UV

Maybe people are scared that if Ashley wins, he might suddenly get a sudden surge of confidence and decide he is loved again and do a u-turn and decide not to sell. Thats an absolutely horrific thought so to avoid him even getting close to that kind of mentality, it would be important for KK to win any case. nobody is thinking that. certain people on here just want keegan to win so they can score a point. its really that simple. I am not sure. I think people just have 100% confidence that KK will be proven to be the injured party. I don't, I think he'll lose. Even though I think he was morally in the right to leave according to the situation as I understand it (and face it, we're not going to get any more clarity on events than we already have), I think like quayside said he may well lose because of the contract he signed which will be close to the "it is a fact" statement.

If players are sold in January, they will be sold regardless of the result of this case. If Keegan wins and takes any money it will of course be used as an excuse.

To be fair, with it's current liabilities it's only worth about £10m (Sunderland went for around £16m with £35-£40m debt).

how? if keegan wins, the club (bigger than keegan remember) doesnt benefit at all. we get X million further in the red. Like we would ever see that 10 million anyway, and if KK does win the truth is OUT once and for all. Yet another NAIL in Ashleys coffin. If Ashley wins and KK is proven to be a c*** (which i dont think he will) It finally gets rid of the monkey off the cubs back with the fans and the club doesnt lose 10 mil or whatever. Not that the club would ever see that money. See our last few transfer windows for proof. it's not so m uch that we'd ever see it,more so that any buyer would possibly have to find another 10mill to takeover the club as ashley would be unlikely to pay keegan himself. I presonally think and this is just me, if fat git sold the club during this court case and then left quickly. I think KK would trike a deal with the new owners, KKs gripe is with Ashley, Llambias, wise and his other bitches. It just so happens these bastards were running the club at the time. I personally think Keegan's claim is only a bargaining chip to try and get the club to drop it's claim against him.

Sorry, I edited in a condition.

how? if keegan wins, the club (bigger than keegan remember) doesnt benefit at all. we get X million further in the red. Like we would ever see that 10 million anyway, and if KK does win the truth is OUT once and for all. Yet another NAIL in Ashleys coffin. If Ashley wins and KK is proven to be a c*** (which i dont think he will) It finally gets rid of the monkey off the cubs back with the fans and the club doesnt lose 10 mil or whatever. Not that the club would ever see that money. See our last few transfer windows for proof. it's not so m uch that we'd ever see it,more so that any buyer would possibly have to find another 10mill to takeover the club as ashley would be unlikely to pay keegan himself. No, Ashley would have to accept £10m less if he really wants to sell.

how? if keegan wins, the club (bigger than keegan remember) doesnt benefit at all. we get X million further in the red. Like we would ever see that 10 million anyway, and if KK does win the truth is OUT once and for all. Yet another NAIL in Ashleys coffin. If Ashley wins and KK is proven to be a c*** (which i dont think he will) It finally gets rid of the monkey off the cubs back with the fans and the club doesnt lose 10 mil or whatever. Not that the club would ever see that money. See our last few transfer windows for proof. it's not so m uch that we'd ever see it,more so that any buyer would possibly have to find another 10mill to takeover the club as ashley would be unlikely to pay keegan himself. No, Ashley would have to accept £10m less.

even if it turns out he was in the wrong ? If he is worng he wont get a penny. well dah! i was replying to ahmed hope that he gets every penny he's claimed for without actually knowing what went on. we should have a sweep as to what people think will be the result. i'm going for keegan to be awarded a sum but nowhere near the ammount he's claiming. And us never to find out the whole truth. Seems the most likely outcome. aye. my hopes were dashed as soon as i found out it was going to an arbitration panel and not a court of law. So I assume you'll never be able to have an opinion on the subject. End of thread for you I guess. Is he heck a leech The guy never claimed a single penny from his previous jobs - instead he chose to walk away, a leech would have hung on until he was sacked (especially in the case of the England job) The problem is that Keegan has integrity and honesty in abundance - something that is severely lacking in football today i'd rather he stayed until he was sacked rather than just quitting for no reason. he only took the job to pay his debts. his behaviour and this lawsuit proves it. (if you can turn speculation into fact then so can i) He would never have been sacked. He was appointed to be a figurehead, putting a fan friendly face on Ashley's non-investment and taking the blame for poor results. Ashley would of course magnanimously let the fans hero carry on as "manager" despite his poor results with the brilliant squad of players assembled by Dennis. He could of course have carried on futilely in the job, collecting his paycheck rather than risk being sued for £2m by the club as he is now (he was only in it for the money you know). If Keegan wins £8m or whatever, does anyone seriously think that £8m would have otherwise been spent by Ashley on the club? If Keegan loses and the club gets £2m off him does anyone seriously think that £2m will go into the transfer kitty Win or lose, under Ashley it will make fuck all difference to the money we spend on the squad. All it will change is the price he will get when/if he ever sells up.

I just hate it when the fabled 12 point lead is mentioned, its a falacy IMO and the media and everyone else have used it as a stick to beat us with for years. There was nothing we could do to stop Manure winning their delayed game that day or their game in hand. All we could do is keep the actual 6 point lead we had and of course we didn't which does fall on Keegans shoulders. Of course getting that lead in the first place also falls on his shoulders. I agree, I hate that 12 point lead myth. As an added bonus macca also brings up the we lost because of the crap defence myth in the same post. Man Utd 38 15 4 0 36 9 10 3 6 37 26 82 +38 Newcastle 38 17 1 1 38 9 7 5 7 28 28 78 +29 2 goals in it defensively, 7 goals in it offensively. Man U's last 15 games were won 13, drew 1, lost 1. They dropped 5 points out of 45. It wasn't so much us bottling it as Man U going on a brilliant run.

Because a load of Ashley supporters desperately need to try and deflect at least some of the blame for the club's current state away from their beloved leader? If it wasn't for dastardly Keegan, the way Ashley was running the club would have worked & we'd now only be a couple of years from challenging for everything don't ya know. who are these ashley supporters ? most agreed when he came in we couldn't keep going as we were financially, haven't got a clue what happened with keegan and think ashley got it totally wrong with kinnear etc. or is it a case that some think if you have any criticism of keegan or the previous board then you must therefore think that ashley has done everything right ? Sorry, I was forgetting that nowadays there never were any Ashley supporters who thought he was doing a great job. The praise for the system, the transfer policy, the lack of communication, etc were all a figment of my imagination. I think this is one of my favourite non-Ashley supporting posts: Mike Ashley - Newcastle's best ever chairman/owner.

Because a load of Ashley supporters desperately need to try and deflect at least some of the blame for the club's current state away from their beloved leader? If it wasn't for dastardly Keegan, the way Ashley was running the club would have worked & we'd now only be a couple of years from challenging for everything don't ya know.

Strange that Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger both agreed with him though isn't it? Spot on. NONE of the leading managers would have stood for what was foisted upon Keegan. Never mind the left-back issue, look at where Xisco is now (will those previously in denial now finally admit the lad is shite beyond measure?). Imagine what Benitez's reaction would have been.... Not walk, give the player a crack, then take charge of the situation and sell him back to the players old club in the next window? Seems to be how Benitez has handled it in the past. As for Wengar and Furguson backing Keegan, frankly, other than it suiting their own agendas anyway, they have earned the right to walk if they don't get it all their own way (besides the fact that Wenger especially has had players sold he would have prefered to keep and just got on with it). Keegan on the back of his time at city was arguably in a much weaker position to throw his toys out the pram over not getting it all his own way regarding transfers.

Stoke supporting mate of mine says he's pretty decent. To paraphrase - "Doesn't get booked not because he doesn't tackle, but because he usually gets the ball. Good at getting his head to crosses in the box at both ends. Always seems to have time on the ball." He doesn't really understand why he's not considered good enough.

Words fail me.

Wake up grandad, this is the new NUFC. We're leading the way in the next generation of football clubs. We don't need any of those old fashioned ideas of having scouts, coaches, a manager, a chairman who knows anything about football, or a permanent playing staff. That's so passée. All you need is an MD and an agency to sell the players you have and hire loanee players for you and you're sorted. The club's never been in better shape.

He's got absolutely no experience as a commentator and showed no aptitude to be one, so if it was up to Mike Ashley he'd probably have got the job.

Keegan couldn't possibly know Ashley would use the excuse to put the club openly on the market and appoint the only manager he could find that would work on a rolling monthly contract, but saying this with the hindsight of this Summer, how on earth can you say Keegan leaving during the last transfer window would have made the situation better. If he had left during the Summer, I 100% guarantee he would have been criticised for "not giving the system a chance" and "ruining any chance of getting players in". "The system" was the bees knees last Summer remember. If he had left later in the season, I 100% guarantee he would have been criticised for "leaving in the middle of the season when it was too late to get new players in January/turn things around". If he had left at the end of the season, I 100% guarantee he would have been criticised for "if he wasn't happy with the players he got why didn't he leave last year". He left after giving them a chance to prove their system could work and at a time when it wouldn't interfere with their transfer dealings, but with a full season to get a new coach in who would work within the system's restrictions. If anything he left at the least damaging time. if he had left 2 or 3 weeks prior to the window shutting and was honest enough to say he couldn't work under those conditions but was leaving in time to give the club a chance to get players they wanted would seem fair enough. also the sysytem as we knew it last summer heavily involved keegan beacuse he told us so. Yes, I'm sure leaving a week or couple of days before the season started would have attracted no criticism whatsoever. How exactly would that have made the slightest bit of difference though, apart from meaning we were relegated a bit earlier due to not picking up those early points? Milner would still have been sold, but maybe Xisco would not have come in? I refer you back to option 1 of how he (and any supporters who dared to raise an eyebrow at his leaving) would have been blamed for ruining the transfer of all the great signings like Gomis, Arda, Derdiyok, Sahin, Gomez, Pandev, Garay, Veloso, Digard, Chamakh, Skjelbred and many more the system had lined up to come in, because they wouldn't join a club up for sale with no manager. What do you expect him to say publicly if he's trying to make it work? I'm sure he was involved in some way, but not to the extent he should have been. He's not very good at hiding his feelings though and there were numerous occasions when it was obvious he didn't have clue what was going on with transfers and was not happy. (Even Louise Taylor knew, and people still haven't forgiven her for being the messenger).

for a start they gave away their shirt sponsorship for nothing to a childrens foundation for 2yrs, thats not bad PR Yes that kind of thing, but more generally it's kind of accepted by Villa fans and neutrals that he's a great chairman, and comments like "he want's O'Neill to spend loads of money but he wont" are "common knowledge" . It may be true, but for now, for me, it's just great PR. Nothing wrong with that btw, just not something I'd personally give much credence to when labelling someone a perfect owner. Villa have achieved relatively little so far for the amount of money invested, and he's not been really tested with any hard decisions yet.

Keegan couldn't possibly know Ashley would use the excuse to put the club openly on the market and appoint the only manager he could find that would work on a rolling monthly contract, but saying this with the hindsight of this Summer, how on earth can you say Keegan leaving during the last transfer window would have made the situation better. If he had left during the Summer, I 100% guarantee he would have been criticised for "not giving the system a chance" and "ruining any chance of getting players in". "The system" was the bees knees last Summer remember. If he had left later in the season, I 100% guarantee he would have been criticised for "leaving in the middle of the season when it was too late to get new players in January/turn things around". If he had left at the end of the season, I 100% guarantee he would have been criticised for "if he wasn't happy with the players he got why didn't he leave last year". He left after giving them a chance to prove their system could work and at a time when it wouldn't interfere with their transfer dealings, but with a full season to get a new coach in who would work within the system's restrictions. If anything he left at the least damaging time.

Too early to say. Hasn't hit a rough spot yet and Villa have done reasonably well for a couple of seasons (not as well as we did with crap owners though), but even now they're getting lower crowds than we are with all that's going on at our club, and the supporters who do turn up boo their players after conceding a couple of goals. Their debt (to him) is larger than ours was and it has all been spent on "trophy" players, not on stadium expansions or new training grounds/academy facilities for example. Exactly the sort of short termism our last lot were accused of but on a bigger (more expensive) scale. Their wage bill will have shot up in the last couple of years, but their turnover is still a lot less than ours was in the premiership. I doubt he'll be funding them as significantly in the next couple of years unless they manage to get in the CL. Let's see how he copes when the supporters get restless because they have a couple of poor seasons, they don't spend £10m+ every Summer, he has to get a new manager in, or even just because they are only getting into the UEFA cup every other year. He's certainly pretty good at PR though, and that's what counts most for some.

Not a single shred of evidence The only thing Keegan can be "blamed" for is taking on the job to save us from relegation under those conditions in the first place whilst allowing them to put a clause in his contract where he would have to pay the club millions of pounds should he leave, and believing in the same vacuous promises of "challenging for everything" that most on here did.

Schoolboy error. It was built up to that point by the last lot of idiots squandering money on trophy players and running the club as disastrously as they did to build up the fanbase and get them spending their cash on tickets, merchandise, TV packages, etc. Frightening that some (most?) still don't appreciate this fundamental point and take it for granted NUFC is an automatic money generating machine.

There's nothing to stop NUFC voluntarily prepaying the loan out of disposable cashflow, even if it the whole amount fell due after more than one year. However I'd be very surprised if Barclays did not put in clauses to ensure incoming cash was trapped and used to pay down their facility first and if all they have is an overdraft then I'd cancel it tomorrow and put them into a structured loan that would ensure no cash can be taken out of the business. If a penny has gone out of NUFC up to SJHL while the Barclays loan is in place then someone at the bank has been extremely generous. Why? As long as we're paying the interest, and as long as the overdraft is guaranteed by Ashley, the bigger the overdraft (up to the limit of the facility) the better as far as they are concerned. It's how they make money.

This is the aspect that I cannot get my head around. I don't think we'd have been in this division had Keegan stayed even under those circumstances, Ashley would have sold up much easier, and we'd be better off. I blame Arthur Cox for signing Keegan in 82. It's all his fault.

Where did you get this from? There's no way the club's worth anything like £200m+. Writing off that loan has to be part of any realistic deal surely. The key word there is realistic. I don't any more than anyone else on here but I could well believe that Ashley's insistence on recovering his loan is a key reason for there being no takers so far. I've seen nothing from any reliable source that indicates the loan is being written off. When you buy a business you inherit its assets and liabilities and the loan is simply a liability of the company. It is indeed, I put it in specifically. If Ashley is attempting to the sell the club for £100m plus £110m debt to Ashley plus any overdraft, then any and all bids have almost certainly been pure fabrications. If he is trying to sell the club for that, then he isn't seriously trying to sell it at all. (I don't believe this is the case.) The only realistic way he could sell the club for anything like £100m is if he wrote off the debt. If this is the case and if the money from player sales is going towards reducing that debt, then should a sale go through he is effectively "trousering the cash" as it is reducing his losses and is money the club will never see again. How does he get that cash out of the club though? People on here who are significantly more clued up on finances than I keep saying it would be illegal. There's nothing illegal about paying off a debt. The debt is to Ashley. The money would go into Ashley's bank account. I've said this before, but in order to get the accounts signed, Ashley (or more specifically SJP Holdings) will have signed a guarantee that the loan will not be recalled within one year from the date the accounts were signed. By using transfer fees to pay off this loan he would be comitting fraud. Of course the terms of the loan could show that (e.g.) £20m is payable each year back to Ashley on demand. If this is the case then there would be no reason why this could not be front loaded. I haven't seen the loan agreement so don't know its specifics, but I seriously doubt that it is structured in a way which would allow it all to be called in at once unless there is a major event (like a change in ownership) There's a conflict of interest, so I don't know how that works legally, but could the club via Llambias not CHOOSE to pay off the debt rather than be forced to by Ashley? When the club was a plc shares were bought back off SJH at a cost to the club. That's a similar conflict of interest, yet it wasn't illegal. People called it trousering the cash then.