UV

I don't get that - we didn't buy anyone? If anything, our costs should have gone down? It includes a years worth of wages for Debuchy, MYM, Gouffran, Haidara & Sissoko rather than 5-6 months in the previous accounts, along with Remy for a year & Luuk de Jong for 5 months. However, considering the wages went DOWN in the previous year even with the 5-6 months of wages from the Jan 13 panic signings, it doesn't seem to add up at all just from the player wages - nearly a £300k per week increase.

Not in these accounts.

Read into this what you will from the related party transactions section. If Sports Direct are selling our merchandise, should we not be receiving money from them in related party transactions? Charnley's signature BTW http://i.imgur.com/NijZjZe.png?1

Hiring and firing the world's leading Director of Football comes at a cost.

Accounts available now. First scan key numbers: Net debt: £94.9m (2013: £133.5m). £34.1m in the bank Staff costs: £78.3m (2013: £61.7m) "Other operating charges" £23.4m (2013: £17.6m)

Got to be a bit careful using the amount of deferred income at a point in the year to equate to season ticket income.

From the MASH accounts: http://i.imgur.com/5OhikTl.png As far as I can tell from a quick scan, all the figures in the rest of the accounts are mixed in with his other businesses, so hard to pick anything specific to the club out. One thing is though that there was no impairment on players registrations which is where I expected the missing profit to at least partly have gone. Note these accounts are made up to 30/4/14, so not quite in sync with the club's.

Why would they release any information about the profit at all if they were trying to hide it or delay it? There will obviously be a backlog with it being the end of the tax year and Easter as well. I typically download the accounts as soon as I find out they're available, the 2012 accounts have a CH datestamp of 28/3/13 but I only downloaded them on 10/4/13 & the Swiss Ramble bloke only reported on them then too, so I guess that's around when they were publicly available - http://www.newcastle-online.org/nufcforum/index.php/topic,93808.msg4338282.html#msg4338282 I think you can put the tinfoil hat away for now.

Says who? Of course they will have submitted them, just takes time for companies house to process, scan and upload them. From the shitty quality of previous accounts (you can't even see the decimal points) it looks to me like they usually fax them to CH.

On the 31st Jan they were 2nd, 16pts from 1st and 6pts from 5th (with 3 games in hand) (wouldn't get in playoffs) http://www.statto.com/football/stats/scotland/championship/2014-2015/table/2015-01-31 Today they are 3rd, 26pts from 1st and 9pts from 5th (1 game in hand) http://www.statto.com/football/stats/scotland/championship/2014-2015/table/2015-03-28 What a turnaround!

Yes thats correct, and cash in the bank doesn't lie - if you get my drift. Yeah, so income-minus-costs still makes profit, even if you stash the cash in the bank? So we would need other ways to manage the profit down. Yes, for example as has been mentioned you can mess around with asset valuations to alter your reported profit. You could decide that certain players aren't worth the value they are recorded at in the balance sheet, and stick through an extra charge for amortisation - and that will reduce your profit. You would have to come up with a plausible reason. Albert Luque is a player who I remember being given this particular treatment, although in his case there was concrete evidence that he was overvalued as (apart from being fairly crap) he was sold for a fraction of his carrying value after the balance sheet date. He was actually written off the books completely in the 06-07 accounts (a loss of £7.2m) making them look worse, and then sold for £2m in 07-08. I can imagine Ben Arfa, MYM & Santon were written off, but that's less than £10m all together, and there's not really much left to play with after that in the squad book value. There's not just the turnover increase to hide, the profit from player trading in 2013 was £10.5m, that will be bettered in these accounts with the Cabaye sale. I can only think they have revalued the fixed assets (stadium, training ground, etc) as well. Either that or, you know, hiring & firing the top Director of Football in the world don't come cheap.

Operating profit/loss is intrinsic to what the club can afford to do. If the club is hemorrhaging £30m a year before player trading, then players have to be sold to plug that leak. If the club is just about breaking even then players have to be sold before we can buy. If the club is earning £30m, then we can spend that on players before we sell anyone. That's not true like, not at all. Amortisation which hits that profit isn't cash hemorrhaging out of the club (especially as these days the transfer fee is usually paid up front). You don't have to desperately sell players to cover the amortisation loses to stop the debt growing. If the club is breaking even after amortisation, then it will almost certainly have a decent positive cashflow (ie money which could be used to pay off debt, buy players without selling, or sit in the bank). This operating profit/loss before player trading is a false position to use when you're talking about how much the club has to spend. But then you're getting into complex accounting practices most people aren't interested in, and I struggle with myself. But I can follow that through to some degree.... In 13/14 we sold Cabaye for £19m and bought no-one, most would call that a £19m profit, but it wasn't, amortisation came into play as in my previous pic and the player trading for the year actually showed a profit on £16.9m. A couple of million less than people would assume. In 14/15 keeping it simple we spent £37.4m but recouped £18.3m, which means we spent £19.1m. However accounting for amortisation, the actual accounting profits on those sold were... Debuchy +£6.36 Mbiwa +£1.24 Santon +£1.74 Ben Arfa -£0.73 Giving a total of just £8.62m recouped, ten million less than the laymans view. That means our net spend in 14/15 was more like £29m. £10m more than most assume. So why do you insist on using profit before player trading as your metric? Why not just use cashflow? It's far simpler, and much closer to what us non-accountants understand as profit/loss.

Operating profit/loss is intrinsic to what the club can afford to do. If the club is hemorrhaging £30m a year before player trading, then players have to be sold to plug that leak. If the club is just about breaking even then players have to be sold before we can buy. If the club is earning £30m, then we can spend that on players before we sell anyone. That's not true like, not at all. Amortisation which hits that profit isn't cash hemorrhaging out of the club (especially as these days the transfer fee is usually paid up front). You don't have to desperately sell players to cover the amortisation loses to stop the debt growing. If the club is breaking even after amortisation, then it will almost certainly have a decent positive cashflow (ie money which could be used to pay off debt, buy players without selling, or sit in the bank). This operating profit/loss before player trading is a false position to use when you're talking about how much the club has to spend.

That's only because you were sitting back protecting the lead - if you had gone at us the score could have been really embarrassing. Let's take a moment to reflect on the side that was representing Newcastle United at the end of the game yesterday: Raylor - Janmaat - Williamson - Colback Sissoko - Jonas - Gouffran - Cabella Perez How shit is that man, this really is a new low. 19th richest club in the world, record profits, great recruitment policy. Good times.

Matthew 7:15-16 Beware of false profits, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruitless transfer windows.

YAY!!! let's charge Spurs prices Or, you know, we could make more because we have 16000 more seats.

Honestly not sure what that graph's meant to show except a net zero spend over 8 seasons, and that we made a big transfer profit selling Cabaye in 2014 knowing we were already making a massive profit in that season. The actual profit will be £50m+

You can get all you need to know from the first and last set of figures in the article. 2001 - 22 games, income £24.9 2014 - 22 games, income £25.9 Both seasons we had 3 home cup games and finished slap bang in the middle of the table. Matchday revenue has gone up by only £1m over 13 years, 4% overall, around 0.3% per year. In that time (in less time than that in fact) Spurs have more than doubled their matchday income from a starting point significantly below ours to one nearly £20m ahead of us today.

No. Did we see opportunities considered in Summer? Did we see opportunities considered in January? The accounts when they come out relate to the state of the club on 30/6/14. They will not be a shocking revelation to the people running the club when the auditors sign them off.

Well exactly. How does this: http://www.themag.co.uk/assets/Newcastle-United-Ticket-Prices-Under-Mike-Ashley-NUFC.png translate to: Only 2 seasons out of 6 (one post-relegation) where it hasn't gone down. Edit: As an aside, I'm dubious about the average attendance figure for 2013 considering there were 7 Europa league games which were typically getting 30k crowds. The average. Shepherd £1.18m, Ashley £1.20m You're comparing averages over a period where we were regularly in Europe & tried in cups (an average of 7.5 extra home games per season) to a period where we avoid Europe and cups (an average of 2.5 extra home games per season). These cup games are often relatively poorly attended and have lower ticket prices, thus lowering the average income per game. You're basically praising Ashley for the club's cupaphobia.

Well exactly. How does this: http://www.themag.co.uk/assets/Newcastle-United-Ticket-Prices-Under-Mike-Ashley-NUFC.png translate to: Only 2 seasons out of 6 (one post-relegation) where it hasn't gone down. Edit: As an aside, I'm dubious about the average attendance figure for 2013 considering there were 7 Europa league games which were typically getting 30k crowds.

The club couldn't do a better job of spinning it than this. Trajectory of the club Matchday revenue went up in 10-11 because we were promoted. Well done Mike and Derek. However it was still lower than at any time since the stadium was expanded in 2000. It went down in 11-12 even though we finished in 5th It went up in 12-13 This was mostly because we played 7 home Europa League ties, but we don't like Europe, so we'll try and avoid doing that again. The Deloitte report has 13-14 at £25.9m which is down from £27.8m. So basically an increase of £1.6m in 4 years since we were promoted with start & end pretty similar seasons. What's that about 1.5% a year? Would be surprised if that's anything above average for the whole league and below the average for teams in the top half of the league. Certainly nothing to brag about, and your last sentence can't be true as its down £6.5m from 07-08 (no Europe, 2 home cup games).

Pretty sure that's wrong. The way you describe it a £12m player would reduce profits by £24m over the full term of his initial contract.

We haven't reported a profit before player trading yet. Operating profit for the last 7 years has been... -29.0m -24.7m -37.7m -33.5m -3.9m -5.1m -0.6m I'd expect us to spend in Summer. That's a very misleading set of numbers IYAM. Those numbers are £(turnover - op ex - player amortisation), but ignoring transfers. You're including the downside of player trading (amortisation) but not the upside (sale profit/loss). The important thing to point out if you use that as a base is that when you include transfers it's pretty much all profit. Correct me if I'm wrong, but players brought in for however much don't affect the profit at all in that year except for any amortisation which you have included (they are assets at the value of the transfer fee). However players sold will add £(sale price - book value) to the final profit margin. For example Cabaye - Bought for £4.3m on a 5 year contract. Sold half way through contract so book value=£2.15m. Sale price=£19m. Profit=£16.8m to be added onto whatever that value is for 13-14 When transfers are included, the final profit/loss numbers are: 07-08: -£20.3m 08-09: -£15.2m 09-10: -£17.1m 10-11: £32.6m 11-12: £1.4m 12-13: £9.9m In that context it seems a very strange conclusion to draw that the amount we have available to spend on player purchases is related to profit before trading. Would you not be better just looking at the cashflow?

It's a good question. But...it could be that not even Fat Mike fail to realise that appointing Carver would mean relegation. I also hope Graham Carr has a major say in all this. Quick reminder that this is the same Mike Ashley who less than 2 years ago, without consulting Carr or the manager, appointed Joe Kinnear as Director of Football to steady the ship after we finished 16th with our second lowest PL points total ever.