Howaythelads

Gemmill How about answering this question I asked you earlier....

f*** off Captain Mainwaring. Tell me something, if you hadn't already paid for your season ticket and so paid for all the matches, would you have stopped going to matches by now? You don't have to renew your ticket, you know. You have a choice and the club doesn't need the moaning types like you anyway. Why do you have to take such bizarre abusive stances on everything? Why do you have to call somebody a simpleton or a tit because they have a different opinion to your own? Why do you need to have a dig at somebody because of where they come from. EG "From New York. Oh dear, we've been here before" Why do you have to say stuff like "Then you won't have to come on here and bore the tits of us all with it." just because you don't agree with someone? Jesus, your hypocrisy knows no bounds. Have you read some of the responses you give to people that don't agree with you? Or your catch-all "Good post. Don't expect the idiots on here to understand though" response, just because "the idiots" don't agree with what you've got to say. And no, I'm not providing you with links. You sort that out and maybe I'll think about being less abusive. You wouldn't be able to find many comments such as that you've mentioned above that are made by me, at least nowhere close to the frequency you resort to this kind of thing. You abuse someone on here almost every day, why don't you just stick with your chums on toonspastic if there are so many idiots on this forum? Next thing is you'll be falling back on this supposed threatening PM I sent you about three years ago. You're probably the most abusive member of this forum and have been for ages. Has to be said.

f*** off Captain Mainwaring. Tell me something, if you hadn't already paid for your season ticket and so paid for all the matches, would you have stopped going to matches by now? You don't have to renew your ticket, you know. You have a choice and the club doesn't need the moaning types like you anyway. Why do you have to take such bizarre abusive stances on everything? Why do you have to call somebody a simpleton or a tit because they have a different opinion to your own? Why do you need to have a dig at somebody because of where they come from. EG "From New York. Oh dear, we've been here before" Why do you have to say stuff like "Then you won't have to come on here and bore the tits of us all with it." just because you don't agree with someone?

Gemmill at it again, I see.

As you know, what I said was that the club as a PLC the club has a plan to allocate 'x' funds to each activity/requirement to run the business. Funds had been allocated for transfers and had been spent by the manager. It was decided to allocate certain funds to dividends. I don't like the club being a PLC but it's now a fact of life. Just as long as they financially back the manager I think they are fulfilling their responsibilities to the manager and also the hopes of the fans. They must also attempt to fulfill their responsiblities to the shareholders, whether you and others like it or not. So they had always planned to offer the Halls £4.5m for a chunk of their shares? YOu don't really belive that do you? Why to no one else? Why only in the year that Cameron Hall made such disastrous results? Wy have the dividends suddenly stopped? Why did Shepherd tell us that the signing of Woodgate was from the unexpected windfall from CL success? Why did the subsequent planning mean we had to have an overdraft for the first time, or that we had to take £8m worth of sponsorship early? I just don't see a plan, or not as you describe it. If they did plan to be in this mes s then they want shooting. I don't believe they did plan it, it just 'happened' withotu them really noticing. In much the same was as a new manager is appointed on the hoof, they have financial planning on the hoof. Hopefully the new guy wil bring some discipline. I'm surprised that you view team -building as something that stops when you reach the top 4. Why do Man U and Liverpool keep investing ? Here you go again making things up as you go along. So it's now time to tell you to f*** off. Sorry you had to spoil the post. Sorry. You seemed to suggest that team-building was complete as we had bought in Woodgate, Ambrose and Bowyer (plus the others over the previous couple of year, but those three in 2003). If I misunderstood what you meant I apologise, but that was how it read. Not much to say really, I can't be arsed to talk about dividends as I'm not really that interested. They've backed successive managers with enough money to build a successful team and the managers have failed. That you're totally obsessed with the entire system of companies handing out dividends to shareholders which manifests itself in how you perceive the board of Newcastle United really doesn't interest me in the slightest. Sorry about that. As for the bit about team building. Team building never ends and anybody who has paid any attention to posts I've made since joining this forum would find your comment that I'd think otherwise totally ridiculous.

Answers at the bottom of the post.... I really am sorry if I seem to have put words into your mouth. I try not to. NE5 does it with me all the time and I hate it, so sincere apologies if I slipped to his level. I will answer anything you want me to. The question you seem to feel I know, I'm sorry but I genuinely don't. If you are asking anything about dividends then my position is that they are generally wrong, and they are particualrly wrong in the case of NUFC. The people who run the club should make thier profit on their investment through improving the business and therefore increasing the share price. The current board have rewarded their ability to make a loss of £23m by giving themselves dividends of £35m. Dividends on profits is understandable, nearly justifiable. Divis on incomepetence is taking the pis*, or robbery. If you say so..... Here we go again, my last attempt at getting a proper reply from you on this subject. Dividends I'm not really interested in dividends that much, although I hadn't reailsed they'd taken £35m in dividends in the last 3.5 years. They have taken £35m since the club has been a PLC. In 2003 they took 8.5m, in 2004 it was £4m and in 2005 a further 4m. So roughly the money required to replace Shearer with Owen I suppose that's the price of being a PLC though. Wouldn't it be great if the club wasn't a PLC, although I would wonder why the club didn't spend copious amounts of cash on players when previous people ran the club, assuming they weren't at that time paying dividends. Don't spend any time on that paragraph though, as I said, I'm not that interested having accepted a PLC plans into it's budget the paying of dividends. You can disagree if you like but imo successive managers have been adequately backed financially to produce a successful team irrespective of the money that has gone out in dividends. Football We were talking about wages and the concept of bringing in players in summer 2003, at which point you made the assertion (or clear implication at least) that the club missed an opportunity by not bringing in more players during summer 2003. We weren't talking about whether £8.5m spent on dividends would have been better spent on another player. I actually have no doubt you know what we were talking about. I'm asking you why you think it a good idea to increase the wage bill in summer 2003 by bringing in yet more players despite the documented fact the club had already strengthened the squad by bringing in 3 players in 2003. I'm asking you why you advocate spending yet more money over the £43m that had already been spent in those previous 32 months given how you try to put across an idea you believe in prudence, regularly using a lack of prudence by the Board as a stick with which to beat them. If the club could not afford to bring in players in 2003 then it was the correct thing not to bring them in. I absolutely agree with you if that is what you are really asking me. The board judged that the club could afford to spend £8.5m that summer. With hindsight they were wrong. The club could not afford tod spend that £8.5m, it is a major contributor to their being an overdraft now. If it was wrong to spend it on player(s) it was wrong to spend it on pension contributions too. If I am to be accused of double standards then you must be too If the club could afford to spend the money then you must want it to go on the team. Otherwise you are saying Douglas Hall's pension fund is more important to you than your football team. I'm pretty sure, unless you are Hall or Shepherd family member, that you do not believe this. Try not to refer once again to how much better it would have been had that £8.5m been spend on a player. That's not the answer and also don't tell me that I'd prefer the club paid dividends than bought players, that's the type of argumentative s**** I expect from mandiarse and isn't what I expect from you. I'm surprised that you view team -building as something that stops when you reach the top 4. Why do Man U and Liverpool keep investing ? Answers start here: Yes, I know. Which begs the question why you feel the need to "spin" the £35m taken in dividends as a "reward for incompetence." If you were happy with their performance right through to 2003 then I'd suggest those dividends were in fact earned and so you should NOT be quoting this £35m figure in the way you do. As you know, what I said was that the club as a PLC the club has a plan to allocate 'x' funds to each activity/requirement to run the business. Funds had been allocated for transfers and had been spent by the manager. It was decided to allocate certain funds to dividends. I don't like the club being a PLC but it's now a fact of life. Just as long as they financially back the manager I think they are fulfilling their responsibilities to the manager and also the hopes of the fans. They must also attempt to fulfill their responsiblities to the shareholders, whether you and others like it or not. I understand what you're writing here but it honestly makes very little sense if you follow what I've already said and have repeated in this post. You're clutching at straws imo. Here you go again making things up as you go along. So it's now time to tell you to fuck off. Sorry you had to spoil the post.

See my previous reply, I think I've covered your points in that one.

The Partizan game was one of the most important of the decade. It was absolutely essential that we win it and bag the resulting CL cash if we were to carry on progressing as a club. Meanwhile, the season just finished had been marked by a constant feeling that we were over-achieving, doing better than we should have – until the 2-6 to Manchester United, and the sense that a young, inexperienced squad had been "found out". You can try to pretend that signings in the January window somehow make up for the lack of them that summer, but the fact was that by the end of the season the squad was seriously reduced in confidence. It needed some reinforcement, something to lift the spirits. Instead we got only the divisive signing of Lee Bowyer on the cheap. There are times when it makes sense to speculate to accumulate, and times when it does not. I'd argue that the summer of 2003 was an example of the former, while the summer of 2005 was a stupid time to spunk £30 million. Circumstances change. Yes, Shepherd finding a way of investing in the squad might not have resulted in a win against Partizan. But the course of action taken didn't either. And at this point all of Bobby Robson's good work was unravelled and our current decline began. It's not a double standard. Sometimes it's necessary to take risks, at other times it's necessary to be cautious. On some crucial occasions, Shepherd has picked the wrong times to make risks, and the wrong times to be cautious – if awarding an £8.5 million dividend to shareholders can be described as "caution", that is. The points you are making are all valid but I will tell you that those very reasons you have written down in your post are the reasons I thought the club needed to shift Shearer and change the manager. Said so at the time. You and others may have thought we needed yet more players and that's your opinion, mine was different. We needed an entirely fresh approach but we had a decent enough squad to qualify for the CL. By the time summer 2005 had arrived circumstance WERE very different. We now had a manager who had been backed in ridding the club of certain players allowed to go off the rails by Robson. It costs a lot of money to sacrifice players of that quality on a principle, even worse when it is an unfounded principle and manufactured. This was why the club had to throw away so much money backing Souness. Thanks for replying.

It's great that HTL never slags off other posters. Who said that, certainly wasn't me. For the sake of clarity. I've never denied I become involved in "heated" discussion with some people, but what I've said is that personal abuse isn't often started by me. I think this is generally part and parcel of a football forum and it's not me who complains about it either. Your regular contribution of ignoring the main thrust of a post while selecting 1 comment in an attempt to take things out of context and provoke an argument is well known on here. It's why you're considered by many to be a WUM. You should be pleased really, as you've worked hard to earn this reputation and no doubt think it's hilarious to snipe in thread after thread. Now let's try again to get back to football, although it's becoming more difficult as this thread goes on. We can start by asking you to have another crack at making a proper post in this thread on the subject being discussed. Tell me why, after a deficit of ~£43m and a huge increase in the size of the first team squad bolstered by 3 players already signed earlier in 2003, it was still essential the club bring in more players during the summer of 2003? You can also tell me why, in the summer of 2003, the principle of spending of money the club didn't have for transfers was ok and the increase in wages to turnover ratio was ok, but it's not ok a few years later and that doing this kind of thing actually shows the board is incompetent. I'm all for debate, if you can give me some valid reasons for the double standard I'm describing here (and without hindsight, nobody knew the players would bottle the CL qualifier, as Alex has pointed out earlier) I'm all for reading entire posts and responding with integrity, honesty and also without deliberately taking your comment out of context.

I really am sorry if I seem to have put words into your mouth. I try not to. NE5 does it with me all the time and I hate it, so sincere apologies if I slipped to his level. I will answer anything you want me to. The question you seem to feel I know, I'm sorry but I genuinely don't. If you are asking anything about dividends then my position is that they are generally wrong, and they are particualrly wrong in the case of NUFC. The people who run the club should make thier profit on their investment through improving the business and therefore increasing the share price. The current board have rewarded their ability to make a loss of £23m by giving themselves dividends of £35m. Dividends on profits is understandable, nearly justifiable. Divis on incomepetence is taking the pis*, or robbery. If you say so..... Here we go again, my last attempt at getting a proper reply from you on this subject. Dividends I'm not really interested in dividends that much, although I hadn't reailsed they'd taken £35m in dividends in the last 3.5 years. I suppose that's the price of being a PLC though. Wouldn't it be great if the club wasn't a PLC, although I would wonder why the club didn't spend copious amounts of cash on players when previous people ran the club, assuming they weren't at that time paying dividends. Don't spend any time on that paragraph though, as I said, I'm not that interested having accepted a PLC plans into it's budget the paying of dividends. You can disagree if you like but imo successive managers have been adequately backed financially to produce a successful team irrespective of the money that has gone out in dividends. Football We were talking about wages and the concept of bringing in players in summer 2003, at which point you made the assertion (or clear implication at least) that the club missed an opportunity by not bringing in more players during summer 2003. We weren't talking about whether £8.5m spent on dividends would have been better spent on another player. I actually have no doubt you know what we were talking about. I'm asking you why you think it a good idea to increase the wage bill in summer 2003 by bringing in yet more players despite the documented fact the club had already strengthened the squad by bringing in 3 players in 2003. I'm asking you why you advocate spending yet more money over the £43m that had already been spent in those previous 32 months given how you try to put across an idea you believe in prudence, regularly using a lack of prudence by the Board as a stick with which to beat them. Try not to refer once again to how much better it would have been had that £8.5m been spend on a player. That's not the answer and also don't tell me that I'd prefer the club paid dividends than bought players, that's the type of argumentative s**** I expect from mandiarse and isn't what I expect from you.

Aside from saying that a PLC pays dividends I've never made my position on dividends a matter of record on the forum, so thanks for making my mind up for me and posting my opinion accordiing to what's in your head. You appear to have made up a lot of stuff that you think is my opinion in your post above, telling me what I'm thinking. That's very clever of you, mate. I wonder how you do that. Still waiting for you to explain your double standards, by the way. The question I'm asking sn't about dividends as you well know. I won't repeat it because you know what I'm asking, you're just frantically avoiding it.

I have no personal issues with the member who prompted your comment, though I doubt he'll take action on your comment. His main goal on this forum is to ignore the main point of the majority of posts by taking any single sentence from a post that will allow him to potentially create an argument. I know that you know that. Cheers

Great player? Blimey. Shows how much that word is over used these days. He's better than Parker but that's not saying much. I wouldn't want us to sign him but if we could get him for less than what we'd receive for Parker it wouldn't be a crap deal.

Subsequent disastrous non-qualification for Champions League. Obviously. Typical ignorance of the big picture from you. Troll. As usual.

I think that if the club were going to spend £8.5m that summer then it would have been better spending it on strengthening the squad than on enlarging the Hall and Shepherd pension funds. I will always look for the football side of the business to come first. You (and NE5) have consistently disagreed with me on this. We just have to accept that you see different priorities for the club from the ones I do. Let me get this straight. Despite you constantly slagging the club off for spending money and increasing the wage bill you're saying this very course of action would have been ok in summer 2003, it's suddenly ok to ignore the fact the club strengthened the squad by signing 3 players earlier in 2003, 2 of them England squad players? Is that what you're saying, despite the ~£43m deficit over the previous 32 months and the huge increase in playing staff as a result of doing that? I just want to be clear on what you're saying, keeping in mind that PLC's pay dividends and that the club (company) will have money allocated to the manager for transfers and money allocated for all other parts of running the business, including I assume predicted or expected dividends to shareholders. It's no good saying they should have spent that £8.5m on a player, that money was for dividends and there was money allocated for transfers to bring in Woodgate, Ambrose and Bowyer (fees and/or wages). If this other £8.5m had gone on a player and that player had turned out to be a Boumsong you'd be slagging them off now for spending that £8.5m on this player and for increasing the wage bill accordingly. The club can't win with the likes of you. What is the obsession with the summer of 2003? What's wrong with signing 3 players earlier in 2003 rather than 1 in January and 2 more in July? Had that happened what would be your argument? Well I think you'd be saying the same, that they should have spent that £8.5m in the summer of 2003 on a player. Hence, your argument is nothing to do with the club not signing a player in summer 2003, it's to do with the club paying dividends, which it's been pretty much established is something you've been banging on about for years. I detect massive envy in you mate. What's been shown without a shadow of doubt in these latest exchanges is your clear double standards on this issue.

In the 9 years as a PLC to June 2006 the club made a combined loss of £59.7m. I love your belief that there is a plan in there somewhere. I'd have hoped to see the club looking mroe healthy on the playing front than it is today. If we about to compete in Europe with a team of young players, led by a bright innovative coach, all ready to blossom into the next great team then the idea that there was a plan of some sort may be right. [Potential agenda alert} Of that 9-year loss nearly 60% comes from giving money away to needy causes, and is nothing at all do with the way the business has performed. If for the next 9 years we did exactly the same, but didn't give away ll that money we'd be doign very well. The sad thing is that the only reason we got away with giving so much money away was because of the money put in at the launch of the PLC. That money has now gone, and the current financial results show we're a bit stuck. [/Potential agenda alert] Grow up, ffs. While you're at it, tell me again why you're now advocating that we should have bought more players in summer 2003. I think I must have missed it the first time you answered it.

when they published their accunts for the first 6 months of the 2005-2006 season the loss was £6m. When they published them for the full year to last June (only 11 months as they chanegd accoutnign dates), the loss for the whole period was over £12m. but as you well know that is different to losing £1mill per month.(ie,they could make a profit of £1mill per month for 11months then buy torres(knowing us fred torres from stevenage borough) for £23 mill which would show a loss of £12mill but isn't a loss of £1mill per month. it may seem pedantic but the way you make it sound and it may be that way,that we are losing £1mill per month on the day-to-day running of the club not the one off hits for transfers. if we didn't buy anyone for a year would we still be "losing" £1mill per month ? Player purchases don't affect your profit on date of purchase, the cost is capitalised and amortised against the length of the players contract. So if you signed Torres for £20m on a 5 year contract, the costs would hit your books at £4m p.a. over the 5 years. So basically, you're wrong. To think you moan about the tone of other people's posts.

Anyone would think football was the same as any other high street business from some of the stuff I read on here.

I wish we could keep this thread about Newcastle and cut out this boring shit about spurs.

Aye because NUFC are the ONLY club to have used that money in future accounts get over yourself FFS It's like the comment that if £30m hadn't gone in dividends over a decade (or whatever it was) that this exact £30m would have been available to Roeder last summer to buy players. I'm understand why you say this, but where would it have gone? In the summer 2003 £8.5m was given away at the same time as no money was given to the team manager to strengthen his squad. For me that was a key turning point. It is far better to invest while things are going well, than to try and spend your way out of a mess. The moment has gone though. The summer of 2003 has been discussed many, many times and every single time it is I make this post but the content is largely ignored. Maybe you'll comment properly on it this time. <copy and paste> For 32 months from March 2001 through to Jan 2004 the only players who left the club were fringe players, many new players were brought in to boost the team and also to boost the squad. In fact, the players who departed weren’t even fringe players imo. There was an incoming transfer fee in March 2001 of £3.5m for Goma, the next significant incoming transfer fee was £2m for Cort in Jan 2004. The only other fees I can find a record of was £150,000 for Stuart Green and £150,000 for David Beharall when they left the club. Nobody else left for a fee during that time. During that same time period ~£45m was spent on the following players: O’Brien, Bellamy, Robert, Distin (loan fee), Jenas, Viana, Bramble, Woodgate and Ambrose. Bowyer also joined the club a few months later for nowt. These 10 players all draw wages, of course, changing the wages/turnover ratio etc. I make that a deficit of £43.7 million in 32 months, but this propelled the club into achieving those 3 top 5 finishes. I think this expenditure was well controlled, proven by the consolidation period of summer 2003. Don't forget that Woodgate, Ambrose and Bowyer all signed earlier in 2003, it's not as though we didn't sign any players during 2003, those signings could all have been left to the summer but they were brought in sooner for the greater benefit of the team, rather than later to satisfy the desire of some to sign a big name every summer. http://www.newcastle-online.com/nufcforum/index.php/topic,21421.msg400941.html#msg400941 <end of copy and paste> So here you are in March 2007 yet again banging on about the size of the wage bill while at the same time advocating the club should have increased it during the summer of 2003, this despite the huge deficit at that point in time combined with an already huge increase in playing staff over the previous 32 months. Of course, you're saying this in hindsight but it's extremely unlikely you would have been saying this at the time. The club is a PLC, they give dividends, live with it. £8.5m would have bought one player, who could have been good but could have been a Boumsong, a Jenas or a Luque as easily as a Bellamy or a Robert. We'd signed 3 players already that year, two of them in the England squad at that time. In simple terms, the team and squad was improved during 2003 it just didn't happen during the summer, it happened sooner which was better. I'm sorry at how this might come across, but there's no other way of saying it. I find your position to be massively fuelled by your agenda, which has consumed you so much you're unable to see it. This post from you and my reply should highlight this for everybody imo.

You keep suggesting that. Souness joined September 2004, so had no impact on wages until the subsequent January, 2005. The bringing in of Boumsong, Baba and Faye for 6 months will have made the tiniest difference to the wage bil for the year. So Souness's full influence can only be seen in the 2006 accounts. He brought the expensive playersin for that season. That looked to be responsible for the £6m leap from 2005. He cannot be blamed for the rises up to 2005. Also it was quite clearly stated in the accoutns thsi year, for the first time, that all decisions regarding player wages were made purely at the board level. Why do you seem surprised? Why would anyone think anything different?

Aye because NUFC are the ONLY club to have used that money in future accounts get over yourself FFS It's like the comment that if £30m hadn't gone in dividends over a decade (or whatever it was) that this exact £30m would have been available to Roeder last summer to buy players.

But not so good with words? From the 2005 accounts - The club have roughly 300 full time employees, and roughly 1000 part-time staff. The wages and salaries for all of those comes to £44.5m. On top of that the club paid £5.2m in Social security costs, and then a further £0.4k in other pension costs. This came to the total for that year of £50.2m. The total for 2006 was £56.6m but I don't have the breakdown at hand. (Anyone any idea wher I've put it :-[ ) Lets play numbers ... The 1000 part-time wiill be match-day people. So for 25 home games, at £50 (?) a game woudl be £1.2m. If we say that the footbalnlers and the management total 35 bodies, then that leaves about 270 other full-time staff to run the business. Lets say they have the average UK wage of £20k per year. That would cost ~ £5.4m to finance. This leaves the 35 "football" employees to share the rest. This means 44.5 - 1.2 - 5.4 = £37.8m Looks like just over £1m per year for each of them. Of course there will be extremes, at both ends, but on average the figure looks like £1m to me. ++++++++++ So about £20k per week? About what I said then. Plus like it or not Owen and Dyer do skew the figures for the average player at the club. So almost every club doesn't meet the criteria? I haven't seen any premiership clubs go bust recently either? I understand what your saying but in football especially it's harder to stick to the ideal model. When you consider the cost of players, etc. Wages for all clubs rose in those 4 years I would guess. Nevertheless those wage costs were meant to create success for the club, which unfortunately hasn't happened. I trust the board of NUFC to keep the club in good financial help whilst providing as much resources as they can to the team. Exactly. However, that's a football reason and it happened as an attempt was made to rid the club of the reported bad influence of certain players who had to be replaced otherwise we'd be looking at relegation and even less revenue. It's been discussed before but people don't understand it. The poor appoointment of Souness is what can be seen in that chart and that is all.

But not so good with words? From the 2005 accounts - The club have roughly 300 full time employees, and roughly 1000 part-time staff. The wages and salaries for all of those comes to £44.5m. On top of that the club paid £5.2m in Social security costs, and then a further £0.4k in other pension costs. This came to the total for that year of £50.2m. The total for 2006 was £56.6m but I don't have the breakdown at hand. (Anyone any idea wher I've put it :-[ ) Lets play numbers ... The 1000 part-time wiill be match-day people. So for 25 home games, at £50 (?) a game woudl be £1.2m. If we say that the footbalnlers and the management total 35 bodies, then that leaves about 270 other full-time staff to run the business. Lets say they have the average UK wage of £20k per year. That would cost ~ £5.4m to finance. This leaves the 35 "football" employees to share the rest. This means 44.5 - 1.2 - 5.4 = £37.8m Looks like just over £1m per year for each of them. Of course there will be extremes, at both ends, but on average the figure looks like £1m to me. ++++++++++ So about £20k per week? About what I said then. Plus like it or not Owen and Dyer do skew the figures for the average player at the club. So almost every club doesn't meet the criteria? I haven't seen any premiership clubs go bust recently either? I understand what your saying but in football especially it's harder to stick to the ideal model. When you consider the cost of players, etc. Wages for all clubs rose in those 4 years I would guess. Nevertheless those wage costs were meant to create success for the club, which unfortunately hasn't happened. I trust the board of NUFC to keep the club in good financial help whilst providing as much resources as they can to the team. Seriously Koven are you working for FS? Parky, Seriously, do you think everyone who doesn't slag them and realises that it's not all bad is working for the club?

But not so good with words? From the 2005 accounts - The club have roughly 300 full time employees, and roughly 1000 part-time staff. The wages and salaries for all of those comes to £44.5m. On top of that the club paid £5.2m in Social security costs, and then a further £0.4k in other pension costs. This came to the total for that year of £50.2m. The total for 2006 was £56.6m but I don't have the breakdown at hand. (Anyone any idea wher I've put it :-[ ) Lets play numbers ... The 1000 part-time wiill be match-day people. So for 25 home games, at £50 (?) a game woudl be £1.2m. If we say that the footbalnlers and the management total 35 bodies, then that leaves about 270 other full-time staff to run the business. Lets say they have the average UK wage of £20k per year. That would cost ~ £5.4m to finance. This leaves the 35 "football" employees to share the rest. This means 44.5 - 1.2 - 5.4 = £37.8m Looks like just over £1m per year for each of them. Of course there will be extremes, at both ends, but on average the figure looks like £1m to me. ++++++++++ Deloittes who look in to these things, say that football clubs should run themsleves with the target of payroll costs (in total, so the £50.2m not the £44.5m) ideally be no more than 50% of income. Up to 2003 the club extolled the fact that they were one of only two sides who met this criterion. Then they just lost the plot. The graph below shows the rise of the wages:income ratio, as well as the general rise in wages. http://www.nufc-finances.org.uk/payrol5.gif Now whichever way we try and cut it up, and try and work individual player amounts, the trend is steeply upwards. The issue is two-fold. The wages are rising, so 76% up in 4 years. This is ridiculous. The other issue is that our income has only gone up 17% in the same time. Someone at the club has just not been in control of things. High wages on falling income is why the club has been losing over £1m per month for the last reported 18 months. The hope has to be that the new CEO will bring in sound financial knowledge that has clearly been missing for the last few years. Luckily the Sky money leaps next year. The sad thing is that that money has aleady been spent. The extra income will only take us to the point we should be at. For other clubs the money will be a bonus, for us is it is a life-raft. Agenda again. You just can't stop and it spoils almost every post you make.