NJS

It's too late to cancel next month You misunderstand me - I'm cancelling the direct debit. I don't care about getting a renewal form in the summer as I'm not buying another ST. You need to cancel it this month & repay your discount then. How long have you had a season ticket for? I might do that but don't really care either way. 26 years.

It's too late to cancel next month You misunderstand me - I'm cancelling the direct debit. I don't care about getting a renewal form in the summer as I'm not buying another ST.

I signed up for 3 years because I took the hint that prices would increase substantially - though not sure that will happen now that they realise that renewals will be down - and yes I did sign up because Keegan had rekindled my hope. I'm cancelling next month.

to tie up some deals for players who have concerns about his future? The only result of any decent player's reading of this would be confirmation of their exit. Any player who wants to see this I would sell/sack/have shot.

I can't believe anyone is shocked. The only way he was ever not going to be manager next season was if we get relegated and even then I could see the "Joe is just the man to get us back up" line being used.

I hated him before, during and now after his "reign" - football murderer supreme.

The good start was a "hangover" from having decent players like Martins (plus the fixture list) - as soon as his influence became apparent the football was killed.

As I've said before, asking fans to go back to being mediocre or even relegated when they've seen good times is asking too much imo - it certainly is for someone like me who has seen poor times before and I also think it will be for "Sky" fans as they are generally described. I think with the remaining good will/willingness to keep going its still just about possible for Ashley to give it another go - a year of two of no ambition at all will do serious damage.

Possibly - a fair point. If we had been taken over by say an NE consortium of businessmen then that approach would be more obvious - I think I like everyone else is disappointed that we were taken over by someone who nominally had a lot more money but has chose a frugal football approach. Hence the over reaction to the Keegan saga? No - imo that was about control and responsibility - it wouldn't have mattered if the budget was £1 or £100m

Possibly - a fair point. If we had been taken over by say an NE consortium of businessmen then that approach would be more obvious - I think I like everyone else is disappointed that we were taken over by someone who nominally had a lot more money but has chose a frugal football approach.

I didn't say ignore the debt - I said service it through ST/Sky money but yes essentially I am talking about gambling. I get the impression that Ashley may have been going to go down this route if the club had been debt free when he bought it. He seemed to "easily" find the £110m to pay off the debt which I could argue is similar to injecting capital as I advocate. The pisser for us is as I said that all of what could have been his "gamble" money was spent for no tangible football (as opposed to business) benefit - that's why I'm suggesting a mixture of the two in retrospect.

Not necessarily - it should be judged on a case by case basis - as I said above the scouting young talent model requires a consistent standard to make it work - if you have a similar player in mind as a replacement then fair enough but otherwise progress demands keeping good players. This of course also requires someone with responsibility for the team making these decisions - the thing I don't trust about Ashley is his business style suggests to me him being always game to take the quick buck if he can - as I think he attempted to do on deadline day last year and he will again this.

What about Lerner at Villa or the Irish/Yanks at Sunderland? they have injected working capital into their businesses and the only way to get it back is via success. Do you think theres any chance whatsoever of Ashley turning down offers for Jonas or Bassong this summer?

It's worked elsewhere (and you could argue here with Hall) - is there a fundamental reason why it can't work here? If you say "credit crunch" or some variation then can you tell me there are no more people rich enough, with non-diminished assets, or should I point a few out? Admittedly none of them have expressed any interest but theres nothing to stop them doing so. you are dumb. everyone has been affected by this. I think most "rich" people have suffered more than the average person as most of their wealth tends to be invested in the market, hedge funds and real estate. With the market down as much as it is. Most people at the high end of the spectrum have lost over half their wealth and are not currently in a position to make a luxury buy like a sporting club. Prove it. Investing in football clubs aside the idea that the rich have "suffered" is ridiculous - down to their last couple of billion - my heart bleeds. Also a s*** load of money was made by short selling - who gained from that? The rich may not be standing in line at the soup kitchen, but the desire to plunk 400 million initially and God knows how much in the long term into a football club abates considerably when you've just lost about half of your fortune. Roman apparently lost around 90% of his money during the crisis by the way. And by the summer or the end of the year he'll have it all back. I've not got your amazing powers of precognition, but lets just say I have my doubts as to whether every billionaire on Earth will magically recover all their losses by next summer. I've worked with financial software since the 80s - stocks and assets always bounce back and rise over time - it's just a question of how quickly. The more you have as a starting point (assuming they haven't sold out) means the quicker you recover. As I also said money was made from the collapse - some rich people somewhere either offset their losses or made money.

It's worked elsewhere (and you could argue here with Hall) - is there a fundamental reason why it can't work here? If you say "credit crunch" or some variation then can you tell me there are no more people rich enough, with non-diminished assets, or should I point a few out? Admittedly none of them have expressed any interest but theres nothing to stop them doing so. you are dumb. everyone has been affected by this. I think most "rich" people have suffered more than the average person as most of their wealth tends to be invested in the market, hedge funds and real estate. With the market down as much as it is. Most people at the high end of the spectrum have lost over half their wealth and are not currently in a position to make a luxury buy like a sporting club. Prove it. Investing in football clubs aside the idea that the rich have "suffered" is ridiculous - down to their last couple of billion - my heart bleeds. Also a s*** load of money was made by short selling - who gained from that? The rich may not be standing in line at the soup kitchen, but the desire to plunk 400 million initially and God knows how much in the long term into a football club abates considerably when you've just lost about half of your fortune. Roman apparently lost around 90% of his money during the crisis by the way. And by the summer or the end of the year he'll have it all back.

Fucking hell I hope that's sarcasm - we've had a dozen players better than him in the last 15 years - though this doesn't mean I don't think he's decent - I just want more.

It's worked elsewhere (and you could argue here with Hall) - is there a fundamental reason why it can't work here? If you say "credit crunch" or some variation then can you tell me there are no more people rich enough, with non-diminished assets, or should I point a few out? Admittedly none of them have expressed any interest but theres nothing to stop them doing so. you are dumb. everyone has been affected by this. I think most "rich" people have suffered more than the average person as most of their wealth tends to be invested in the market, hedge funds and real estate. With the market down as much as it is. Most people at the high end of the spectrum have lost over half their wealth and are not currently in a position to make a luxury buy like a sporting club. Prove it. Investing in football clubs aside the idea that the rich have "suffered" is ridiculous - down to their last couple of billion - my heart bleeds. Also a shit load of money was made by short selling - who gained from that?

It's worked elsewhere (and you could argue here with Hall) - is there a fundamental reason why it can't work here? If you say "credit crunch" or some variation then can you tell me there are no more people rich enough, with non-diminished assets, or should I point a few out? Admittedly none of them have expressed any interest but theres nothing to stop them doing so. I didn't say it wouldn't work, I'm just laughing at how simple you think it would be even though we were up for sale and nobody snapped us up. It's like saying that all you have to do to get that new house is to win the lottery, easier said than done. I was asked how Ashley should have done it or how I would have done if I'd had his money - this is more retrospective that speculative. I've never understood why when told he had to pay £50m off he paid the lot off - as I said he should have realised (imo) that the other £50m or whatever would have been better spent on players. I have £70k left on my mortgage - if somebody gave me that exact amount I wouldn't pay it off as paying it through work isn't a problem - I'd probably clear some of it and spend the rest on a few luxuries and a fuck off holiday - I don't see why that analogy doesn't apply. In fact the money I would "waste" in a football sense I could get back so having fun gambling it would be closer.

It's worked elsewhere (and you could argue here with Hall) - is there a fundamental reason why it can't work here? If you say "credit crunch" or some variation then can you tell me there are no more people rich enough, with non-diminished assets, or should I point a few out? Admittedly none of them have expressed any interest but theres nothing to stop them doing so.

I would have left the debt which wasn't compulsory to be serviced by sky/ST income then I would have used persobnal money to fund a an intial splurge - maybe £50m I may have got an "expert" into help me run the club but the people Ashley got in had/have no expertise or experience in doing so. Where did you get that from? Even if you'd identified it as a problem which was eating into the clubs finances with interest? So you have £50m extra, to spend in this window and £50m increasing debt from then onwards? Then what? Wheres the next bit of cash coming from? Would you not say he's a bit of a business expert himself? Mort as well? As long as the debt is serviced then its okay - this "paying off the debt is the best thing he could have done" argument makes sense on an instinctive level but not with football clubs - see Man U and Liverpool as examples of serviceable debt models. Money to pay off any extra debt would come from increased revenues from a thing called success (however relative). I meant expert in the football sense - Allardyce did say that some players were missed out on in the early days because of Mort's on the job training. It was the best thing to do in the long term, as well as the short term, it was the best move full stop. Examples of Man U and Liverpool debt levels are moot, not only have they been consistently successful and therefore benefitted from the finances covering wages etc but there debt hasnt been acquired in the conventional way more the owners lumping the debt onto the club, something Ashley didnt do. Effectively speaking, Man U are paying of there own purchases through football. What your basically saying is that you'd gamble and lump £50m in the hope that we'd be successful, you;d also entrust that £50m to one man. You;ve basically not learnt anything from the mistakes of the past. If it goes wrong, your £50m out of pocket with potentially no sell on value of "unfiltered" players who have flopped here. Also, part of the strategic review suggested that they'd benefit from having a footballing person on the board, like you are suggesting. Unfortunalety the merits of Wise's appiontenet is up for debate. First of all I intimated that the £50m would be "my" money and not as a loan. Secondly, what is your alternative? If it is to embrace the Ashley "plan" then you are relying on Wise or whoever to find players who are good enough to keep us up but not good enough to be obvious targets for more ambitious clubs. In other words you'd have to have a production line which is self-sustaining and immediately successfull. Just as doing a "Souness" and wasting money, one year's bad crop and you'd be screwed. I'd also say that appointing a man who would make the £50m work is part of the gamble which other clubs have done - see Chelsea or Villa as well as Aresenal, Man U and Liverpool - for the record Ashley had that man in place. No - its about making himself happy or more prcisely not unhappy.

Brilliant plan, Baldrick. Well since he's supposedly put the club up for sale in the first place for that reason it sounds reasonable to me Nursey.

I would have left the debt which wasn't compulsory to be serviced by sky/ST income then I would have used persobnal money to fund a an intial splurge - maybe £50m I may have got an "expert" into help me run the club but the people Ashley got in had/have no expertise or experience in doing so. Where did you get that from? Even if you'd identified it as a problem which was eating into the clubs finances with interest? So you have £50m extra, to spend in this window and £50m increasing debt from then onwards? Then what? Wheres the next bit of cash coming from? Would you not say he's a bit of a business expert himself? Mort as well? As long as the debt is serviced then its okay - this "paying off the debt is the best thing he could have done" argument makes sense on an instinctive level but not with football clubs - see Man U and Liverpool as examples of serviceable debt models. Money to pay off any extra debt would come from increased revenues from a thing called success (however relative). I meant expert in the football sense - Allardyce did say that some players were missed out on in the early days because of Mort's on the job training.

I would have left the debt which wasn't compulsory to be serviced by sky/ST income then I would have used persobnal money to fund a an intial splurge - maybe £50m I may have got an "expert" into help me run the club but the people Ashley got in had/have no expertise or experience in doing so.

I think that's the point - the campaign/banner has the aim of "pressuring" him into lowering what he considers a good price on the basis that he doesn't get any "joy" out of staying. Obviously if he considers money the be all and and all of the deal then its a waste of time but I don't see anything wrong in trying.

That's if you believe Ashley ever intended to sell. "putting it up for sale" is different to accepting what were probably reasonable offers.