Matt

Nope, he can change the terms of it at any time he likes, although suddenly demanding the whole whack would raise eyebrows if assurances to the contrary were made to auditors the year before.

Despite all the nonsense about cups, advertising boards etc, that is possibly the daftest thing said in the whole meeting.

He hasn't got the bottle for it.

Don Cowie sounds like a footballer from the 60s. Maybe I just keep thinking of Don Howe.

Yep, same one, was an article about him on the BBC a while back.

Christ. Administration beckons there. How the hell has Gartside allowed that to happen? Unlikely given that almost all of that debt figure is owed to the club's owner, who must know he's never going to see most of that money ever again.

Gouffran looked absolutely shagged.

If the right barriers are in place then it's no different to the current situation with all-seater. While I've seen from pictures that some clubs in Germany 'double up' on rows, I think the only sensible approach here is to have one row per barrier with each person given a row and seat number. It should in theory make no difference to capacity, you are simply replacing a bucket seat with a rail seat.

More likely to be knocked over celebrating a goal in a seated area due to the lack of rails between rows. Who hasn't ended up on their arse once or twice in a celebratory melee?

Daft lad.

I thought the bit where we finished in the bottom half for 4 years running while they were off winning the Champions League probably did it. I don't get the hatred for the loan system. I don't care if we 'develop someone else's players' if it means we benefit from a better player and we finish in a better position as a result. That's what a trade is about, you do something that is in both parties interest. Admittedly the system is just allowing some clubs to hoover up players and needs reform, but we shouldn't consider ourselves above borrowing players from other clubs.

My only point was the difficulty in comparing like for like with other clubs when all you do is look at revenue. Other clubs will do various things in house or outsourced. The key point on the merchendising side is that Ashley is on both sides of the fence and can decide where the profit actually falls (while the club pleads poverty because none of the real profits ever hit the club itself).

Catering, for example, is outsourced so comparisons based on revenue are difficult. NUFC's revenue is their concession fee, which will be only a fraction of the amount that would be classed as revenue if the club carried it out themselves. Of course the club would then also bear the associated costs. If NUFC have outsourced all merchendising to SD then the revenue from this will similarly be much smaller than if the activity was carried out by NUFC. A lot of this is missed in the Deloitte rich list, which for some reason is obsessed with revenue but ignores costs in their headline numbers. It's hard to draw conclusions on these areas. What isn't in doubt though is that we used to have paying sponsors where SD signs now enjoy a free ride.

I cannot fathom how anyone can think Obertan is ever a better option than Ben Arfa. Obertan is as bad a player I have seen in the shirt since Wayne Quinn.

Just boycotting the East Stand would make a huge visual difference.

NCJ rely heavily on Newcastle United stories to keep interest in their papers and to keep themselves afloat. Seeing as they won't have access to any NUFC sources, their choice will be to either meaningful cease coverage entirely and lose readership, or go on the offensive and become the flag-bearer for the discgruntled. First and foremost, they have to fill the pages. Daft of the club not to think this through. Edit: The Journal beat me to it in the post above..

This should not be seen as a trade-off, because the 'not taken a penny out' line wouldn't wash if SD was paying £10m a year and NUFC then paying Ashley £10m a interest. Ashley is somehow portrayed as a benefactor. I would far rather it were all done on arms-length commercial terms.

Keith Curle is a good shout, ever since the 'race row' with Andy Cole in a league cup tie. Paul Gallacher for punching in the winner when he was at Blackburn.

Unless those same individuals can find a truckload of cash, it's not happening. We've been down this route before and it was utterly unsuccessful.

Nope, there'll be a contract just it'll be a small fee. It's fine as long as it's not seen as a way of shifting profits for tax planning purposes. Although even then, that's no problem form Amazon and Starbucks.

On the face of it, it would make perfect sense as SD can operate the shops cheaper than NUFC could. But given the arrangement for advertising you have to wonder just how much the club is seeing after the merchendise sales.

The club was maxed out. Ashley could hav bode his time and saved himself £100m. It's ironic he's so focused on cost control when you consider the reckless abandon with which he bought the club. I can't really get my head around it.

It wasn't a bank loan, though. The debt relating to the stadium development was in the form of privately-placed loan notes and couldn't simply be accelerated at the drop of a hat, the club would have to breach a covenant first (admittedly it's highly likely that releation would directly or indirectly lead to covenant breach). The notes amortised in such a way that as long as people turned up for games, the financing was covered. The real issue with the club's finances was the colossal wage bill which was weighed down by bumper contracts given out on the back of CL participation which is what lead to the overdraft position and the subsequent hocking of future sponsorship monies which most likely would have been repayable on relatively short terms (up to 3 years most likely). Bullshit. Yep- though we were headed for the financial wall- no doubt about it- you have to think through the series of events. Financial distress would have lead to a collapse in the club's share price- making us a relatively attractive purchase at a time when a number of clubs found themselves under new ownership. I don't think administration would have been necessary, but it could have happened. We certainly would have been in new owners hands fairly quickly. Instead we were bought for a ludicrous price and as a result Ashley is here for the foreseeable. There is no way we'd have sunk into the abyss. As for the argument that we need an owner with deep pockets made earlier- no we don't. Why should we expect someone else to shovel their cash on the bonfire? This club- run properly- can wash its own face and the supporter base should be prepared to be right behind that. It's a poor excuse and just masks the fact that we're not as strong operationally than we were in the past.

When you've got so much cash going spare it makes perfect sense to repay every bit of interest bearing debt you can. The bulk of the debt was in the form of long-term notes held by private investors (rather than bank debt) and investors could only demand repayment if the club breached a covenant (not outside the realms of possibility given the direction of the cash position). At 7-8%, they were not cheap, but the revenues from the stadium expansion more than covered the interest cost.

While Peter Cook would have been a good choice to stake out at a drinking hole, the reporter guy was Roger Cook.