Matt

Yup, deserves some credit for the debt thing. No excuse for every other mistake he's made mind, but that bit he got right. The debt was amortising and matured in (IIRC) 2016. It only needed refinancing because of the change of control at the club, even though that bog-standard clause came as a total surprise for the supposedly business-savvy Ashley. Despite the size, NUFC had no problem with the stadium debt and like every other club was simply massively overspending on wages.

Football finances are too dependent on the valuation of player registrations for that.

After we switched to 4-4-2 at half time we were much brighter and were causing WBA problems down both flanks. Delivery from the right was very poor but Jonas' hard work and decent cross got us right back into the game. We were looking very good for an equaliser at that point. Personally I thought we worked very hard with 10 men and the second goal was fully deserved. We're never going to outrun a team like WBA- they have younger players who have the legs to cover the ground. If we play a pressing game at both ends we'd need to replace Nolan, Smith and Guthrie after half an hour- they aren't up to chasing shadows for 90 minutes. This inevitably means we afford more possession to the opponent around the midfield, but try to close down around the edge of our area. Improvement in the middle of the park is a must- right now we have no choice but to play this way.

For a good chunk of the ST base, midweeks are out for travel or work reasons. I don't think the oppo will have such a great impact.

Was in there for a few games last season but it was heaving. Will try to make the effort on Monday.

You can't really class the loans from St James' Holdings as debt- in reality that is equity because all of the risks and rewards fall at Ashley's door. Occasionally in takeovers there are 'vendor notes' where the selling party lends to the new owners to help smooth the sale but I can't really see Ashley being keen on that- surely he'll want a clean break. The only price is an all-in price- so no interest at £80m should give you an indication of how much interest there would be at £200m!

I was in two mind about trusting my funds with NUST, but not any more. I'm tired of hearing how there are 'top professionals' on board- well top professionals clearly aren't churning out numbers like that. You don't need GCSE maths to work out that 7x12 is more than we'll turn over in this division- are players now paying for the privilege of playing in the black and white shirt? Stunts like this will have any professionals involved distancing themselves from the project- what accountant would own up to producing this sort of garbage?

What is SJP Holdings? Do they mean SJHL? Dear God.

£150m was too much in the PL so no-one met his price. £80m was comically high for the state we were in the summer, so no-one met his price. When he names his price again, is it really any more likely to be met? Will he realise that investors are not queuing up round the corner to buy clubs? A number of major financial institutions will not touch football clubs after what has gone on at Man Utd and Liverpool. As for the concept that a low price would encourage a buyer who couldn't afford to run it- sorry- are we basically demanding that someone who buys the football club has some kind of moral obligation to pump tens of millions of pounds into it? It doesn't matter how much money any buyer has- if they pay what Ashley asks they are either very wealthy (unlikely to happen) or foolhardy. It was overpaying for the club in the first place which has driven Ashley to save face and ask for top-whack prices. I'd rather a businessman paid what it was truly worth- maybe that's the sort of level-headedness needed to run NUFC.

Not desperate enough to lower the price to one that will actually get the club sold though. In other words not desperate at all. Exactly. Until the club is marketed at something like a reasonable price, we'll remain in Ashley's hands.

Chelsea converted shareholder loans (debt) into equity. In reality this is smoke and mirrors as shareholder loans in a 100% owned company is as good as equity (though is done this way for tax reasons). Just the same as Ashley's loans to NUFC aren't really debt- they're just tax-efficient equity.

Ultimately, this will be a good things for them- paying out the PIKs (which are a bit like a large-scale credit card) is absolutely critical. How come Peston is quoting 'bankers' as his sources- he has spent the last two years explaining why each and every one of them is totally useless. Anything to fill that column, eh?

That would have the direct opposite effect. If clubs are unable to raise finance then they will never be able to match the spending of the incumbent CL teams, money will stay with money. I'm not sure how 'able' the top clubs are- Liverpool and Man Utd are both struggling to service their debt, while Chelsea / Man City are clearly outside of the equation given the wealth of their owners. Plus there is the need for clubs to raise debt to improve their infrastructure (otherwise we'd have spend the last 10 years with a 36,000 stadium). As with most clubs, the killer is not 'debt' as such but wage payments. That should be the target of any regulatory pressure.

Size obviously is an object which is why non league clubs go bust and league clubs don't. The size of the debt too, Whenever a team goes out of business the debt is usually tiny, one team went this season oweing something like 7k. No- size helps league clubs because there is more interest in saving the club and paying the Revenue what they are owed. It doesn't impact on the decisions made by HMRC.

The Revenue have taken a very hard line with football clubs, having been criticised for being too soft in a number of earlier cases. They shut down Kings Lynn a few weeks ago and they'd shut down Portsmouth too, size is not an object, it's all about ensuring debt recovery and more importantly providing a warning to future transgressors.

Opening on Boxing Day?

An investor would not see that as debt though- they would see it effectively as part of Ashley's investment in the business. Any deal would have to ensure that effective control is with the prospective buyer- no-one would agree to a deal which left them still at Ashley's beck and call. In deals like this, all major debt is usually mandatorily repaid. When people talk about the value of the club, they are talking in terms of the value of the equity (nowt) plus the value of the debt (which is being discounted if the £80m is correct). An asking price of £80m with the loan in place means you're asking £200m. They wouldn't have even had a sniff of a bid on that basis.

£80m or £100m- it's a stratospheric price for an organisation that needs a lot of investment to get back to operating on an even keel at the top level. I cannot fathom the rationale of people who think it's a bargain of some kind. As for Portsmouth- they were sold for a nominal fee due to the need to pay down imminent debt repayments and to meet future obligations. If we got promoted we'd need considerable investment to have a strong chance of staying up. Ashley thinks that if we go up we'll be the whole package, ready to sell off the shelf- in fact we'd need a major squad overhaul and a considerable upgrade to the talent on the coaching side. Ashley thinks he will get a better price as he thinks we will go up. It's far from a certain conclusion- one more year in the championship and our perceived value is zero.

It's not worth £100m or £80m but I doubt Ashley has been able to 'pocket' any money as we will have been too busy pushing it all out of the door on wages and reducing the drawing on the overdraft.

While it is insane that a few results could cause such a shift in the value of the club, it has become apparent in recent games that winning promotion will be no cakewalk and will require additional funds in January. A couple of more bad results means any sale would have to price in not going up- in which case it's anyone's guess what the club would be worth. Moat might be seen as a bit of an amateur but he's seemingly got himself a £20m discount and I reckon there's probably one more in there somewhere now Ashley has blinked first.

Of course we know nothing yet of Moat's un-named American backers and whether they are in a similar financial situation to Moat or have considerable extra wedge. If you're buying a business in such a public way it's far better to plead poverty than turn up with a suitcase full of million pound notes.

Come off it, you claim poor preparation and make no effort to mention that our current owner hadn't even looked at publicly available accounts. Moat will find it harder to get the overdraft as I suspect Ash has partly cash collateralised to overdraft with Barclays. He sticks in £15m of his own cash into a charged bank account and if the club dont pay it back on demand, Barclays keep Mike's personal readies as security. Moat can't do that, he doesn't have the spare cash to do it. So naturally the bank are considerably more nervous about lending to such a godawful business proposition as NUFC. Moat has never come out and publicly stated how close he is to a deal, only that by his prescence in the directors box that he is clearly in the process of making an offer. The status of the club's overdrafts and the security needed would only become clear after several weeks of negotiations with the bank and its credit function. Clearly the first attempt failed and there is now a move to present a more paletable case. That's not something you can do straight away, unlike looking at a balance sheet for 30 seconds which our dear leader apparently didn't bother to do. I find it odd that so many people are concerned at Moat's lack of cash. I don't see any oil barons queuing round the corner and the current owner is clearly not planning to invest, so what exactly are we supposed to do? We're not owed a takeover- what is wrong with the club investing because fans are back onside again, selling out the ground and increasing merchandise sales? Moat could do that- if he has the business sense. Equally, we don't know who is behind Moat's bid- so it far too early to act as judge and jury on his bid.

The long-term debt, associated with the ground development, had about £60m outstanding and this was only paid becuase Ashley took over and triggered a repayment clause. This would not have been needed to be paid under the old regime. So no credit can be given for that, only derision that he was so foolhardy as to not conduct any kind of proper checks and displayed a lack of basic knowledge, this sort of clause is bog standard stuff. No-one seems to realise that well-structured, stable debt (such as the stadium loan) is actually very good business. There was no problem there. Ashley has not 'saved us' from that. If Ashley was approaching this club in a business-like way they'd have modelled the finances, worked out how much was required and worked out what finance was needed and in what form. They wouldn't have been scurrying to Mike's cash pile because of something else they hadn't realised. His poor investment decisions and woeful boardroom decisions have scuttled the club's valuation. To get £100m out of the whole affair would be a very lucky escape. The concept that our relegation wasn't really down to MA is comical. We might have been poorly run in the past, but he's taken it to a whole new level. Still there are people in this thread who seem to have swallowed all the bull about his business plan and basing it around young players and making a good profit. That's no use if the most critical business appointments you make are based on utter lunacy.

Good point- what about goodwill? Why would any purchaser consider an asset that is merely an accounting filler to reflect a purchase price over the net value of the assets? The stadium and training ground are assets. But you can't sell the stadium and the land is covenanted so the only way you can make money out of it is by playing football there- you therefore cannot look at it in isolation. It is part and parcel of the loss-making football operation. And if the business is repairable by someone with more brain cells than Ashley then why should Fat Mike get the benefit of an inflated price? Let the purchaser take the benefit. It's not about debt, it's about cash. Debt is fine. Hold on, a better class of businessman pays double the price- what sort of logic is that? And how would promotion claw that amount back? Would we just stop paying wages?

If your house was worth £50k and you wanted £100k, then the market went up 30%, it would still be overpriced. I'm failing to see the justification for the price- so what if revenue doubles? The club has had huge inflows for years, and managed to spend even more. If we went up, we'd need investment to survive. If you want to be getting decent results and not just scraping then this will require further investment. There's your base. How would an investor get his money back? Where is the decent return on what would likely be £150m+ to buy a stable Premiership club? We make a loss and have done for years. A lot of this is down to mismanagement, but a lot is simply down to the fact that football is a rotten investment. To sustainably generate £10-15m of profit to justify that sort of investment seems very ambitious. Would fans be happy if transfers were modest while the shareholders took out that sort of cash on an annual basis?