UV

Ireland? have you seen him play the last 2 seasons, he has been absplutly rubbish for a while now. It is a reason why we got him on a loan deal you know. He'd easily push Gerrard out the team man

Just to confirm, you're talking about the 03/04 season here where we conceded 40 league goals, a total we've only ever bettered once in the Premiership (when we came 2nd in 95/96 supposedly with our reckless concede 3 and try to score 4 tactics which meant we threw away a 12 point lead ). The main problem that year was we drew too many away games (we only won 2). That was mostly because we only scored 19 away goals which was the 7th worst total in the league.

Constant turnover of top players? Isn't that to exaggerate a bit? Carroll's sale was the right thing to do. The deal was terrific. And Enrqiue wants to be sold. That's only two players. Together they have generated a whopping £50 mill. Used wisely, we could buy us a hell of a team that will be much stronger than a team consisting of Carroll and Enrique and mediocre recruitments. Ashley's PR department would be so proud of you. Isn't what he said fact? Even Enrique hasn't left, so actually this is all based on one player sale. While complaining about players on high wages who don't earn it, haven't we sold one or more of our best young players at the time on lowish wages every season bar his first? Milner, N'Zogbia, Bassong, Carroll? I guess you'll argue there were good reasons for selling all of them, but when it's exception after exception after exception, at some point you have to start thinking they're not really exceptions don't you? Don't you have to ask where the priorities lie when deciding whether or not to sell a player? Were they all sold with the aim of the on-field benefit of the club? Was Milner sold so we could improve the team? Was N'Zogbia sold so we could strengthen the squad? Was Bassong sold so we could free up his wages to bring in someone better? Another way of looking at it is who have we resisted serious offers for to hang on to? Then again I'm just one of madras' typical cockney haters who can't look at anything rationally, so Ashley will more than likely prove me wrong in the coming years and will go against practically everything he's done at the club so far and in business in general, and will act competently to hire the best staff available within our means with the on-field success of the club at the top of the priority list, and strive to constantly improve the product he sells to his customers.

Hasn't he only been responsible for 1 signing for us so far, ie Tiote? One player isn't much to base any confidence on really. Here's how £45m+ was spent at Man City under Eriksson when Carr was chief scout : Benjani £3,870,000 Felipe Caicedo £5,200,000 Valeri Bojinov £5,750,000 Elano £8,000,000 Vedran Corluka £8,000,000 Javier Garrido £1,500,000 Martin Petrov £4,700,000 Geovanni Free Rolando Bianchi £8,800,000 and City signings pre-moneybags era from the rest of his time there (for an idea of how good he is at spotting cheap/unknown players who come good) : Season 06/07 Andreas Isaksson £2,000,000 Hatem Trabelsi Free Bernardo Corradi Signed Dietmar Hamann £400,000 Season 05/06 Ousmane Dabo Free Paul Dickov Free Joe Hart £1,500,000 Matthew Mills £250,000 Georgios Samaras £6,000,000 Darius Vassell £2,000,000 Andy Cole Free Season 04/05 Ronald Waterreus Free Danny Mills Free Inspiring?

How to earn a living in Sunderland: At least the insurance money will mean they can afford to go to the pub to watch the game.

You realise though Dave, assuming Ben Arfa is fit or if we have some new Carlos Kickaball midfielder, at the start of next season we'll be right back to page 1 of this thread.

Damn you, you clever bastard, you've picked up on the one motive for our feeble questioning of the saviour of our club. There's no rhyme or reason to any argument, just pure cockney hatred. I hate those infernal cockneys!!!!!!! PS I have to laugh at someone defending Ashley bringing up Occam's razor when the most obvious conclusion to draw from the way he has run the club without making any assumptions about intent is that he's an incompetent fuckwit who hasn't a clue about what he's doing.

I don't know why he's even acknowledging this kind of thing, let alone where he's read it. He's first with the rumours because he gets to hear them before the PR department leak them to the press.

if the club accepts an offer you wouldn't then expect him to hand in a transfer request. the second sentence is possibly closer to the carroll scenario in so far as the player receiving "an offer too good to turn down" I am not saying this is what happened as no-one but the people involved know the details, but this scenario fits the stories from both sides, and seems the most plausible to me: NUFC tell supporters and Carroll they are not interested in selling him and he is the future of NUFC NUFC negotiates with LFC and accept offer to sell once LFC have confirmed with CFC they will pay 35m + £15m for Torres NUFC tell Carroll on deadline day they have now accepted an offer to sell him & allow LFC to talk terms with the player LFC tell Carroll they are willing to pay him £X & try to convince him to join Carroll then talks to NUFC & asks them to match what LFC are willing to pay NUFC tell Carroll that if he wants to re-negotiate his contract he has to put in a transfer request Carroll puts in transfer request NUFC then tell Carroll they are not interested in re-negotiating his contract until the Summer, and even then it will not be close to what he is being offered. Carroll says ok, if you're not willing to pay close to what I'm being offered elsewhere you obviously have less ambition as a club than Liverpool and don't really want me to stay very much at all. Carroll flies off in Ashley's waiting helicopter.

Can we s****! I hope he breaks both his legs the f***ing c***. Let Me GUess, you are still booing your eyes out every night because we sold Andy Cole.......... There is a massive difference. Andy Cole wasn't a Geordie and din't move because he wanted to anyway, nor did we need to sell him. He was sold because the manager wanted to change how we played and that meant replacing Cole in the team with a new striker. He was too good to be a squad striker and worth too much in terms of resale value to be sat on the bench. Mind I was personally devastated when we sold him, my first footy and Toon hero. As for Carroll, he can go and fuck himself. I hope he amounts to fuck all in his career. People rant on about Carroll as if he left us on a free transfer! We made £35m out of him. He also fired us back in to the Premiership during the second half of last season and his goals this season maybe the key reason we stay up this year. We turned down bids between £20m to £30m. At what amount of money should have Carroll been sold before people don't moan about him leaving? or is there no amount? I said all along I wouldn't sell him for any money. I support Newcastle United the football team, not its bank balance. 'Moaning' ffs, I couldn't give a fuck what we 'made out of him'. I did make a point about his contribution over the last 18 months as well. I would have been happy if we rejected the £35m bid and told Carroll to stay. I guess some people move on faster than others, but I can't be bothered to waste energy moaning about him leaving still or hoping he "breaks his legs" or "never amounts to anything" at this stage. It's just a tad pathetic I think. I won't take any pleasure out of seeing him do well at Liverpool, but I'm more than happy to see him do well for England. Also saying Carroll should not leave for any amount of money is just naive. Your saying you would turn down £100m? £200m? I appreciate this may be a bit of a loaded question, but if Pardew goes out there spends some or all of the £35m and we bring in forwards that fire us even higher up the table next season, would that make you care less about Carroll sale? Everyone is entitled to feel what they want about the sale of Carroll, I rather he wasn't sold, but I'm not going to say bad things about him and his career now or in future. We should move on. Just a point on this. If we don't get relegated this season, and then we do finish higher next season, it's not necessarily a case that we have strengthened, because we have effectively sabotaged this season's final league position by selling our best striker without replacement half way through it (and loaning out our only dedicated right winger).

Just took the figures out: 2003/04: 4,2m profits before tax and dividends, and 3.95m dvidiends was paid out to the shareholders, aso nothing left 2004/05: Breakeven, but again, 3.95m dividends was paid to the shareholders, so we have a 4m loss 2005/06: 12m loss, and on top of that, 2.6m dividends paid out (2m in shares, 0.6m in cash) Would appreciate if someone can complete the figures afterwards 2006/2007 £30m loss 2007/2008 £20m loss 2008/2009 £15m loss 2009/2010 £17m loss So we lose nearly 100m for the last 7 years. Wow, jesus. Remember though the profit/loss figures are heavily influenced by player amortisation, and give a somewhat distorted picture of the years in which money was spent over budget and debt was built up. For example the loss in 05-06 was only £12m, but the increase in the debt was £23m due to buying Owen & Luque in that year while the loss in 06-07 was £30m, but the increase in the debt was only £10m as a lot of that loss was amortisation of players already on the books. For last year it looks like most of the loss is amortisation (going off reports the debt has remained steady) so probably not much cash was actually lost as the shortfall was covered by player sales. When we spend the £35m + the rest of the profit from this year on buying players cash up front in the Summer, there wont be an immediate hit of £50m to next years accounts as it will be spread over the next 4/5 years even though it was spent in 2011 from money generated in 10-11.

Yeah, it was a staggering improvement from the mishapen hash of a football team that we looked under Souness. Unfortunately, though, we still had the same defense. Emre was such a good player man. 42 goals conceded that season. 06-07 - 47 07-08 - 65 08-09 - 59 10-11 - 45 so far

Even without the Carroll sale, only Arsenal & Portsmouth would have "done better" than us. That 5 year period also includes an £8m net spend pre-Ashley in 06-07, so it's more like a £56m net income from transfers under Ashley tbh (disclaimer: I haven't checked the figures are correct).

Just an overview re our total liabilities. Anyway you are correct to take those things out if you want to focus on bank debt. I guess the bank debt, which was due immediately after change of shareholders and force Ashley to pay after acquisition, was the item "fixed interest senior loan notes" as shown in note 15 and 16 in the 2005 accounts and note 14 in the 2006 accounts. So this bank loan rose up to 70m when Ashley takeover the club? Well there were a bunch of different loans at different rates, the stadium loan was around £45m of that total.

If you believe Milner - and I do - he agreed a contract extension when Ashley bought the club on the same terms that he was already on, on the condition that the club would renegotiate the deal the next year. The club then refused to even talk to him about it causing him to show his annoyance by handing in a transfer request. They then sold him saying he wanted to leave.

Just do some google research: http://www.nufc.co.uk/staticFiles/53/12/0,,10278~4691,00.pdf Our debt as at 31 July 2005 was about 105m, with 43m short-term (due within 1 year) and 62m long term. one year later: http://www.nufc.co.uk/staticFiles/ea/3d/0,,10278~81386,00.pdf The total debt is close to 111m (excluding deferred income) Unable to find the accounts afterwards No. You're including running costs for the next year, tax and all sorts in those numbers. 2005 - Note 27, p43. Debt = £63.3m, Cash in bank = £26.2m, Net debt = £37.2m When Ashley bought the club, the debt was £70m.

Thanks for spending so much time going back through my posts, but those two aren't contradictory. When I said turnover is nothing in business, I explained that it needs to lead to a healthy profit for it to be good for the business. Whether we can afford to spend money on players depends on how much of a profit/loss we're likely to make and whether that's sustainable, not on how high our turnover is. I'm assuming you know that 'turnover' just means income. Spending so much time going back through your posts It was a post from yesterday I'd already commented on man. It was so absurd a post even I'd struggle to forget it so soon. I'd like to assume you realise that better players command higher wages (if not when you buy them, then when they prove themselves), that the more money you generate the better the players you are able to afford to get or keep, that to get or keep these players you actually have to spend the money you generate not make a profit with it. I'd like to assume you realise that all clubs have players who become not worth the wages they are on, that it's completely unrealistic to think that cutting costs only means you get rid of the wasters, that it will almost inevitably result in reduced quality and/or manpower. Of course the aim should be to minimise wastage, but it's better to have money and waste some of it than not to have the money in the first place. I'd like to think you realised that a club which makes a profit year after year is not putting everything it can afford to spend on players. It simply isn't realistic that a club which puts all it's profits from good years back into the team makes a profit year after year, let alone the sizeable profits you seem to think we should be making. The only way to do that would be to have a constantly increasing turnover or a recruitment team so good that they hardly ever make a bad signing and the squad value was always increasing. If Mike Ashley can do it, I'd be one of the last to commend him for it, but I would do so eventually. Anyone who isn't insanely naive or optimistic knows he wont though.

A football supporter who wants his club to make sizeable profits for it's owner Alarm bells should start ringing if a large turnover is reducing year on year in comparison to it's competitors. Maybe people with a vested interest in that company should think twice before praising the management for running the company well financially by cutting pay and selling off assets. If you don't think turnover is important, I guess you think it should be quite easy for us to get back into Europe, the top 4, and even compete for the title? We did it before with a poor chairman hamstrung by a high wage bill, so now we have the dream team of Ashley, Llambias, Pardew & a low wage bill, it should be pretty easy to do.

Instead of going on about not spending money we don't have you and others might like to ask yourself why we don't have the (any) money to spend without selling players to fund it. Why in 4 years we've more than doubled the club debt despite making £50m profit in transfers. It's quite amazing how Freddy Shepherd has been able to do exponentially more financial damage to the club since he left than he ever did while running it. The club turnover in Ashley's first year was £99m, that was up on the previous year due to an increase in the TV revenue. The club finished in the bottom half for the second year running, but still managed the 6th best turnover in the league. This is before Ashley had a chance to weave his financial magic, and was generated by the club being run in the way set out by the supposedly financially incompetent Shepherd. This is a benchmark for where the club was when he arrived and what it is possible to achieve at this club, it should by all accounts have been easy to better this benchmark. What actually happened though was, the following year revenue dropped to £86m. The completely unnecessary relegation meant revenue dropped again to £52m (and anyone who thinks losing £50m in revenue was in any way good for the club needs their head seeing to). This season, TV revenues went up again, so a financially incompetent owner should be able to generate £110m+ in revenues this year, but we are more likely to see revenues of closer to £90m. In 2 years Ashley cost this club at least £60m in lost revenue. This year will probably be another £20m lost. Up to now he has (had to) cover what could not be clawed back with players sales and cost cutting with loans to the club. For all the talk of Ashley subsidising the club, it is the supporters as a group who have subsidised the club the most by continuing to turn up and pay the same to watch the club in a lower league. If he now proceeds to pay his loans off with any profits we can make from a now greatly reduced annual turnover, it simply adds insult to injury. We will have to produce and sell an Andy Carroll every 2 years just to compensate for the lost revenue this bloke costs our club. You want me to applaud him because we have drastically cut the squad in quality and depth to be able to make a profit off the new lowered club revenues to pay back the debt he built up? If I write-off your Porsche and then lend you the money to buy a Punto will you thank me and buy me a drink as you pay me back?

2 years ago the plan was to be challenging for everything within 5 years. 6 months later we were relegated. Now the long term vision for the club is to finish 10th or above every year, year after year. Let's hope they don't fall as far short of the new rather more limited aim as they did the old one.

Would you rather have had that money or stayed up with the extra point that I'm fairly sure a player of Milner's (and/or N'Zogbia's) productivity would have earned us over a season? To those mentioning Spurs sell-to-buy policy, if you suggested to Harry Redknapp that they had one, I suspect he'd laugh in your face. Point is, spurs have done it and found success, so now they don't have to sell to buy anymore. Please understand. You're spreading a myth. Please understand.

what makes you think that? He's talking about the sort of players he's looking to bring in, whether he has targets, and after waffling a bit about how hard it is to get the players you want he volunteers Ireland as an example of a player who is young and has lots of talent and could recharge his career at Newcastle. I got the feeling it was pretty much a done deal and wouldn't be surprised if the transfer was already agreed in principle.

Sorry to take the thread OT, but listening to that Pardew interview, I'd be very surprised if we don't sign Ireland in the Summer.

It didn't live within its means under Keegan and Robson though, did it? I'm not blaming them personally, but they were part of the regime that overspent enough to put us in financial trouble now. At the end of the 15 years of the old board, disregarding the stadium expansion, the size of the debt due to this "overspending" was around £25m which for a club constantly in the top 20 highest revenue generating clubs in the world is an absolute pittance. To put it in perspective, that's less than the TV revenue alone which was lost due to relegation, or less than drops in non-TV revenue in the last 3 years due to reduced sponsorship, merchandising and ticket sales, or about half of the net profit generated on player sales since Ashley bought the club. Ashley's got the club back on a sound financial footing though by doubling the debt while reducing the squad to a threadbare state so everything's great, lets carry on with more cuts, that'll take us to the next level (down). Give me the kind of "overspending" we did under Keegan and Robson to buy the likes of Shearer, Bellamy & Robert over the idea we need to get rid of Barton so we can bring in 2 more Guthries any day.