UV

I read them as potentially ditching Barton and vetoing transfers due to age. Maybe you need to re-read it. Maybe I do, perhaps you could help me by explaining what the bits I've bolded mean?

How are you reading these bits? I read them as potentially ditching Barton and vetoing transfers due to age.

i think its a good thing. there's a difference between being hands on and interfearing with the manager's duties. this Is dictating the transfer policy as alleged in this report (eg ditching Barton and vetoing transfers due to age) not interfering with the manager's duties?

Sorry Dave. Yeah! Champions League! Remember that tino hattrick against Barcelona, that was brill! Bring it on!!! Is that better?

A Champions League one-off appearance is even more meaningless long term. Unless we build a squad which is capable of sustaining it or at least achieving it every other year, it will just be a brief income spike accompanied by a few humiliating defeats against foreign teams. The question's therefore difficult to answer until we have a better idea of Ashley's intentions. If we're seriously aiming for top 4, then I'd prefer the CL spot as cups will eventually come along later, but if it seems we're happy with mid table and it would just be a one-off fluke year in the CL I'd prefer to get the cup in the bag.

Aye, was so sick of those short term fixes like extending the stadium, building new academy and training facilities, and buying and holding onto one of the world's best strikers at 25 and one of the Premiership's best keepers over the years at 21. Don't forget the purchase of the European young player of the year - he wasn't going to stay young player of the year for long was he! Yet again we bought a player on the way down! Why didn't we simply buy him before he was European young player of the year and then sell him when he reached his peak! Roll on the Ashley revolution where the owner dictates the transfer policy to maximise player resale value ahead of team performance, and lets have more of the long term thinking of hoovering up future ticket revenues into big Mike's pocket.

Yeah, I mean really, in football you either have to have a squad of 30 year olds or one of youngsters so you don't hamper their development. It was alot better for N'Zogbia to have someone to challenge his place and Duff's been injured 90% of the time anyway so you're talking bollocks mate. Imagine we hadn't signed Duff and Charlie got injured. Do you really want to see Ameobi playing left wing again? The best clubs sign youngsters who at first may not even get in the side, maybe year 2 get 10 or so games, builidng up each year till he's first choice. That way the lad knows his position like the back of his hand and builds up rapport's with the other youngsters and established first teamers so when they do come through the bedding in period is almost nil and we've got a 10M(random) player for next to nowt. It wasn't me saying this. HTT was the main one I remember, but basically a lot of people who now say it was wrong to sign Duff, and N'Zogbia fanboys use this reasoning for N'Zogbia's poor form. Lies! This idea is copywrite Mort/Ashley. I'd also add that it's not good enough just to pick up any old bunch of "upcoming 20-23 yr olds" and say job done. There are scouts from teams from all over the world looking for these players, and to think we're going to spot a young player's talent without a bunch of other teams also noticing is naive. So we're either going to have to pay a decent amount for a select few of these players, or adopt a scatter gun approach and get in a lot of cheapies. Either approach is going to cut into the transfer and wage budgets though, and poor choices here could end up being just as costly as poor choices in more developed players.

I'd argue with "just as important", but I've not seen anyone say getting in upcoming 20-23 yr olds would be a bad thing. According to some though, N'Zogbia's development has been held back if not irrevocably damaged by us buying a player to compete for his position, yet you'd be happy for these lads to play/start only half a dozen games? Why are you so keen to make other young players suffer this horrendous fate?

check out the clip `MARADONA Peruano - Roberto Merino` Some skill that fella has In almost 10 minutes of footage I counted 563 stepovers, 3 assists & 3 goals. Youtube showboat rating: 8/10 Youtube effectiveness rating: 4/10

Well someone's got to subsidise the new cheap seats.

To answer the thread: Can we? - Of course Will we? - Not a snowball in hell's chance Should we? - Not on this one IMO

Nice Freudian slip

Eggs. f***ing. Hactly. It's not about posting the fixtures though is it. It's about not being able to say "I think we'll beat X, Y & Z at home but lose to A & B away, maybe sneaking a draw at C". Not saying the site should pay it, just saying why it's such a pain. I'd like to think supporters and websites such as this for all clubs would be able to get together and try and make a noise about it. If the media got behind it and made everyone aware of how pathetic the PL's actions on this are, I think they'd back down to avoid the negative publicity of exposing how stupidly officious they're being. I'm sure it can't be legally right what they're doing either, it's just the fact that the mere threat of legal action causes ISPs to piss their pants and close sites down.

Yeah, anyone know when he's going to f*** off and let us get a proper chairman in? I need someone I can blame immediately for any poor onfield performances, for any transfers we make this season that turn out to be s***, and any players we were rumoured to be interested in who do well elsewhere.

So are you arguing that once you drop out of the CL places you should immediately and drastically cut your wage bill, and when you have a poor season devastated by injury you should cut it even further? Is this the stability you're after? Basing you wage bill on a single year's league position rather than an average position or level of achievement over a number of years (ie in Europe every other year on average)?

Eh, yes. That's the exact meaning of it. Using the best example out of a bunch of teams using the same approach is cherry picking. It's like using Solano as a justification for buying loads of cheap South American players and ignoring the many more cheap South American players who have failed in the Premiership. Why not compare us to Boro, Charlton, Fulham, Man City, etc, etc? Why would we have to suddenly make the debt disappear? It was manageable. The club was sustainable for a couple of years until we reduced the wage bill to a level suitable for the Championship. If we halved the wage bill (easily done if necessary after a few years) we'd turn a profit on gate receipts alone. Half the debt was manageable stadium expansion debt by the way. I'm hoping you're not going to argue we shouldn't have taken that on. Like I said, back it up with facts and figures and I'll listen. It was "well reported" that we were fucked too. Selling a couple of players whilst not desirable is also not financial ruin. I've cherry picked your post for the bits that were worthy of a response.

Everton have a large local support, their all time average attendance is on par with ours. What have their board done to harness that? If I were an Everton fan I think I'd be proud of what we'd achieved on a limited budget, but be very pissed of that we'd HAD to do it on a limited budget.

I have to say that I was shocked Arsenal's wage bill was just a few million lower than Man U's. Arsenals squad is quite big isn't it, full of youngsters like Gilbert, Gibbs, Van der Berg, Nordveit. Wouldn't be surprised if their wage bill was quite high, though they are quite strict with how much they pay in wages for individual players, this will be taken into account with how many youngsters they have on the bill. Isn't this the way many are suggesting we should go though? Most are using it as an argument on how we will cut the wage bill.

I have to say that I was shocked Arsenal's wage bill was just a few million lower than Man U's. Considering win bonuses, I'd guess their basic pay is actually higher than Man U's.

I don't think we were ever in a position where we couldn't have survived a relegation. We would have had to have shed a lot of the high earners of course, but most would leave of their own accord anyway, and this would be true of any long standing premiership team who got relegated. I think it's fair to rely on the fact that the gates would not have dropped significantly for a good few seasons; we would still get an average of 40k at least I'm sure and that would have given us time to stablilise the club at a different revenue level in the Championship. Man United, Liverpool, Chelsea, and Arsenal however are in a FAR more precarious position should they get relegated. They are in so much debt they would never be able to stablilise their clubs in the Championship, and would therefore have to either go bankrupt or go even further and further into debt until they got back into the Premiership. Even then Liverpool, Chelsea, and Arsenal would struggle until they were back in the CL (Man U's revenues are not so dependent on it, so they would probably be okay). If anyone is at risk of "doing a Leeds" it's those clubs. Of course, they're the "big 4" and that could never ever happen. On Chelsea under Bates - I stand to be corrected with facts and figures, but as I alluded to above, I'm as dubious of the doomongering about Chelsea's imminent bankruptcy as I am about ours. On Abramovich - I guess he must have wanted a bit of a challenge as we know he could easily have bought Man U or Arsenal with the money he has, and at the end of the day he would have had to spend less on them than he has over the years on Chelsea. He also must have wanted a club in London if he went for Spurs & Chelsea, as I'd have said us, Liverpool or maybe Villa were the best positioned clubs at the time which would still have presented a challenge for him. Who knows what his thinking was, he didn't pick Fulham, Charlton or West Ham though. On takeovers in general - Chelsea, Man U, Portsmouth, Villa, West Ham & Liverpool all got taken over before us. Is that a sign that they were all well run or badly run? I'm not sure what your point is. On Ashley - If he was unaware of the state of the club's finances before he took over, then that's his own lookout, but if an extra £20-30m of debt was going to seriously knock his plans, then he's in the wrong game. Relegation last season would have knocked a hell of a lot more than that off the price of the club, and conversely a European place would have added more than that onto it (to be clear I mean club worth here, not revenue). Everton - cherry picking here - there are plenty of clubs run like Everton who don't get anywhere near Europe let alone the CL. However if Everton do get anywhere near the CL it will be down to the manager far more than the board. I will say fair play to them for not panicking in that season when they went from 4th to hovering around the relegation places for a lot of the season, but it's easier to do that when you've had a few good years out of a manager and know you're unlikely to be able to attract better when you're as tight with your money as they are.

Acceptable to who? The club or Owen? I'm sure it would be acceptable to the club, but I very much doubt it would be acceptable to Owen. You not going to replace those 8 players then? Or are you just going to use YTS lads? PS You forgot Given off your list of useless players/crocks.

says the man with a picture of smith as his avatar owen has proved himself as a player whenever he's been fit, but therein lies the main problem. i agree wages of a 120 are outrageous, but we'll struggle to get anyone in who has even half his talent But you can get 2 Alan Smiths for 1 Michael Owen! It's a no brainer! Also don't dismiss the fact that these trophy players attract revenue to the club that your Alan Smiths don't (Ashley probably wears that Smith shirt because there were loads left in the club shop and he wanted to start a trend). So he pays back some of his wages in that way.

I don't know the full facts about Chelsea's finances, but if they were as close to bankruptcy as we were before Ashley, then I don't think they really had much to worry about. Yes they may have had to reign in spending for a bit (as would we), but at least they'd given it a shot (and they were lucky enough to get something to show for it). You also have to ask yourself would Chelsea have been in the position they are in now without Bates? He made them an attractive proposition for Abramovic to buy before it was fashionable. He might be an odious little individual, but you can't deny what he did for Chelsea. As a separate point, I don't think people should underestimate the massive spanner in the works the arrival of Abramovic at Chelsea was to us. We were funding our spending in a much more sustainable way than Chelsea, and they were about to run out of gas and would probably have slipped back into the mid table pack. Without Abramovic, we would probably have gotten 4th in 03-04 and in all likelihood have been in the CL the following season. With the money that generated, and the better quality of manager we could have attracted after Robson (maybe Mourinho?), who knows where we'd be now. There's a very good chance we would have been part of the "big 4" even with the shitty old board and it's lack of planning.

Cover for right back & wing? Yes on a low wage. but...