UV

I think you truly are deluded if you actually believe what you are typing is in any way fact. I don't think there's a single bit in what you posted that isn't rumour, opinion or simply made up. I'm still waiting for that list of mistakes Ashley has admitted to by the way. Rome was already built, but someone was fiddling while it burned.

they will have to be shrewd if the reported wage levels are anything to go by, do you think the recent signings are good enough for the premiership, do you know the length of their contracts ? Bob, we wont actually know until we see the likes of Routledge, Williamson etc play in the EPL. What I will say is that the likes of Dann, Johnson at Birmingham, Lescott at City, Baines at Everton and quite a few others, have come from lower divisions and done well in the PL so it is not beyond the realm of mpossibility that our signings will also succeed. Furthermore, if you look at the teams near the bottom of the PL, I dont think any of them are that much better than us, if at all. Also, there are plenty of good quality players around who would more than likely jump at the chance of coming to NUFC at realistic prices and whilst most peoplke on here would like to see Arsenal type football played, realism says that workmanlike performances are the order of the day under Hughton and that hasnt done the likes of Birmingham, Villa, Everton any harm this season at all. Maybe we can see a sim ilar response next season. I've seen these players, I'm not going to watch the smoggies or anybody else, as you are telling people to do, but I don't think they are as good as the players he has sold. What do you think of them ? You are probably right there, to a certain extent. However, the players who left, no doubt, with the undoubted skill they had, failed miserably to mput that skill to good use for the club. Ask yourself, how many have suceeded since they moved! Given, Milner are the only ones I can think of. Viduka retired, Owen spent most of the season benched as did Beye, Martins at Wolfsburg? What has he done there? Even Edgar at Burnley cant get a game there. So, as for their undoubted skill, yes, they were skillful but only when they felt like it which wasnt very bloody often, was it? The players coming in have substantially less salaries, points to prove and who knows yet, maybe huge successes in the PL. I would much rather be top of the CCC at the moment than bottom of the PL. Your comment about managers was very relevant and certainly a major mistake by Ashley last year, which so far, he has learned in his backing of Hughton. I actually think CH will do well next year and believe he deserves a great deal of credit for this season's success. Ashley put his faith in him and he has rewarded that faith, so far. Lets look ahead and not back. I don't think Hughton will do well, especially with one hand tied behind his back and being forced to buy cheap players. Ashley lost his best chance of succeeding when he lost Keegan, he then had a chance to rectify it by backing and appointing Shearer, if only to unite everybody in the short term, but he blew that as well. He had the support of supporters at first but he has lost it himself. Take your point if you mean uniting the fans in the short term, but we don't know whether all the players would have united under Shearer. Ashley has made many mistakes but I can't see a scrap of evidence that rejecting Shearer was one of them. Listening to the anti Ashley chanting at games and feeling, it will take a lot to change that. Doesn't address what I said. What evidence is there that rejecting Shearer was a mistake? The fans have certainly had a bit of a chant about Ashley but does that mean rejecting Shearer was a mistake? Fans shout about a lot of things. There was a lot of moaning about Caroll and Jonas (and others) earlier in the season, so does that prove that Hughton sticking by them was a mistake? Would you be convinced Hughton knew what he was doing if one week he praised Carroll & Jonas, saying they were the best players we had in the squad and we were going to build the team around them, then dropped them the next week without saying why and never played them again?

So the real story is that an uncontrollable journalist viciously pushed an innocent security guard in front of a speeding vehicle. I hope this attempted murder is dealt with with the full force of the law and this crazed journalist is locked up for life or at the very least sacked from his job. I do hope the papers start a campaign to ensure morally outraged vigilante justice is served.

List the mistakes he's admitted to & show evidence of him trying to rectify them.

I hate your f*cking posts on finance. I find myself trawling back through old sets of accounts only to discover that you are usually wrong Not that anyone was particularly interested in club finances at the time but: In 1998 the club had £25 million of cash sitting on deposit a long term £15 million bank loan was the only debt, on a turnover of £45 million wages were only running at 54% and the club’s net worth was £55 million. In 2001 the club still had £16 million of cash on deposit, the debt had risen to £55 million as a result of the stadium expansion, on a turnover of £55 million wages were running at 49% and the club’s net worth was £23 million. In 2007 Ashley inherited something far worse than this. I’ve explained the June 2007 financial situation more than once and am not going to do so again. To say we had been in a worse situation in the past is complete and utter crap. Although your post was not directed at anything I said, just for the record I certainly don't think trying to get an accurate view of what happened in the past is in any way some sort of defence of the c*ck ups Ashley has perpetrated since he took over. It is just a matter of putting where the club was at the time of the takeover into full perspective. I don't have accounts from back then, so I can only go by what's on nufc-finances It has a net debt in 2001 of £66m http://www.football-finances.org.uk/newcastle/2007/assets15.gif In 2000 before income from the expansion started coming in it has turnover at £45.1m and wages at £28.9m, ie 64.1% http://www.football-finances.org.uk/newcastle/2007/payrol12.gif http://www.football-finances.org.uk/newcastle/2007/income6.gif If his figures are wrong I wish you or one of the other accountants had told him ages ago, because I don't think he's interested in us any more and is more concerned with Premier League clubs now it's mission accomplished with NUFC.

Yes, I agree. It is unbelievable how far down Ashley has managed to take the club in such a relatively short space of time, undoing all of the excellent work done by those he bought the club from. the undoing of the excellent work started arond 2004. So you keep saying, mate and I read it the first time months ago. It's mildly interesting that according to others the decline started in 2003, when despite heavily investing in the playing squad for the previous 'x' years and bringing in 3 players during 2003, this wasn't ambitious enough. It does seem somewhat stupid to be blaming the situation in 2010 on what happened half a decade ago but then you do have a big determination to not give any credit where it's due. They made mistakes, nobody has ever denied that, but the ambition they showed for the football club transcends anything we've seen so far from Ashley and his crowd of football morons. Ashley took over a PL club and knacked it through a series of poor decisions, it's a fairly straightforward situation to understand. ashley took over a club going backwards rapidly in every sense. it does seem stupid you trying to make out that i'm referring to only 2004 in particular and not the timeframe since then. yes ashleys decisions have contributed to us being relegated, however by the end of fred's time i wanted him rid as that was where i saw us heading anyway. then again if you don't think we were going backwards with little chance of turning it round due to the financial position we were in then it's not worth discussing further as it's not really being truthful to the situation as was. (oh i also said "AROUND" 2004, surely you aren't goiung to be so petty to want an exact date) edit...i have gave nothing but praise for the previous board until around the time of robsons leaving. This is what I don't understand. Why weren't you critical of them in 98 then? How was the slump between 97 & 2001 different to the one we were going through? The wages were 64% of turnover, the debt was £66m when the turnover was only £55m, we finished bottom half for 4 years. In many ways we were in a far worse position then than the one Ashley inherited, yet you and others are trying to paint it as almost inevitable that we would have been relegated and/or gone into administration. If you're going to be critical of how the club was run in the past, then at least be consistent and say that if you'd had your way we would not have extended the stadium or given Robson the money to buy hit and miss purchases such as Bassedas, Cort, Bellamy, Robert, Viana, Bramble, Woodgate, or going further back bought "trophy players" such as Shearer. We shouldn't have risked any of that, and should have played it safe like Villa, Everton, Spurs, etc did back then. Just admit that you'd rather have uncomplainingly settled for mid table mediocrity year in year out, selling off any good young players who came through to the big boys to balance the books, than watch us in FA cup finals, Champions League football, European games every other year, have top players at the club, because the bit of added financial risk that if it didn't work out we'd have to cut back and regroup for a few years just wasn't worth it. When Ashley took over and after his first Summer of transfers there was no talk of relegation, it was all about whether or not we'd be able to get into Europe. The squad he inherited had had a bad year with injuries, but were comfortably a mid table squad in a normal year, Ashley had the money to pay off the debts and the full extent of the club's finances were known to him. At that point Ashley had control of the club and had money available to rectify any financial problems (he chose to spend some of his money paying for players in one lump sum rather than spreading the payments). No matter what you think of what would have happened to the club otherwise, at that point the club was stable. That is the context and the point from which Ashley should be judged, not in comparison to some theoretical disastrous future differing wildly from what happened under similar circumstances in the past. Even if it were the case, whether or not we would have been relegated at some point under the old board because they didn't have access to any more external cash is IRRELEVANT to how Ashley's performance as owner should be judged. You are the one who is not really being truthful to the situation as was and the scale for which our relegation, currently far poorer squad, and bleak near future is completely down to Ashley.

Wittingham has missed half the season has he not? and Brunt? really? Dorrans is a much better player... Adam is superb, and probs a bit closer to the national opinion of Nolan than Nolan actually is...though Nolan is over-criticised on this forum like, his actual level of ability lies somewhere inbetween... Whittingham has played in 32 games so I assume not. Scored 16 goals ... 9 assists. Aye Dorrans is probably a better candidate than Brunt. Can't see how Nolan has won this, at all. Whittingham, Ambrose & Dorrans take pens, free kicks and corners. Whittingham & Dorrans have about half a dozen pens each, and it's no wonder their assists stats are slightly better if they're taking most of the set pieces. I'm impressed if people have watched half as many full games of West Brom, Cardiff, Crystal Palace, Blackpool, etc as they have of ours to make the judgement on their superiority for other reasons, but the fact that despite having less goals and assists he has a higher actim rating than them makes me think that he must be doing something in general play that they aren't (tackles, completed passes, etc). Well done Kevin. Fully deserved.

With our goal difference situation, Forest would have needed 4 wins more than us whether we'd won or drawn today. 11 points would have been massive though. I must be the only one who doesn't give a shit about winning the league. Seeing the likes of Smith, Butt and Nolan parading the trophy around the ground at the last home game would be a bit wierd seeing as they were the ones who took us down in the first place. They would be righting a wrong but it wouldn't be anything to get carried away with. Smith only started 4 games last season, and Nolan 10 in a new team, so not sure why you're singling those 2 out. Why not pick on the ones who played 20+ games like Coloccini, Enrique, Taylor, Gutierrez & Guthrie.

Ok just ignore what he said then Seems to be the way to do it when you know you're wrong. Or one of could just stop being arsey for a second and explain the subtlety in the post you're talking about which isn't at all obvious. Bob they mean that no single supporter has "put in" more than Ashley so he is teh bestest. Of course this ignores the fact that no supporter ever expects to see the money he puts into the club again whereas good old Mike only ever put money in in the hope of an even bigger return. Because the recession and his mistakes have lead to what would currently be a loss I think we're supposed to ignore the fact that money from supporters is the only thing from stopping those losses being even bigger and feel sorry for him and thankful to him.

Our next manager tbh. Ashley looking to regain popularity with supporters by getting rid of Hughton (after he can't get a worse squad than the one that got relegated into the top half of the table) and replacing him with an experienced Premiership manager and local lad.

I don't think Ashley will put the club up for sale this Summer like he has done before. Obviously it will still be for sale at a price, but I don't think he'll put up the shutters and put it openly on the market like previously. All the noise coming out of the club recently suggests he intends to hang on to it for a while now, and I can't see any reason for putting that message across now except to get some preparation work in lowering expectations for a Summer of low budget transfers while everyone's on a high from (hopefully) the promotion run in, and in an atmosphere where a number of clubs (with far, far less resources than us) are going under. If we get promoted, spend around £10m net on transfers but keep the wage bill around £40-50m, next season he should make a good £20-30m profit which he can use to pay off some of his loans. There's no incentive for him to sell at a cut down price if we get promoted this season.

It looks like it's escaped you and a few others but the thing about those who left and those who didn't is that the players who wanted to leave left, while those who didn't want to leave have stayed apart from Geremi who moved on in January. Somebody within the club made a decision before January to keep a squad of players that would get us out of this league and that looks like its going to pay off. They also decided to give the manager’s job to Hughton before January and again that's paid off and I've been one of his biggest critics but he seems to be growing into the job. Whoever made that decision looks to be right and I look to be wrong about him. You're kidding yourself if you think any of the players (except maybe some of the local lads) wouldn't have jumped at the chance to move to stay in the Prem or move to a foreign league if they didn't have to take a cut in wages. Do you really think Duff is one of only 4 players who had a bad attitude and wanted out ahead of the likes of Coloccini for example who fucked off from his first club behind their back to join Milan and whose agent was in the press prior to him joining us threatening all sorts if Deportivo didn't let him leave for the "contract of a lifetime"? Here's a quiz, which of the two's agents was this at the end of June: If the aim was either to reduce the wage bill while keeping a competitive team or just to get rid of those who wanted out they did a piss poor job of it, and I'm not sure how keeping players, staff and supporters completely in the dark until a matter of weeks before the season started fitted into either of these masterplans either. Towards the end of last season Llambias said they had a plan in place for if we got relegated, well apart from "fuck lets try and sell this piece of shit" we didn't see much of a plan last Summer at all. Far, far more likely there was plan A - we give up, forget about running the club, just sell it. Then when that failed on to plan B - quick, try and reduce the losses we'll have to carry this year by selling anyone we can to get the wages down and bring in some transfer cash. Hughton doing well wasn't a good decision it was pure luck on their part, and of course they're not going to replace him if he's currently doing well, is cheap, and plays along with the pretence he's in charge of the squad without rocking the boat.

The wage bill was of his own making. Correct me if I've missed someone, but I think there was only 1 high earning player who would have still been under contract this season (Duff) who was not signed or given a new contract under Ashley. We sold 2, maybe 3 high earners in the Summer (Duff, Martins & maybe Beye although I doubt he was on that much). Are you saying that out of Duff, Martins, Beye, Coloccini, Gutierrez, Smith, Nolan, Barton, Geremi & Butt we would not have been able to sell 3 of them while in the Premiership, but thanks to getting relegated (and losing £40m+ revenue) we were luckily able to get 3 of the best of them off the books (saving £7-8m at most if you ignore the cost of paying their replacements). Great bit of business that was. If hanging on to the rest of the high earners was due to the desire to have a very competitive team in the Championship rather than the fact no one was willing to pay their wages or give us a decent fee can you explain why for example we held on to the high earning, older, under performing Coloccini (who we had loads of offers for apparently ) yet sold the low wage, younger and better performing Bassong? I'm also interested in who exactly you think was making these footballing decisions? Unless he's the best liar I've seen, it certainly wasn't Hughton who repeatedly said he didn't have a clue what was going on in the Summer. Until January, nothing that has happened this season has been by the good judgement of Ashley, it has just worked out like that fortunately for both us and him. Will the new "plan" (whatever that may be) be better than the plan when he bought the club, or the revised plan when he brought in Keegan and a DoF, or the make it up as you go along plan trying to sell the club with Kinnear, or the "back on track" plan of a year ago when the club was off the market and he was definitely not selling, or the pre relegation get in a hero and sack the DoF plan, or the post relegation sell a club in limbo plan of the Summer? As we don't know what it really is who could possibly say, but do you really have any confidence he'd stick to it even if it was?

There are just a few people other than Ashley putting something into the club either directly or indirectly, and their combined contribution far exceeds Ashley's. Llambias for one would do well to remember this. So to paraphrase the above post - no one should complain about anything Ashley does because he bought the club and no one else is willing to pay the price he has put on it to buy it off him, so "whingeing" is pointless? Your choice, but not for me. The mere fact that the chanting is annoying Llambias and Ashley show that it is not in fact totally pointless. For now it may not have the desired effect of getting him out of the club, but at least it encourages articles such as this to counter the "Mike saved the club" spiel that's once again being pushed out to anyone who'll listen. BTW, I hope no one agreeing with BT's post was "pointlessly whingeing" about the old board (or even encouraging people to protest and boycott matches) when Hall was looking to sell but no one until Ashley was willing to pay the stock market valuation for the club. That would be a bit hypocritical wouldn't it. Not sure what your point is about the stock market value tbh. Stock markets react to known situations and known negotiations. The stock market value of the club was about half what Ashley paid for it until the previous board starting seriously touting it around. Remember Polygon and Belgravia? Belgravia even completed due diligence, and I can assure you from my own experience you do not go through that unless you are a willing seller. And even after that it got nowhere near £130 million until the word on Hall's discussions with Ashley got out. Just one further point, Shepherd had plenty of opportunity to buy it if he had wanted to. He obviously had his reasons for chosing not to. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6904072.stm I'm fully aware Hall wanted to sell and had done so for a number of years before Ashley came along, I've said so on numerous occasions. It was well known he wanted to sell long before anyone was predicting imminent financial meltdown (in fact in spite of freely available sets of accounts on the club website I don't seem to remember any of those predictions until after Ashley tbh). He managed to do so and attract potential buyers without appointing short term interim managers or putting the whole club in limbo over the Summer though. I mentioned the stock market value as that is the price Ashley had to pay to buy the club at the time. Whether the club was worth that figure was down to the potential buyer to decide, but it wasn't some arbitrary figure put on the club by the Halls, Shepherds and the other shareholders. The club was for sale, and it was for sale at the market value. If you are going to take the point of view that complaining about the running of the club is "pointless whingeing" if the club is up for sale, then you have to surely agree that it was pointless whingeing back then too. Really not sure what you're on about with the price rise once the "word on Hall's discussions with Ashley got out". Unless I missed it there was no hint of it until it was deal done with Hall. Ashley bought the shares off Hall for £1 per share, and he bought the rest for £1.01 per share. Hardly a rocketing increase. There's not much detail on the share price graph in the article you linked to, but it looks like a steep but gradual increase in shareprice throughout 2007 at a time when a large increase in TV revenue had been announced and Premiership football club ownership was becoming fashionable amongst those looking to make a name or a profit. I would imagine the graph would look similar for any other club on the stock market at that time. Ashley may have paid a few pennies per share extra, but saying it was "nowhere near £130 million" is simply not true. I believe Shepherd would have loved to have bought the club, the minor problem of him not having enough money to be able to afford it MAY have been one of his reasons for him "chosing" not to. Just guessing there though.

There are just a few people other than Ashley putting something into the club either directly or indirectly, and their combined contribution far exceeds Ashley's. Llambias for one would do well to remember this. So to paraphrase the above post - no one should complain about anything Ashley does because he bought the club and no one else is willing to pay the price he has put on it to buy it off him, so "whingeing" is pointless? Your choice, but not for me. The mere fact that the chanting is annoying Llambias and Ashley show that it is not in fact totally pointless. For now it may not have the desired effect of getting him out of the club, but at least it encourages articles such as this to counter the "Mike saved the club" spiel that's once again being pushed out to anyone who'll listen. BTW, I hope no one agreeing with BT's post was "pointlessly whingeing" about the old board (or even encouraging people to protest and boycott matches) when Hall was looking to sell but no one until Ashley was willing to pay the stock market valuation for the club. That would be a bit hypocritical wouldn't it.

That's just a (bad) transcript of the BBC Newcastle interview isn't it? Maybe some of the directors should take a pay cut then Derek, especially if they're running the club so inefficiently that it needs £50m+ to cover costs other than wages.

Do you also fancy the £104m wage bill that comes with having the large number of promising youngsters on your books it takes to be able to find enough who can make the step up to the first team?

The season before Ashley bought the club we finished 13th with 43 points, with an expensively assembled squad - but of course the football was fantastic and the previous board appointed Allardyce to take it to an even higher level........ If Ashley allows us to put together a squad which can sustain having over 10 first team players out for more than half a season and still stay well clear of relegation, I'll give him credit for being able to match one of the low points in the previous board's tenure. He'll have spent a hell of a lot more than them to get there like.

The points I'm trying to make here are not necessarily to defend Shepherd (although I do think he is misjudged and my posts will inevitably come out that way) but to try and counter what seems to be a growing feeling that administration and relegation were inevitable without Ashley, and so whatever mistakes he has made we're still better off with him. That's most certainly not the case IMO, and for all the PR, personnel and footballing mistakes he has made, his financial handling of the club has been equally as bad. Posts above have said things like "we're still suffering from the debt" and "clearing up Shepherd's mess is going to be long and painful". I really don't see how the club spends money now can in any way be attributed to how the club was run in the past - I don't think there is a single senior player on the books who's contract was not approved while Ashley was the major shareholder if not complete owner. The debts are paid up, he's had 2 and a half years to change any poorly run parts of the business, and he's made over a hundred people redundant. What is left to clear up? Surely we can NOW fully attribute the running of the club and how it performs off the field to Ashley and the people he has appointed? Will people be congratulating Shepherd & Hall for promotion this year? Should I belatedly congratulate McKeag for promotion and then getting us to 3rd the following year? I'd much rather concentrate on how Ashley is running the club as that is far more relevant to where we are now and where we will be in the future. Personally I'm very worried about how Ashley is running the club financially yet people (and Llambias) are coming out with statements like the club has never been financially healthier. I don't want the club to be dependant on an owner putting in money to subsidise the losses he has caused. I don't see that as running the club well, but more than that I don't then want him in the future trying to pay himself back at the expense of the team which I am worried is what he will seek to do when we're promoted. Llambias said this week "you need to be up around the £100m mark as revenue to be able to afford the kind of wage bill we have". It may just have been loose wording, but if he actually means the wage bill we NOW have (£40-50m?) then that would be £50m+ to cover other costs, and the club would actually make a very healthy profit which could be used to reduce the value of the loan to Ashley. His comment yesterday "With that promotion we'll be able to grow and two years down the line we'll have a much better pot for buying players." suggests to me we wont be significantly changing the squad from what we have now in the Summer. Additionally the club is losing it's off the field revenue generating ability year on year, so even without Ashley reducing his debt the club's financial advantage over other teams in the league above has been greatly reduced.

To be fair to UV he, like many others of us, appears to be more concerned about the actual nosedive into the CCC rather than a still notional threat of financial oblivion. And it is, and must always remain, notional; who knows what the previous owners might have done to protect their investment? On the basis it was a public company rather than them being "the owners" their options were fairly limited. This isn't difficult; if you own a lot of shares in a plc and the plc goes under you lose a lot of money. The Halls and Shepherd owned a lot of shares and therefore had a substantial interest in maintaining the club's viability. Or in flogging it off quick so someone else had to pay their bills. You've changed your tune since you thought Shepherd was hanging on to the club for dear life by not selling it to a hedge fund and allowing the club to flourish via a leveraged buyout. Probably about the same time you changed your tune about the merits of protesting against the owners. Hall wanted to sell. Shepherd wanted to own it all. This was well known and part of the reason the deal between Hall and Ashley was done behind Shepherd's back as Shepherd had tried to block the takeovers in the past - he convinced people like Ozzie he had anyway. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-471478/Shepherd-Betrayed-friends.html You could argue that he was lying, but to what purpose when the vast majority of supporters hated him and wanted him out and saw Ashley as our saviour? By saying he wanted to keep the club and fight Ashley's takeover he only made himself even more unpopular (if possible). It all seems pretty far fetched that he was just putting on an act of wanting to takeover himself while buying up more shares in a company which was about to go bankrupt 2 months before Ashley showed up out of the blue so save us, and then carried on the act afterwards at a time when Ashley could do no wrong in the eyes of most supporters.

I suppose though its important in rationalising whether indivudally you are willing to accept the mistakes whihc have been made were made in an effort to do something right or are all part of a plan to screw us over. It is fairly obvious that I feel that he has made decisions he felt were right at the time and has started to make some better decisions since relegation, and hence if he stays or goes I'm not particularly arsed - I'm more interested in what a new owner would bring to the table than desperate to see the back of Ashley (and I would be happy with a strategy of bringing in young players with hunger rather than plodders past their best). Others want him out come what may, and I do actually understand their pov, just don't agree with it! I certainly don't believe it was a "plan to screw us over", but I think it's just as simplistically naive to believe he wanted to buy and run a club because he's such a big footy fan and he wants to altruistically give the club £20m a year. I lean toward believing he thought he could make a quick buck by buying what he thought was a bargain (and in the climate he bought it in it may have been), get supporters onside by claiming to be a saviour and spending money on buying up debt, then in the short to medium term sell it on to a rich arab or a poor yank with access to a gullible bank. I think he wanted to make the books look like they were improving year on year since he came in and turned things around, but I don't think he cared too much about the team (hence why the money he put in went into paying for players up front instead of simply giving us a bigger transfer budget).

I would love to see your face when you go to sell that £15,000 car you bought a few years ago and expect to get that back for it. Players are not cars. Some of them appreciate, they don't just depreciate which is all that is accounted for in accounts. Not at Newcastle they dont I realise you're being glib, but... Milner - accounting value <£1m, actual value £12m£9/10m N'Zogbia - accounting value <£100k, actual value £6m Given - accounting value £0, actual value £5m Bassong - accounting value £2m, actual value £8m? Taylor - accounting value £0, actual value £?

The parachute payment isn't handed out in one lump sum and we'll get nothing more than 1 payment if we are promoted this season so we'll get a third of the total as I'm sure it's paid over 3 years. Unreliable I know, but I was taking it from the horses mouth Media revenue was actually £41.1m in the 07-08 accounts I believe, so that's where I came up with the £26m drop from. Using Llambias' figures it's a £25m drop. We've been on the TV more than our fair share too, so I assume we'll get a bit more than the £2.4m Llambias is quoting there making the commercial and matchday revenue drops even larger.

I would love to see your face when you go to sell that £15,000 car you bought a few years ago and expect to get that back for it. Players are not cars. Some of them appreciate, they don't just depreciate which is all that is accounted for in accounts.

I stand corrected on that, I used the higher £10m figure as that correlated more to the increase in the net debt as calculated on nufc-finances. The point remains that from the point of view of a lay person it is somewhat misleading to say we lost £33m in that year when we actually overspent in cash terms by £7.5m. Does the difference between the £90 million of trading losses (I assume you mean since the club was turned into a plc) and the £68 million of debt correspond to the net payments due on player transfers? Does the upfront payment of the sponsorship money come into it? Am I right in thinking the £22m funding shortfall in the accounts would have been addressed by the sales of Milner, Given and N'Zogbia who would have only shown up as a couple of million worth of assets on the accounts in 06-07? It's all about the timing as you say, but the 06-07 accounts took the full hit for Luque (£7.5m) even though he was actually sold in the following accounting period. Without that adjustment there'd have been £5m less of a loss in 06-07 and £5m more in 07-08 levelling it out in spite of the £18m increased TV money.