madras

Link? Come on Dave, we all remember it. I remember him appointing Kevin Keegan and saying money was there 'if Kevin wanted' a player. Seems a bit at odds with the pretty straightforward explanation that we're skint as f***. Theres still no suggestion that he wouldnt puthis and in his pocket when keegan was signed - hence the bid for AModric amongst others. We knew that finances were tight at the point that mort said "we were close to collapsing like a house of cards". I dont understand, though at which point did you think we were ever flushed after the owner having to put £100m into the club to keep us afloat? ~EDIT: For me personally, these accounts dont excuse Ashley from spending any money but they do go on to explain the absolute nessecitiy of the system and its importance to the club. I never thought we were 'flushed', but then I saw the owner come out several times and say he'd be looking to back his manager with significant funds to improve the first team. That didn't happen IMO. I seem to remember when Mort came out with that quote, most people were still fully behind Ashley. It's what's gone on since then which has turned many, hence my request for a link from Ozzie. I can't recollect 'no fucker' believing him, apart from NE5. I was thinking about his explanation of subsidising the club to the tune of £20 million per annum. Plenty of people moaning ever since that he obviously wasn't doing this, though I can't be arsed to look for links. 10mill already into the club and a supposed 10mill in this window (m'bia and other alleged bid by kinnear) Do you actually think M'bia will end up here though? I'm highly sceptical. thats why i posted "and other alleged bid"

It's quite obvious what they (as in people who aren't you or NE5, that said your posts seem to mesh together anyway) are getting at, and it's completely fair and doesn't take much or anything away from their criticism of Ashley. Hindsight. Almost on a par with mandiarse.....but not quite. You show me one poster who said at the time we were playing in the san siro etc that we shouldn't have bought those players that took us there rather than run a solvent business ? You will also find the same posters, for the most part, frothing over at the fat b****** for not buying more players and "splashing the cash" whenever we lost a game or two. i'll show you plenty who said it when we bought luque etc. as i've already posted the position we were in then is vastly different to the position fred left us in......i'll spell it out for you. borrowing money when you have small debts and a sustaining business plan is ok, in some circumstances it is even preferable to raising cash in other ways. borrowing year on year whan you have very high debt to turnover and have no business plan excepet to hope you become succesful is mindless. why do you constantly cherry pick the highpoints and ignore the position we were left in ? I'm not talking about Luque, you are cherry picking a bad signing as being indicative of the clubs whole philisophy. In actual fact, most people said that Luque was a good player/should have a chance. Not too many people agreed with me when I said that he was s**** the first time I saw him. You have to accept that some players don;t work , or are poor buys, but you can't accept this in the same way as you also completely unrealistically can't accept that we don't appoint the right manager every time. In fact, in the last 4 years ie since Bobby Robson, only 5 clubs have had trophy winning managers. Do you still think everybody apart from us has appointed good managers in the last 4 years ? Why do you ignore the previous 12 years before that ? Fact is, as I've told you, they have been held accountable, they have gone, are you happy with the outcome or not ? no. what i was pointing out was the timing, it came at a time when we weren't doing well and as many pointed out was vastly overpriced. i do not ignore the previous 12 years.you know this,i've said they done well but they stopped doing well and didn't seem to me and others as if they were going to turn it round. now again...i've asked you a few times and am yet to receive an answer......if you keep building debts year on year while being unsuccesful on the field and off...do you keep on going with that tactic until the banks call a halt ? am i happy with the outcome.....could've been better but i'd rather what we have than what i envisage would have happened had it not changed.

Link? Come on Dave, we all remember it. I remember him appointing Kevin Keegan and saying money was there 'if Kevin wanted' a player. Seems a bit at odds with the pretty straightforward explanation that we're skint as f***. Theres still no suggestion that he wouldnt puthis and in his pocket when keegan was signed - hence the bid for AModric amongst others. We knew that finances were tight at the point that mort said "we were close to collapsing like a house of cards". I dont understand, though at which point did you think we were ever flushed after the owner having to put £100m into the club to keep us afloat? ~EDIT: For me personally, these accounts dont excuse Ashley from spending any money but they do go on to explain the absolute nessecitiy of the system and its importance to the club. I never thought we were 'flushed', but then I saw the owner come out several times and say he'd be looking to back his manager with significant funds to improve the first team. That didn't happen IMO. I seem to remember when Mort came out with that quote, most people were still fully behind Ashley. It's what's gone on since then which has turned many, hence my request for a link from Ozzie. I can't recollect 'no fucker' believing him, apart from NE5. I was thinking about his explanation of subsidising the club to the tune of £20 million per annum. Plenty of people moaning ever since that he obviously wasn't doing this, though I can't be arsed to look for links. 10mill already into the club and a supposed 10mill in this window (m'bia and other alleged bid by kinnear)

It's quite obvious what they (as in people who aren't you or NE5, that said your posts seem to mesh together anyway) are getting at, and it's completely fair and doesn't take much or anything away from their criticism of Ashley. Hindsight. Almost on a par with mandiarse.....but not quite. You show me one poster who said at the time we were playing in the san siro etc that we shouldn't have bought those players that took us there rather than run a solvent business ? You will also find the same posters, for the most part, frothing over at the fat b****** for not buying more players and "splashing the cash" whenever we lost a game or two. i'll show you plenty who said it when we bought luque etc. as i've already posted the position we were in then is vastly different to the position fred left us in......i'll spell it out for you. borrowing money when you have small debts and a sustaining business plan is ok, in some circumstances it is even preferable to raising cash in other ways. borrowing year on year whan you have very high debt to turnover and have no business plan excepet to hope you become succesful is mindless. why do you constantly cherry pick the highpoints and ignore the position we were left in ?

to be fair it's not just the celeb ones

brian blessed is worth 3 gabby whatsits

i know evertonians who say they only kept him cos they couldn't afford to sack him. over to you lien

fyp

To be fair, bringing in youngsters is the easy bit. Well we've never managed to do much of it before. we have,we've always had academy teams,youth teams etc, some have even included foreign talent, pinas,kiedel but either we were identifying kids who werent good enough or we were crap at improving them (my opinion is a bit of both) Well fine, maybe I should have said we never did it very well before... or it never produced any decent players. Obviously we'll have to wait and see what happens with the current lot, but I'm encouraged by what I've seen so far. me too. the fact that we've not let many kids go at academy level who've went on to big things is as scary as that none have gone on too be top class for us.

To be fair, bringing in youngsters is the easy bit. Well we've never managed to do much of it before. we have,we've always had academy teams,youth teams etc, some have even included foreign talent, pinas,kiedel but either we were identifying kids who werent good enough or we were crap at improving them (my opinion is a bit of both)

you maybe taking it a bit far. i think the banks would have allowed more debt,probably restructured but the position you envisage was on its way the way things were going.

also £2.1 mill paid out to doug and bruce for "loss of office" http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/newcastle/article5570167.ece sorry if already posted.

I wasn't the one that originally brought up Ipswich, but a few that spring to mind are: - I'm surprised you forgot Dyer (probably better than every player you mentioned combined) - A £17m striker in Bent (he's not worth that, but apparently that's what big clubs do), - One Titus Bramble (ah how I miss those signings that said "ambition") - An international keeper in Richard Wright who won a Premier League winners medial IIRC. (Ok slightly different from us qualifying for Europe, but I'm sure he'll get over it) Good to see you didn't cherry pick too I never once mentioned being run like Ipswich. I merely suggested that we, or any team for that matter, will benefit from a good youth set up. What you do with them after that is a different argument. Your reasoning that because West Ham sell some of their youngsters, Ashley will get us relegated is, some might say, slightly warped. Surely even you can see your logic that because some teams with good youth set ups have struggled, therefore it must be a bad thing, is flawed. They also all had tea ladies as well. I can't even believe you're arguing about it. On second thoughts.... I did mention Dyer. I also deliberately missed out Bramble and Ambrose, because they were their "best" youngsters, who in the end arguably didn't prove good enough for us ala Ameobi, Chopra, Hughes etc. So. The only one is Bent, maybe. For Dyer, who we bought, being the bigger club, or rather we were at the time. Richard Wright v Steve Harper ? The bigger question being that it has been pointed out to you that these clubs who put the accent on finding the young players - as mentioned - have all sold them because they haven't "spunked money on bigger ready made players" to go with it, which is what the big clubs do, or do if they are actually big clubs. The ones that don't, lose their youngsters, as mentioned, just like Ipswich who have lost some to Newcastle, when they acted like a bigger club, but didn't when they didn't act like it as in the days when Bobby Robson was manager of Ipswich Town and showed very little interest in managing the much bigger club, his hometown club, Newcastle United. I just know you won't understand this, the same as the shitloads of people who also didn't understand it when it was pointed out that good owners choose to back managers, rather than choose to not back them . The difference now is beoming more clear to people, but not yet all it would seem. For people who cast envious glances at the likes of Ipswich town, its your prerogative, at least playing years in the 2nd division means they don't do embarrassing things, partly because it means they are out of sight and out of mind. Just like we used to be, and just like where we will end up again if the current regime stays as it is. so you would advocate just giving managers cash,racking up debt year on year hoping it works and not really caring about what happens if it doesn't.......have you noticed what clubs like west ham, portsmouth,everton and boro are now doing ? and to pre empt your call about we shouldn't be ranking ourselves alongside such clubs i'll say we should becuase the way the club has been ran we have as much available cash as these despite a higher turnover we also had much higher outgoings. THROWING THE BANKS MONEY AT A MANAGER YEAR ON YEAR IS NOT SUSTAINABLE. stand by to support a club making a profit in the championship then. Having said that, when gates are down to 30,000 and lower - like they were the last time the club acted like also rans - they didn't make money then either apart from when our best players wanted to leave for the big clubs. These supporters of Arsenal and Liverpool must be devastated supporting clubs that buy the best footballers. so you are advocating speneding the banks money year on year with no thought to what happens if/when the plan fails ? and doing this year on year do you think the time will come when the banks say "no, because we don't think you are in any position to pay it back" ? basically your plan is to just ignore any debt. I asked him a bit ago how he'd go about things and all i got was "back my manager". Which basically means he'd of put his personal money into the hands of another man to buy whomever they want ignoring debt, ignoring wage bill and not giving me any inclination as to where the next batch of dosh was coming from fornext seasons transfer budget. Apparently he;s sick and tired of telling us how simple this is... whats your recipe for getting back into europe then fredbob ? Even via the mediocrity and disgrace of needing the intertoto to qualify for it ? Do you still think we are heading in the right direction ie not wasting any money on better players according to the manager appointed by the club ? Yeh actually, i do think we're going in the right direction- in the long term. My only concern with whats happneing so far is that we have Kinnear in charge instead of a manager who could take us forwards, something which should of been done if the fans hadnt spit there dummies out. One of your famous quotes is "back your manager then balances the books later" well when is later? P.S Good answer. if you were one of one or two others, I'd keep that post Not that I hope it comes true, I hope he sells up asap to someone who will show more for the club. And believe it or not, we could still do worse, there are plenty of other tosspots out there who could buy the club. If he sells to one of those, those years of euroean qualifications, full stadiums, and top quality footballers under fat fred [and the Halls of course despite the notion some have that one person with less than 30% of shares ran the club single handed and told everybody else later what he was doing ] could be a distant fond memory indeed. The essence behind the "Back your manager and balance the books later" has been documented at the time I said it, it means if the manager wants a player badly enough, get the player and don't make him sell first in case he loses the player". This is what big clubs do, only small clubs adopt the other stance, like Ashley appears to have done re Keegan of all people. I'm going to go here.......don't want to go down old familiar route, although I suspect some people enjoy it more than they admit so keep backing hiom until you are succesful.....10, 15 years away maybe........except the banks may not like us having more of their money than they have of ours. the point being as we've pointed out often enough.........that tactic can not go on for ever,sooner or later it has to stop,hopefully before it is stopped by the banks.

the betfair predictor has us finishing 17th on 34 points with west brom,boro and stoke going down. man utd to win the league by 8points from chelsea. http://labs.betfair.com/vtpp/League.aspx

Why talk about things that are actually happening when you can blather on about the same old things FOREVER! what is your opinion on a player who is the fabric of the club wanting to leave because he knows he isn't going to be successful ? And - have you seen a relegated team before or not ? what...you mean ginola ? and i've seen us relegated before.

I wasn't the one that originally brought up Ipswich, but a few that spring to mind are: - I'm surprised you forgot Dyer (probably better than every player you mentioned combined) - A £17m striker in Bent (he's not worth that, but apparently that's what big clubs do), - One Titus Bramble (ah how I miss those signings that said "ambition") - An international keeper in Richard Wright who won a Premier League winners medial IIRC. (Ok slightly different from us qualifying for Europe, but I'm sure he'll get over it) Good to see you didn't cherry pick too I never once mentioned being run like Ipswich. I merely suggested that we, or any team for that matter, will benefit from a good youth set up. What you do with them after that is a different argument. Your reasoning that because West Ham sell some of their youngsters, Ashley will get us relegated is, some might say, slightly warped. Surely even you can see your logic that because some teams with good youth set ups have struggled, therefore it must be a bad thing, is flawed. They also all had tea ladies as well. I can't even believe you're arguing about it. On second thoughts.... I did mention Dyer. I also deliberately missed out Bramble and Ambrose, because they were their "best" youngsters, who in the end arguably didn't prove good enough for us ala Ameobi, Chopra, Hughes etc. So. The only one is Bent, maybe. For Dyer, who we bought, being the bigger club, or rather we were at the time. Richard Wright v Steve Harper ? The bigger question being that it has been pointed out to you that these clubs who put the accent on finding the young players - as mentioned - have all sold them because they haven't "spunked money on bigger ready made players" to go with it, which is what the big clubs do, or do if they are actually big clubs. The ones that don't, lose their youngsters, as mentioned, just like Ipswich who have lost some to Newcastle, when they acted like a bigger club, but didn't when they didn't act like it as in the days when Bobby Robson was manager of Ipswich Town and showed very little interest in managing the much bigger club, his hometown club, Newcastle United. I just know you won't understand this, the same as the shitloads of people who also didn't understand it when it was pointed out that good owners choose to back managers, rather than choose to not back them . The difference now is beoming more clear to people, but not yet all it would seem. For people who cast envious glances at the likes of Ipswich town, its your prerogative, at least playing years in the 2nd division means they don't do embarrassing things, partly because it means they are out of sight and out of mind. Just like we used to be, and just like where we will end up again if the current regime stays as it is. so you would advocate just giving managers cash,racking up debt year on year hoping it works and not really caring about what happens if it doesn't.......have you noticed what clubs like west ham, portsmouth,everton and boro are now doing ? and to pre empt your call about we shouldn't be ranking ourselves alongside such clubs i'll say we should becuase the way the club has been ran we have as much available cash as these despite a higher turnover we also had much higher outgoings. THROWING THE BANKS MONEY AT A MANAGER YEAR ON YEAR IS NOT SUSTAINABLE. stand by to support a club making a profit in the championship then. Having said that, when gates are down to 30,000 and lower - like they were the last time the club acted like also rans - they didn't make money then either apart from when our best players wanted to leave for the big clubs. These supporters of Arsenal and Liverpool must be devastated supporting clubs that buy the best footballers. so you are advocating speneding the banks money year on year with no thought to what happens if/when the plan fails ? and doing this year on year do you think the time will come when the banks say "no, because we don't think you are in any position to pay it back" ? basically your plan is to just ignore any debt.

I have had a look through that website but am absolutely nothing to do with it. I think whoever it is who runs it does post on here sometimes though. was it macbeth ? i think he used to run an nufc finances site.

I wasn't the one that originally brought up Ipswich, but a few that spring to mind are: - I'm surprised you forgot Dyer (probably better than every player you mentioned combined) - A £17m striker in Bent (he's not worth that, but apparently that's what big clubs do), - One Titus Bramble (ah how I miss those signings that said "ambition") - An international keeper in Richard Wright who won a Premier League winners medial IIRC. (Ok slightly different from us qualifying for Europe, but I'm sure he'll get over it) Good to see you didn't cherry pick too I never once mentioned being run like Ipswich. I merely suggested that we, or any team for that matter, will benefit from a good youth set up. What you do with them after that is a different argument. Your reasoning that because West Ham sell some of their youngsters, Ashley will get us relegated is, some might say, slightly warped. Surely even you can see your logic that because some teams with good youth set ups have struggled, therefore it must be a bad thing, is flawed. They also all had tea ladies as well. I can't even believe you're arguing about it. On second thoughts.... I did mention Dyer. I also deliberately missed out Bramble and Ambrose, because they were their "best" youngsters, who in the end arguably didn't prove good enough for us ala Ameobi, Chopra, Hughes etc. So. The only one is Bent, maybe. For Dyer, who we bought, being the bigger club, or rather we were at the time. Richard Wright v Steve Harper ? The bigger question being that it has been pointed out to you that these clubs who put the accent on finding the young players - as mentioned - have all sold them because they haven't "spunked money on bigger ready made players" to go with it, which is what the big clubs do, or do if they are actually big clubs. The ones that don't, lose their youngsters, as mentioned, just like Ipswich who have lost some to Newcastle, when they acted like a bigger club, but didn't when they didn't act like it as in the days when Bobby Robson was manager of Ipswich Town and showed very little interest in managing the much bigger club, his hometown club, Newcastle United. I just know you won't understand this, the same as the shitloads of people who also didn't understand it when it was pointed out that good owners choose to back managers, rather than choose to not back them . The difference now is beoming more clear to people, but not yet all it would seem. For people who cast envious glances at the likes of Ipswich town, its your prerogative, at least playing years in the 2nd division means they don't do embarrassing things, partly because it means they are out of sight and out of mind. Just like we used to be, and just like where we will end up again if the current regime stays as it is. so you would advocate just giving managers cash,racking up debt year on year hoping it works and not really caring about what happens if it doesn't.......have you noticed what clubs like west ham, portsmouth,everton and boro are now doing ? and to pre empt your call about we shouldn't be ranking ourselves alongside such clubs i'll say we should becuase the way the club has been ran we have as much available cash as these despite a higher turnover we also had much higher outgoings. THROWING THE BANKS MONEY AT A MANAGER YEAR ON YEAR IS NOT SUSTAINABLE.

It's not so much that, more the way he gets away with spouting off anything to the press, blatantly tapping many players up and trying to unsettle them and breaking every code of conduct and the geneva convention etc. I truly f***ing detest the man. Even if he didn't break any codes I'd still detest him tbf. now you see. that attitude is a lot more healthy than looking for reasons.

dunno like.....by the sounds of thew phone ins and message boards his honeymoon with the fans is over. if they turn the press will follow.

Fair enough, but why come out and say it? He's a cockend beyond belief, and the fact that he now works for the yids makes me hate the pair of them even more. c***s deserve each other. steve coppell did the other year in similar circumstances....fuck all good it done him aswell.

i'm really struggling to think of a club in the top flight who hasn't fielded a weakened team deliberatly in the FA CUP over the last few years. the only one i can think of is us !

What? The whole stockmarket was overpriced. the price was the price and any call of overpriced or underpriced is purely opinion. the value of something is always what someone will pay for it.

it doesn't mean we should support him, what it does is give us a little bit more of an understanding of where we were when he took over and the reasons for where we are today. there's an argument to be made that his lack of due dilligence was a good thing for us.

yes but tremember if you do that you also have to take into account that lack of revenus for the next two years. ashley will face this as will anyone who wants tio buy and would be reflected in any sale price.