Matt

We are currently wanting rid of one... Way more money than sense, we need a wealthy man/group with a level head and an fantastic brain for business. No one with a fantastic brain for business would pay £100m for NUFC, therein lies the problem.

If we get promoted £100m price tags will be a distant memory On what basis though? What is a football club worth? As a business it's worth nothing if it doesn't make any money and very few clubs can do that on a sustainable basis. All we're banking on is the club becoming attractive enough to become a rich man's plaything and him having more money than sense.

The club will pay wages with whatever cash they have to hand- the overdraft nets off against cash in the bank so it's not a case of money going anywhere else other than against the overdraft- it's all one big pot.

Fees won't have been paid upfront and most of cash received will have been spent paying wages.

Because banks want their money back when it's at risk and you cannot argue it is not at risk now. MA will not have personally guaranteed the whole amount by putting the equivalent amount of cash in a Barclays account, otherwise he might as well put the money into the club and not pay the interest. They will have an appetite for risk and how much they are comfortable lending to each counterparty- clearly this amount is being breached following our relegation. I'd imagine Barclays would be loathe to demand the whole thing back so would be wise to look for it to be run down quietly to a level at which they are more comforable. Your concept of 'bigger is better' as long as they can service the debt is insane. It has to be paid back sooner or later- you can't live on the 'never never'. Banks now are looking to get their money back where possible from risky operations like NUFC.

There's nothing to stop NUFC voluntarily prepaying the loan out of disposable cashflow, even if it the whole amount fell due after more than one year. However I'd be very surprised if Barclays did not put in clauses to ensure incoming cash was trapped and used to pay down their facility first and if all they have is an overdraft then I'd cancel it tomorrow and put them into a structured loan that would ensure no cash can be taken out of the business. If a penny has gone out of NUFC up to SJHL while the Barclays loan is in place then someone at the bank has been extremely generous.

The value in the offer depends very much on the repayment terms of the remainder. You still need to add in about £50m just to sort the wage bill out.

Well, there's one way Shearer can guarantee himself the job!

It's better for him at least to commit to a season and appoint a manager now- while we might still be able to salvage something from the tatters of our pre-season preperations. We cannot go on much longer like this. Sure, he'll want to sell again, but surely we're better off when Ashley's intentions and ours are aligned, albeit for a different reason?

4-2 to the reserves, just as it was 100 years ago!

I think Barclays would have something to say if Ashley was dividending out cash on player sales while they had money out to club. Anything that will comes in will go straight to them (or more likely, a ring-fenced account controlled by Barclays who will take their money out as an when required). Ashley won't personally get a penny.

I've been told that Keith Harris is on holiday because Seymour Pierce are in the process of cutting all ties with Ashley. They're f***ed off he wont accept a realistic offer for the club and they believe it's impacting on their reputation quite badly. Why would they care, they get paid regardless. No, they'll get a small basic + % of the sale price.

The most powerful thing we could do would be to fill the ground against Reading, live on TV, make a hell of a racket and leave en masse at HT. Would never work though as I doubt we'd get enough people in to start with.

Only if the ref feels the need to report it and is deemed serious enough to merit it. Storm in a teacup.

Of course we do- it was the latter and it's in the accounts at Companies House. There is no way any new owner with a brain would take on a company with any significant liability to a previous owner- in most cases all significant debt is repaid and refinanced as required. No-one will leave themselves in such a position- they will simply see the £100m as something to be repaid to the sole shareholder and factor this into the calculations. Anyway any loan of this type will have a change of control clause, giving the lender right to demand to be repaid if the business changes hands (which Ashley clearly didn't think about- not so much due diligence as the completely obvious). Reasonable bid now would probably be between £50-70m all in. Close the window and it's below £50m.

Jesus. Ashley will not put us into administration. Barclays on the other hand......

Couldn't agree more. The whole "package" of an away day at Fulham is just perfect If you get a match there in the spring, and the sun is out, it is pretty much the perfect PL football day. It's a shame they tend to spoil it with them clapper things and a cringeworthy announcer. Everything else is a welcome change from the usual fare. Will be a miss this season.

Businesses don't go bust because they have too much debt- they go bust because they run out of cash. NUFC were running out of cash at a staggering rate in 2007 and were severly overdrawn, having already front-loaded cash income on sponsorship deals and leaking cash on the wage bill. It had little do to with interest costs from the debt.

Oh god no not again, I hope you realise you've inevitably started a raft of stupid administration posts, despite the fact the idea makes no sense at all If you quoted the whole post, he said that's why a sale for a lower price now would be more likely.

This. Ashley had to plough in cash when we were making PL money- if he's closed his wallet then no sale would mean administration and the sale being taken out of his hands. He would get very little back, if anything, out of administration. This is why the sale process is taking so long. Ashley is desperately waiting for higher bids as clearly all the ones so far are well below this ludicrous £100m price tag. How long do you think he will wait? Given his track record, it's hard to tell, but I can't see us going much further than the end of the year before administration, especially given season ticket cash will be well down (the upfront money for 3-year tickets is gone already). If you were an investor, would you rather pay £100m to Mike Ashley, or £10m and put £90m into the club six months later? Surely the latter. The players coming into training should bring things home to him. But then, he's hardly demonstrated much acumen this far, has he?

This. Ashley had to plough in cash when we were making PL money- if he's closed his wallet then no sale would mean administration and the sale being taken out of his hands. He would get very little back, if anything, out of administration. This is why the sale process is taking so long. Ashley is desperately waiting for higher bids as clearly all the ones so far are well below this ludicrous £100m price tag.

Nothing's coming out of Ashley's pocket. Not a penny more. So Alan Smith's wages won't be paid by Ashley- they'd just go unpaid and the club would end up in administration. He minimises his losses by selling for the best offer he gets this summer. If the club remained unsold, he clearly won't back it further so the sale would be forced by being ordered into administration by the courts. Also it seems that our only way of continuing in the medium term is with a loan from Barclays- they will only procide a loan on the basis that they get paid in full before Ashley gets anything so he'd need to extract a lot of cash to get anything. And if Ashley uses ST money to repay himself, it will disappear straight off the sale price of the club. I still reckon the £60-80m he might be offered in the next few weeks will be far more paletable than the £20-30m he might get out of admin.

What you do with your season ticket has virtually no impact on the sale of the club, a process which is clearly well underway already. It would take 120 fans to hold on to their cash to have the same impact at Alan Smith staying at the club for another week. Drop in the ocean stuff. I don't see how Ashley will 'fuck us over' given that pretty much every penny of season ticket money will be working its way out to our wonderfully talented playing staff. If you want to force the club into administration, fine. But given Ashley will sell (probably for less than what he wants) then I'd rather have a sensibly worked out sale process (at least sensible from the bidders, clearly not the club) than a panic-stations administration sale, replete with hasty player departures and -10 in the points column.

If Barclays are lending us a penny, you can be sure he wouldn't be able to get away with that. The land would have to be sold at a fair price.

Freemen of the City. Just as well, really.