UV

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/25052009/58/premier-league-team-season-hail-gerrard.html I'd disagree about Enrique being as bad as they say, he had some games where he seemed to think the ball boys were his team-mates, but I think he just picked up poor marks in general bad defensive performances with extra points off for poor passing. Can't argue with the rest of it though, and Coloccini was easily the worst of a bad bunch last season. I disagree with people saying he started well and then lost his confidence in a poor team. I think he showed the same weaknesses from the start, just that with new players it takes a while for you to see their flaws, or if you see them you subconsciously let them off because they're new to the team/league. Certainly within a few months there were people saying there were serious problems in his game that he'd need to improve to be any good in the Premiership. He never did, and there's no reason to believe he ever will. There's no way we'll get anything like £7m for him, unless we agree to pay half his wages too. I think we'd be lucky to get £3-4m and we'll probably end up loaning him out abroad to avoid paying his wages, hoping he'll look half decent in another league. (He's so in demand, none of the 3 clubs he's already been on loan to in his career could hang on to him, they all had to give him back at the end of the season ) I don't hesitate in saying that for £12.5m & £50+k/w for a mature defender who doesn't have the basic skills required to play in an English league, IMO Coloccini is easily the worst transfer the club has ever made.

Apart from the evidence that we've always conceded less goals with Harper in net than with Given you mean?

MA: macbeth and all his cronies, mick, baggio, etc where are they now? Conehead: They seem to have disappeared from the supporters website we were monitoring for ideas sir. DL: I can't believe we went with the bollocks they spouted about putting the books in order and not investing in the playing side of the club. A Director of football, 5 year plans, all their ideas and look where it's got us! MA: I know. If only we'd listened to that NE5 geezer, I realise now he was the only one on there worth listening to. Get back on there and see what he has to say now. Conehead: They banned him sir. MA:

Lets analyse this apology of a statement a bit then. 1) "mistakes were made". Notice it's not "I made mistakes" or "we made mistakes", just that mistakes were made. No admission of blame there. Thank goodness he's noticed something's gone wrong though! 2) "during this and previous seasons". Still blaming the old board two years after they ceased to have any influence on matters. At least he's consistent. 3) Most importantly, what mistakes does he think were made? There's nothing in this statement to give a clue as to what he thinks the mistakes were. Everyone seems to assume he thinks the mistakes that were made are the same ones we think were made (and not all of us agree on what they were). Maybe he thinks the mistakes made were simply not making a bit of money on Owen last Summer and spending too much on Loloccini and Xisco, he could have just got a cheaper defender and given Ameobi a new contract earlier instead? Maybe it's just that he wishes he'd sold the club for the amounts he got offered off the various potential buyers last year? I don't see how you can start believing things are going to change for the better when you don't even know what he believes the mistakes made were. This apology is as bland and non-committal as it could be. Good PR, but nothing more. Absolutely nothing to pin any hopes on that the right lessons have been learned.

Some stats which are "meaningless" because they consistently show something most don't want to admit: games shots goals shots/goal save % goals/game 06-07 Harper 16.06 72 18 4 75.0 1.12 Given 20.9 98 27 3.63 72.4 1.29 07-08 Harper 19.91 103 28 3.68 72.8 1.41 Given 18.09 91 37 2.46 59.3 2.05 08-09 Harper 16 83 22 3.77 73.5 1.38 Given (NUFC) 22 109 37 2.95 66.1 1.68

We didn't qualify for the CL though did we. Arguably in part due to spending the Summer budget early and buying Woodgate we had our highest finish under Robson and finished in a CL qualifying round position, but by no means were we guaranteed the money from getting into the CL proper. We lost out in a 2 legged game, didn't qualify, and didn't get the cash bonus that would have paid for the players you are suggesting we bought. Anyone who goes on about not spending that Summer is advocating being far more reckless with the clubs finances than the old board is ever accused of being. What you are saying is that we should have gambled money that the club couldn't budget for without the CL money in the hope that the player(s) bought with that money would make a significant difference in their first couple of competitive games for us (ie would be the difference between losing the tie with the existing established players and winning it with the new one's involvement). That's a ridiculous risk to take. Of course hindsight is a wonderful thing, especially when it's combined with the surety that doing something differently would have had a positive outcome - if only we'd bought unidentified player X he'd have stopped the Partizan goal/scored the home equaliser/scored the pen that Shearer or Dyer or Woodgate or Hughes missed. Bollocks. New players not fully integrated are as likely to cost you a game as win you one. The hilarious irony is that had we spent more money that Summer in the assumption that we were going to qualify, and had we still lost that tie, you and those like you would be slating the old board (not the manager who would have chosen the player btw, but the board) for spending that money before we were guaranteed the income.

I can't remember the club being in over £250m of debt under FS like. Now it is and boy are we paying for it. The debt levels under FS were worrying but manageable all the same. Unlike Ashley who it appears doesn't recognise at all the seriousness of the situation we are in, FS did hence the appointment of Sam Allardyce, a manager capable of doing wonders on a small budget and building from the bottom up. Oh and when the club goes down.... it will make the level of debt we were in under FS seem like pennies. So much for Ashley's plan eh. We are not £250 million in debt. Ashley paid about £130 million for the club and has loaned at least £120 mllion since. The amount paid for the club is not debt. The question that will not go away, it has been asked on here several times but no one can answer it, is how would the previous board have financed the club if they had still been in control? The glib answer that all successful football clubs have debt does not cut it, other clubs have debt because someone is prepared to lend it, meaning that they can demonstrate to the lender that the debt is secured and has a prospect of repayment. Who would have loaned us more money in the situation we were in? It is like you have a 100% mortgage on your house, everything in your house (furniture, kitchen appliances etc) and your car are bought on HP - plus your annual income is less than than your annual costs. Now go and find someone to lend you some money in the current climate to allow you to speculate to accumulate... There are people on this board, like me, who aren't Ashley believers. In my case I think he is a chancer who made some money floating a chain of downmarket sports retail shops at a grossly inflated value. He has bought us to show off to his mates and is now way out of his depth. We all know that there are indefensible actions relating to the Ashley regime. But until someone answers the above fundamental question about the previous regime it is hard to put the current shambles into perspective. superb post quayside, gets to the heart of the matter...i'm with you on all points is it possible for someone to get a clock up on the banner of the site adding up the days/hours/minutes 'til this question is answered? it'll need to run pretty fucking high mind It's a trap! Okay, at the risk of being banned for talking on a taboo subject and upsetting some people: It's a false assumption that the club would have had to pay out the same £50-£60m above it's income in the last 2 years that Ashley has loaned the club. Factors affecting the club's losses in Ashley's time: 1) Wages are the largest outgoing. The year prior to Ashley wages were £62.5 (71.8%). Last year they increased to £70m (70.4%), and this year according to Llambias they will be around £76m (76% of a £100k turnover). That's an increase in wages of £21m over the 2 years. Remember, the wage bill Ashley inherited included "high earning wasters" such as Parker, Dyer, Emre, Luque, Carr, Babayaro, and also Solano. If their supposed wages are to believed, that's almost a third of the wage bill he inherited right there. These players are all gone yet the wage bill has still risen both in absolute terms (by over 20%) and relative to turnover (in spite of a £18m per year hike in the turnover from the TV revenues) under Ashley. 2) Player purchases - Ashley's decision to pay up front for players has increased the amount we have had to pay out for players in his first 2 years even though we have had a negligible net transfer budget. I did this rough calculation before we knew Coloccini actually cost £12.5m rather than £10m, but for a rough figure it will do: So due to Ashley's pay up front policy, up to this point we have probably paid around £25m more in advance than if we had continued to pay in instalments for players. This is money that we would not have had to loan from banks, but would be effectively loaning from the selling club. 3) Allardyce - There's no way Shepherd would have sacked Allardyce in his first year, so the £6m(?) payout would not have been necessary, not in the first year at least. [i'm no fan of Allardyce, but I think if he hadn't been working for someone who didn't really want him there, he wouldn't have been looking over his should wondering when he was going to be sacked all the time and would perhaps have been less cautious in his approach than he was which was his ultimate downfall.] 4) Loan repayments - For last year the early repayment charge on the stadium debt was around the same as we would have paid in interest on the whole debt so that cancels out any benefit from Ashley's takeover. This year however, we are around £7m better off if the loans to Ashley are interest free. 5) Reduced match day income- you can argue some of this is down to the credit crunch or that it's due to a build up of suffering from years of having to endure only UEFA cup football, but surely Ashley and his appointments have to take some of the blame for the reduced attendances and corporate box sales this year, and the lack of any decent cup runs to bolster the income. Having said that I'm not even going to try and quantify this. So, guestimates all, but that's 21 + 25 + 6 - 7 = ~£45m additional expenditure so far which is purely down to the decisions and actions of Ashley and his employees, NOT attributable to some ill defined "state of the club when he bought it", "spiralling debt", "heading into administration" argument implying the current situation was inevitable anyway. When people talk about Ashley turning around the club's finances I just shake my head in disbelief and wonder what the hell they're basing it on. Does it simply boil down to the fact he's currently covering the debt and has a pipe dream of finding a bunch of wonderkids who are going to save us? Ignoring the abysmal staffing decisions he's made which in themselves are financially disastrous for the club, as far as I can see it he's also running the club in an increasingly worse way financially than ever before. How he has the nerve to constantly complain about the old board getting the NR sponsorship money up front and then in the next breath ask for 3 year's advance season ticket money from supporters is beyond me. Getting 5% of your future annual income up front is a terrible way to run things but trying to get 30% of your future income up front is perfectly fine? If we have any financial problems it was and is due to the wages not the debt. The debt was £70m. Of that, £45m was a fixed long term loan for the stadium expansion which easily paid for it's own interest repayments. I hope no-one is going to say that was a bad idea, that we should have saved up until we could pay for it in cash, or should have paid it off as soon as possible instead of putting the money into the squad which eventually got us back into the CL. That leaves £25m attributable to the running of the club over the previous 15 years. Is that the sort of debt the 13th or so richest club in the world can't afford to have? Something which is going to cause it to go into administration within months if Mike hadn't come along to save us? I know 1 injury ravaged season where we don't qualify for Europe is enough for some to declare that the sky is falling in, but I personally doubt it was. Ignoring the impending financial implications of relegation due to his negligence, can someone explain to me why they think Ashley is running the club so well financially even if we do somehow manage to stay up?

Strange that LLLO didn't pick you up on this, but... Er........ they will either way, whether he pays in full or by installments. I'm not sure why he would need to pick up on it, the figures are from the accounts. The accounts are made up man, has no one told you? So Mick's interpretation is correct? Mick's figures are correct, I'm not sure what his interpretation is tbh, but if it's the same as Happy Face's then it's incorrect. I'm sure he won't mind. Is it a big deal to you like? I put you right with the sums last night, I don't mind doing it tonight if you want. His interpretation is what I quoted. It was only 1 sentence I'm surprised you find it so hard to pick out. He's saying you can tell whether or not players were paid for upfront by the amortisation figures in the accounts. Here it is again in case you still can't find it:

Strange that LLLO didn't pick you up on this, but... Er........ they will either way, whether he pays in full or by installments. I'm not sure why he would need to pick up on it, the figures are from the accounts. The accounts are made up man, has no one told you? So Mick's interpretation is correct?

Strange that LLLO didn't pick you up on this, but... Er........ they will either way, whether he pays in full or by installments.

He's put £40 million in to cover our payments, £30 million is covered in the last set of accounts and £10 million has been reported this week yet you have decided that you'll make a judgement based on nothing. Regardless of him potentially getting the loans back, we needed the money and Shepherd wasn't in a position to pay that sort of money. As I've tried to say in previous posts, the majority of the money Ashley has loaned the club on top of taking on the £70m debt when he took over is to pay for his decision to pay for players up front rather than stagger the payments as is typical. It's been specifically said that some of the recent £10m is to cover the up front purchase of Nolan while we've received nothing for Given. A lot of the additional money that Ashley has loaned the club would not have been necessary under the old board or indeed any other owners. Assuming 4 year staggered payments, and starting with Smith as a signing Ashley would have had full control under: Smith + Enrique + Beye + Feye = £16.5m Incoming transfer costs to the club in 07-08 under Ashley = £16.5m Incoming transfer costs to the club in 07-08 under anyone else = £4.1m Bassong + Guthrie + Coloccini + Xisco + Nolan = £24m Incoming transfer costs to the club in 08-09 under Ashley = £24m Incoming transfer costs to the club in 08-09 under anyone else = £4.1m + £6m = £10.1m So assuming all other things equal, the club has paid out up to 16.5+24 - (4.1+10.1) = £26.3m more in advance of when strictly necessary (ie if we did it like other clubs) simply due to Ashley's choice to pay up front for players rather than in instalments.

Where are the details for this march like? I like a good protest march. Will there be Cockney Mafia out banners? I'm only going if there'll be Cockney Mafia out banners.

I'm talking here about credit in the form of not paying the full fee for players up front. Credit such as that which we are giving to the richest club in the world to enable them to buy Given. Possibly we got the players for a smaller total fee than if the payments had been staged, but not necessarily. So considering there was a £32m loss, did the debt go from £61m to £93m then? Where did the extra £23m come from? Was Ashley already altruistically donating money to the club before he bought it?

The £32m was for the most part an accounting loss due to the reduction in the book value of the players due to amortisation, impairment & disposal. If you look at the net debt of the club it went from £61m in 2006 to £70m in 2007, that gives a clearer indication of the money the club lost in real terms in that year, ie about £10m. In Ashley's first year the debt went from £70m to £100m+, this is in spite of getting the £18m TV bonus over the previous year. I couldn't understand at the time how the club could have suddenly started making such "real" losses, but this is obviously due in no small part to Ashley's decision to pay for players up front. The massive losses last year are therefore less to do with the position the previous owner's left the club in and more to do with how Ashley has chosen to restructure player purchases. As I see it there are advantages and disadvantages to either way of doing it, but to change from structuring transfer payments over a number of years to paying up front for any new purchases is obviously going to incur a large financial hit for several years. This is crippling the club in the short term, and is the main reason Ashley is having to loan the club more money. Each year we carry on purchasing players up front the club's losses for the same transfer outlay will inevitably fall compared to the first few years under Ashley as the payments for players from previous years are paid up. So the losses under Ashley will reduce merely as a consequence of that, not necessarily because of any improved management of the club's finances. When finance is hard to come by it seems a strange time to consciously decide to turn down credit, and I'm honestly not sure what Ashley thinks he's gaining by doing this, unless he thinks that he's going to look like the hero in the short term pouring money into the club to save it from financial ruin, and then the business genius in the medium term when the losses are turned into profits. You're already arguing in his favour from the projections, so he may be right in how people will view it.

Got my badge, keyring, car sticker & membership card today. Smart

I don't see where exactly you think they're turning it around by their actions so far. There are 2 opportunities per season for the club's Chairman/MD to significantly affect the clubs finances by specifying the budget for buying/selling players and setting a target for increasing/decreasing the wage bill. They have had almost 4 full transfer windows now, so effectively 2 full seasons to play with the club's finances. What I see is that when Ashley took over the wage bill was £62.5m. In his first year it rose to £70m, we wont know what it is this year until we see next year's accounts, but by my rough guestimates the wages will be roughly the same again, but certainly will not have significantly dropped. However IMO (and I know many disagree with this) the squad quality has dropped. Even if you think player for player the squad quality has improved with respect to NUFC in 2007, it is not NUFC 2007 who we are competing against. There can surely be little doubt that the general quality of the league has improved amongst the rest of the also rans, and where we once had a quality advantage to rise above these teams, they now also can afford to have a sprinkling of quality players and are much closer to us than they were 2 years ago. At the same time, if the extra £18m per year TV money is disregarded, turnover dropped in Ashley's first year over the previous season, and will probably be even lower this year due to lower attendances, (although this may be mitigated somewhat by the 3 year season ticket sales). Maybe the financial climate is partially to blame for this, but I believe it has far more to do with the disillusionment since Keegan left, and the shit football on display. I can't see things picking up next year either, I can only see revenues decreasing year on year until - and only until - we start performing better on the pitch. But when we're going to be losing more of the few quality players we have remaining, like Owen and probably Barton IMO in the Summer, and have less than £10m net to spend if that, with a squad that needs filling out rather than just fine tuning, I can see lots of average players and young hopefuls coming in rather than anyone of any proven quality. Add to that having Kinnear as manager, and I can't really see us improving anytime soon. Hopefully we'll be able to stay in the premiership, and with a lot of good luck a number of the kids coming through will turn out to be decent and we'll somehow manage to persuade them to stay, but that's the only way out of the current slump the way Ashley is running things as far as I can see it. I don't call relying on luck a good long term plan, and I don't see still rising wages and falling club-specific turnover (ie the money NUFC generates on it's own merit rather than the money every team in the league gets) as financially turning things around. This is very true, and something I was going to point out. To put in some context all the talk of financial mismanagement, wasting money on useless/trophy players, paying astronomical wages, taking millions out of the club, ever spiralling debt, etc, etc by Shepherd/the old board, they actually managed to do all that and achieve what we did over a 15 year period on a final total of around £25m worth of non stadium related debt (and I've not even tried to take out what it cost to build the new academy and training facilities). Personally I'd call that a pretty decent job and far better value for money than most other club's have had over that period of time.

"I can confirm I met Newcastle representatives," Venables told The Sun. "Those talks will continue in the morning [today] when, hopefully, I can give them a final decision." Makes it sound like he slept on it not that they were locked in a room for 2 days thrashing out the minutae. Anyway, if he did spend 2 days in talks, sort of rubbishes the theory that the obvious cluelessness and mismanagement of Ashley put him off. If you want to insist on the length of deliberation then what does that mean about how he viewed Keegan's departure? Cant have it both ways. Its all irrelevant anyway, my personal view is that the turmoil put him off. I guess he had to go home and watch SSN for a bit before he decided, then had to go back and meet with them the next day to tell them face to face he didn't want the job because of the protests. I see you snipped your 'meaning too much to too many people' quote from a larger piece originally in the Sun: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/newcastle_united/7636504.stm I don't think any reading between the lines is required here tbh.

"I can confirm I met Newcastle representatives," Venables told The Sun. "Those talks will continue in the morning [today] when, hopefully, I can give them a final decision."

Yes, I'm sure the inevitable short term reaction of supporters to a legend walking out on the club had FAR more to do with who we could get to do the job than the fact the job vacancy was for a 1 month contract to be the lowest paid "manager" in the division. If supporter unrest was a deterring factor in getting in anyone better than Kinnear, it was way, way, way down on the relevancy scale compared to things like pay, length of contract, the fact the club was publicly up for sale, that they would not have control of transfers, or that the club is owned and run by a bunch of clueless amateurs who think employing their mates over people actually qualified for a job is the route to success. If Venables was going to turn the job down due to the protests, why would he have discussions with the club over the job for 2 days rather than just turning it down flat straight away?

Just like in 2001, yes. Dead easy. It's a mystery as to why everyone isn't doing it. The successful teams are. Like Spurs sitting below us in the league I never said it was foolproof. So with Ashley's muppets in charge maybe it would be unwise (no pun intended)

Just like in 2001, yes. Dead easy. It's a mystery as to why everyone isn't doing it. The successful teams are.

Perhaps you can momentarily ditch your obsession with the past and link to a recent example. Me, I see Liverpool's owners desperate to sell to a cash-rich customer because they can't refinance their debt, and the club with the Premiership's second-richest benefactor operating a sell-to-buy policy because even an injection of £600 million (!) hasn't been enough to buy sustainable success for Chelsea.

Just like in 2001, yes.

He chose to pay off the debt in full rather than pay off some and invest more in the team. At least one of the major loans had a condition where it had to be repaid should the club change hands. He didn't choose to repay the loans, in some cases he was forced to. No doubt you'll twist this to prove that it was Ashley's fault for not doing due process. How the hell can he increase profits if the club is making a loss? Possibly because we still had payments to make on Emre & Luque 2 years after they left the club. Other than the £30million he's put in to keep the club running? He placed his business in the hands of people he knows and trusts. That Bastard! I agree that putting the club up for sale was a huge mistake, but who in their right mind would accept an offer for the club that was significantly less than what he paid for it & subsequently invested in it? I don't especially like Ashley, this season has been handled appallingly by everyone involved but he's not some pantomime villain sat in his mansion figuring out how to screw the club over this week. There are other banks you know. Other clubs seem to manage to take out loans. If Ashley's cashflow is what is stopping spending (I doubt it tbh) then I'm sure the 17th richest club in the world could manage to take out a £20, 30, 50m loan. You increase profits by selling out the ground and corporate boxes (by having a better team and winning more games) You increase profits by having cup runs (by having a better team and winning more games) You increase profits by qualifying for Europe (by having a better team and winning more games) You increase profits by selling merchandise to people who want to be associated with a good team (by having a better team and winning more games) You do not increase profits by running down the squad and hence performing poorly on the field, decreasing income from all sources. Jobs for mates rather than qualified people is not my idea of how to run a successful business, and it certainly doesn't seem to be working out for Mike. If I tried to sell my house for what it was worth 2 years ago, I wouldn't get it. Does that mean I couldn't sell my house? No. If Hall & Shepherd had still owned the club it would have cost any buyer less now than when Ashley bought it. He took a gamble on the price of clubs going up and he lost out in the short term. If he really wanted to sell he had to accept a loss. Sorry, but that's just how it is. If he didn't attempt to sell it for less than he paid, then he didn't realistically try to sell it at all. I don't think the situation of the club is down to Ashley being malicious, however it was always going to be highly likely given the incompetence and mismanagement of him and his employees.

A few months, come on, it was a year and a half wasn't it. He did very well as player-manager, manager, and youth development at both Millwall and Swindon as well as leeds iirc. How much are we actually paying Wise as a director of football, is it something daft like £2m per year? Thing i found most strange was Llambias description of what Dennis Wise does because what he described was basically a chief scout!!!!!! No club in the world pays anyone £2m per year for a chief scout. He wasn't with Kinnear, Ashley and Llambias last week at the training ground for the laughable attempt to make a breakthru in the transfer market so once he finds players he mustn't do the negoiating on the deals. Which again just points to him being a scout not a DOF. Why in his role of Director of Football as he not looked to replace our reserve team coach, Adam Sadler was given the boot along with KK and Terry Mac and the club have left Richard Money looking after both the reserve team and the academy. Just another sign of the mismanagement and poor running of this football club by the current regime. Llambias said specifically today that Wise (while having some role finding and recomending players) does indeed also do the negotiating, all Ashley and Llambias do at that stage is say yes or no when he pushes them for more money. As for the £2 million, I have no idea whether this is true (the only figure I have seen was 1.2 million or something but who the ferk knows) but I would doubt it. What amount of money would you be happy with? And Wise' role in appointing coaches, I dunno. Surely if anyone was to appoint coaches for the academy it would be Joe Joyce as academy director. Otherwise, while Money seems the main man, the youth and reserve personel seem pretty fluid. Calderwood took the reserve match this week to check out the seniors coming back probably, but what is Whartons role? Wharton is one of the Academy coaches, under 18's i think. , Money came in as the director of football, not even sure if Joyce is still at the club, he wasn't involved in the youth cup games, so if he's with the academy he's working with the younger kids, maybe under 16's or even younger but since Sadler went Money has been running the academy and taking the reserve games. Calderwood stepped in to take the reserve game but it was because Money was on a scouting trip not because they were checking the seniors coming back. JFK and Hughton watch every reserve home game anyway. Cheers for that. Just checked on .cock and Joyce would appear to still there thankfully so maybe Money has been moved up to the reserves full time? I agree we can always do with more people and hopefully things will become clearer as to the set up in the summer (still not sure what Elliott role is tbh), but they seem to be a good bunch working at those levels these days. Robbie Elliott works as fitness coach... Which is the one responsible for bringing through the youngsters which will have us competing for EVERYTHING within 5 years? Is he any good?