madras

dread to think what a torres,ronaldo,van persie would have done against us tonight.

Shouldn't your vote be 2.5 then? 7.5 surely

on the plus side mike ashley was there tonight and wore a shirt, no jacket, scarf or anything like that,surely a sign of strength.

i'd rather loose than lose on sunday

who should? "these cunts" can't you read ?

tp be fair i think viera in his prime would have looked shit in the middle for us tonight. nothing beside him,nothing up front,nothing out wide and shit scraed of whats behind him.

i honestly think that when kinnear first came to the club and was introduced to the players some joker butted in and said that xisco didn't speak any english and was a keeper.

some may mention paul kitson or carl cort or viana as other managers mistakes.

This thread is about our latest set of accounts. believe it or not, your league position affects your income and therefore your accounts. And see post number 1058 i believe it, i believe it...just as your accounts affect the debt you can carry and the likelihood of people lending to you.

The players who came in were his choice though, some were utter garbage. To be honest the garbage ones cost next to noubt. Dalglish is the one manager I think if we had given time to would have made the club something special, but I'm on my own thinking that. t I'm not so sure. He already took on a special team! they finished 2nd two years in a row. It didn't need big changes. Selling Ferdinand, Ginola, Batty etc. was scandelous. He did bring in Solano, Speed, Given, so kudos there. ginola wanted away and looked it,batty started getting regular reccurring injuries, ferdinand was 30 and was going to be out a while with a back injury and we could get back what we paid. even if keegan had stayed big changes were needed,

i sit in the middle tier of the gallowgate. not too far from "DODGY KEEPER" to be exact.

TT no one on here is saying we shouldn't spend money! However, giving an abomination of a manager that was Souness more money to spend than Bobby Robson was an act so thick and stupid that it deserved lynching the c*** (Shepherd) I know that but this was down to clearing up the mess of past managers. We always do it. We have seasons of big spend and then next to nothing. Our problem with FFS was not down to the money he gave managers it was down to sacking managers so quickly which could also relate to hiring the wrong managers. Dalglish had the same problem. He had to do all the tidying of the club left over from KK as the club needed to reduce wages and get rid of squad members before cash could be made available again. heretic.......that never ever happened under hall/shepherd. NE5 will have you for that.

nowt basic about it, its an absolute necessity. It IS a necessity, but so are other factors which you are refusing to admit FS did not display, or possess, which is why he made a complete f***ing mess of it. like appointing Bobby Robson and speculating, rather than take soopa mikes prudency route ? Bobby Robson was not Shepherd's genius idea I may be wrong but wasn't he the one that wanted Bobby Robson to come, others weren't so sure due to his age ? no. i think you'll find fred was just a minor shareholder who done the bidding for more major shareholders as in the appointments (and sackings)of souness and roeder.

I've no intention of trying to put people right in this thread Dave. Suffice to say, we will see how long it drags on, or how many people look back on Ashleys lack of ambition and fail to still grasp the basic point that if you want to succeed you have to spend big bucks. Ashleys current direction will never achieve anything near the league positions we have seen since 1992, so if thats what people want its up to them. Just like when they all said they wanted rid of Shepherd [for anybody] they won't be so keen on the reality when it happens though. So much so, that those european qualifications will be nothing other than a fond memory. now that you've looked at the finances a bit closer do you think we were nearing a point at which we probably wouldn't have got anyone to loan us anymore money to carry on the spending ? I've only looked at the last page of this thread, as I have said earlier, I know what it will be about. Lots of hysterical people forecastig doomsday and believing the desperate stance of a desperate board/owner trying to deflect criticism of their lack of ambition and the fact that they are letting the transfer window go by with us in real danger of going back to where the Halls and Shepherd found us. UV has pointed out the difference between choosing ambition and not choosing ambition. Its extremely sad that after everything that has happened in the last 18 months people still don't get the difference. Carry on supporting a club not even aiming to go anywhere, despite having one of the biggest fanbases in the country. Please tell us where we will get the finance to move forward again when we are relegated and gates and revenue fall by half at least. it's one thing to shout "spend,spend,spend"..it's another to ask where the money is coming from ? if you look elsewhere i've said ashley needs to spend if necessary to get us out of this,probably his own cash. i've also said that i don't think fred could have carried on spending the way he was and wouldn't have spent his own cash. now again can you tell me if you think fred should've (maybe "could've" would make a more realistic question ?) kept going deeper into debt to the banks etc to chase a dream paying no heed to what would happen should he fail ?

I've no intention of trying to put people right in this thread Dave. Suffice to say, we will see how long it drags on, or how many people look back on Ashleys lack of ambition and fail to still grasp the basic point that if you want to succeed you have to spend big bucks. Ashleys current direction will never achieve anything near the league positions we have seen since 1992, so if thats what people want its up to them. Just like when they all said they wanted rid of Shepherd [for anybody] they won't be so keen on the reality when it happens though. So much so, that those european qualifications will be nothing other than a fond memory. now that you've looked at the finances a bit closer do you think we were nearing a point at which we probably wouldn't have got anyone to loan us anymore money to carry on the spending ?

I don't know tbh. Which assets have we lost since then? Regardless, while financial restraints due to the current state of the financial world may have stopped Shepherd from investing as he may have wanted (or he may indeed have decided that it WAS time to cut back), that would have been a temporary cessation of ambition due to necessity. This is not the case with Ashley. He could pursue a more ambitious course for the club now, but he chooses not to. I think we can see that this season it would have been quite easy to rise above the pack and take a UEFA cup spot. More cover, a few good midfielders, and a decent manager is all it would have taken to give us a good fighting chance of that. Had it failed, Ashley would have had to add a bit more on to his asking price for the club. Had it succeeded, we would be getting full houses this year, and the subsequent year's increased gate & TV revenue would have paid for it easily (considering transfer fees are staged). (The club would also have been a much more attractive proposition to sell Mike.) Instead we are in the greatest danger of relegation we have been in since we got into the Premiership. The current situation may have been a necessity for Shepherd, but it is a choice for Ashley. That's the significant difference between the ideologies of running the club of the two for me, and why I think it is highly unlikely that we will ever be anything more than a mid table team at best under Ashley no matter how long he owns the club. I'm not sure if the "debt" seems top be clouding the analysis of the current situation for a lot of people. If Ashley had bought a debt free club for £240m would people have the same opinion on his lack of spending on the squad? we haven't lost any assets but it isn't on to sell the same house to five people. plus i don't think he'd bought us for £240mill. the debt structure is what appears to have fucked us.

It has to be macbeth. He has a website and his numbers are bigger. bigger font size or bigger in the sense of all the money fat freddy shepherd wasted? WAHEY!!! we should have got Bob Murray in, he's an accountant and he really showed the scap metal dealer how its done i've already pointed out to you dumbfucks that "that" fred isn't the scrap metal shepherd.

Do you honestly think adopting Ashley's methods (hiring an inexperienced DoF over the manager, net £0 transfers, allowing the star striker's contract to run down to get him off the wages, trying to sell the club, bringing in a manager unable to find a job anywhere else) back in 2001 would have got us into the CL? Probably not, or not in a hurry, but I'm not the one setting CL qualification as a benchmark. The point re Shepherd should be clear. It's not about where we had been under the old board, but where we were going. If Shepherd had stayed, I honestly think we\d be in a bigger mess than we are right now. Unless you have inside information about his plans to get in control of a situation where we were losing £30 million a year before they sold the club? I have it on good authority that just before selling out to Ashley, FS was looking actively into securitizing the club's assets and refinancing its debt. What I understood now from one of the solicitors involved was that we would have lost most value on the paper money with the credit crunch which would have put us in an even graver situation. Dunno whether or not you could really blame Shepherd for that as he couldn't have foretold the financial crisis unfolding the way it did. didn't they refinance the debt regularly anyway (similar to getting a better deal when your tie-in on your mortgage runs out)? and fred could hardly have been blamed for not seeing the credit crunch coming. but, the taking on of any new debt would need to be secured on assets and by the looks of it there was nothing left to hock.

Do you honestly think adopting Ashley's methods (hiring an inexperienced DoF over the manager, net £0 transfers, allowing the star striker's contract to run down to get him off the wages, trying to sell the club, bringing in a manager unable to find a job anywhere else) back in 2001 would have got us into the CL? Is hindsight only ok to use when it's about Ashley then? Hindsight is used when you agree (or disagree) with actions at the time but subsequent events prove them to be wrong (or correct). In this case I agreed with the decision to push forward then and it proved successful, so it's not using hindsight on my part. Besides, Ozzie is the hindsight king. He'll love it. Remember the financial and on field situation at the time: The debt (£66m) was larger than the turnover (£55m) which relative to turnover is more than the "debt" now The club was making loses (£15.5 in 2000, £8.9m in 2001) which relative to turnover are equivalent to the loses now The club had finished 13, 13, 11, 11 in the previous years which is worse than our last 4 years. As I asked in another thread, should we have Cut back on signings and not brought in Bellamy & Robert Sold the likes of Dyer for a good profit Let injury prone Shearer's contract run down so he could leave on a free and we could get his high wages off the bill (after all, we had a ready made replacement coming through from the youth team). Got someone like Vinnie Jones in to buy and sell players over Robson's head. If it pissed off Robson and he left, should we have replaced him with someone like Dave Basset. Can I assume that the people commending Ashley for his prudence and vision for the club now would agree that we should have taken a similar approach back in 2001? Ozzie asked if Shepherd was going to get us back in the CL. Well in a similar position back in 2001, by being speculative, we DID get back into the CL. At the moment I can only see Ashley's way of handling the situation taking the club in one direction, and that's down. did the club back then have assets to borrow against ? what happens when you have borrowed against everything and you want to keep lending ?

Do you honestly think adopting Ashley's methods (hiring an inexperienced DoF over the manager, net £0 transfers, allowing the star striker's contract to run down to get him off the wages, trying to sell the club, bringing in a manager unable to find a job anywhere else) back in 2001 would have got us into the CL? do you honestly think employing souness then roeder as manager, spending £9million on the likes of luque,being unsustaiable financially so that sooner or later the banks would say "no more" would get us back into the CL ?

just for us old buggers could you make it........ gallowgate the corner east stand leazes leazes/milburn corner milburn gallowgate/milburn corner

where has the money from all the other clubs came from ie apart from Chelsea and Man City ? My earlier question/point was exactly the same question. The point others are making seems to be that they would be happy to stop competing and support a solvent club that spends years not attempting to make a challenge ? And my view of that is personally, I wouldn't want that because I've seen it, and the real effects of it, and also those that think they want it, wouldn't like it at all if they got it, just like now they don't like Ashley now the automatic improvement they expected with "any" new owner hasn't happened(although getting them to admit it is like pulling teeth) Completely ignored my question and yet again put a set of words in mine and others' mouths. Good stuff, cheers. its never, ever worth it mate don't be too harsh. NE5 is performing a service. a bit like an internet scratching post

where has the money from all the other clubs came from ie apart from Chelsea and Man City ? My earlier question/point was exactly the same question. The point others are making seems to be that they would be happy to stop competing and support a solvent club that spends years not attempting to make a challenge ? And my view of that is personally, I wouldn't want that because I've seen it, and the real effects of it, and also those that think they want it, wouldn't like it at all if they got it, just like now they don't like Ashley now the automatic improvement they expected with "any" new owner hasn't happened(although getting them to admit it is like pulling teeth) Parky has put it quite nicely in fact. They are deliberately throwing mud at the old regime because its a last resort and people are fallign for it. yhe money for all the other clubs came from debt (although in man u and liverpools cases their debt came from the purchase of thier clubs......massivly reduced in man u's case and enough for liverpools to look for buyers).......in just about all other cases the debt hasn't been as big as ours, they didn't make as much of a yearly loss to be able to finance the debt as we did and they are cutting back and trying to live within their means aswell. where was the cash going to come from inour case ? would you have gone to the banks, tried to get more (not certain they'd have got it) and with no plan beyond "it may bring success and we have no plan if it doesn't" ?

don't be too surprised if the clubs sell their own rights that way in the future.

what have you got against Tories ? Do Labour, Liberal, BNP, UKIP mp's, or even Mike Ashley, always answer straight questions ? I've told you, the Halls and Shepherd did a great job, they left the club unrecognisable and a million miles superior to how they found it, I wouldn't call that "blame", I would call it a great credit. Sir you are a baboon then. If you believe perilously close to bankruptcy through bad management and mortgaging the club beyond belief with a bank which needed to be bailed out by the government itself was a fantastic thing then you are just mad. I cannot disagree that the football was great, but had Shepherd remained in charge we would have been bankrupted. Your head in the sand attitude and deluded belief that Freddy Shepherd was not a bad apple who was stinking out the barrel at Newcastle is astonishing. Sir John Hall had a vision for this club, which his son and Freddy Shepherd distorted and abused to make their own financial gains. While we are certainly miles away from where we were prior to Sir John Hall's intervention, it is laughable that you continue to stand up for Freddy Shepherd, a man who most others lost any respect they had for him when he was caught out by the NOTW with his contempt for his peers and his customers. rubbish. mackems.gif Did you see many protestors standing up for their principles a few months after that "contempt for his peers and customers" when FA Cup Final tickets were being dished out, for the first time in 24 years, I may add. When do you think the automatically better board will reach another Cup Final or even qualify for the UEFA Cup ? Under Mike Ashley I don't think we will. But you keep on telling yourself that Freddy was a top bloke, and wasn't bothered first and foremost with lining his pockets from the money he could make from Newcastle United. I think Freddy Shepherd has a nerve telling anyone how to run Newcastle United as a successful business. you find a post where I have said he was a "top bloke". Apology accepted. None given. So will you now please answer my question. Is Freddy Shepherd (at least partially) responsible for Newcastle's financial state? Why can you not answer this yes or no? Why can't you stop waffling on about other things? What are you talking about ? The saleable value of the club increased from 1.25m to anywhere between 100m and 200m quid while they ran it ? Maybe you should go back to the financial statement thread and re-read it if you cannot understand what I am asking you about. I think you should look at the league positions I posted and the history of the club if you don't understand exactly how much better off the club became while the Halls and shepherd ran it. Thank you I know exactly what happened with the club when Sir John Hall came in. I can remember what it was like before he came in. And I know what happened when Sir John Hall and Freddy Shepherd were here in regards of football. I also know that Fred Shepherd mortgaged the club to the hilt and he was lucky not to financially ruin the club. I know that Mike Ashley was not the only person to look at the books with a view of taking over the club, but the mess Freddy Shepherd had made with the finances put everyone else off. I don't need a history lesson, but you need a reality check! So, it's a mystery to you that the top 4 have massive debt?? man utd's is dropping dramatically, chelsea are f***ed should abramovic walk away,arsenal have had to redefine their plans and liverpool are trying to sell up. So you admit it takes massive expenditure and debt risk to gain a chance at success? And when massive expenditure and debt buys only a steady decline until there's nothing left to borrow against? Not as simple as that is it. People come into these threads (not you) saying FS is a c***, KK is a c***, Wise is a c*** etc...it's more complex than that (as you know). Sometimes little things go against you (Luque's career threateing inj or Boumsong being half decent) and history can be re-written. And sometimes throwing money at the problem only makes things massively worse, if there's consistently poor decision-making in other areas. And that ain't that simple either. What was Coloccini? Youth? Or a cheap buy? I agree just throwing money at it is no good without a proper strategy in place and football men running the club (Ashley has failed here totally). Actually keeping KK in place with even a reasonable spend of say 25m net would have seen us having a respectable season. Collo is a reasonable buy and one tiny step in the right direction, but then you have to weight Xisco and Nacho against that. Let's not foget who ok'd the silly wages of Smith, Crappa et all either....Ashley and Wise oversaw all that debacle as well. Now their last hope is to throw mud at the previous regime and make out high wages etc is a Newcastle problem...It's a PL problem. It doesn't even seem to me like MA has learn't anything over his time here. hey we agree...ashley has made his f*** ups aswell and it is a PL problem that clubs hocked themselves up and now have to find another way and it looks like us,west ham and pompey were the three in most trouble. no, I don't agree that we have to model ourselves on West Ham or pompey at all. As i said re the appointment of Allardyce, and when we signed Woodgate after spending loads of money to get back into the europe/Champions League [unlike the current regime who won't spend money to attempt to stay up], taking stock for a short while is OK but if you want to get back among the top teams, then you have to make big expenditure again. where was the money going to come from ? and i didn't say we had to model ourselves on them,what i said you sly twister of context you, was that we were the three in most trouble and neither od us could carry on going the way we were. not from selling or losing their best players, thats for sure. Hopefully, we can capitalise on being a bigger club in all respects than most others, especially clubs like West Ham and Portsmouth, but that sort of ambition only comes out of the boardroom. I take it you have seen parkys post, where he explains that none of the solvent clubs are anywhere near the top 4, if there are any solvent clubs at all. and i hope you have read enough of my posts about the debts of others,particularly the top 4. where would the money come from in our case ?