UV

I noticed that all Liverpool supporters still want the "Yanks" out though. Look what that distraction's done to them, down to second. Without their banners, they'd probably be 10 points clear.

But then again if your "emotional contentment" is revolved around ambition and winning trophies then he's 5 years too late with all this - in my eyes he's decided to go before the ships sunkbecasue he doesnt want to be tarnished. Ambition isnt something which you develop a craving for, your either are or arent. He should have left while we were pushing for another Champions League place and playing in the UEFA cup? Yeah, no ambition.

Yet you were happy to claim that there was an improvement in the squad in Ashley's first season because we finished 1 place higher than the year before (with the same points and worse goal difference) even though Roeder was supposedly a terrible manager and we had an injury list for the first half of that season we're only just matching now. We'll get nowhere near those 43 points this season and it's not all down to Kinnear. Is it Kinnear's fault we've conceded 39 goals so far even in a season where Given has been fit and back up to form? I agree you cannot account for the injury list we have now, the difference is in 06-07 the injuries meant the difference between a possible European place and lower mid table. Now it means the difference between lower mid table and possible relegation. Do you honestly still believe this is the best squad we've had for years?

OzzieMandias will never post his own opinion on a subject in case he is later proven to be wrong as he so often has been in the past.

In real money (ie cash) the loss for the year was the amount of money Ashley had to put in to keep the club going - £30 million. And that sum included very little invested in players, it was mostly just to make sure the club could pay the players and meet its minimum financial commitments. Is the net debt included in the accounts? If so is the change in net debt not a truer reflection of the actual monetary loss in a year? Is part of that £30m held as working capital sat in a bank collecting interest (replacing the overdraft facility we had)? Can anyone PM me a link to the accounts so I don't have to keep asking questions? (Before anyone says it I realise there's a need to have working capital, and am not suggesting we can just go out and spend it on players, I'm just curious about where the money Ashley's put in has gone)

1) The club was for sale the minute Keegan was employed. Probably one reason he made Keegan have a walkout penalty clause in his contract. The protests were only an excuse to make it public. 2) No manager would touch the job because he was only offering a 1 month contract. A contract to the end of the season would have seen plenty of interest and not caused much of a problem for new owners who would probably keep any manager until the Summer anyway. 3) Are West Ham not up for sale like? Everton & Portsmouth too for that matter.

http://www.football-finances.org.uk/newcastle/2008/assetsdebts3.htm http://www.football-finances.org.uk/newcastle/gates2.htm Is there a net debt figure in the current accounts btw, as quite clearly the value for 2008 on there is not right.

More than Gutierrez.

I don't know tbh. Which assets have we lost since then? Regardless, while financial restraints due to the current state of the financial world may have stopped Shepherd from investing as he may have wanted (or he may indeed have decided that it WAS time to cut back), that would have been a temporary cessation of ambition due to necessity. This is not the case with Ashley. He could pursue a more ambitious course for the club now, but he chooses not to. I think we can see that this season it would have been quite easy to rise above the pack and take a UEFA cup spot. More cover, a few good midfielders, and a decent manager is all it would have taken to give us a good fighting chance of that. Had it failed, Ashley would have had to add a bit more on to his asking price for the club. Had it succeeded, we would be getting full houses this year, and the subsequent year's increased gate & TV revenue would have paid for it easily (considering transfer fees are staged). (The club would also have been a much more attractive proposition to sell Mike.) Instead we are in the greatest danger of relegation we have been in since we got into the Premiership. The current situation may have been a necessity for Shepherd, but it is a choice for Ashley. That's the significant difference between the ideologies of running the club of the two for me, and why I think it is highly unlikely that we will ever be anything more than a mid table team at best under Ashley no matter how long he owns the club. I'm not sure if the "debt" seems top be clouding the analysis of the current situation for a lot of people. If Ashley had bought a debt free club for £240m would people have the same opinion on his lack of spending on the squad?

Do you honestly think adopting Ashley's methods (hiring an inexperienced DoF over the manager, net £0 transfers, allowing the star striker's contract to run down to get him off the wages, trying to sell the club, bringing in a manager unable to find a job anywhere else) back in 2001 would have got us into the CL? Is hindsight only ok to use when it's about Ashley then? Hindsight is used when you agree (or disagree) with actions at the time but subsequent events prove them to be wrong (or correct). In this case I agreed with the decision to push forward then and it proved successful, so it's not using hindsight on my part. Besides, Ozzie is the hindsight king. He'll love it. Remember the financial and on field situation at the time: The debt (£66m) was larger than the turnover (£55m) which relative to turnover is more than the "debt" now The club was making loses (£15.5 in 2000, £8.9m in 2001) which relative to turnover are equivalent to the loses now The club had finished 13, 13, 11, 11 in the previous years which is worse than our last 4 years. As I asked in another thread, should we have Cut back on signings and not brought in Bellamy & Robert Sold the likes of Dyer for a good profit Let injury prone Shearer's contract run down so he could leave on a free and we could get his high wages off the bill (after all, we had a ready made replacement coming through from the youth team). Got someone like Vinnie Jones in to buy and sell players over Robson's head. If it pissed off Robson and he left, should we have replaced him with someone like Dave Basset. Can I assume that the people commending Ashley for his prudence and vision for the club now would agree that we should have taken a similar approach back in 2001? Ozzie asked if Shepherd was going to get us back in the CL. Well in a similar position back in 2001, by being speculative, we DID get back into the CL. At the moment I can only see Ashley's way of handling the situation taking the club in one direction, and that's down.

Do you honestly think adopting Ashley's methods (hiring an inexperienced DoF over the manager, net £0 transfers, allowing the star striker's contract to run down to get him off the wages, trying to sell the club, bringing in a manager unable to find a job anywhere else) back in 2001 would have got us into the CL?

It has to be macbeth. He has a website and his numbers are bigger.

Strange analogy. You can't compare a player to a manager like that, a manager has so much more influence over the team doing well or the team failing. A manager may have more influence over the team than a player (although in extreme cases, like Chelsea for example, they could win stuff with almost anyone in charge simply because they have far superior squad to most teams), but his abilities as a manager have nowhere near as much influence as the stature of the club and the amount of money he has available compared to his rivals. The point being that a player or a manager's medal tally has far more to do with the teams they are with than their own individual ability. Of course their ability determines whether or not they are wanted by the top teams, but not all top players/managers chose that path. If Wenger, Ferguson or Mourinho had managed Fulham or Man City would they have been winning cups and leagues? I doubt it.

And just as objectively you'd have to agree that Phil Neville was a far better footballer than Shearer. Using the competitions won by managers managing different teams, in different leagues, with different financial clout, at different times is far from as objective a way of measuring as may seem. Apart from with us Keegan has never managed a team which has anywhere near the resources necessary to win the big stuff. He's always taken on teams which were a challenge and needed turning around, and as such he got each of the teams he managed promoted as champions the first full year he was in charge (I think). He very nearly won us the league 3 and a half years after almost being relegated from the second division. Are those lesser achievements than winning the Dutch league with PSV, or a cup with Barcelona? Well, objectively, yes they are, but for me I'd rather have Keegan as manager than Robson because given the same resources I think he'd win out quite easily.

The last bit is all news to me. Who is the other £49m owed to and how has Ashley managed to double the debt in a year and a half? Comforting to know that we're not expected to pay off the £100m before July like. The £49 million is owed to normal club creditors and is not fixed debt as such. £70 million debt was due to Ashley at 30th June 2007 after he paid off the clubs fixed debt and put some extra working capital in. The club then had another bad year incurring heavy losses, so he had to stick in a further £30 million to keep it going and resulting a total debt due to him of £100 million at 30th June 2008. So in your opinion is macbeth's intimation correct that the net debt in the 2007 accounts is wrong and should be £124m rather than £71m, and that the net debt grew from £61m in june 2006 to £149m in june 2008?

How do you and others form basis for criticisim if you have no opinion as to what went on? I guess its becasue Keegan loves this club so much that people cant entertain the notion that he may of took advantage of the situation with his standing at the club, especially with a failing buiness behind him, especially with him putting in a full claim against club he loves....its just an idea, not that i fully agree with it. Aren't you the one who keeps banging on about the fact that no-one should be criticising Ashley, Lambias, or Wise because we don't know exactly to the last detail what went on?

Do any of the accountants have any comments on macbeth's latest update? http://www.football-finances.org.uk/newcastle/2008/assetsdebts3.htm The last bit is all news to me. Who is the other £49m owed to and how has Ashley managed to double the debt in a year and a half? Comforting to know that we're not expected to pay off the £100m before July like.

Not relative to turnover. The debt to turnover ratios look about the same to me. You're right yes about the same, but slightly worse. I should revise what I said to "more gloomy" rather than "much more gloomy". The point is though if you advocate the prudent approach now, you must surely also say we should have taken the prudent approach back then too, and hence are happy to almost certainly have given up the achievements of 01-04 for the sake of more assured short term financial security, but at the increased risk (as now) of relegation.

1997, pre stadium extension. I'm talking about 2000-1 What does that matter? It was used to subsidise the business in the future, since Mcbeth predicted all of our money troubles a few years back perhaps we should look up some of his old posts as he always claimed the club was ran well up until 2003. It matters because you said we had £40m in the bank when I was talking about a period when the net debt was larger than the turnover. Are you or anyone who supports Ashley's lack of spending on the squad denying that if he had bought the club in 2000 and done the same things back then that you would not have used those accounts and the same arguments that are being used now to justify his actions? Do you think if we had followed a similar course back then and sold the likes of Dyer, rid the wage bill of Shearer, not spent money on trophy players like Robert, brought in someone with no experience to buy and sell players for Robson, that we would ever have achieved the positions we did in Robson's time (assuming he'd stuck around)?

Not relative to turnover.

1997, pre stadium extension. I'm talking about 2000-1

Don't think the comparison is quite fair tbh. I'm certain our wages were less than 50% of turnover until near the end of SBRs reign, would have been down around 45% then, rather than the 65%ish that seems to have been mentioned in this thread. I think our financial situation is worse than it was back then, and whilst the need for investment in the first team is abundently clear, I think it will be slightly harder to turn around than it was last time (and it took a couple of years then, too). Another huge dissimilarity is that then we had a world class manager, who knew the game inside out, had contacts in most major football playing nations in the world and was someone you could trust with money, even if he did get the odd one wrong. He was also afforded a fair amount of time before he did get it right. Not to mention we had around £40 million in the bank from the float which was used to subsidise the loses. I can see it being a kick in the bollocks for some to find out that it's only Ashley's promise to continue financing us that is keeping us out of administration when they've tried to paint the picture that all was well and he's in fact been creaming off our massive profits but they've got to try and get their head around the state the old board left us in. £40m in the bank? Where's that from? I don't have the accounts from back then but I'm taking figures from nufc-finances website. The net debt in 2000 was £47m and in 2001 was £67m Turnover in 2000 was £45m and in 2001 was £55m The loss in 2000 was £15.5m and in 2001 was £8.9m Those figures paint a much more gloomy picture than the one Ashley inherited. I can see it being a kick in the bollocks for some to realise that adopting the policy Mike Ashley is currently pursuing back in 2001 would almost certainly have meant we did not enjoy the football we subsequently did, but they've got to try and get their head around the fact that the consequences of under investment can be worse than the consequences of speculative over investment.

Don't think the comparison is quite fair tbh. I'm certain our wages were less than 50% of turnover until near the end of SBRs reign, would have been down around 45% then, rather than the 65%ish that seems to have been mentioned in this thread. I think our financial situation is worse than it was back then, and whilst the need for investment in the first team is abundently clear, I think it will be slightly harder to turn around than it was last time (and it took a couple of years then, too). Another huge dissimilarity is that then we had a world class manager, who knew the game inside out, had contacts in most major football playing nations in the world and was someone you could trust with money, even if he did get the odd one wrong. He was also afforded a fair amount of time before he did get it right. The relative costs of running a football club have changed so wages are a higher % across all clubs. To try and clarify - the cost of running the stadium, etc will have risen roughly in line with inflation; the turnover of all premiership clubs has risen by well over inflation; the extra income is spent by most clubs to compete with everyone else, and this goes on transfer fees and wages, therefore these increase in line with the turnover rather than with inflation; therefore the % of turnover spent on wages will naturally increase. (That didn't clarify it at all did it) I also forgot to add that we should have got someone like Vinnie Jones in to purchase players over Robson's head.

I think I'm starting to realise where it all went wrong tbh. Back around 2000, 2001 when the debt was larger than the turnover and the losses were over a third of the turnover, when we'd had 3 or 4 years outside the top 10, what we should have done was to cut back on signings, sell the likes of Dyer for a good profit, let injury prone Shearer's contract run down so he could leave on a free and we could get his high wages off the bill (after all, we had a ready made replacement coming through from the youth team). If it pissed off Robson and he left, no problem, we could have replaced him with someone like Dave Basset. If only the old board had had the vision of Mike Ashley, just think how different it could have been. If only....

Would not any money spent/received on player transfers be included in the operating expenses (whether it be for transfers in the current year or for delayed payments for transfers in previous years) ? No - money spent on players isn't charged against profit in operating expenses in the year it is incurred. That money physically (okay, electronically) moves from one place to another in a particular year though doesn't it. Surely it must be accounted for somehow in that financial year? It gets shown as an asset in the balance sheet. It is then, as discussed, amortised through the annual results over the life of the contract. Eg If a player cost £10 million we record a £10 million asset in our balance sheet. Say its a 4 year contract so £2.5 million gets written off every year against the overall profit/loss for the year. If he's sold in year 4 his value has been written down to £2.5 million by then, if we get £8.5 million the profit is recorded as £6 million in the result for the year. FWIW Given will be on the books at zero so if he's sold its all profit. I (believe I) understand how the player valuation as an intangible asset on the books works via amortisation, but how you describe it the accounts would look the same whether we paid all the money up front for a player or if we paid the money in stages over a number of years. Is there no difference to the accounts in the two significantly different scenarios?