Teasy

i thought he was nowhere to be seen, especially in the first half. Do you think the invisible man set Harewood up for that chance in the first half like? because creating one chance in 45 minutes justifies someone as being "dangerous"? No, but it does make him somewhere to be seen..

i thought he was nowhere to be seen, especially in the first half. Do you think the invisible man set Harewood up for that chance in the first half like?

I'd tip Harper to score ahead of Smith.

He'd probably be much more likely to score from left back then as part of a front two No way should Nolan ever start up front for us when we have Ranger, Carroll, Lovenkrands and Harewood all fit. He hasn't got the mobility and gets too easily marked out of games, he's also no good at hold up play. In midfield he's marked less and can break into the box late which is what he's best at. He definitely has to be in the team at the moment, but putting him up front as part of a front two would totally neutralism any threat he has, just like every other time he's played up front this season. Either we play him in midfield or we play him as part of a front three (or a five man midfield with Nolan in between the strikers and midfield).

Nolan doesn't score goals when he plays up front though, he's not even a handful. He scores his goals from midfield, all he does when he plays up front is lumber around and waste a place in the side.

I'm not sure how that works, its something I've asked before but nobody seems to know. I do know its £264m, of which an unknown amount is spread across the 24 teams but I've got no idea how its distributed. For comparison the Premiership is £1.8b distributed to 20 teams. this is how it works "Revenue from the agreements will be split according to the Football League's television income distribution mechanism, meaning 80% to the Championship, 12% to the League One and 8% to League Two. So clubs in every division will receive more than they currently do once the new deal kicks in. For clubs in League One, the incentive to gain promotion to the Championship becomes even greater." Ah right, so that clears up how much money actually goes to Championship sides (£211.2m over three seasons). But I wonder how that's distributed within the league? I mean obviously it has to be based, to some degree, on the number of times each team is on TV. But is there a basic rate plus bonus for being on TV plus extra for final league placing or what?

You're equation is missing one important part, profit. I didn't mention anything about attendances being irrelevant. Obviously bigger attendances minimise the clubs losses. But the fact is the losses are continuing which makes the idea of Ashley hanging onto the club as he fills his pockets completely idiotic. If he's hanging onto the club then he'll be doing so to try to sell it for more if/when we're promoted. How do you know he's losing money? If we lost £20m (was it) in the last set of accounts... And we've gotten rid of £25m off the wage bill. And earned £25m in transfer fees (say...half of that up front.) And we got the parachute payment so the TV money isn't vastly reduced. And we've released 3 new strips. Isn't it possible he's not losing money this season? We lost £30m in the last published accounts. £41m in TV money has turned into £14m in parachute payments. We're currently 15% down on attendances (£5m). That's at least £32m down without even taking into account the fact that we're going to be down in merchandising as well. £25m less on wages and £25m paid in installments over the course of the next few years really doesn't cover all that. What a pity Ashley is so dumb he didn't realise a relatively small investment in the team would have kept us in the PL. Or is he dumb...? He's so thick he didn't even realise that an even lower level of investment in a half decent manager without almost fatal health problems would have kept us up

So £32m down and £50m up. Not sure about the merchandising claim either, given that we've got 3 new strips out this season. No mate, £32m down that we can count (merchandising WILL be down, you don't sell less tickets yet more merchandise..) and £25m plus a fraction of transfer fee's minus loyalty bonuses up All in comparison to a season when we lost £30m. So as you can see there's no way in hell the club isn't losing money this season.

I'm not sure how that works, its something I've asked before but nobody seems to know. I do know its £264m over three years, of which an unknown amount is spread across the 24 teams but I've got no idea how its distributed. For comparison the Premiership is £1.8b over 3 years, and obviously 4 less teams. Though I believe the £42m parachute payments per season comes out of Premiership money.

You're equation is missing one important part, profit. I didn't mention anything about attendances being irrelevant. Obviously bigger attendances minimise the clubs losses. But the fact is the losses are continuing which makes the idea of Ashley hanging onto the club as he fills his pockets completely idiotic. If he's hanging onto the club then he'll be doing so to try to sell it for more if/when we're promoted. How do you know he's losing money? If we lost £20m (was it) in the last set of accounts... And we've gotten rid of £25m off the wage bill. And earned £25m in transfer fees (say...half of that up front.) And we got the parachute payment so the TV money isn't vastly reduced. And we've released 3 new strips. Isn't it possible he's not losing money this season? We lost £30m in the last published accounts. £41m in TV money has turned into £14m in parachute payments. We're currently 15% down on attendances (£5m). That's at least £32m down without even taking into account the fact that we're going to be down in merchandising as well. £25m less on wages and £25m paid in installments over the course of the next few years really doesn't cover all that.

You're equation is missing one important part, profit. I didn't mention anything about attendances being irrelevant. Obviously bigger attendances minimise the clubs losses. But the fact is the losses are continuing which makes the idea of Ashley hanging onto the club as he fills his pockets completely idiotic. If he's hanging onto the club then he'll be doing so to try to sell it for more if/when we're promoted.

What a maroon Constantly amazes me that some people are still living in this fantasy world were Ashley is making money from the club.

I'd be very happy with challenging for the top 8 for a while and even if things aren't going well enough to progress further we'd still be in a position to be taken over by the next crazy spenders

Liverpool may have spent small this summer but they've spent a bomb in recent years. I don't know the net spending but 25M on Torres, 18M on Mascherano and 20M on Keane all in the space of a year is a level of spending most other clubs have no hope of competing with. You could also say they spent £18m on Johnson and £20m on Aquilani this summer and that looks like the kind of transfer dealings most clubs couldn't compete with, but there actual spend was still only £4m. In the past they've been in a position where they could spend big, the debt Gillet and Hicks have put on the club have stifled that. Obviously we won't be able to compete with Liverpool in the transfer market anyway because players will choose them ahead of us. But I do believe only Man City, Manure and Chelsea would be totally out of our league financially.

Bought for £0 apparently by a bloke nobody seems to know anything about.

Access to massive funds is what i said was required, Target of the mega rich is also what I said... It was a genuine question. Man City, Chelsea, who else has a mega rich owner or is being targeted by them? Sorry my bad. In answer how about Liverpool, Arsenal, Portsmouth, Birmingham, West Ham, targeted/owned by mega rich. In addition of course to chelsea, man city. Throw in Man utd financial clout and were out of the top eight and europe if thats how the game is going. Having a rich owner doesn't necessarily give the club access to massive funds though. For instance despite Gillett and Hicks having lots of money they aren't significantly subsidising Liverpool (some might say Liverpool are subsidising them) they spent £4m this summer. West Ham are owned by a bank who will not be significantly subsidising them and they'd need huge subsidisation to be out of out league financially (as would Portsmouth and Birmingham). People seem unable to find out how much money the new Portsmouth owner has which is hardly encouraging for them. Carson Yeung at Birmingham certainly isn't mega rich (nowhere near as rich as Ashley). I'd say Manure, Chelsea and Man City are the only clubs with really big money behind them, the only clubs who we wouldn't be able to compete with financially in the transfer market should we go back up.

We're going to have to wait a long time to see like, the 2009 report won't be out until January. I'm just not seeing where the turnovers going to drop off significantly. TV money will be the same (in fact it'll be £10m higher). Our ticket sales are only down 20% in the Championship so I can't see them being much under £50k as long as we're in the Premiership. Also Merchandise is pretty much linked to ticket sales.

We didn't need to spend £72m per year on wages to generate that turnover though, or spend £16m on Owen for that matter. Obviously you should spend all the turnover (there's no point in savings in Football) but its how you spend it that matters. While Shepherd was spending over £100m a year to get us where we were (nowhere) other chairman were spending half that to finish above us. Do you think people would have stopped turning up if we were in Everton's position just because we didn't buy Owen or pay Viduka £80k per week? If you spend £100m wisely it should not only be enough to keep generating that amount per year but enough to grow that revenue.

isn't that to have the same turnover. don't mistake high turnover with good finances. No I'm not talking about the state of either clubs overall finances. Rather the total amount of cash the club brings in. Everything else is dependent on good management rather then billionaires after all. Basically I was just saying that to match what we can normally spend per year in the Premiership (whether that's spent on wages, player transfers or whatever else), Short would need to subsidise them by £40m.

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.