midds

So we tapped Maiga up and then his club wouldn't deal with us on deadline day. Maybe we should have approached the club first like you're supposed to? They deserve every single ounce of criticism they get. They're clueless, classless pricks.

Twisted his stomach, has he?

It's still completely inexplicable to me why the felt that it was a good idea to come out with the whole "it'll be reinvested" shit. Did they just assume we'd forget in six months time? For a lot of fans it was the only thing that justified his sale. It also bought them 6 months breathing space. What's the difference between people being pissed off then and a lot more people being pissed off now? It's not as if they needed to lie to avert mass riots or anything. I guess they don't like being criticised/slagged by the footballing public? I stopped trying to make sense of their backward logic and strategy in 2009.

It's still completely inexplicable to me why the felt that it was a good idea to come out with the whole "it'll be reinvested" shit. Did they just assume we'd forget in six months time? For a lot of fans it was the only thing that justified his sale. It also bought them 6 months breathing space.

It's like picking the peanuts out of shite. At the end of the day they failed miserably and lied about the Carroll money. Scum.

Still think he knows exactly what the score is and spins it to the fans. Deliberately obtuse in interviews and wings it with cliches and lies. He knew what he was walking into, who he was working for and is happy enough to go along with it.

The threat of litigation if anything went wrong means standing will never be allowed again. As much as I'd like to see small standing areas reintroduced I know it'll never happen. It's a complete non-starter.

Take your pick: 1. The deal wasn't right for the club. 2. Couldn't quite tie it up (in time). 3. We offered him a very good deal but he chose to go somewhere else. 4. We weren't going to be held to ransom. 5. We did everything we could to get someone in. 6. We're not going to buy for the sake of it. 7. Obviously teams don't want to sell their best players on deadline day. Or some other fucking bullshit. Don't want to hear it, it stinks.

I'd like to give Pardew the benefit of the doubt and say it has always been the plan to go one upfront with Ben Arfa behind in the hole, pace on the wings and a quality CM pairing. Now if we have Ba, Best or Shola as that one upfront then might, might be ok to get us through to Jan. We also need to cross our fingers and hope we get no injuries to the key men. Lot's of 'if's' and 'buts' in that and it might be our only way of working it. How fucking ridiculous that we're limited to what formation we can play because of the inability to get a striker in. Fucking farce.

Have you thought about mentioning the inaccuracies of the article on the comments section of the chronicle?

That is half right. He also paid 140m in CASH to Shepherd and the Halls for the club, so even if his initial loan is paid back through profits that the club makes, there is still the initial capital cost of 140m. I think his total investment in the club is around 280m. If he makes a 40m profit for the past year and uses that to reduce the debt, then his net investment in the club will still be north of 200m, which means that if he sells for anything less than that, he'll have made a loss. And for what it's worth, when you invest almost 300m in anything, you expect returns every year. He's obviously not had any return on his investment over the past 4 years, so there is an opportunity cost to factor into it. A rough estimate of his investment so far is probably around 350m (without taking into account last year's profits). Does he have to disclose any of this? Is it possible to join the dots from the published accounts and find out exactly how the club was bought and who is owed the money? Sorry for sounding like an idiot I just want to understand where the club is financially. Yeah, you'll be able to see everything from the yearly accounts published. When he repays a bit of the debt back this year, it'll show up in the accounts as a smaller gross debt (which is what I expect to see). Our cashflow is probably not good yet because we're paying out transfers up front and selling in installments, but from a financial perspective, things are improving and the medium term future looks good (low wages, high revenue = profits). Maybe the cash-flow situation will actually look good because we got all the Carroll money up front. If that's the case then our overdraft will be significantly lower than the 36m that it was in the last set of accounts. The trouble is maintaining lower wages which is impossible to do for good players, so you either have to sell them and replace them with players whose wages are lower, or pay them more which will reduce the profit. I'm just giving you an objective look on the finances, by the way. It's obviously no fun as a fan to see negative net spending every window and us having to suffer through watching shite like Ameobi and Lovenkrands when we should realistically be watching the likes of Gameiro and Ruiz. Cheers. Last one - do we know when are the next set of accounts due to be released?

That is half right. He also paid 140m in CASH to Shepherd and the Halls for the club, so even if his initial loan is paid back through profits that the club makes, there is still the initial capital cost of 140m. I think his total investment in the club is around 280m. If he makes a 40m profit for the past year and uses that to reduce the debt, then his net investment in the club will still be north of 200m, which means that if he sells for anything less than that, he'll have made a loss. And for what it's worth, when you invest almost 300m in anything, you expect returns every year. He's obviously not had any return on his investment over the past 4 years, so there is an opportunity cost to factor into it. A rough estimate of his investment so far is probably around 350m (without taking into account last year's profits). Does he have to disclose any of this? Is it possible to join the dots from the published accounts and find out exactly how the club was bought and who is owed the money? Sorry for sounding like an idiot I just want to understand where the club is financially.

Can someone explain this to me in layman's terms? Is this right: He loaned a company the money to buy the club. Any/some of the profit the club makes goes towards paying off the loan that he used to buy the club in the first place?

It would only need to happen at a few games to eject the persistent standers and the rest would fall into line. The fact is that if you stand for most of the match you're breaking the terms and conditions of your ticket. You've not got a leg to stand on. Pun intended. That is exactly why they shouldn't have shunted those intent on having a good time and jumping around like nuggets out of the top corner. Nobody was getting upset by people standing up there, apart from the stewards, I mean the away fans stand all of the time. Newcastle do it away from home. What about Peterborough away? A whole stand where we stood all game....as there was no seats. Anyways, if you couldnt stand for longer than 2 hours for a game, you certainly couldnt make it up to levcel 7 in the first place so all round, everyone was a winner. I can think of one highly influential person immediately...

It would only need to happen at a few games to eject the persistent standers and the rest would fall into line. The fact is that if you stand for most of the match you're breaking the terms and conditions of your ticket. You've not got a leg to stand on. Pun intended.

The standing issue could be addressed quite easily. Simply have 2 stewards on either aisle starting at pitch level. They ask the whole of row A to sit down - anyone not complying is ejected. Once row A is all sat down they move on to row B and so on. If anyone decides to stand as they work their way towards the top then security identify them and eject them. I reckon it would take half an hour max to do the whole corner.

Is there something similar for net spend chap?

How about you treat everyone with respect just to be on the safe side? Just a thought.

I hope the stewards weren't using seat numbers as a way of identifying the wankers. By all accounts the pricks were just standing wherever they liked and loads of people had to move just to watch the game.

Every player is for sale at the right price. Don't give a f*** what your ITKs have agreed. If Modric goes Bale and VDV would follow very quickly after. If Modric goes in this window I'll happily give £100 to the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation, I've done that before but, on this occasion, I don't think I'll be donating anything. I'm very confident. I said I didn't believe Modric would go, although I was nervous when I heard the bid had gone up to £40m (I actually heard £42m). But I had also been told that Levy was prepared to let Modric sit in the stands for the next 5 years so I'm not surprised it was still rejected. Time will tell whether Levy did the right thing, I personally think so, I'm far less happy about no other striker or CB having been signed than £40+m being turned down. Anyway, despite Modric still being at WHL I'll still be donating £100 to the SBRF in spite of Modric staying. It's up there with the most worthy of causes. Fair play. I honestly thought money would talk and he'd go. £40m is a huge amount of cash to turn down and it's nice to see the player not calling the shots.

Maybe tapping players up, which obviously annoys the selling club, isn't the best way to go about things Mike? Especially when we go cap in hand to them at the 11th hour trying to do a deal. Just a thought?

This place is going to be like Hiroshima tomorrow. You'll see the smoke for miles.... There's absolutely nothing wrong with the OP either.

There's 8 million reasons why we could't/wouldn't have gone in for it.

4. We did really well to pick up a few good players for little/no money it has to be said in their favour. However, we've also seen quality players leave and invested virtually zero in the football club. Not acceptable and their fucking excuses won't wash. They're small-time cunts.

You could always find it yourself? Have no idea where it is. In his posts via his profile. Knock yourself out.