UV

Those revenues are all in € not £

Some absolute drivel been posted in the last 4 or 5 five pages like. One of the men responsible for taking the club from being penniless & on the brink of the 3rd division to being a regular competitor in Europe & one of the richest clubs in the world was disastrous for the club apparently. Don't tell me that "it was all because of Hall" either. Maybe he was a better chairman then Shepherd - I don't know the ins & outs of who did what exactly to compare the two - but he certainly had an easier job to do while the club was riding on the coattails of Keegan's success than Shepherd had to do trying to maintain the momentum of the club without the footballing results to back it up. Even after 7 years of Ashley some people must still think that stadiums expand themselves for free, and advertisers, sponsors & supporters from around the world come begging to throw their money at the club just because its Newcastle United. The owner & chairman just sit back and watch all the cash flow in, only lifting a finger to make bad decisions & throw an occasional spanner in the works for the hell of it. No-one has ever said Shepherd always made good decisions, but in the main they were always made with the intention of being for the good of the club (and thereby good for himself & the Halls of course). Even possibly his worst decision - bringing in Souness - was done in the context of most supporters seeing some of the players taking the piss out of Robson & the club, and wanting a more disciplinarian line to be taken. The pick of the bunch for me though is the idea that appointing a manager who had won the league 4 times in the previous 10 years with 2 different clubs, one of which had been in the Championship when he took over, was a "terrible managerial appointment". It didn't work out, shit happens, but I think you'd have had to search for quite a while to find a supporter who wasn't very happy with the appointment at the time. Hindsight's great though isn't it.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AB9xEMxPRws/UgfsvEA-gMI/AAAAAAAAG14/2XLQtaJ6HMg/s1600/8+Money+League.jpg Great work over the last 7 years Mike

Hope they build a massive new Sports Direct megastore on the land. Think of the amount of NUFC branded Sondico kit it could shift to make money for our beneficent owner. The reckless previous owners made the ground too big as it is anyway, its only thanks to Mike making the tickets affordable that it stays as full as it does. Hopefully in the future we'll be able to close down some of the stands and put them to better use as promoting potential advertising space for the TV audience when the big teams come to visit. Getting rid of the possibility of expanding the ground should also put off any potential new owners who might look to exploit the club by risking its future on dangerous growth which might one day stop and cause the club to go into administration like the poor supporters of Man City & Chelsea have to live with. It should also stop the malicious rumours that he's going to sell the club soon too as you wouldn't get rid of the possibility of expansion just prior to a sale of a business, so it looks like he's here for the long term.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/26493211

Only the same note from the previous accounts that £18m is due for repayment within one year. Obviously there was no spare cash to pay any off last season, but there almost certainly will be this year.

For those interested, the accounts are available from companies house now for £1, or you can get them emailed to you for free if you sign up to companycheck.co.uk (you can get all the accounts back to 1992 if you want). Pretty much all the relevant numbers were in the press release. Despite a "profit" the net debt increased by £4.2m (bank overdraft). This bit is new in the related party transactions section: If that £1.7m is most or all of our branded product revenue it's pretty disappointing (was £7.8m in 2006).

Interesting theory. Do you think it's the younger players like Kadar, Perch, Vuckic, Guthrie & Ranger who feel the weight of history more, or is it the experienced players like Ryan Taylor, Alan Smith & Lovenkrands who are burdened by the pressure of past quarter, semi and cup final failures they weren't involved in when cobbled together to play Arsenal in the last 16? TBF it's a clever tactic by the club to try and alleviate some of this pressure by pretending we don't care about them. It's a very convincing double bluff. FWIW I actually think we put out stronger teams this year than we normally would have due to the negative publicity about the club admitting to not prioritising cup competitions.

Since this post we beat Leeds at home, so it's gone up to 12 wins in 7 seasons, 10 of those against lower league sides. Our record against premier league sides (who are all resting players to the same level as we are of course) is: P12 W2 D1 L9 Translated to league form over a season = 22 pts Yeah. We try just as hard as everyone else.

Martin Keown, Michael Owen and David Seaman? Nothing wrong with Keown or Seaman. Owen was obviously an abysmal choice of captain but it wasn't just the international manager who made that horrific appointment. Campbell was ahead of Keown in the pecking order at international level when he was given the captaincy over him. Campbell had already amassed 2 of his 3 caps by that point. I'm sure someone will think of an excuse though. Is the fact that Campbell was injured & not in the squad when Keown got his solitary England captaincy a good enough excuse not to captain him for that game?

If Mike was in it to win it, he has more than enough cash to invest to make this club a top 4 challenger every single season. That's whats so fucking frustrating by all of this by the way. He's always had more than enough money to take this club where it should be. Yes, if he fancied making the club his own personal plaything whose every success was nothing to do with its history or support and everything to do with the whim of a billionaire, ready to be tossed aside into bankruptcy when he'd finished having fun. Thankfully neither he nor we want that because the club is big enough to run within its own means and do well. It'd be nice in a way, if someone just came in and arbitrarily Abramoviched us, but that'd also make Newcastle a part of what I don't like about football. I hope PSG, Monaco, Man City, Anzhi Makhachkala, Chelsea and the rest crash and burn, even if that's a bit hypocritical from someone who loved Milan in the 90's. Absolutely ridiculous. Even worse than the Portsmouth/Leeds scare tactics when anyone suggests a net transfer spend for a club our size might be nice. I don't know anything about the foreign clubs, but Man City & Chelsea wouldn't inevitably "crash and burn" and wont be "tossed aside into bankruptcy" when their owners eventually leave. Obviously without outside injections of cash they'd have to curb their spending and reduce their wage bill, and without good new ownership they would eventually slip back into the pack. With particularly bad new ownership they may in time go under, but it would be completely because of the new owners not because of the old one leaving. Chelsea's turnover for 2013 was £260m without Abramovich artificially subsidising it. That doesn't go away overnight however much you hope it might or pretend it will (if the new owner was Ashley he might make a good fist of it like).

Not sure what you mean by that. Recent cup finals show that there is actually more chance of a surprise package ending up there, not less. BUT YOU INEVITABLY GET RELEGATED!!!! "Do you want us to be the next Wigan, Portsmouth, etc" is the new "Do you want us to be the next Portsmouth, Leeds, etc" People have probably said "I think football has changed forever now though" every year since 1888. It's the same as "I don't think anyone can break into the top X now" where X happens to be the number of dominant teams in the current season, but almost inevitably some team does in the following year or two. It's all just bollocks to justify not trying.

Ashley wouldn't know whether to laugh or cry if we got into Europe because everyone above us was disqualified from it.

8th or 9th "another good league finish"

I think it's what justified his purchase in the first place. He would have been aware of the cost to buy that amount of advertising. The nonsense about wanting us for a bit of fun he was willing to spend on is bollocks but.. but.. he was going to put in £20m a year...

BTW For those asking where the £10m has gone, without going into detail, this headline profit is an accountancy "profit". It basically means the club is worth £10m more on paper than it was the year before. It doesn't necessarily mean the club brought in £10m more than it spent and that £10m is sitting in a bank somewhere or has disappeared into Mike's back pocket. Looking at the paragraph on the debt & the overdraft it suggests we spent about £4m more than we received for the year. This year though...

Congrats Mike, commercial revenue's up to only £10m less than when you bought the club!

Higher revenue means you can sustain a higher wage bill and possibly even dare to spend money on incoming transfers without selling players first. Yes I think people would be indirectly interested, and guess what, that interest might even increase revenue further. Revolutionary thinking I know.

If Ashley had increased the club's revenues such that it was in a position for him to pocket trillions while doing its utmost to strengthen the squad year on year, then I doubt many would be complaining. We've made something like £40m profit from transfers over 5 years, and he's only been able to pay off £11m of his self-created debt so far. Yet some would have you believe that the club's never been healthier. Unfortunately, I think the need to bring in some players in Jan 13 meant we couldn't pay Mike the £18m we would have hoped to. This was mentioned in the fans forum meeting when asked by the NUST member who was subsequently banned. *This figure is incorrect

Well done to the club on this magnanimous gesture. It's great that the club's finance director is delighted at this even though it means the club's matchday revenue will continue to reduce year on year in real terms. Hopefully, in line with the aims of the club, we'll soon be able to match Sunderland's "commitment to making football affordable" by giving away more & more free tickets to games too.

According to the recent Delloitte figures turnover in 12/13 was £91.8m. That's down on the year before (£93.3m) despite a europa campaign because of our lower finish in the league. In 11/12 Ashley could afford to pull £11m out AND spend £11m (net) on transfers. Net transfer spend was almost £11m in 12/13 too but Ashley said he would not take out the money (£18m is in my head?) he had planned to...whether that turns out to be true or not remains to be seen but you would expect it to leave us with plenty money in the bank if so. Actually, I calculate it at £95.9m if you go by the other euro conversions in there. (RM: €518.9=£444.7 -> €1=£0.857, so €111.9=£95.9)

Long story short: 06-07 - £10m net transfer spend, wages up by £10m = net debt went up up by £10m Ashley doesn't buy club 07-08 - TV revenues go up by £18m, maintain yearly average £10m net transfer spend, maintain wage bill = debt reduced Of course there are other factors involved and revenues are affected by results, but basically keep the wages in check & we'd have been fine IMO. None of this would have happened of course, because Hall would have sold up to Mansour in 08 and Keegan would be leading us to our 4th consecutive title.

The net debt was around £70m when he took over. It quickly doubled because the club started buying players for cash up front while still selling players in instalments. So even if there was little or no net transfer spend, the visible debt still grew, but the club had IOUs for the likes of Parker, Dyer, Milner, etc. Those IOUs were wiped out when we were relegated though (Ashley essentially bought the credit notes off the club) which is why the debt didn't rise when we were relegated. Where does this £6m figure come from and what was it spent on? Even though Shepherd was the chairman, the Halls were the major shareholders and could out vote him on anything like that anyway. If Shepherd wanted out, why did he keep buying more shares in the club and propose scrip dividends right up until the end? Why did Ashley buy Hall's shares on the QT without doing due diligence and without even consulting the other major shareholder if he also was keen to sell? If he was glad to be out why did he try to get a consortium together to buy the club back when Ashley put it up for sale when we were in the Championship? That really is some conspiracy theory you've got going there. If you're right, Shepherd's a far better actor/liar than I gave him credit for, and is a persistent bugger carrying on the pretence for years afterwards. It must be for all the love it gets him from supporters.

yet he's put in over 100million above the purchase price, is this right ? Was that because he didn't do the correct due dill before buying? Just another f*** up, got his fingers burnt, tried to spend his way out, got his fingers burnt again. Now we have conservative mediocrity. The main two things that due diligence would have revealed were that the debt was repayable on a change of ownership (that's a pretty common condition but its not always the case) and the club was in the process of losing about £30 million for the year. Without being entirely sure why he bought us (and no one is) it's not easy to call whether he would have cracked on with the takeover if he was aware of those two issues. The club is actually in a far better state and worth a lot more now than when he bought it that's for sure. Whether its worth more than he paid for it is another matter. I'll bite. "in the process of losing about £30 million for the year" To be clear on this, the vast majority of this £30m "loss" was amortisation of players. It's an accountancy tool (which is quite flawed in the football club model) used to help value the assets of a company. This is not the same as the club spending £30m more than it brought in for the year as most people would understand that statement, and it is not as if Ashley suddenly had to find an extra £30m. I think the actual cash flow loss for the year was under £10m and included significant costs due to the takeover (director payoffs, loan early repayment costs, aborted refinancing costs, etc). The club was actually one of eight PL clubs to make profit before player amortisation & trading. "due diligence" I'm sick of this term being bandied about. Due diligence implies having a team of accountants and business analysts looking at the books and the fine print of contracts, etc over a period of weeks to look for problems. What we are talking about here that he is supposed to have missed when buying the club is absolute basic stuff that could be answered with a few questions. Ask any supporter who was remotely interested in the club's finances at the time and they could have told you about the repayment clause in the stadium loan. If he had not tried to buy the club on the sly I am sure, even from his sick bed, Shepherd would have been only too happy to tell him about any problems with the club to try and put him off buying it. Not doing due diligence is the equivalent of buying a car without getting it checked over by the AA. If he really didn't know about loans becoming due or current year losses, then it's the equivalent of buying it without turning the engine on to see if it starts. Your memory is off by a bit I think. Net liabilities were £16m. It's not ideal by any means, but many clubs are technically insolvent including the likes of Everton & Villa. It's actually mainly due to the under-valuation of most club's squads due to how the accountancy process works. Our squad in the last accounts for example was worth only £37m apparently. That's just over 1 Andy Carroll (it was actually valued at only £30m when we sold him). Transfermarkt, which while by no means perfect looks to have given most of our players reasonable valuations, has the squad valued at nearly £150m No way the banks are going to pull the plug just because of an accounting practice poorly suited to the business. 2 years later when we got relegated we had a £36m overdraft. Not a loan secured against income or assets, a plain old bank overdraft. I think you over-egg the club's inability to get any loans, and in fact was in the process of a refinancing deal when Ashley bought the club.

Just noticed this with the thread being bumped. The text quoted is in regard to the previous year's related party transactions (in which NUFC were not mentioned) is for an unspecified amount in addition to the other related party sales & purchases detailed, not explaining them is relating to rent paid to Mike Ashley by Sports Direct for use of properties he personally owned, not money paid to Sports Direct So whether or not the writer of nufcblog bothered reading it, he was correct to not mention it, whereas you were incorrect in 3 separate ways to suggest it explaned the money being paid by NUFC to Sports Direct.