Teasy

That's what I was getting at earlier, just didn't phrase it that well. So if the 'real' loss is £2.5m, are people justified in claiming Ashley should have spent more on the first team? It wasn't the real loss in cash terms. We went from owing £70 million at 30th June 2007 to owing £100 million at 30th June 2008, increasing to £110 million after that. If you forget amortisation (which is a perfectly good concept btw) and all that and just focus on Ashley's cash position it puts it into perspective. £30 million of extra cash was stuck into the business for the club to (at best) stand still. where do you think that's gone, considering wages only went up £5m and player trading only cost half a mil net? is it a case of one-off costs associated with the takeover or is the club just not being ran all that well? I posted this earlier, it's the best I can do given the time and information at my disposal. It just shows where the cash went under fairly broad headings. Cash flow in basic terms: Operating cash flow - £5 million (ie cash loss on day to day business) Finance servicing costs - £8 million (mostly interest on loans now paid off) Net capital spend - £21 million (net spending on assets, haven't had time to look closer yet!) Loan repayment - £70 million (obvious) Total out = £104 million This was financed by : Ashley £100 million Overdraft £4 million Total £104 million cheers. the £21m looks like the key figure. the debt repayment is switching to a more favourable lender (ashley), £8m no longer applies and as we wont be paying that we shouldnt really be making a loss. wonder what the £21m has been spent on, something to do with 'the system'? Players as well I thought players fee's were only included as assets which are then depreciated over the course of his contract? How can they also be included as a seperate cost? Or am I misunderstanding what you've just said there?

And I maintain that no, the squad has not improved, since the personnel isn't as balanced as it was, and since players reaching the end of their careers are getting older. We have replaced players without considering whether they would fit in. Jonas is an impressive player, but he creates nothing (he's got 3 assists, as many as Shola, James Milner has 5). Guthrie is fine if you consider he's young and cost very little, but he's also mediocre and creates nothing, and tends to go missing. Our midfield is worse than it was last year, and so are our strikers, since Viduka is no longer able to contribute anything. Forget how many assists Milner has this season in a top 4 side, how many did he get for us!

Wow. Interesting. Well if there is one thing no one can accuse Mike Ashley of, it is letting players go on the cheap. Every player sold under this regime has brought in more than I thought they would. For £12 million I would have to say bye bye Given. No point having the best goalie in the prem if your defence and midfield are dodgy. He'll make 5 odd world class saves a game only for us to lose 3 - 0 anyway! It's stupid. Why is that more then you would expect to get for him? You describe him as the best keeper in the Premiership who can make numerous world class saves yet you expect him to go for less then Wayne Brigde?.. what the fucks up with that? How many 29 year olds who have played only 21 games in two years and scored 7 goals get transfered for £14 million, the rules have changed, certainly when dealing with Man Shitty.

Definitely. I think it just might be too, as there is no way they would even dare to offer £5 million cash straight up. Why not? It's worth a go, he is 33 after all. My concern is that by the time they up it to closer to £8m for which we'll sell IMO, we'll be left with too little time to spend it as happened with the Milner money before the last window closed. He's 32 actually, he's in his prime and should have around 5 or more years left in the game, more time then the likes of Craig Bellamy IMO. Its not worth a go, its an idiotic offer that has no chance of being accepted. Also if we end us accepting £8 million I'll fucking flip out! That's a pittance for a player like Given.

Why the fuck aren't away goals counted in the carling cup!

Not sure if this helps: Yes but why not instead just look at what we paid for the likes of Coloccini ect vs what we made on players sold at the same time. That's a better indicator of real money lost and what Ashley might have had to put in himself to keep the club debt free. The fact is amortisation doesn't reflect real losses in this particular year. As in the £17.8 million "loss" did not actually require Ashley to spend £17.8 million, because its a paper loss based on depreciation of players values who were bought 3 or 4 or even 5 years ago. Cashflow my friend Of course its obviously the right thing to look at long term when looking at the health of the company. What I'm saying is that people here are talking about "oh we made a £20 million loss, so Ashley had to spend another £20 million to keep us out of debt" but that's not the case. The majority of that loss was in effect a loss in value of the club due to a loss in value of assets. No money actually had to be spent to cover this loss.

Not sure if this helps: Yes but the fact is amortisation isn't useful when looking at what we actually made or lost in 2008 or what Ashley may have had to spend to continue to keep the club debt free. As in the £17.8 million "loss" did not actually require Ashley to spend £17.8 million, because its a paper loss based on depreciation of players values who were bought 3 or 4 or even 5 years ago.

If we don't sell him and nobody offers that much then I'll agree that nobody would pay £15 million, obviously. But I'll still be of the opinion that he's worth more then Craig Bellamy

No one is going to pay £15m for a 33 year old keeper who usually isn't even noticed when he's gone. What on earth is that supposed to mean? By the way, 33 for a keeper is like 28 for an outfield player. Any club who's willing to pay £14 million for a nearly 30 year old Craig Bellamy (who could barely play 20 games a season at 24) should have no problem paying £15 million+ for a nearly 33 year old Given. Selling him for £8 million is a joke.

You make it sound like this is the first season we've been fighting relegation. At the end of the day, id rather fight relegation without the debt then i would with it, if anything im grateful for that. Ill wait till the 1st of Sept, ive seen enough to suggest he did want the best for the club, who knows if he does now, imagine paying all that dosh and still having shit slung at you, how would that make you feel? I didn't make it sound like this was the first time we've fought relegation at all, if I'd wanted it to sound like that I'd have said that. Also I'd certainly rather be doing well in the league with our debt then staring at relegation with the knowledge that if we avoid it this season its almost a certainty next season. I'd rather live with risk then have no future, which is how it seems under Ashley.

Yeah its great to have those debts paid off so we can compete in the market for players and move forward as a club.. oh hold on we now spend fuck all and we're closer to relegation then ever before.

In one of the statements released by the club, they said something like 'club was still hemorrhaging money' or something along those lines, so are all the debts gone? I think the debt still exists its just owed to Ashley instead of a bank, probably with no interest attached (which is exactly what Roman did at Chelsea). The club may well be haemorrhaging money. We lost £12 million in the year to July 2007 and in that year we had European football and good attendances. Not much has changed to the cost base since then. Same overheads, same high wages etc. But the income is probably down since then so a loss is likely. And the only person who can fund that loss is Ashley. In answer to the thread - No. He's a chancer who hit the jackpot when he floated a dodgy chain of sports shops and thought it would be the ultimate toy to own a Premiership club. He had no idea what he was buying, didn't understand the importance of the club to the city of Newcastle, underestimated the ability of the fans to see through bullsh1t and he hasn't got a clue how to run it. Our best bet is somehow we survive and he finds a buyer in May. If the debts have been paid off then we won't have the same overheads, considering those debts were costing us around £8 million a year (can't remember the exact amount). Plus Premiership TV money has gone up by £20 million a season since then.

Hopefully Carroll smashed the little twats face in.

Ryan Taylor? He only turns up against us so what's the point in signing him unless we want loads of own goals?

Problem is who the fuck would want to come to us :-[ Too many players to list. In case you haven't noticed we're still a Premiership club with a bigger reputation then plenty of other teams in the league. Most players won't have a clue of the state Ashley's got this club in.

For fuck sake you lot come on back to reality, Kaka will not sign for Man City in a fucking million years no matter what they offer him. Get a grip!

*gulp* However what also needs to be mentioned here is that last season at this stage we went on to get only 3 points from our next 8 games.

I think our defence had improved a lot until the injuries. Even now, with some nasty injury problems we're a better team then the one that lost 5 games in a row under Houghton. Is that impressive?, not particularly. But that doesn't change the fact that TF seem to have forgotten how utterly hopeless we were under Houghton, we lost to the Spuds for fuck sake!

Spot on.. oh no wait, its actually total bollocks. But lets not let that get in the way of proclaiming how spot on they are. I agree with the rest of it though

It's a pity Leeds had a clause in his contract which gave them 50% of the profit above the £5 million we paid to them for him. According to who?

A player's worth whatever his club is willing to sell him for. If nobody's willing to pay that amount then he's not worth that amount.

Where's the money gone then? It's gone where the £1.1bn Ashley has lost in the past 12 months has gone. So it hasn't gone anywhere then?

It's not the £100m transfer fee, of course they can spend what money they want. It's the quoted £250,000-£500,000 a week wages. That's absolutely pathetic. Some footballers will be lucky to make that in their entire career tbh. It'll ruin football because no matter how well players like Kaka play on the pitch, they'll make nearly 2-3m per month regardless. you can't blame the players for the inflated wages though I don't, my problem is with Man City but they're not doing anything wrong. They're offering to give a player 26 million pound a year, what's right about that?! It will corrupt football. This is a real test of just how far we've come in these past few years. If Kaka signs for Man City, it'll just confirm what many have worried about - that football is dying and just like anything else it's about money. If Kaka really cares about football, he'll stay at Milan. It's a better club, better league position, Champions League football etc. Man City are nothing atm. I don't like it anymore than you do, but who's to judge what they spend their money on. this type of thing has been happening ever since football became professional, just that now it has reached enormous levels. the more the game brings in, the more that will go out. But that money isn't coming from football.

So you honestly think the likes of Hull and Stoke haven't had performances like that?

To be fair the Hull and Blackburn games were at a time when we were manager-less and would have lost to anybody, we even lost to the Spuds back then! Wigan, Stoke and West Ham is a different matter though, we should have gotten much more then three points from those three games.