Teasy

I'd bet our wages have dropped a decent amount after the last transfer window. But certainly last time these kind of stats were released we had the 5th highest wages in the Premiership. However it should also be remembered that in the same season we also had the 6th highest revenue in the league!..

Who wants him back?.. is nobody the answer?

I found it strange that a few months back Ashley stated that he paid off the debts so that "today Newcastle United doesn't owe a penny to anyone". Yet today he says we're still in major debt..

He does very little for free apparently. Well he's done less then very little as ambassador so that must have been for free then

My opinion on Shepherd hasn't changed at all, has anyone elses changed really? The only reason I wouldn't go mental is the fact that he'd be an employee this time, not an owner. Too many stupid decisions and he'd be gone whether he liked it or not.

So why do they want freddie then? Because they obviously can't run the club by themselves with no footballing experience. Although he's a fucking clueless idiot, Shepherd has experience of running a football club. To be honest a sackable Shepherd wouldn't be bad, he's got the connections and experience in the game, this time around too many mistakes and he's sacked, that could make all the difference.

Really? Anil Ambani has a personal wealth of £22 billion...

Hmm, not sure anyone's going to pay that, doubling your money with the club in the state its currently in seems just a little bit too ambitious to me.

Well he paid £134 million for the club and paid off £70 million deb so that's £204 million. But having spent nothing on players so far he'll have recouped over half of that £70 million from club revenue. So I'd say £250 would give him a nice little £70-80 million profit. Not an amazing profit for the money, but if he just wants out with a profit now surely it would do. If he wants out and has instructed his people to sell the club but expects a profit close to £300 million then he's a fucking idiot!

Wise's signings?, the blokes got no idea where to find players. Vetere will have found all of them.. How could Keegan have stayed and signed a fullback and attacking midfielder when he left after the transfer window closed?

Some of the worst idea's I've ever seen.

Hows that? We had 8 first teamers missing (yes we all hate Smith but I'd play him ahead of Ameobi), that's something almost no squad in the league could cope with. Its the same amount of missing players that's fucked up Manures start to the season.. So yeah I agree our squad isn't good enough to cope with losing 8 first team players but that doesn't make it not good enough full stop IMO.

this is gonna be an avoid going down season at best mate, "doing something" is on the bus to another city along with his friend "enjoyment" slog time i'm afraid Nonesense, lets not get stupid ok, we had massive injury problems, ones no club could cope with. Yes we still should have beaten Hull, but lets face it our luck was also injured yesterday... Martins, Gutierrez, Beye, Viduka, Enrique, Barton, Duff, Smith Get most of those players back and we've got a good team and a good squad, one that will not be troubled even by the thought of relegation.

Of course, he's the best person for the job, the candidates we're looking at to replace him or quite frankly pathetic. Most people here seem to be using the reasoning that he walked out so if he came back he'd just do it again. If the likes of Wise stay at this club any good manager with any integrity at all will end up walking out within a year anyway.. once they're sick to the back teeth of being undermined.

Of course it does.. The value of the club when Ashley bought it was lower partially because of the debt, paying off that debt raises the value of the club.

How is it any different? The Abu Dhabi people have already admitted that we were on there list ahead of Man City. So they obviously didn't come to Ashley and say "name your price". Also Shiniwatra was hardly in a position to haggle..

If that's what he's said then it doesn't really make much sense to me. A time when the fan base is up in arms and protesting against the man you want to buy the club from is a great time to buy. All of a sudden you're the conquering hero, which means people will be a lot more inclined to give you a chance.

Unfortunately Tsunami you're exactly right, some fans here are happy to cheer the balanced books at the expenses of any hope of success on the pitch. We've gone from a team who were challlenging at the top, to a team who where challenging for Europe, to a mid table team, to a team that's statisfied to remain in the top division. This clinging on to the hope that we'll be another "Arsenal" is fanciful in the extreme. Don't think anyone's happy with that scenario, the thing is most people don't believe that's the case at all. Personally I think the team and squad has been improved and that if the new appointment isn't a disastrous one we should finish at least mid table. If Keegan was still in charge I'd say top 10 at least with a possible top 8 finish.

How many businesses do you know where the customers can set their own prices? The gist of those against the 'Master Plan' seems to be let Keegan sign who he wants for however much it takes. Does M&S operate like that cos I think 50p is more than enough for a sandwich, the bastards are surely ripping us off? That analogy doesn't work at all. The situation would be more similar to customers complaining that M&S were buying there stock from the cheapest places possible with less concern for quality then for saving as much cash as possible, despite the high prices for those products to the consumer. NOTE that personally I don't believe the signings have been poor or that effort hasn't been made to spend on quality players.

Thought they said they had no interest? Now they've withdrawn that lack of interest

Is £16 million not 'some money' like?

Milner was unhappy with his wages, a contract he'd signed only a year earlier with 3 years left to run. An offer came in for him which we turned down. As you say Milner then saw that as an opportunity to get a raise. We turned his proposal down, which was the right thing to do IMO considering he'd just had one of his worst seasons only one year after signing his last contract. Milner asked to go and we got a fantastic offer, so we accepted it. To say that we decided to move him on to pay for the likes of Coloccini, or that we'd budgeted for selling him, just isn't fair at all IMO. There's really nothing at all to support that conclusion.

Bassong struggled at Coventry?, not really.

We can probably assume that the new TV deal has taken our revenue up to around £100 million (looking at it optimistically) and that our wage bill will probably have dropped a bit. But that still means over half of the money we make will be going on player wages. There are then also plenty of other costs (cost of the merchandise we've sold, wages for none playing staff, energy costs ect). There's no way we've come out with £60 million a season spare, maybe £30 million at a stretch. Still enough to spend the cash so you're point stands, but to be honest I think money has been available to spend on the players they see as the right ones.

Who says he did?, we got a striker. we didn't at the time the left back thing came to light. unless of course he knew we were getting a striker,who it was and was happy with it ? Obviously he wanted players in a few positions and was told that certain positions would be filled, left back being one of them.