable as a partial payment of the sum that had been agreed”.

Lawyers for Ashley said Blue’s claims were “extremely vague” and pointed out that there was no contemporaneous written record of the claimed deal. They said a “considerable amount of alcohol was drunk in the pub” which led to “banter” on several topics, including business and football.

Speaking in court, Blue claimed that drinking copious amounts of alcohol during business meetings was not unusual for Ashley, and that the tycoon often conducted meetings “in various unusual venues” and agreed deals orally while under the influence.

He said that during the same meeting Ashley was also on his phone finalising player transfers at his football club. “Notwithstanding the venue and the consumption of alcohol, I note that Mr Ashley was able during the evening to conduct other business, including making decisions in regards to player transfers on behalf of Newcastle United,” Blue said.

Blue also claimed that the company’s senior management meeting was held during a boozy event every Tuesday night at the Lion hotel in Worksop. The Lion is a short drive from Sport Direct’s warehouse, which a parliamentary inquiry found Ashley was running like a Victorian workhouse and treating workers “without dignity or respect”.

The meeting “typically commenced in the bar area at around 8pm with Mr Ashley drinking alcohol at the bar while in discussions with management”. Blue alleged that dinner would be served at about 10.30pm with the gathering generally coming to a close between 1am and 3am.

“Meetings were like no other senior management meeting I had ever attended in all my years of investment banking experience,” Blue said. “It was effectively a ‘pub lock-in’ with alcohol continuing to be served well beyond closing hours and fish and chips or kebabs being provided throughout the evening.”

Jeffrey Chapman QC, who is representing Blue, said: “Sports Direct senior management meetings often took place in bars where considerable volumes of alcohol were consumed while Mr Ashley made business decisions. The court must decide whether this was just a night in the pub or an important business meeting.”

David Cavender QC, representing Ashley, told the judge, Justice Leggatt, that Blue’s claim was an “opportunistic try-on”.

The case continues, and Ashley is due to take the stand on Wednesday.

Easy 10 said:

True, but surely a manager the calibre of Benitez should be in charge of one of the big European clubs challenging for honours, not pissing about with a basket-case yo-yo club like Newcastle, where the best he was ever going to achieve there was exactly what he did - mid table. I don't really understand why he so readily accepted several years of utter mediocrity there. I'm sure he was well rewarded, but he'd have got that anyway, if he was managing a serious football club. Its like he's had his career on hold.

Bet he gets a proper job next.

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Chelsea?

Does anyone think it has anything to do at all, maybe, possibly, you never know, with the fact that Rafa has been offered £1m a month by a Chinese club

I'm hoping Mark Hughes gets the gig.

Lower West Stander said:

Has he?

They are profitable and finished mid table in the Premiership last year. He also got a Champions League winning manager to manage them for three seasons.

I think we are only hearing one side of the story.

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Love the way fans of premier league Newcastle slate Ashley.
Must remember to tell them about Bill Archer, chairman of homeless and nearly non-league Brighton.
AKA don’t get taken in by whinging, entitled Geordies. It’s not like Newcastle were ever that great.

blue-shifted said:

Mate, there are people in the world genuinely deserving of your sympathy.

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Fair point.

crodonilson said:

Davy Moyes looks a big price @ 20/1 also could see someone like Alan Curbishley turn up there.

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Pardew still has a year left on his Newcastle contract

Pavilionaire said:

A black day for Newcastle.

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It's OK, tomorrow will be a white day, then a black day, a white day, black, white, black...

Easy 10 said:

Bet he gets a proper job next.

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Proper job in terms of money, but not in prestige. I reckon he'll pop up in China.

Paddy Power paid out on Newcastle being relegated!

[tweet]1143130190966611968[/tweet]

Suspect there isn't a lot of money on it so a nice bit of advertising.