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If Randy gets the next appointment right and results come back then the majority will be happy again. Mike Ashley is a very good example of that. Now people will say 'but what makes you think he'll get it right'. I don't know if he will. But getting rid of McLeish - a manager who is failing - is a great start towards letting him get it right.

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If Randy gets the next appointment right and results come back then the majority will be happy again. Mike Ashley is a very good example of that. Now people will say 'but what makes you think he'll get it right'. I don't know if he will. But getting rid of McLeish - a manager who is failing - is a great start towards letting him get it right.

And if Villa sign Messi we might play better. Looking at the evidence before us, neither are likely to happen, are they?

Lerner has only appointed two managers, and they have both been complete and utter disasters in every single way. The inevitable firing of McLeish (leading to yet more millions wasted in compensation) will eventually be down to Lerner having no other choice (due to falling club revenues) don't somehow kid yourself that it means something in his head has suddenly 'clicked'. He should never have hired him and, having done the unthinkable, he should have fired him long, long ago. He has absolutely no credibility left and I still find it astounding that intelligent people still cannot see the wood for the trees.

Mike Ashley is such a poor example when talking about Lerner. Mr Ashley, despite his obvious failings, has never chucked money at Newcastle and has actually proved this season to be a very good owner of a football club. He realised that instead of investing millions; creating a brilliant scouting network to poach the best talent for the cheapest prices is definitely the way to build long-term success at a club like Newcastle. All of this is so far removed from Randolph Lerner it's quite frankly painful to talk about.

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Finally the Birmingham Mail has woken up and realised what a poor manager Alex McLeish is.

However, I cannot agree with them when they state that all fans get behind the team and save protests until after we are safe. We may not be safe, if at all, until the final whistles have blown on the last day of the season by which time it will be far too late.

I object to them telling me and many thousands of other fans that have 'got behind the team' all season when to protest and what to do with regards to support for the team.

If they had woken up at the beginning of the year (at the very latest) and criticised McLeish for his poor management ability and our poor form then perhaps it would not have come to this.

They like many other media sources, have sat behind their desks not wishing to rock any boats that may see them bugger up their chances of getting inane and irrelevant ramblings from McLeish and the players to fill their column inches every day.

For me the time is now or never.

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Mike Ashley is such a poor example when talking about Lerner. Mr Ashley, despite his obvious failings, has never chucked money at Newcastle and has actually proved this season to be a very good owner of a football club. He realised that instead of investing millions; creating a brilliant scouting network to poach the best talent for the cheapest prices is definitely the way to build long-term success at a club like Newcastle. All of this is so far removed from Randolph Lerner it's quite frankly painful to talk about.
Mike Ashley has not 'proved this season to be a very good owner of a football club'. The only thing that has changed is that he got a managerial appointment right. Any changes to scouting networks was done by Pardew. Ashley got lucky. He hired his mate on a 5 year contract and gave him the keys to the Rolls as it were. He is doing precisely what Randy did with O'Neill (minus the 'mate' part) and Pardew seems to be doing a whole lot better with his Rolls than Martin did with his.

Every reason you think Ashley is now all of a sudden good is because he got one appointment right. And on paper, Alan Pardew was nothing like the success that he has so far turned out to be. Ashley essentially lucked into it.

Randy might need to luck into a good appointment too. He probably does. Maybe he will, maybe he won't. What I do know is that we don't currently have one, so why not throw the dice? If we get snake eyes again then we get snake eyes again. We're only back where we are now. But we might get better than that. I know it's better than sitting around waiting for the inevitable. And who knows. You say something in Randy's head won't have clicked. Maybe not that extreme but I'm willing to bet he doesn't want to go through all of this again. I'm willing to bet he has learned something, even if it's as small as going about it a different way.

Either way it's immaterial. For me we have to throw the dice. Worst case we get as bad as we've already got. But maybe we won't.

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Protesting is futile. The Occupy movement will tell you that.

What about in the Middle East where protests ousted governments?

Whilst I disagree with violent protests, there's something that can be said for peaceful ones.

But then again look at Blackburn earlier in the season.

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Protesting is futile. The Occupy movement will tell you that.

What about in the Middle East where protests ousted governments?

Whilst I disagree with violent protests, there's something that can be said for peaceful ones.

But then again look at Blackburn earlier in the season.

True - Blackburn fans are still not happy, and they won't be if they get relegated. I suppose they are in a similar boat to us - their chairman doesn't seem to know what to do.

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Mike Ashley is such a poor example when talking about Lerner. Mr Ashley, despite his obvious failings, has never chucked money at Newcastle and has actually proved this season to be a very good owner of a football club. He realised that instead of investing millions; creating a brilliant scouting network to poach the best talent for the cheapest prices is definitely the way to build long-term success at a club like Newcastle. All of this is so far removed from Randolph Lerner it's quite frankly painful to talk about.
Mike Ashley has not 'proved this season to be a very good owner of a football club'. The only thing that has changed is that he got a managerial appointment right. Any changes to scouting networks was done by Pardew. Ashley got lucky. He hired his mate on a 5 year contract and gave him the keys to the Rolls as it were. He is doing precisely what Randy did with O'Neill (minus the 'mate' part) and Pardew seems to be doing a whole lot better with his Rolls than Martin did with his.

Every reason you think Ashley is now all of a sudden good is because he got one appointment right. And on paper, Alan Pardew was nothing like the success that he has so far turned out to be. Ashley essentially lucked into it.

Randy might need to luck into a good appointment too. He probably does. Maybe he will, maybe he won't. What I do know is that we don't currently have one, so why not throw the dice? If we get snake eyes again then we get snake eyes again. We're only back where we are now. But we might get better than that. I know it's better than sitting around waiting for the inevitable. And who knows. You say something in Randy's head won't have clicked. Maybe not that extreme but I'm willing to bet he doesn't want to go through all of this again. I'm willing to bet he has learned something, even if it's as small as going about it a different way.

Either way it's immaterial. For me we have to throw the dice. Worst case we get as bad as we've already got. But maybe we won't.

Why not quote the first part of my post?

You're not right about the "only thing that has changed is his managerial appointment" at all. Ashley has never pumped millions upon millions into the Club, and for many years he got slated for it, but now he has appointed a manager who has turned things round. You say the scouting network is solely down to Pardew, how do you know that? And, even if it is, Ashley gets a lot of credit for making that correct appointment that clearly fitted in with the way he wanted to build success. There's no point in pretending otherwise and to say he just "lucked" into it stinks of sour grapes quite honestly. At least give credit where it is due.

He has not done "precisely" what Lerner has done at all, he's done the exact opposite. You're also forgetting the fact that Lerner didn't appoint O'Neill, Ellis did. But even so, Lerner threw and wasted tens of millions of pounds towards O'Neill with no safeguards, no caution, and no consideration for the long-term. Lerner acquired his play-thing and just chucked money at it. Look how much good that approach has done? Ashley has very much done the opposite, braved the early criticism, and is now proving that his approach is far better in the long-term.

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I didn't quote the Messi line because I'm trying to avoid the discussion going down some facetious route where legitimate points get ridiculed by childish comparisons. I avoided your first paragraph because I don't want another discussion about how good or how bad Martin O'Neill was. I felt your 2nd paragraph was closer to the topic that we're actually discussing so I put my effort into that.

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The exact reason why I made the Messi point was because what you were saying was not a legitimate point based on any evidence, merely guess work and what-ifs. I simply amplified the point I was making, and then backed up with evidence, why everything points to the fact that his next managerial appointment is just as likely to be as bad as his first two.

My first paragraph didn't even mention O'Neill, so I'm not sure why you think it would have led to a debate surrounding him?

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As frustrating as things are, and never mind the fact that we gave McLeish time and support, we should support the team and back the boys as much as we can through the next 3 games, and then sort this mess out.

I will put this in simple terms for you to understand:

We have been 'supporting the team and backing the boys' all season (even in the Bolton game) and it hasn't had any positive effect on the results, league position or quality of football played.

Once the next 3 games have been played any protests (if people can be bothered to turn up to an empty VP after the season has finished) will be a waste of time as McLeish, Lerner, Faulkner and the players will have already **** off on their long summer holidays.

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You're not right about the "only thing that has changed is his managerial appointment" at all. Ashley has never pumped millions upon millions into the Club, and for many years he got slated for it, but now he has appointed a manager who has turned things round.
Hold on, first you say I'm wrong in saying that only the manager has changed, then you yourself say Ashley has never pumped money in and still isn't i.e. he's doing things 'the same' as he always did. Which is it? Has he changed in his approach to pumping money in or not?

You say the scouting network is solely down to Pardew, how do you know that?
Because that's the manager's job. As well as coaches, managers tend to be followed around by their chief scouts and they implement what they believe to be the scouting network that they want at a club. I'd be amazed if Ashley had any input into how his scouting network changed.

And, even if it is, Ashley gets a lot of credit for making that correct appointment that clearly fitted in with the way he wanted to build success. There's no point in pretending otherwise and to say he just "lucked" into it stinks of sour grapes quite honestly. At least give credit where it is due.
It's not sour grapes at all and you should probably do me the decency of assuming I'm not here on a point scoring mission. I remember at the time he was appointed that there was uproar amongst their fans about how it had come about. Pardew IS a good mate of Ashley from before being manager there. He hired him after (or during) a piss-up and gave him a big fat long contract. At the time it smacked of hiring nothing more than a mate. It's not at all sour grapes. More power to them. But he did to a certain extent luck into it, not least because Pardew has never done as well previously as he is doing at Newcastle so there was nothing to suggest he was a saviour.

He has not done "precisely" what Lerner has done at all, he's done the exact opposite. You're also forgetting the fact that Lerner didn't appoint O'Neill, Ellis did.
Again, I don't want to go into this because the old tinfoil hats come out. Everyone knows the reality of the façade of that appointment and who O'Neill had agreed to work under and it does this discussion no good to try and obfuscate history by making it an issue.

But even so, Lerner threw and wasted tens of millions of pounds towards O'Neill with no safeguards, no caution, and no consideration for the long-term. Lerner acquired his play-thing and just chucked money at it.
Yes Lerner did all those things. He learned the hard way. I didn't hear us complaining while he was doing it mind you. Hindsight is 20/20. If we'd cracked top 4 this would be a very different discussion and we'd be heralding Randy. But his gamble didn't work and now he is tightening the belt. That's an example that he has learned or is at least learning from his mistakes. So it doesn't make sense to suggest that he won't have learned anything from the McLeish appointment considering he has learned in other aspects.

Look how much good that approach has done? Ashley has very much done the opposite, braved the early criticism, and is now proving that his approach is far better in the long-term.
Again, similar to above, it's all hindsight. At the time Ashley was being lambasted as a clueless buffoon who bought a plaything, had no idea how to run it, refused to put money into it and got it relegated. Then we move on to the Pardew appointment that we've already discussed and now all of Ashley's flaws (and they are flaws) have been forgiven as somehow being prophetic at the time.
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The exact reason why I made the Messi point was because what you were saying was not a legitimate point based on any evidence, merely guess work and what-ifs. I simply amplified the point I was making, and then backed up with evidence, why everything points to the fact that his next managerial appointment is just as likely to be as bad as his first two.
I feel you've missed the main point of my post then. The Messi line and this subsequent response only proves that.

My first paragraph didn't even mention O'Neill, so I'm not sure why you think it would have led to a debate surrounding him?
You said "Lerner has only appointed two managers, and they have both been complete and utter disasters in every single way". You can't see how that might turn into a discussion about the merits of the first manager if, say, the other person in the discussion doesn't think one of them was a "complete and utter disaster in every single way". Anyway, that's why I avoided it, as I've said earlier.
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As frustrating as things are, and never mind the fact that we gave McLeish time and support, we should support the team and back the boys as much as we can through the next 3 games, and then sort this mess out.

I will put this in simple terms for you to understand:

We have been 'supporting the team and backing the boys' all season (even in the Bolton game) and it hasn't had any positive effect on the results, league position or quality of football played.

Once the next 3 games have been played any protests (if people can be bothered to turn up to an empty VP after the season has finished) will be a waste of time as McLeish, Lerner, Faulkner and the players will have already **** off on their long summer holidays.

Did you even read my post? I wasn't even implying that we hadn't supported the team all season. In fact we were in great voice for 60 mins at the Bolton game, until we let two goals in the space of seconds.

And I'll put this in simple terms for you:

Protesting now won't make a blind bit of difference. Randy won't budge (see the backing of him on the website) and it will likely just affect the players in a negative way.

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I will put this in simple terms for you to understand:

We have been 'supporting the team and backing the boys' all season (even in the Bolton game) and it hasn't had any positive effect on the results, league position or quality of football played.

Once the next 3 games have been played any protests (if people can be bothered to turn up to an empty VP after the season has finished) will be a waste of time as McLeish, Lerner, Faulkner and the players will have already **** off on their long summer holidays.

The time for protest with a view to effecting any menaingful change passed weeks ago. It's clear the manager won't be going anywhere before the end of the season so save for the understandable desire to express your frustration I can't see what you hope to achieve from any protest at this stage.

With the spectre of relegation now very real it is difficult to see how protests will help make things better - if anything it'll only serve to undermine the already very brittle confidence of the team at a critical time.

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You're not right about the "only thing that has changed is his managerial appointment" at all. Ashley has never pumped millions upon millions into the Club, and for many years he got slated for it, but now he has appointed a manager who has turned things round.
Hold on, first you say I'm wrong in saying that only the manager has changed, then you yourself say Ashley has never pumped money in and still isn't i.e. he's doing things 'the same' as he always did. Which is it? Has he changed in his approach to pumping money in or not?

You say the scouting network is solely down to Pardew, how do you know that?
Because that's the manager's job. As well as coaches, managers tend to be followed around by their chief scouts and they implement what they believe to be the scouting network that they want at a club. I'd be amazed if Ashley had any input into how his scouting network changed.

And, even if it is, Ashley gets a lot of credit for making that correct appointment that clearly fitted in with the way he wanted to build success. There's no point in pretending otherwise and to say he just "lucked" into it stinks of sour grapes quite honestly. At least give credit where it is due.
It's not sour grapes at all and you should probably do me the decency of assuming I'm not here on a point scoring mission. I remember at the time he was appointed that there was uproar amongst their fans about how it had come about. Pardew IS a good mate of Ashley from before being manager there. He hired him after (or during) a piss-up and gave him a big fat long contract. At the time it smacked of hiring nothing more than a mate. It's not at all sour grapes. More power to them. But he did to a certain extent luck into it, not least because Pardew has never done as well previously as he is doing at Newcastle so there was nothing to suggest he was a saviour.

He has not done "precisely" what Lerner has done at all, he's done the exact opposite. You're also forgetting the fact that Lerner didn't appoint O'Neill, Ellis did.
Again, I don't want to go into this because the old tinfoil hats come out. Everyone knows the reality of the façade of that appointment and who O'Neill had agreed to work under and it does this discussion no good to try and obfuscate history by making it an issue.

But even so, Lerner threw and wasted tens of millions of pounds towards O'Neill with no safeguards, no caution, and no consideration for the long-term. Lerner acquired his play-thing and just chucked money at it.
Yes Lerner did all those things. He learned the hard way. I didn't hear us complaining while he was doing it mind you. Hindsight is 20/20. If we'd cracked top 4 this would be a very different discussion and we'd be heralding Randy. But his gamble didn't work and now he is tightening the belt. That's an example that he has learned or is at least learning from his mistakes. So it doesn't make sense to suggest that he won't have learned anything from the McLeish appointment considering he has learned in other aspects.

Look how much good that approach has done? Ashley has very much done the opposite, braved the early criticism, and is now proving that his approach is far better in the long-term.
Again, similar to above, it's all hindsight. At the time Ashley was being lambasted as a clueless buffoon who bought a plaything, had no idea how to run it, refused to put money into it and got it relegated. Then we move on to the Pardew appointment that we've already discussed and now all of Ashley's flaws (and they are flaws) have been forgiven as somehow being prophetic at the time.

The first bit about Ashley wasn't worded very well. What I meant is you implied the only thing which is now bringing Newcastle success is one flukey managerial appointment - what I am saying is Ashley's approach has remained constant all along and now the scouting network is in place, and he has a manager able to spot emerging talent, his approach is paying dividends.

I'm sure you are aware that, especially in this day and age, the boundaries between manager and owner at many football club's has been blurred like never before. I think it would be very naive to think Ashley has not had a key say in poaching this potential talent through an extensive scouting network, especially given his previous notoriety for not spending huge sums of money. What exactly do you think they talked about when discussing the terms of the managerial job?

All of what you say about Ashley "lucking" into the appointment and hiring him "after a piss-up" is just rumours regurgitated from the national press and has no substance really in a serious discussion. I'm fairly confident Ashley wasn't pissed when he suddenly just decided to 'stick a mate in charge'. He's a successful businessman outside of football remember, I think it's far more likely that he made a calculated risk which is now proving fruitful.

Your paragraph about Lerner is so wrong I don't even know where to start. You honestly think if we'd have secured Champions League that one season, things would be completely different now? Ask Everton fans why that assumption is so wrong. We'd need to secure CL football for at least five seasons in a row to even come close to having the amount of financial power Spurs have, let alone your Arsenal's, Chelsea's and United's.

Getting into the Champions League that season wouldn't have changed a thing. The fact is, and it is a fact, that Lerner spent so unsustainably that it was always going to take years to recover - whether we reached Europe's top competition for one season or not. You say none of us moaned at the time, but the true extent of his feckless spending didn't materialise at the start, did it?

You say he has learned things by 'tightening the belt' - well that's the line he would spin you certainly. I would say he's realised how much of his money he has wasted, and panicked. It doesn't mean he's actually learned how to put things right, as this season suggests.

Any rich person could chuck money at a football club. It takes a proper owner to come up with a plan, do it sustainably, hire logical managers, surround himself with footballing people and think about the club's long-term future. I'm not for one minute saying Mike Ashley is suddenly a perfect example of this, but Randolph Lerner certainly isn't. He's a joke, and has been ever since he stepped foot in this place.

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The exact reason why I made the Messi point was because what you were saying was not a legitimate point based on any evidence, merely guess work and what-ifs. I simply amplified the point I was making, and then backed up with evidence, why everything points to the fact that his next managerial appointment is just as likely to be as bad as his first two.
I feel you've missed the main point of my post then. The Messi line and this subsequent response only proves that.

My first paragraph didn't even mention O'Neill, so I'm not sure why you think it would have led to a debate surrounding him?
You said "Lerner has only appointed two managers, and they have both been complete and utter disasters in every single way". You can't see how that might turn into a discussion about the merits of the first manager if, say, the other person in the discussion doesn't think one of them was a "complete and utter disaster in every single way". Anyway, that's why I avoided it, as I've said earlier.

I didn't miss the point of your post at all. You said "if Lerner gets his next managerial appointment correct and results come back then the majority of fans will be happy" did you not?

I said, in response, that going by the evidence before us how likely is that to happen? Not very is the answer. Your point was and still is based on guess work. I'd love to know how I've completely missed your point.

Any in depth discussion about Aston Villa is likely to bring up O'Neill in some form or another, particularly when one person in the discussion cannot see the disastrous and shambolic mistakes made by our owner. But I didn't actually mention O'Neill in that post, as you suggested. Houllier was a complete disaster - from the point he walked into the club and suggested our natural position was 8th to 12th, until the point he received a massive compensation pay-off due to ill-health less than 12 months after taking up the role. Again, how you can say otherwise is staggering.

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As frustrating as things are, and never mind the fact that we gave McLeish time and support, we should support the team and back the boys as much as we can through the next 3 games, and then sort this mess out.

I will put this in simple terms for you to understand:

We have been 'supporting the team and backing the boys' all season (even in the Bolton game) and it hasn't had any positive effect on the results, league position or quality of football played.

Once the next 3 games have been played any protests (if people can be bothered to turn up to an empty VP after the season has finished) will be a waste of time as McLeish, Lerner, Faulkner and the players will have already **** off on their long summer holidays.

Did you even read my post? I wasn't even implying that we hadn't supported the team all season. In fact we were in great voice for 60 mins at the Bolton game, until we let two goals in the space of seconds.

And I'll put this in simple terms for you:

Protesting now won't make a blind bit of difference. Randy won't budge (see the backing of him on the website) and it will likely just affect the players in a negative way.

Yes, I read your post hence why I put things in simple terms for you.

Please tell me how, given that we can't get results with the fans 'supporting the team' and 'backing the boys' as you put it, any protest now could result in a set of worse results.

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As frustrating as things are, and never mind the fact that we gave McLeish time and support, we should support the team and back the boys as much as we can through the next 3 games, and then sort this mess out.

I will put this in simple terms for you to understand:

We have been 'supporting the team and backing the boys' all season (even in the Bolton game) and it hasn't had any positive effect on the results, league position or quality of football played.

Once the next 3 games have been played any protests (if people can be bothered to turn up to an empty VP after the season has finished) will be a waste of time as McLeish, Lerner, Faulkner and the players will have already **** off on their long summer holidays.

Did you even read my post? I wasn't even implying that we hadn't supported the team all season. In fact we were in great voice for 60 mins at the Bolton game, until we let two goals in the space of seconds.

And I'll put this in simple terms for you:

Protesting now won't make a blind bit of difference. Randy won't budge (see the backing of him on the website) and it will likely just affect the players in a negative way.

But it has made a difference. This week the media are starting to realise he was the wrong appointment and the board (bullshit or not) have had to come out with a statement as good as admitting defeat from the fans. Finally we have been noticed.

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As frustrating as things are, and never mind the fact that we gave McLeish time and support, we should support the team and back the boys as much as we can through the next 3 games, and then sort this mess out.

I will put this in simple terms for you to understand:

We have been 'supporting the team and backing the boys' all season (even in the Bolton game) and it hasn't had any positive effect on the results, league position or quality of football played.

Once the next 3 games have been played any protests (if people can be bothered to turn up to an empty VP after the season has finished) will be a waste of time as McLeish, Lerner, Faulkner and the players will have already **** off on their long summer holidays.

Did you even read my post? I wasn't even implying that we hadn't supported the team all season. In fact we were in great voice for 60 mins at the Bolton game, until we let two goals in the space of seconds.

And I'll put this in simple terms for you:

Protesting now won't make a blind bit of difference. Randy won't budge (see the backing of him on the website) and it will likely just affect the players in a negative way.

But it has made a difference. This week the media are starting to realise he was the wrong appointment and the board (bullshit or not) have had to come out with a statement as good as admitting defeat from the fans. Finally we have been noticed.

Well said.

The protests against McLeish at the Bolton game quite likely were the catalyst for dedicated 'Football Phone In' programmes on Radio WM and TalkSport Radio yesterday and several pages in the Birmingham Mail today.

The media are starting to wake up and smell the coffee with regard to the plight of Aston Villa and the more we challenge what we are being force fed by Lerner, Faulkner and McLeish the more the media will take note and the more pressure they will apply as it is a knock on effect

If we sit back and do nothing, as some fans on here and on the radio would have us do, then we will look back in a month or more and ask ourselves:

"What did I do when my club needed me?"

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