you aren't going to hold him wanting his money back at some point against him are you when he's been effectivly keeping the club going for the last year or two are you ?
That depends on how much of the extra debt we’ve accrued since he bought the club can be attributed to his mistakes. Taking money out of the club to pay for his mistakes would certainly be of dubious morality.
using the same criteria i wonder what you think of shepherd ?
Unless you count the stadium extension as a mistake (£45m of the debt), then the remaining debt left at the end of 15 years of Hall & Shepherd was around £25m.
In the year prior to Ashley's takeover we were without the advertising revenue that Ashley complains about, we were paying the instalments for players like Owen and Luque that Ashley also complained about, we spent net £10m on new players, and we were also paying interest of £7.5m. In that year the debt increased by £9m. That is the context for the loses in cash terms when Ashley took over.
In the first year of Ashley's ownership due to a new deal for prem clubs, TV revenues went up by £18m. If things had continued to be run as they had the previous year then even with another £10m net spend and a slightly increased wage bill the club should have easily broken even or made a cash flow profit and paid back some of the debt.
Going from the figures in this post: http://www.newcastle-online.org/nufcforum/index.php/topic,69123.msg2330046.html#msg2330046
As of May this year the debt stands at something like £134m (268-134 cost of club) + £36m overdraft = £170m
That's an increase of £100m in 3 years, or £33m per year, and that's before you even start to look at the quality and depth of the squad when he took over to what it is now.
So Ashley has put more debt per year on the club than the old owners racked up through 15 years of mistakes taking us from a club on the brink of the 3rd division to being one of the richest clubs in the world. Please don't try and tell me these losses are due to the mistakes of the previous owners, because the stadium debt had to be paid off, because of some missing advertising revenue, or even because of Michael bloody Owen. They are purely down to how Ashley has run the club and "turned around" the finances (he sure has!).
The idea that the moment Ashley came in all club losses were his fault is very flawed, I think this quote from NUFC-Finances is fitting here:
"In summary what Shepherd left was a club that was losing over £30m a year, had debts of £70m, had no assets they could borrow more money against, and had a set of players on long, lucrative contracts. Ashley can get rid of the debt but the £30m annual losses with over paid players will take longer to sort out."
No doubt he fucked things up big time by getting us relegated, but the losses in the first couple of years I'd place mostly on Shepherds back.
