Teasy

Sunderland are one club who definitely need a billionaire owner. Short would have to subsidise them to the tune of £40m a season just to have the same cash we have normally

It's a good punt we'll lose in the play-offs! Our recent track record regarding what happens when it's time to 'stand up and be counted' is, half of them disappear. Just make sure we don't need the playoffs The difference in revenue between being in the Championship and the Premiership would be more like £50m+, which means our revenue would be double (or more) then it is now. Of course you then have the fact its the Premiership and that's the league every Football owner wants to be in (especially the crazy arabs). Even trying to sell it for £200m in the Premiership would be a bit easier then trying to sell for £100m in the Championship. The Man City lot were interested at £250m last season until the fat prick told them he wanted £450m. Of course we have less playing assets now, but back in the Premiership somewhere between £150m and £200m would get Ashley a quick sale IMO.

Maybe trying to shave a bit off the price because of his preferred bidder status? The thing I keep coming back to on this is that if I were Ashley I just would not sell now. He won't get his money back if we are promoted but he'll get a lot more back than he would if he sells right now. Ashley seems thick skinned enough not to give a s*** about being branded a liar and being hated - so why sell? But what if we don't get promoted and they have to sell off more players - he would not get £100m then. He's a gambler - and its a good punt that we will get promoted. At some point even a gambler has to stick, maybe he'll finally decided this is one gamble too far.

Which is a bit pointless considering this Saturday we carved out one or two decent-ish chances for him and he failed to hit the target with them. It brings back the whole Owen-type argument again, why bother playing the player who does fuck-all else but take chances when we're not making good chances? We've done that to death though, so we'll not do it again, unless you want me to talk about Martins for a bit. Having said that though, I reckon Lovenkrands was bullied out of the game this Saturday. He'd be more effective in the hole (ie where Nolan played against Ipswich) in front of two physical strikers, two of Carroll, Ranger, Shola and Harewood. I don't remember Lovenkrands having two decent chances to be honest. However he did setup Harewood for what should have been the opening goal.

Yeah more and more of these crazy people coming into the game should be a concern to everyone in Football. Still Moat taking us over now doesn't stop us from being taken over by a crazy money's no object billionaire in the future. In fact I'd be far more comfortable with the idea of Moat being approached by someone like that then it happening while Ashley is in charge. I mean the people at Man City already came to Ashley before they went to Man City and the fat idiot turned them down.

You say we can generate more money than most, but I don't think that will be the case any more if we make it back to the Prem. As it is, much of the money we have generated in the past has been on the back of the brand image created during the Keegan years and to a lesser extent the Robson years, through advertising, TV, and sponsorship deals. We are not that kind of draw any more. Our ticket prices are not in the same league as Southern clubs and as other clubs up their capacities, any advantages we had there will be lost too. Yes, as a city we can draw on more loyal support than most places, but when it comes down to it, will that ofset the fact that we still have to pay so far over the odds to get the best players and managers away from London, Liverpool, or Manchester? The TV money we were getting last year (£42m) and the year before was no more then a standard Premiership club, that won't change when we go back up as every club gets that basic amount (plus extra for finishing higher in the league). Our sponsorship was £4m a year, a deal made in 2004 which will not be hard to match next year as sponsorship deals in general are bigger now then 5 years ago. The other £53.4m we brought in came from match day income (£32.5m) (ticket sales, food, drink) and merchandise (£20.9m). Those two incomes are what really makes the difference between us and other clubs and that's not going anywhere next year. I agree we may sometimes have to pay over the odds for a player. But that doesn't mean we have to end up with a £70m wage bill with a team not capable of even staying in the league. Again its a case of good management, making sure that if we do pay over the odds its for a player worth getting. Also making sure that if that will put us in a dangerous position financially we balance it out by letting someone we don't need go.

I'm not sure how it can really be his fault that the likes of Lambias acted so unprofessionally. At the very most you could blame him for putting Keegan into a system that he was never likely to thrive in (if he actually picked Keegan himself.). However even then it only took a bit of flexibility and some common sense from the person who replaced him to keep things from going the way they did.

Barclays probably wouldnt authorise an overdraft when its possible the club may have to pay out 25M basically probably around what they'd be willing to give Moat. I wasn't being entirely serious like, but yeah no doubt that was a big part of it. Though as far as I've heard Ashley and co had £9m listed in the data room as the maximum they would have to pay.

So what exactly do they claim Mort did that was so bad? He didn't answer every single question he was asked?, what Chairman would? He advised the club to put in place a system that other employees of the club fucked up later on?, hows that his fault?

How do we know that Barclays wouldn't have agreed the overdraft for a new owner faster had the extra revenue from pies and shirts been coming in?

People should be wary that he has little to no experience of running a Football club. Instead they're banging on about money, at a club the majority of Premiership clubs can't compete with financially. Doesn't make any sense to me.

BottledDog, when you say we have to have competitive investment, what level of competition do you mean? Without outside money we can't compete financially in the transfer market with Manure, Chelsea or Man City obviously. But we could compete financially with any other team in the league (Liverpool are fucked financially and Arsenal don't spend silly money).

the idea is with stability and financial prudence in spending then the club can generate its own finance. Everton are an example of a club that competes at the top level and only spend within their means without the resources of a chelsea man city man u Everton are going backwards though. Going backwards or maintaining their same level of stability, ony losing their league final placing due to Villa and Man city spunking wedge left right and centre. They're going backwards, gradually. I respect Everton, a lot. I can see the way they are trying to progress, they have an excellent structure in place. But I also saw them try to keep Lescott in vain, the same will happen to the rest of their better players if their situation remains the same. Everton don't have our level of financial clout though (we'd bring in £40m-£50m more per year in the same position). Just because they've hit a brick wall they can't break without outside money doesn't mean we would. I mean how far could Everton have pushed on if they had an extra £40m to £50m per season?

This worries me. How will he fund the day to day running of the club, and how much would we have to invest in new players? I couldnt give a flying how much money he has to spend as long as he runs the club correctly, Ashley has a lot more money than were lead to believe Moat has, but how much has he spent on transfers ? Get a grip we need shot of Ashley asap, the guy is a lying bafoon of the highest possible order. When Sir John sold to Ashley we jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. We all hated Fat Fred. I want rid of Ashley as much as anyone, but I don't want the club dragged into further s****. What would Moat do differently that would drag us into further s****? If he hasn't got his own money to invest, it's not like Ashley is investing any of his, however much he's worth. only spent around a 250 millon on the club I'd guess he means now and in future rather then in the past.

I think this is true. I worry that without significant investment the best we can hope to be is a yo-yo club. I'd feel more comfortable if I knew a few more positive things about Moat and his vision/plan for the club other than that he's had a struggle to get the overdraft guaranteed and will appoint his mate Alan Shearer. Newcastle bring in far more money then the majority of Premiership clubs, so how can you then come to the conclusion that the best we can hope for is to be a yoyo club without extra cash? Why do you think all those clubs that bring in much less money then us aren't yoyo clubs? This is complacency. We got ourselves into a lot of financial trouble in the Premiership under Shepherd and Hall once the flotation money ran out. What's going to be different this time? I'm not saying it can't be done, but Moat has yet to offer anything to convince me that he's the one who can do it. Right now he's just the non-Ashley, like Ashley was the non-Shepherd. A negative rather than a positive. What's he got that will get us there, apart from Shearer's mobile number? Complacency? I'm not saying that the amount of money we make guarantees success.. All I'm saying is that lack of money is not going to be an obstacle to us re-establishing ourselves in the Premiership, because we generate far more money then most Premiership sides. How the board and manager spend that money should be our only real concern IMO. We didn't get into trouble last time round through lack of money. We got into trouble because the people running the club squandered the 5th highest revenue in the league while producing a team that couldn't even regularly finish top 10!

When we got into the main competition in the Champions League our revenue rose to £96m (from £70m the previous season). Obviously now with so much extra TV money and bigger sponsorship deals these days we can pull in £100m just by being in the Premiership (the likes of Everton bring in £70m when finishing 4th/5th). Who knows what our revenue would be if we ever managed to qualify for the CL again, I'd guess well over £150m.

I think this is true. I worry that without significant investment the best we can hope to be is a yo-yo club. I'd feel more comfortable if I knew a few more positive things about Moat and his vision/plan for the club other than that he's had a struggle to get the overdraft guaranteed and will appoint his mate Alan Shearer. Newcastle bring in far more money then the majority of Premiership clubs, so how can you then come to the conclusion that the best we can hope for is to be a yoyo club without extra cash? Why do you think all those clubs that bring in much less money then us aren't yoyo clubs?

Stability is always needed. Also while you're argument of stability not being able to offer anything but a limited improvement would apply to a lot of Premiership clubs its much less relevant to us. Of course its going to be very difficult to ever get back into the top four without large outside investment. But unlike most clubs we generate enough money to allow a very good manager and board room to get this club to the top again. For instance our revenue last season was just short of £100m. With a wage bill well above the Premiership average we'd still have plenty of money to add to the squad. You then aim for top 6 or 7 and gain further revenue from Europe/TV/better sponsorship and use that bit extra to push on into the top four. Everton have been close on far less money then we bring in and Villa haven't been spending anything that would be out of our reach and look at how they've developed with some stability and a professional board room.

But how will we compete in the top league if we are on a tight budget. There's no reason why we should be on a tight budget. The club generates enough money to give us a budget as big or bigger than all but 5 other clubs in the country (including the sugar daddy clubs like Man City and Chelsea). Significantly bigger then the majority of Premiership clubs. If you want to talk about tight budgets look at the likes of Wigan and Stoke who are getting by on a budget of around half what we were bringing in.

And what was the total cost of Shearer's time here? How about Owen, how much did he cost us again? Shay Given saved more goals than these two scored. Here's another quote from that article you might have missed At no point did I claim he didn't earn his money in his time here, well at least as much as any Footballer can earn his money. By the way why you'd mention Shearer alongside Owen is quite beyond me.

You're missing a lot of costs by putting down the wage bill and a small amount of interest as the only outgoings. Granted they're hard to include since I'm not sure were they're itemised in the club accounts, however they're obviously significant. For instance we see from the accounts that we made £26m from merchandise in 2008 but how much did it cost to make/buy in that merchandise? Only a fraction of the £26m we made no doubt but its still bound to be several million pounds. Obviously it costs to light and heat the stadium and offices though I've no idea how much. Also we'll still be paying for past transfers and I'm sure there are many other costs I'm not thinking of. We don't know what all of these costs are, but you only need to look at the revenue/wages and profit/loss from the 2008 financial report to see how significant they are. Our total income was £99.4m and our wage bill £70m, if the wage bill and interest was our only cost we'd have made a £26.4m profit but instead we made a £30m loss. Of course £8m was interest repayments on the debt before Ashley secured it (so we won't be paying that in future) and £5m was from Allardyce's payout. But even without those two costs there are £41m in costs outside of the wage bill and overdraft interest payments that we aren't seeing. While stuff like past transfer fees will reduce over time given no new transfers most of the other costs will reoccur every year no matter what. There's no way we'll have gotten all the £27m from transfers up front. At best we can expect to get it over the course of the next few years with say £12m of it being up front. Also quite a significant chunk of that initial £12m would then have had to go to pay loyalty bonuses to the players we sold.

Wages have dropped by about £25m yes, but TV money has dropped from around £50m to £20m (if we include parachute payments in that category). Only a fraction of transfer fees will be paid up front and only £34m can be included when talking about 2009 anyway (especially since the other £26m of sales in late 2008 were countered by around £26m being spent on the likes of Coloccini, Gutierrez, Xisco ect). Ticket money will have dropped by about £6m and with some of the boycotts on merchandise the £26m we made from that last season could have dropped by a significant amount (lets say £6m which is a conservative estimate IMO). If we're optimistic and say that the £34m we've made from transfers will be paid over three years (some will be four year contracts and likely paid over that entire period) so we got nearly £12m up front. That still puts us at best a few million worse off then last season (and we'll have made a hefty loss last season). Also that completely ignores loyalty payments we'll have had to make to all the players we sold this summer. EDIT I'll put my future posts in the finances thread

£100m to £150m better off then last season, are you actually being serious?!

Is he going to gamble again, invest nothing, and hope that the sqaud we have will achieve what he wants? What happens if we dont get promoted this season, or the next. Is he going to want to hang around for another 2-3 years. I will choose to believe nothing from the little shit and assume he is on the wind up. He did invest, he invested in covering the costs of our past transfers and the clubs bloated wage bill. Unfortunately he wasn't prepared to invest more on current ones.

Now I am not for one minute suggesting the old board were anywhere near as bad as Ashley (they clearly weren't) but I seem to remember lists of reasons why "fat fred had to go" and obviously this billionaire fella was going to have us back challenging for Europe. I don't know all the ins and outs but the one constant I have read is Mort trying to get enough investment to take the club over which is what causes my worry. What if he does take over and we don't get promoted, will he be able to afford us running at a loss for another season, will he be able to keep the players and reinvest to push for promotion again next season? He might well be able to do all these things, these are just my concerns. I want Ashley and his mob out as soon as is possible, but only if its going to be an improvement. For all fat freds faults and there was plenty of them, he tried a lot harder to achieve something with the club than ashley ever will (alot of the current money problems are his fault). We can only hope that Mort and his backers do have a sound plan to run the club, rather than ashleys jobs for the boys method. Like has been stated already if we get taken over before January and a small investment is made by Mort's lot then the money we make from the prem status will help us progress and stablise. If we get promoted under ashley can you see any investment coming from him, or will he use the money to remove the debts and hope for prem survival ? Anyway this is all based on a huge assumption that mort will be the new owner. I have no faith in Ashley doing anything to take this club forward, I am just worried about someone else taking over who doesn't have the resources to take us forward (and maybe even slip further back) if we don't make it up this season. This is all assumptions based on what I have read in the papers but then a forum would be a bit quiet without the occasional discussion from an assumption. My fear is Mort as a fan is thinking with his heart instead of his head and gambling on us going up first time without a real "plan" on what to do if we don't. Cannot disagree with any of that, but at this point in time i personally (not that we as fans get much say) would risk Moat ( ) over a future thats as bleak as i can remeber in my years as a fan. Not too sure many would turn Shearer down as manager and he's a fan, and can we afford to snub Moat because he's a fan ? Don't think anyone's saying being a fan should preclude him from buying the club, what people are saying is that they are worried about whether or not he's got the financial (or otherwise) ability to run the club after having bought it. Just look at Portsmouth for what can happen if someone can afford to buy a club, but not run it afterwards. Do we want that to happen? Obviously not, and I'm not saying that's what would happen if Moat takes over, but it is a legitimate concern for people to have about him. Major difference between us an Pompey is income I'm guessing the point you're trying to make is that we usually have a higher income than Pompey and therefore everything's going to be just fine, well none of us have the slightest idea if it is or not. So simply saying that we have a higher income than them is neither here nor there really. It's much more complicated than that. If he took over and we failed to get promoted then and only them would it be of any concern. There's little comparison between us and Portsmouth (as Premiership sides) financially and even Portsmouth have only been left in the position they are because of extremely poor management at all levels. I'll say it again, if you're going to be worried about anything with Moat then be worried about his total lack of experience in running a Football club, not how much money he has which is of little concern as long as he runs the club well.