Teasy

So this week we'll hit those odds since Hughton will still be in charge and for the second week running? Also Keegan must have won the lottery 16 times in the last 8 months Sorry just being pedantic but its not actually true is it

You say overrate, but tell me who else at the club can score goals like Owen can? well mate, for a start, how does the performance of our other strikers relate to Owen's ability? as for your question, Viduka is basically a 1 in 2 man when fit, the rest cant really compete just yet although Martins and Xisco are well on the way (like Xisco a lot, saw him a bit last season) Owen is our best goalscorer but that doesn't make him a world class footballer, far from it. He isn't even a world class goalscorer really, not when you look at the records of certain players. Remember, cousin Michael has never hit the big 20 in a campaign Owen's overall club record is better then 1 goal every 2 games, the fact that he hasn't scored 20 Premiership goals in a season is down to the fact he's rarely played a full season, in fact I doubt he ever has. Also its hardly fair to use being injury prone against Owen and then give Viduka the benefit of "when fit". As for Viduka vs Owen, here's there overall record in England: Owen - 1 goal every 1.92 games Viduka - 1 goal every 2.43 games And in the Premiership only: Owen - 1 goal every 1.98 games Viduka - 1 goal every 2.47 games And for Newcastle: Owen - 1 goal every 2.42 games Viduka - 1 goal every 3.71 games When both are fit Owen's easily the better striker, very easily now that Viduka's getting on. Owen's record also shows that he's a world class striker IMO.

Says who?

It doesn't work like that unfortunately. A club with next to know debt could increase dramatically in value (beyond the value of the debt that has been paid off). In theory, our value could come close to Man Utd and Arsenal because although we don;t have as much going for us on the playing side, when people invest or buy a business they normally look at the financial side first and foremost. Paying off £110 of debt cannot raise the price of a business by £300 million, our value is nowhere near Manures or Arsenals mate, being free of debt isn't that important..

Care to explain how paying off £110m of debt, isn't subsidising the club? I've heard about 4 different amounts now The guy paid the debt off to maximise saleability. The debt we had was stable, like most of the other top premier league clubs who are in large amounts of debt (Arsenal, liverpool, manu). He paid that debt only because when he bought the club that action triggered the debt to be paid, as you say it was a perfectly stable extremely long term debt, like a mortgage on a house.

That's three potential buyers two of wich have complained that Ashley isn't prepared to negotiate. There's nothing wrong with having a set price and sticking to it but when you are asking for double what most analysts consider is reasonable, you would at least expect some give and take. Ambani flew back complaining it was impossible to reach Ashley to have any meaningful discussions, now the Arabs are saying Ashley won't even listen to lower offers. He's certainly not desperate to sell that's for certain. That happened before the club was up for sale.

One poor and rather unlucky result against Hull doesn't mean we're relegation fodder all of a sudden for fuck sake! We had eight first team players out but we still created chances and scored a goal. By the way some are talking you'd think we've just gone on a 6 game losing streak or looked absolutely hopeless against Hull, neither is true. With a few players back (the likes of Gutierrez, Martins ect) we'll do ok even if Hughton stays as caretaker for the rest of the season, there's nothing at all to worry about on that score. As it is we might have a new owner tomorrow for all we know, so lets not panic there either.

I don't remember a mass protest on the level we've seen at Newcastle over the last couple of weeks no, have I forgotten it happened?, seriously?

Maybe it would have been as easy to get Ellis out had you actually tried to remove him, just a thought there. As for the last line, does not compute just about sums up your point. You seem to be saying that because some people think he's a business man with no attachment to the club they shouldn't complain about him actually being a businessman with no attachment to the club, how does that make sense? Those people simply feel that they've now been proven right.

Of course he's not willing to lose the whole lot, do you think he's f'ing mental or what? We're talking about hundreds of millions of pounds here.

All the same aren't they? At least funded by the same guy. The fan buyout is the most appealing, IMO. Similar to the Barcelona set up, hopefully. Difference is, Barca fans generally aren't charver morons. Yeah I'm sure all Barca fans are geniuses.. they speak Spanish after all so they could never be idiots And Catalan. See, they speak two languages, they're fucking geniuses I tell you!

But I'm being serious!, honestly!

All the same aren't they? At least funded by the same guy. The fan buyout is the most appealing, IMO. Similar to the Barcelona set up, hopefully. Difference is, Barca fans generally aren't charver morons. Yeah I'm sure all Barca fans are geniuses.. they speak Spanish after all so they could never be idiots

That Hitler video has one funny bit about McClaren, the rest was pretty unfunny IMO.

Probably because he was told he'd be attacked which to be fair is embarrassing as fuck on us lot. How can you be embarrassed by someone saying something about the fans? "Manure fans will try to murder Fergie tomorrow", oh I bet they must be really embarrassed now!

He paid over the odds at the time when he spent £134 million to buy the club (that was a premium on share prices). He paid off £70, er £80 million, er sorry he now claims £110 million in debt. If we were in a similar position as when he bought us logically we'd be worth about £230 million. But we're currently in a worse Footballing state, fans want him gone and we're managerless. We probably are only worth about £200 million. At best he could ask for a premium over and above our real worth, but a £180 million premium is just a little bit over the top

Exactly, and in the past I would have believed Ashley. Now after all the bollocks that's come from his mouth I don't know who to believe.

Do we still believe the "club could have folded" line though? I mean I have no doubt that had Ashley not paid that money the club would be in big trouble. But that amount was only payable immediately because he took over! Otherwise it was payable over many many years like any mortgage. Don't get me wrong, its still good that its paid, but it doesn't mean that the club was in massive financial trouble before he took other.

Indi, yes they took out loans to pay for a stadium extension and for transfers. I get what you're saying, but I don't understand how it changes my point. I think we're just misunderstanding each other here. This stems from James post asking how a fans consortium would afford to pay for the likes of wages ect. My point was and still is that Freddy Shepherd didn't "afford it", so why would a fans consortium need to? Shepherd used money generated by Newcastle United and took loans out in Newcastle United name to pay for things, he didn't do it personally. Mike Ashley came in and found that because of the contract the Halls had with the bank any new ownership meant that the stadium mortgage had to be paid off straight away. Which is not a situation a fans consortium would find themselves in. Everything to do with actually running the club is still being paid for by Newcastle United Football Club, not Ashley personally. I mean I understand that technically because the stadium mortgage is linked to revenue at the club and so in turn running the club Ashley did sort of pay for past costs. But do you see how that's really beside the point I was making?

Of course there are only a certain number of Champions League places, there are only a certain number for Liverpool and Chelsea, only those same places for Man City to go for as well, but you don't see any of them saying "why bother?, we might not make it". I'd rather be in a position of finishing 5th and actually having the chance of finishing top four or better then languish in no mans land with no chance of going anywhere, wouldn't you? It don't get how wanting to compete and at least have the chance of Champions League or even winning things is stupid just because it might not happen, nothing is ever guaranteed, the only thing that's really stupid is not trying for fear or losing.

The likes of Owen's fee may be spread out like that in the accounts, I don't know so I'm not going to argue about it. Either way if you spend big in a season it will still increase spending that season. Due to the fact you then have past transfers still being paid for plus the new ones. Each season players that were still being paid for will drop off the books and if you're not adding big fee's to the books in those seasons then you're going to start saving.

You think we managed to get all, or even many, of our transfers to be little up front and spread of many years? I don't see it as likely, most deals will be a significant portion up front with the rest spread over a few years.

How exactly does that mean I have no point? Yes we'll still be paying instalments for some players. But its inevitable that the largest single payment will be paid up front, and it also doesn't change the fact that our revenue will now be at least 20% higher then it was then because of the new TV money.

We didn't have Champions League Football for the season our last revenue data comes from, which is what I'm basing this off, our revenue was £88 million. The season before when we had no European Football at all it was £84 million so yes we can say that no Uefa cup Football loses us a few million but not anything significant. Add the extra TV money and we should still be well over £100 million at the moment. I'm not saying its easy to dramatically increase revenue, I'm saying that there's no reason to believe a fans consortium run properly should have any more trouble doing it then any of the owners we've had in the past. I'm also saying that at the end of the day everything is paid for from the club, none of the owners before have made charitable donations so I see no reason why a fans consortium should be at any disadvantage financially. Note I'm not arguing that I think this consortium would work, it'll probably never happen and if it did it would have to be organised extremely well and have the right people behind it, even then you have fans in control to a degree and that could be a disaster. Who knows, I'm only talking about financial stuff

Revenue doesn't stay static, for instance our revenue will have increased quite a lot recently with the extra TV money. Also any board, not just the likes of Shepherd or Ashley, can go out and do things to bring extra money in, which then increased revenue. We were spending more then we were bringing in because we were spending quite a lot on transfers, our revenue covered our wages, operating costs, repayments on loans with money left over.