Matt

Revenues of £1m? How many roast dinners are they selling?

If Rafa isn't under a contract beyond next summer, we simply won't be committing and rolling the cash forward for the next manager. This season will be a write-off with survival the only aim.

That includes the increase in TV money. We received £125.9m in TV money for 17/18 (according to an article on The Mag) - in the Championship our total media figure was £47m so I factored in the difference. However I missed the additional commercial income from PL block sponsorship, so that figure would be more like £45m. Again this is just based on past financials and rumoured figures. Other things could have happened this year which have not been reported yet.

My back-of-the-envelope scribblings estimate that the club should have around £35m available in cash at this point in the year taking into account business done so far and assuming there has been no money paid up to Ashley (based on the 'every penny' comments). We know Ashley doesn't want to put additional funds into the club unless to stave off financial distress so that's probably a decent benchmark as to the maximum net cash outlay- so our approach to instalment vs cash up front could have a big impact.

They may be a lowly amateur side, but looking at the state of the goals you have to think something's off there. Even an amateur side will be able to carry out the basics, and not just stand and let the ball go for tap in after tap in. Or in the keeper's case, dive out of the way of the ball on a number of occasions. There were also a number of huge scores in Italy. Torino, Genoa, Fiorentina, Samp, Udinese all scored 10 or more, some of which were against cobbled-together representive sides rather than actual clubs. Convenient.

Maybe he's like Ba and his main aim in life is to get through as many signing-on fees for him and his agent as possible.

True, but I don't think we are approaching these things in the way most other clubs are, because chopping and changing costs so much money. If there is no guarantee Rafa will be here long-term, then they will hold back as much as possible in order to sweeten the deal for whoever their next long-term choice is, even though that manager will be a downgrade on what we have now.

What?

Because they won't want to spend a load of money and then have a new manager next summer and not rate Kenedy at all then we are either stuck with him or have to shift him at a loss. That will be how they are looking at this window.

I'm almost feeling sorry for the guy here, now he's getting slated for spending money, as opposed to not spending it? The squad were on PL wages and we went out and signed a number of players who were also on PL contracts in order to go back up. The problem here is every single decision is micro-managed by Ashley, despite all his claims that Charley does the day-to-day. He doesn't. The control freak approach and lack of trust from the top is the root of all our problems.

This all happened before the takeover was completed.

This Vysyble outfit obviously fancy supplying Ronnie with financial insight fir a bit of free promotion (the new Vinay Bedi), but Christ what a load of absolute bollocks they are spouting.

Imagine how dry a Sunday roast must be on Wearside. Christ.

Cash cows are business which produce stable, predicatable and high-quality cashflows. Football clubs rarely are and NUFC certainly isn't. MA is not beyond sharp practice, there are plenty of stories out there, but if he needs to extract cash from NUFC, he can. He just repays a bit of the shareholder loan. He's not going to set up a convoluted Balti pie scheme for a few grand. With the merchendise, almost certainly SD providing the service will ensure greater profits. The only question is how these are shared. All of these are minor points, the real issue is that the club has utterly failed to exploit its commercial potential and continues to run itself with a skeleton crew operating at the whim of a barely interested control freak.

But they still make profit on things like this. You're going on as if Ashley is doing us a favour with tricks like this ffs. SD will certainly make a profit on it, otherwise why wouldn't they do it. If A can make something at 5% margin and B can do it at 10% then there is a clearly a deal to be done in which both benefit, that's fundamental. And it's no more a 'trick' than doing the same for our catering. I have no idea if the contract is overly favourable to one party or the other, but it's not some kind of shady practice in its nature.

A less-than-flattering commentary in Private Eye about Methven, who obviously has won no friends in press circles. Calls into question whether he actually does any PR for anyone other than himself.

Still owned by an oligarch I think? I've not seen anything which determines one way or the other that PL TV income is all paid in one go. And their cash outlay is mitigated as the vast majority of deals will be payable in instalmanets.

Banks are generally loath to lend money to football clubs beyond overdraft / working capital uses. They're horrible businesses generally and when things go wrong, your name gets splashed in the press and in some cases indivudual contact details get leaked leading to a bombardment of abuse (this happened to people I know who worked on the Hicks / Gillett Liverpool deal). I wouldn't touch one personally. The issue from the perspective of a club is that fans love the 'jam today' of borrowing £50m and bringing in a couple of players but lets say those signings are duds, that's FA you can spend the following summer if you can't shift them.

They are also paying 100% of the costs associated with it. For comparison, SD's operating margins are around 9% historically.

Outsourcing will reduce turnover but should increase profit. So it's hard to compare revenue streams for clubs who outsource catering for example (or in our case retail). In theory SD should be able to fulfil that function much more efficiently than NUFC could on their own and both SD and NUFC should be able to benefit from it. Our big failure is in our commercial revenues- some of this is down to SD getting free coverage but it really down to our inability to build lasting relationships with major brands which in turn is damaged by the fact we've been down twice and are never far from another crisis. Brands want to be able to work with those clubs and players who are being beamed around the world week-in, week-out. I would really love to know how much we're missing out on the ground advertising. I don't think it will be a colossal amount per year, but this will have built over time. Right, now onto that Chronicle article about the value of the club. What the analysis shows is that it's pointless to use a historical set of extremely volatile numbers in an industry where relagation is valuation life-or-death and where we are still waiting the impact of the new TV deals. I'm amazed someone put their company name to it. So many broad assumptions have to be made (given NUFC is private and not that many clubs are listed) that you could end up with any number you like. 'Economic profit' is more commonly known as EVA (but it's trademarked, so they changed it) and isn't any use whatsoever in terms of estimating what cash the club has available to spend in the window, so don't read anything into it.

He can't walk.

Assuming we also pay in one go, which based on the recent numbers is not a hard and fast policy.

Are you going to launch a JustGiving page for the £6m release clause in his contract? He'll be here for next season and unless there is a change at the top, then he'll be gone for sure. He'll see 3 years as a decent stint and will have re-established himself in PL with no shortage of takers when he goes.

Something like that plus net sales would be roughly in line with what the club publicly said about how much would be available.