UV

you aren't going to hold him wanting his money back at some point against him are you when he's been effectivly keeping the club going for the last year or two are you ? That depends on how much of the extra debt we’ve accrued since he bought the club can be attributed to his mistakes. Taking money out of the club to pay for his mistakes would certainly be of dubious morality. using the same criteria i wonder what you think of shepherd ? Unless you count the stadium extension as a mistake (£45m of the debt), then the remaining debt left at the end of 15 years of Hall & Shepherd was around £25m. In the year prior to Ashley's takeover we were without the advertising revenue that Ashley complains about, we were paying the instalments for players like Owen and Luque that Ashley also complained about, we spent net £10m on new players, and we were also paying interest of £7.5m. In that year the debt increased by £9m. That is the context for the loses in cash terms when Ashley took over. In the first year of Ashley's ownership due to a new deal for prem clubs, TV revenues went up by £18m. If things had continued to be run as they had the previous year then even with another £10m net spend and a slightly increased wage bill the club should have easily broken even or made a cash flow profit and paid back some of the debt. Going from the figures in this post: http://www.newcastle-online.org/nufcforum/index.php/topic,69123.msg2330046.html#msg2330046 As of May this year the debt stands at something like £134m (268-134 cost of club) + £36m overdraft = £170m That's an increase of £100m in 3 years, or £33m per year, and that's before you even start to look at the quality and depth of the squad when he took over to what it is now. So Ashley has put more debt per year on the club than the old owners racked up through 15 years of mistakes taking us from a club on the brink of the 3rd division to being one of the richest clubs in the world. Please don't try and tell me these losses are due to the mistakes of the previous owners, because the stadium debt had to be paid off, because of some missing advertising revenue, or even because of Michael bloody Owen. They are purely down to how Ashley has run the club and "turned around" the finances (he sure has!). Now, at the risk of having an opinion madras, to answer the thread, do you forgive "Mike and Dell Boy" because Hughton fortunately turned out to be a decent manager and got us promoted, and we have brought in a crocked youth prospect, a semi-retired defender, a dutch league sub and an exciting but temperamental prospect on loan to keep us in the premiership? Will you be happy if he uses the extra money the club brings in this year to pay off some of those debts? If we do start paying off those debts this year, will you be happy for the club to continue to do so for the next 5 years until we "achieve a 'break even' financial situation"?

all else aside this is my fear with Ashley, i have the nagging suspicion that he's currently 'succeeding' (used very loosely) by good luck rather than good strategic management and the wheels will come spinning off again before too long a good season from Carroll / Enrique for example, they'll be sold to the first good bid that comes in imo, might be wrong and i'm aware my opinion is skewed by hating the guy so much I have to say I haven't met anyone I could describe as a member of a "HAPPY CLAPPY ASHLEYITE BRIGADE" and there aren't too many unconditional Ashley supporters on this board imo. For the most part I sense that the majority think he bought the club without doing proper research, then made a series of catastrophic mistakes which, fortunately, he has the money to fund. But he has done a bit better in the last 9 months or so. I doubt that many feel totally confident that he couldn't screw up again tbh. I had hoped the "HAPPY CLAPPY ASHLEYITE BRIGADE" label would be quite obviously seen for what it was as simply a response in kind to the "BOYCOUTT BRIGADE" label in the post I was quoting. People don't seem to have a problem labelling anyone who criticises Asley in that camp though. Stupeedo, the person I was responding to, is and always has been quite unashamedly a happy clappy ashleyite btw.

You could also say winning something once is better than not winning anything ever. Better for the supporters - yes, of course. But the achievement would be a credit to the players, coaches & manager at the time. The owner/chairman would get SOME credit for assembling that team of course, but unless the success is maintained or goes hand in hand with good league positions it's almost certainly a fluke from their point of view with the players overachieving or getting through with a few lucky draws/results.

Any apology would look shit now, they've shown themselves to be the type to drive a hard-bargain if it gets the right result in the end. A cup win or consecutive European qualification in the coming years and it'll be those in the BOYCOUTT BRIGADE who'll be eating humble pie. What the HAPPY CLAPPY ASHLEYITE BRIGADE don't seem to understand is that Ashley will drive a hard bargain whether it occasionally gets the right result or whether it more often than not fails to do so. Which in the long run will most likely result in a squad full of mediocre and/or disgruntled players, leading to a disenchanted and dwindling supporter base. Anyone who thinks a single cup win would mean the owner/chairman was doing a good job is an idiot btw. Regular cup quarter/semi/final appearances and defeats would be a more significant milestone a than single one-off win. If we achieve consecutive European qualification spots under Ashley I will gladly eat anything you want. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I'll die of starvation before that happens though. This made me laugh/cry (not the bit about just wanting to enjoy the football, I can fully understand that). Some of the similarities between Ashley's business tactics with Sports Direct and us are becoming more and more evident, eg - buying brands with a good name, then sticking that brand on cheap products - paying staff minimum wages who therefore don't care about the job they do and are always looking to get away - running with a skeleton staff - the minimum needed during an average day, but understaffed when a few are sick/on holiday - putting mates in the top jobs rather than getting in someone more qualified - the worst customer service around - making false claims to customers - pissing off competitors with dubious tactics so they hold a grudge against you He may have started out differently on some things like player wages (maybe he was originally only in it for a quick resale, or maybe relegation changed his thinking), but it seems he's reverting to what he knows has worked for him in the past. Ashley is very successful in making money from selling a poor quality product, but the money he makes doesn't go back into making that product better. Unfortunately, at the minute that's the future I see for us too (at best), and every year it carries on will make it harder and harder to get back to where we were.

NUFC Debut: n/a Sadly true.

The ultimate trophy signing when instead what the squad needed was filling with cheap unproven youngsters. Player on the way down looking for one last lucrative contract. Committing sponsorship money upfront to pay for a player brought in to appease the crowd. Upsetting the tight knit camaraderie and team spirit of the existing squad by bringing in a superstar. Not read the thread, but expect this has been thoroughly criticised by most posters for being a terrible, terrible signing. Hopefully we'll never see this kind of mistake made again.

For those who can't be arsed to look for themselves, here's the latest statement from the trust. http://www.nust.org.uk/the-trust-moving-forward

They're evidently hard at work releasing bullet-points about their notable achievements, which amount to having raised a few grand for Sir Bobby's charity and getting 30,000 sigs on an anti-stadium-naming-rights petition. Maybe you should write to them with your advice on how to get the owner of the club to sell up by protesting and boycotting games?

If only he'd gone in with both feet, he'd not have tripped Alonso up, but that's Joey Barton for you always going out to injure people. I was fuming with Shearer when I watched MOTD after coming home from the pub last week. He went down in my estimation when he did that. The ex-Liverpool media gang get criticised for sticking up for Liverpool all the time, but it's what you expect. If anything Shearer over-compensates when it comes to us. No way would that kind of obvious targeting of a player have been laughed off if it had been Fabregas, Lampard, Gerrard, etc on the receiving end of it.

If Harper had been in goal vs Accrington then Krul would have saved both those goals. The 2 against Norwich too.

Me neither, but be it in a lump sum or in instalments it’ll be in the club’s accounts by the end of the relevant accounting period won’t it? It would interesting for those who are insisting we will be operating at loss season to have a stab at telling us how much that loss will be and how they arrived at this figure. Well I won't insist on anything because there are far too many unknowns (not least of which is what our match day revenue will be this season) but as I said in an earlier post the last time we were in the Premiership our costs were £124 million. So you might assume we have cut say £20 million out of the costs since then, that would leave costs of £104 million for the year. After that it really depends on what you think our income will be.....Last time we were in the Premiership it was only £86 million but there are some improved deals in place in media revenues so, based on this very sketchy model, the question would be whether our income will be more or less than £104 million..... They're unknowns of course, but they are not things which are completely inestimable, and there really aren't too many of them are there? Income = TV + matchday + commercial + transfer fees Costs = wages + running costs + transfer fees + interest + tax Have I missed anything out? (we're talking cash flow here so player amortisation, etc is not relevant right?) The costs you mention from 08-09 will include around £30m from upfront player fees will they not? Any fees out this time will be covered and then some by the instalments coming in from the players we sold that year and last. Plus wages will be down by say £20m. Costs should be down by £40m at least. I would be shocked if the club did not make a substantial cash flow profit this year (barring major purchases in January). If not, then you have to be majorly worried about what has happened to the revenue streams into the club do you not? Or are people happy to just accept year on year declines in revenue, putting it down to the economy while congratulating Mike for how well he's running the club?

so last season (when we were in the CCC) the bottom PL team was guaranteed 24m basic, and as of this season they're guaranteed about 40m? in a nutshell So the extra revenue will be Approx £40m revenue less: £12m parachute payment less: whatever media money we received this year. Not really £35m-£40m extra at all, unless we do spectacularly well. The £40m minimum assumes finishing bottom and having 10 or less games on TV. We are on the TV as much as any other team this year, and will receive amongst the highest facility fees. In 09-10 the difference between a high and a low facility fee payment was around £6m, if this has increased by a third, then that would be around £8m on top of the minimum £40m even if we finish bottom. I can't find what the TV revenue for last year was, but I'm sure it has been published before and I was surprised at how small it was. I think it was less than £3m? £48m - £12m -£3m = £33m difference for finishing bottom. Every place we finish above that is an extra £1m+

Saw someone saying before (might have been Facebook) that Taylor was our best CB by a mile and that Williamson had a 'nightmare' against Man United. Some people's opinions are just clouded. He's nowhere near as good as some suggest and last year proved just how little we need him. If I've added up correctly. We conceded 12 goals with 13 clean sheets in the 21 league games he played We conceded 23 goals with 9 clean sheets in the 25 league games he missed We got by without him last season against Championship attacks, but there was still a significant drop in form when he was out. There are other factors behind those stats of course, but to say we didn't miss him is just wrong. Some people just hate the fact that he promotes himself as a local lad and milks the crowd and assume that it's the only reason some supporters rate him whilst over-compensating and exaggerating his failings themselves. He'd be nothing like as easy to replace with someone of the same or better ability but on low wages as some suggest.

Yours was just the latest post using made up numbers to reach a decision. You're assuming he's been offered £40k.

Surely transfer lists are public by definition? The press will obviously know who is on them. I agree we need to take all this with a pinch of salt though, with claim and counter-claim in the press. It doesn't matter anyway, if Taylor really hasn't rejected £40k then he'll sign, if he has rejected it he won't sign. We'll know soon enough. We have absolutely no idea what he has or hasn't been offered, but once again people are happy to swallow the line put out by the media which can have come from nowhere else but the club. Are some people under the delusion that he's been put on the transfer list so that now clubs know he's for sale and we'll somehow get more for him because of it? Do you think the likes of David Moyes are daily scanning the list to see who they can go after? That's not how transfers work these days, and especially not from the club where "There will be no comment from the Board regarding the sale of players. ". We will have had agents contacting any and every other club we think might be interested from the minute the decision was made to sell. Look at the list man: http://www.givemefootball.com/pfa-transfer-list It's free transfers and released kids. There's only 2 players on there who the club's want a fee for. This is purely for PR reasons by the club to make Taylor out to be the bad guy so supporters wont be pissed off if we sell him, and you can see by the reaction on here how easily and successfully it works. It also helps to make sure he has little choice but to take the terms of any club that comes in with an acceptable offer. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to learn the club had already agreed a fee with another club prior to this. But yeah, footballers should be paid less than nurses because their job isn't as important. If they loved every club they played for like they're supposed to they should be happy to play for their return bus fare to the ground. Give all the money to the owners I say.

Whatever the truths of this situation are, it shows how strongly they feel about this gem from the last club statement: A great advert to those local young Shearers, Bruces, Beardsleys and Carricks this will be to know the club will transfer list you without even telling you first hand, and try to turn the supporters against you by releasing rumours about massive wage demands to the press. He's at least as good now at what is required of a premier league defender as Coloccini is, and Taylor will almost certainly improve in the next few years as Coloccini declines. If wages are the problem, then why has the curly haired one not been transfer listed too, we've another 3 years of paying his wages which are almost certainly higher than the fabricated £60k?

Maybe I have a short memory but that was the best I've seen Smith play for us. He was like a completely different player from the one that played last week - I mean, Smith being mobile and offering himself for the ball, and not making silly lunging tackles? If Smith played like that every game since he joined we'd have never had been relegated, the line was so thin so having a player like that all season would have been huge. (there's a load of if's and nicky butts i know) He was injured most of the season and only started 4 league games, but it seems people love to include him in the players they blame for relegation.

Not far from the truth. If it was left to some on here we would probably sign no-one but 15 year old kids who turn up off the street and they'd sit back and pat themselves on the back at the end of the transfer window for not wasting any money.

Shamelessly nicked (but corrected) from toontastic: Yes! We have no Ben Arfas We have no Ben Arfas today!

Didn't we have that kind of agreement with Birmingham when they loaned Butt - if they stayed up they'd have to buy him?

"Held to ransom" They want to sell a player like normal clubs do, not on a try before you buy basis. If anything we (and the player) are holding them to ransom. Imagine how you'd feel if this was Enrique and he was saying he never wanted to play for us again, but the only club he wanted to go to only wanted to get him on loan for the season & send him back if they weren't happy with him or if they broke him.

I really think we've left this to deadline day and OM will try and offload him for straight cash till then, if that doesn't happen we'll get him on the original terms. That is where I honestly think MA is with this. I too think this is the case What worries me is the back up plan, if they have even heard of such a thing Agreed, if Ashley was going to budge we'd have him now, and there's absolutely no incentive for Marseille to budge until the last minute, so we have a stalemate until deadline day. Even then there's no guarantee that Marseille wont decide to keep him anyway and they will now be working on him to persuade him to want to stay.

Ashley has masterfully negotiated a new sponsorship deal at half the previous rate now though hasn't he? The club really is being turned round financially. tbf, that's because of the economic state we are in now Not really. Liverpool who are doing so well now replaced their old £7.2m a year sponsorship with Carlsberg with a new £20m per year one for the next 4 years. We went from a £5m a year deal negotiated in 2004 to only £2.5m a year for the next 4. We're no Liverpool in terms of desirability for sponsorship, but it's a reflection of the state of the club more than the state of the economy. top 4 clubs can, we can't as we just been relegated! sunderland's new sponsorship deal is 1/2 of what their old 1 was Yeah, but we're talking about Europa League hopefuls Liverpool. If conditions are so poor for sponsorship now, why did we sign a 4 year deal? Edit: Don't want to derail the thread with another post on this, but for future reference: Sunderland were the only other premiership team to get a lower new sponsorship deal (and I couldn't find ANY other sources to corroborate their new lower figures): http://www.nust.org.uk/put-your-shirt-on-it-liverpool-and-manchester-united-surging-ahead-in-sponsor-stakes http://www.nust.org.uk/images/stories/miscellaneous/PremShirt2010-11.jpg

Ashley has masterfully negotiated a new sponsorship deal at half the previous rate now though hasn't he? The club really is being turned round financially. tbf, that's because of the economic state we are in now Not really. Liverpool who are doing so well now replaced their old £7.2m a year sponsorship with Carlsberg with a new £20m per year one for the next 4 years. We went from a £5m a year deal negotiated in 2004 to only £2.5m a year for the next 4. We're no Liverpool in terms of desirability for sponsorship, but it's a reflection of the state of the club more than the state of the economy.

The OM people are right, AShley is just taking the piss and we aren't serious about this deal unless we get him handed on a plate. Why would we ever agree to that clause though? That would mean of he was crap or had a bad attitude we would still have to sign him no matter what. It's obvious Marseille want to sell him, not just loan him out, and I can fully understand why they're not happy to accept a deal to buy him after X games. Either we could decide we don't want him and stop playing him, or worse he could get a serious injury after 24 games, and they end up having to pay an injured players wages next year as he runs his contract down. If I was looking after Marseilles finances I'd certainly only take the deal we're allegedly offering as a last resort.