339 thoughts on “Was fixture congestion really an issue for United?

  1. Big Dave says:
    June 6, 2013 at 15:13
    Kim as I said when there was lots of ones on here telling us how good jabba was and how he saved our club from going bust etc etc, what good has it done us we dont see any benefits from our interest free loan or all the free advertisement he gave to SD .

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    A fair point, Dave, but my question has always been what would have happended if MA hadn’t bought the club and injected it with cash? How would the previous owners have dealt with it when the bills came due? They were already in way over there heads and we would have been in a world of trouble IMO.

    The one place where Ashley really went wrong IMO was the Keegan fiasco. Had he just backed Keegan that one window and got us through that season safely, he could have gradually remade the squad and rid it of the high earners in the summer. Not that Keegan probably would have stuck around for that but at least wouldn’t have wasted that season (and money) in the CCC and would be in a better spot.

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  2. The debt issue is not a big problem for Ashley. He knows he has to hang on to the club for at least 4 or 5 more years in order to make a huge profit and that’s exactly what he’ll do. The big money profits start next year. He should make at least 25-30 M pounds a year for the life of the new TV contract. That will mean 100-150 M pounds of profit over 4 or 5 years. As long as he keeps us in the Prem and the squad is decent he should be able to sell for at least 150-200 M pounds or more. So in five years he has his money back plus a very decent profit. Nobody believes Ashley is in this for football ambitions (he wants to finish mid table correct?) so that only leaves money. We’ll continue to have big ups and downs with him as owner sad to say and the downs will far outnumber the ups as we’ve already seen over the last s6 years.

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  3. MDS – I would love to know where we went had Ashley got behind KK. I think Kevs love of spending big was maybe just too much for Ashley who seems far more calculated about things.
    I think where Ashley went wrong was firstly having the Wise, Jimenez and Lamby trio in place. That was a set up that didnt work for KK and I think put quite a few other managers off when we looked for KKs replacement. KKs replacement was of course MAs second big mistake. If he didnt want a free spend Keegan type and preferred a shoe string Pardew type, then he should have paid the compo to buy the right man out their contract and get them in straight away. Having not done that, he and we paid the ultimate price.

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  4. Sharpy- I have my doubts that Keegan (who was of course used to spending big) would stayed around for the remake of the squad. But by backing Wise, Jimenez and DL we unfortunately never got to find out for sure. Assuming for a second that KK would have left in the summer anyway, you are right that things could have still been OK if ponied up for a decent manager we’d have been fine.

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  5. What will Pardew’s plan for next season be? He will hope to go into it with a full strength squad so our starting 11 should be very decent. With the likes of Ben Arfa, Cabaye, Sissoko, Cisse and Gouffran to lead the attack surely we will score more than we have recently? The defense depends on keeping Colo or getting a very good replacement. If Saylor can stay fit and Mbiwa gets more comfortable we could be decent at the back as well. No problems in goal so to start the season I would hope we can bring in a decent points total. This is obviously the optimistic view but it’s worth considering. Our problems might begin by November or December if injuries mount because we have trouble fielding decent sides when that happens. Ashley will never pay for a deep squad so look to us keeping players like Willo, Jonas, and possibly even Shola.
    With no decent cover at several positions the struggle will probably be the second half of the season even without Europe.

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  6. As far as Pardew is concerned I can’t see us ever getting back to the top 6 under him. That was a one off with unusual circumstances (a very good striker in Ba, another striker in absolutely outlandish form in Cisse and a defense that played with real purpose). I can see us finishing each season under Pardew with somewhere between 45 and 55 points so up and down between say 8th or 9th and 12th to 14th. It’s not horrible but won’t win us anything. Is it enough for most of us? No I think it isn’t. Will we win anything? No as we don’t even have the guts to go for it in the domestic cup competitions. Hopefully I’m wrong.

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  7. I was thinking a bit about formations yesterday. It seems to me our best 11 are well suited to 4-3-1-2 as below:
    Krul
    Debuchy Saylor Colo Haidara/Santon
    Anita Cabaye Tiote/Marveaux
    Ben Arfa
    Cisse Gouffran
    Will we ever see it with Pardew? He seems to like 4-2-3-1 recently or 4-5-1 away (he can pretend that is 4-3-3 but it rarely is). Surely we will experiment with formations in the pre-season? Let’s hope so. We have a lot to prove next season.

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  8. SHARPY @228 i dont think we can say KK overspent in anyway,he raked a fair bit back in sales and a big rise in fan base so in that respect he was cheap mate, how many players can you name that didnt do a job for us 😉

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  9. G2- I like the formation but I’d play Sissoko and Cabaye on either side of (and in front of) Tiote

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  10. I’ve left Sissoko out of the formation above but he could clearly play in place of Marveaux or Tiote, and Marveaux could slide over and take Anita’s place. With a better striker in place of Gouffran it could be a very decent side.

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  11. Yes I was just thinking similarly MDS @234. I don’t know how I left Sissoko out. It does look promising but what happens when we get the inevitable injuries? Players like Willo, Shola, and Obertan would make the idea fall apart quickly if we have to use them mate.

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  12. G2 @227 ,agree he’s not in it for the club’s glory and he told FFS that he was buying the club to use as an advertising vehicle for SD ,same as his input in Rangers is. This summer will tell us of his real intentions ambition wise .You can’t go by January’s rash of signings cause that was damage limitation and putting right the summers **** up 🙄 . If he really want’s progress he’ll strengthen well this summer with some quality ,time will tell ,oh and he won’t let the crown jewels be sold either unless it’s mind blowing Carroll figure sums offered. 😉

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  13. To be more optimistic we could say we have players like Vuckic, Anita, and Bigi to step in if we have injuries. And if we do get another striker then possibly Gouffran spends more time on the bench. Haidara will definitely compete with Santon and Mbiwa will push Saylor or a Colo replacement. Not too bad at the back and in midfield then. The real gaps are at CB without Colo and at least one more striker. Saylor and Mbiwa are definitely not enough at CB if Colo leaves and Cisse and Gouffran aren’t anywhere near enough up front. Forget Shola for me and Campbell needs loaning out for a season.

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  14. G2 Pards has recently said Campbell will feature next season so he won’t be loaned out .More to the point does that mean no top notch striker to sign. If he plays Cisse and a new striker where does that leave Campbell 😕

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  15. Aye Kimtoon @237 the lack of football ambition really shows up with Ashley every summer. We’re all on to that now though. The “we tried to get them across the line but unfortunately it didn’t happen” line isn’t going to work and will only bring more anger from the supporters. It will also put Pardew under even more pressure which should be something Ashley would want to avoid after this season’s disaster. Who knows with Ashley though? He doesn’t spend enough time on the club and has the deluded Llambias filling his ear.

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  16. It gets stranger and stranger Kimtoon. I can’t see us being in a good enough position to let Campbell have a lot of minutes? Perhaps he’ll take Shola’s minutes but even so we don’t have nearly enough striker options. What are they thinking if anything? The lights are on but nobody’s home it seems. Clueless.

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  17. @239. Kim I think Campbell would be good in Shola’s role even if we sign another striker. Play him in the cups, as an impact sub, or the occassional start due to injury….

    I would like to see us add a young RB, striker, and winger this summer

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  18. Ice – I didn’t say he overspent mate, I said he liked to spend big. Whether that be on one large fee or a high turn over of players.
    He had a couple of poor signings but in the main most of his signings were decent to excellent mate.

    Ice – I always looked forward to a Keegan transfer window though mate. Can’t really say that now like.

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  19. KIM@239 what a silly thing to ask,you know fine well he will play him in defence 😆 😆

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  20. Yes Ice we’re the first team to ever try attacking by defending. It didn’t seem to work this season did it mate? The 1-8-1-1 formation is not going to become popular soon I don’t think yet Pardew seems to like it. If we see an isolated Cisse on his own up front at the start of next season I’m going to scream. Get ready to cover your ears mate. 😆

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  21. Aye MDS @242, we need a young promising RB, a winger to replace Obertan and 2 more strikers to cover for injuries and set up some competition. If Colo leaves another CB is a must as well. This must be obvious to Ash/Llam? Please don’t tell me they haven’t noticed and aren’t listening to Pardew mate. 😥

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  22. G2 this is the first time in my life i am not looking forward to a new season,we have had some bad seasons over the years but always looked forward to the next one,but to watch a manager with those tactics and spoil good players does my heed in and to come out with so much ****,oh for a change,sick of the three amgios 🙁

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  23. I would have to agree ice @247 it’s hard to look forward to what’s coming with the 3 clever lads in charge. No real sense that they are paying attention or have learned anything from this past season. More of the same then? If so it will be hard to watch as soon as the injuries start. With so much money at stake even if he has no football passion what is the owner thinking? To say he’s clueless is an understatement.

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  24. No club should go into the off season without a serious review and a plan to go forward with. Yet I worry our club with AshLlamPard (I’m starting to think of them as one horrible monstrosity with a tiny pinhead) do very little reviewing or serious planning. If the summer goes by with no serious effort to improve the club we all know who to blame. That blob we can call Mike AshLlamPard.

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  25. @Aussie

    Fat Freddie didn’t jump ship. He was on his death bed with pneumonia when the Halls sold their shares which allowed Ashley to force Freddie to sell his shares.

    Ashley didn’t do due diligence because he wanted to rush thru the Halls sale before Freddie recovered.

    Its all documented. You should do your research first. 😛

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  26. G2 i dont know what you think but a lot of games i went to the players just did not look fit,you could see the diff in the 2nd half they looked done in and the players themselves imo never put a 100% effort in 🙁

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  27. Oh I agree ice mate @253. It was shocking to see the state of some of the players in the second half of many games. How do we explain that? I still can’t get my head around it. It shouldn’t be possible for a professional footballer to not be able to play an entire game even with only 3 days off. Strange things going on at our club and there are 3 idiots at least to blame.

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  28. G2 could it be because they stuffed up the pre-season players just never were fit if thats the case we are in for the same as they have stuffed up this yrs too,**** heads

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  29. Again spot on ice @257. Could we be any more incompetent? We can’t even arrange a proper set of pre-season games? Now the rumors are it will be Portugal. Who is in charge of this at the club? The same person who’s in charge of fitness? Probably not. And Ash Lampard suits me fine MDS @256. 😆 😆 Only our Ash Lampard is nothing to be proud of. 😆

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  30. G2 dont forget the rangers game jabba is fixing up to fill “his”coffers,no wonder his mrs left him and he lives like a hermit with high wall round the place and a two mile drive to keep the un-wanted away doesnt even read the press they say

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  31. I can see why he might not want to read the press reports ice. Even a little bit of truth would be too much for him. I wonder how long it took him to decide to admit he was lying against Keegan in court? His lawyer probably had to force his hand. A shabby little man with a lot of dosh is still a shabby little man.

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  32. Ice@244 🙄 I bet he does as well 😆 the clueless ***.

    Ice@257 Agree on the pre season mess ,it’s a case of here we go again 🙁

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  33. MDS @ 226 sorry mate wasn’t ignoring you just doing a bit of graft.
    IMO if Jabba hadn’t have bought it someone else would have, maybe FFS would have got backers to come in with him which I think he would have, But I don’t for one minute think we would have went bust or been relegated I still think we would be in the top 8 maybe even better, but that just my opinion.
    Yeah people can say that they think we would have went bust, but again thats only guessing but what we DO know is that under Jabba it has been 1 fuking fiasco after another, we have had the KK one the relegation one, the sd @ sjp, then the SD arena etc etc they are not wild guess’s they are all facts.

    You say they were in well over their heads how we had £110 mill worth of debt over half that was for the ground rebuilding etc so I really dont think £ 60 mill debt was over our heads, not when you see that most prem clubs have that and more.
    As I said I would rather have took the chance with FFS atleast we knew the club meant more to him than ££ and free advertising

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  34. Ice @ 259 all that was for him to try to get a break from Stardust 😉 but it never worked 😆

    Troy @ 252 research isn’t one of Aussies strong points even though it was common knowledge, but maybe all that sand has blinded him 😀

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  35. Kevin Keegan’s latest comments to Lee Ryder are very interesting and I believe every word of it. Keegan calls working under Ashley “a living nightmare”. The clown squad Ashley had working for him at the time get some treatment as well including Wise, Llambias, and Jimenez. More brutal but honest words about our current owner. Keegan is a bit flighty at times but an honest and caring man. Can’t say anything similar about Ashley.

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  36. No worries BD.

    Yeah you and I just have to agree to disagree on that one. I think their whole mode of running the club at an annual deficit, spending advertising fees in advance, paying off transfer fees in in pieces over multiple years, etc. was a poor way of doing business. They just happened to find a sucker buyer and got out before the bills came do. I doubt they’d have been able to sell to anyone at that price who took the time to do due diligence.

    There certainly has been a lot of nonsense under this crew but I’m willing to move off if the keep us on the ascension. This year was a big step back right when they started to look they got a handle on things. Huge year for them next year

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  37. You don’t bring in a man of Keegan’s stature if you are going to make him answer to a clown like Wise, or a football novice like DL. If Ashley wanted that structure in place he should have hired a coach.

    DL should have run the business side, KK the football side, and Wise a concessions stand

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  38. MDS SJH had Malaysians ready to buy the club but they needed time to do DD, so I have no doubt we would have got a buyer if we needed one, as for paying transfer fee’s in installments well that’s how 99% of the other teams do it so I don’t see the problem with that, spending advertising fee’s in advance ? well atleast we would have got a benefit out of it, as it is there is no point worrying about it as most of it is free for SD

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  39. We all know Ashley is a bell end – we just need to live with it until he gets an offer to sell.

    We know we will achieve very little under him, lets be honest I could own the football club and run it like he is running it so what is the point in him owning it?

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  40. that’s the thing though dave I doubt anyone would have bought the club once they’d had a look at the books….

    I don’t know if we’d have ended up in administration or not, but either FFS or new owners would still have had to deal with the debt at some point, trimmed the wage bill, etc. And if we’d have gotten relegated I don’t know if they’d have had the cash to get us back up right away

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  41. I apologise for my earlier statement. I had temporary bout of amnesia and forgot that no one is allowed to defend or say anything nice about Ashley on here. It upsets the horde 🙂 🙂 🙂 also no one can force you to sell shares or take advantage of someone who is sick (or on their death bed if you want to be dramatic) it is anti competitive behavior and not even legal.

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  42. *** 😯 AMF, repeat a thousand times before breakfast:
    Ashley has no ambition
    Ashley doesn’t want to win anything
    Ashley is only interested in money
    Ashley has no idea how to run a football club
    Ashley is the root of all evil
    The sole reason Ashley exists is to make life as difficult as possible for Newcastle fans.

    Get it right, mate 😉

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  43. Vegas o.k let me give it a go…. 😉

    “Ashley has no ambition
    Ashley doesn’t want to win anything
    Ashley is only interested in money
    Ashley has no idea how to run a football club
    Ashley is the root of all evil
    The sole reason Ashley exists is to make life as difficult as possible for Newcastle fans”

    “Ashley has no ambition
    Ashley doesn’t want to win anything
    Ashley is only interested in money
    Ashley has no idea how to run a football club
    Ashley is the root of all evil
    The sole reason Ashley exists is to make life as difficult as possible for Newcastle fans”

    “Ashley has no ambition
    Ashley doesn’t want to win anything
    Ashley is only interested in money
    Ashley has no idea how to run a football club
    Ashley is the root of all evil
    The sole reason Ashley exists is to make life as difficult as possible for Newcastle fans”

    “Ashley has no ambition
    Ashley doesn’t want to win anything
    Ashley is only interested in money
    Ashley has no idea how to run a football club
    Ashley is the root of all evil
    The sole reason Ashley exists is to make life as difficult as possible for Newcastle fans”

    “Ashley has no ambition
    Ashley doesn’t want to win anything
    Ashley is only interested in money
    Ashley has no idea how to run a football club
    Ashley is the root of all evil
    The sole reason Ashley exists is to make life as difficult as possible for Newcastle fans”

    “I hate Ashley” 😈 “Must kill Ashley!” 😈

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  44. Excellent! You colonials learn well.

    Once you’ve mastered that you can move on to:
    I can run a better club than him
    I’m a better manager than Pardew
    Pardew only talks *****
    Pardew is clueless
    Don’t they practise corners
    We’re doomed

    After that, you’ll be ready to join a blog and post messages … again and again and again … on the same topic.

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  45. 🙄 Vegas, I haven’t really picked up any of those bad vibes regarding Pardew and our tactics mate? Are you sure you read them on here 😆 😆 😆

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  46. No, mate, not on here – everywhere else, but not here. No, the guys here are sensible and grown up about it all, not like on Ed’s. The guys here only ever have pithy insights into the game. Full of intelligent repartee, this place, like, ye naa, man.

    Good for a laugh, like.

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  47. @Aussie

    You don’t have to be so dramatic fella. 😆

    Everyone knows you love the limelight. 😛

    It would have saved you loads of time to just to admit you were wrong. 😆

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  48. Troy, fair enough, you have got me mate, I admit that you were wrong! 😆

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  49. @aussie

    Its the greatest. I’ve just zoomed in on google earth live to see Aussie deciding which pants to wear today.

    His chill out flowery Bermudas or his angry pants with inferno flames embroidered on! 😛

    It looks like its the angry flame pants today. 😛 😛

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  50. Troy, so you know which house is mine… I painted “for the sake of the blog” on the roof 😆 😆 😆

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  51. @Aussie

    I can see it. Its just like the Gallowgate roof. 😉

    The bashed up yute gave it away tho Mr angry pants. 😛 😛

    Would you sell Saylor Aussie? I would take £8m

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  52. Aussie I can see Stardy getting a real warm feeling when he reads your points knowing that someone else loves Jabba, but makesure you dont show too much love or his warm feeling will turn into a boiling hot rage

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  53. Yep, I would for 8m, although I would ask for 10m just to see how keen they were 😉 .

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  54. @Big Dave

    Stardy is trying not to comment as he wants his article to have the most posts. 😆

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  55. Aussie after the way you have slagged him off I thought you would have sold him for £800k .

    Troy tell him to keep writing then everytime an article has 200 posts send a new one in

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  56. Yeah gooner fans I know seem to rate saylor for some reason, some more than Colo. Would defo take 8 mil, he is a proven crock imo but they won’t offer that so no point speculating. Plus we’d lose one of the lads who bleeds black and white, puts his body on the line, gives his all, has taylor made excuses because he’s one of us blah blah blah blah

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  57. BD, Stardy will always be the number one Ashley fan, I have no intention of taking that honor from him 😆
    Good to see Newkie still loves a convict joke… BD, ban that racist… 😆 😆

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  58. Where is Toonsy, I sent him a new article about 4 days ago 😯

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  59. He’ll still be converting it to something readable then I expect, jeez give him a chance, he’s not a miracle worker! 😉

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  60. Aussie, eh where’s the convict joke in that? I think you’re just reading too much into everything now, to be expected with your guilty concience and paranoid mind 😎

    Yeah toonsy, give us something else to talk about for 5 mins after the article is posted before we resort to ashley out/pardew out again 😀

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  61. 😆 he has been trying to get all the words with multiple syllables broken down to single syllable words so Big Dave can read it 😆 😆

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