80

...and I hereby christen her the good ship Greedy Cunt. May God bless her and all the bigger clubs she insists on leaving us for.

To your first point- there is a cash flow statement to that effect. The idea of financial statements is that they tell you different things. The first and most important is the cashflow statement, but you can't judge a business solely on its cash. That can be manipulated as well. As to the second- yes, depreciation models are not perfect and are open to manipulation like other accounting methods- cash included. That's what the auditors are paid to check. Don't disagree. As I said in the earlier part of my quote, there is potentially some kind of purpose in using it to look at things. It's just that the contracts of career footballers are about as far removed as you can get from being one of those purposes. The de jure and de facto can end up laughably and dangerously far apart, like with Messi's paper value, or our squad's high value following our relegation against Villa (which effectively masked a lot of damage to the business). In fairness, I think VI was more just explaining the situation rather than arguing for it, but in the intrinsically variable and subjective valuations of football's commodities, amortisation just doesn't serve as a healthy gauge if your key criteria is reliability. Which is why it always gets trotted out as a figure and immediately denounced as not properly reflecting the situation by those same people who introduce it (I'm thinking of in the media, rather than on here), which only helps to confuse debates. As you say, auditors are paid to look at the underlying reality, unless you've got a volunteer army of them on an internet forum like here.

You definitely underestimate yourself.

No one can tell you you're right or wrong for sure at the moment. Ultimately it's about belief. Only time will help tell. Doesn't look too retarded to me, for what it's worth.

Aye, they were trying so fiendishly hard to conceal the fact that the club made a small profit that they announced in advance of the accounts being released that the club had made a small profit. It's true enough. That's why I find it odd/interesting he's chosen to contradict himself.

Amortisation is based on the value at the end of an intangible asset's life. In the case of a player's registration, that is worth zero because the player can leave on a free. If you take a physical asset costing £10m which could be scrapped for £2m and had a life of 4 years- then you would count £2m depreciation (more or less same thing, but for tangible assets) per year until it was worth its scrap value at the end of its life. It is simply a way of allocating costs over long periods. If a company spent £100m on new kit that would bring them huge revenues over 10 years- why should they suffer a huge loss in the year they bought it? This method ensures that costs and benefits are fairly allocated. This is also not what a player is worth- its just what is on the books. We're at liberty to sell a player for more or less- it's purely an accounting methodology. Fair enough if we're talking about equipment and vehicles etc but it barely relates to the value of a footballer if at all. The idea is that this is an objective accounting methodology, which also allows to spread costs predictably. If you are going to adjust your books according to an estimation of a footballer transfer value, how do you decide what value to put in? Footballer market value varies VILDLY throughout time and depends on so many unpredictable and non-objectivable factors, it wouldn't be a good way to run a business. Predictability and reliability is key in accounting. Yes, but it remains open to being predictably and reliably divorced from reality. Not disputing its commonality, or potential purpose in certain spheres (such as classification of business activities), but in truth we all know it only really serves to obscure the view of someone trying to seriously analyse a set of accounts. Going back to that business with the £100m machine that will (supposedly) boost long term income beyond that figure, it's only the immature who would really need that outlay artificially broken down and spread out so that they could 'understand' the affairs and prospects of the business. It's more sensible to understand that it's currently (relatively) cash poor due to infrastructural investments which it's hoped will pay of well in the long run, instead of pretending it's not really got a ready-money problem at the present time. It would only not be a good way to run a business if you weren't very good at running a business. (probably why the old Board completely hamstrung themselves, incidentally...) Again, returning to the scrap value idea, the assumptions in amortising such an investment leave the business open to all kinds of problems if, for example, metal prices plunge at around the end of the item's life due to completely unrelated political issues in Asia, and there's suddenly a £1.8m hole in the company's books that had been hidden by the 'helpful' accounting procedure. I do like the way amortisation has been seized upon to suggest that we're still making an operating loss by Llambias.

Shola Ameobi, Hammer of the Mackems After he dies we need to carry his bleached bones at the head of the team when they come out onto the pitch for derbies.

I like them

Dey tuk ur ahlands.

Better question - why not?

I have hope but my faith is being tested. The fact yet another set of pikey cunts have won something, like Birmingham last year, guts me actually, when I think about it.

I never alter the scores the mods do it all now. You were better at scoring than some of them...

Loaded dice, no game. You've gotta work for this one. No low-hanging fruit.

It scored two or three... That's when the thread went a bit mad. Think of Carroll breaking our captain's jaw. Really boils down to whether you get away with it... Way I see it - if Dalglish wins the FA Cup and/or gets in the Champion's League and gracefully retires, he wins. Finish the season and retire without any more success but with enough for his media mates to still support him and we'll call it a score draw.

Letting bitterness get in the way of reality. Think we've not won anything for so long a lot have forgotten that winning actually counts for something. Take the long term view and half the world will be glossing over all the 'controversy stuff' and will just remember that Dalglish brought a 'long-awaited' trophy back to Liverpool, something more than we've managed in 43 years. Otherwise we might as well just give Parky a hattrick because Suarez looks like a fucking Alpaca, Kuyt has been doused in prison acid and Gerrard's probably a cuckold.

Fingers poised...

And say what you like madras, but Freddie would not have presided over our slide following Keegan's appointment. He was/is a lot of things, but he would have made different and better decisions at the dozens of different times which could/would have prevented us going down (given the margin of it was so tiny even despite our complete shambles). Incidentally, and this is largely just a faith-based view, I really believe Shepherd was going to try and run the club in a way hugely different to what had gone before, and I'm a bit sorry for him that he never got the chance to show whether that was true. I'm not saying he wouldn't have found a new way to fuck it up, but in the same way he'd always do the opposite of whatever hadn't worked before (dour frigid racist, languid cosmopolitan black man, native grandad, cocky bully), it seemed like he'd had a big change of perspective and was going to try and do things the right way (this being the opposite of the previous method - the wrong way). Less panicked and costly chops and changes, more 'legacy investments', value purchases and scientific project managers (headed up by Allardyce, please don't laugh).

tend to agree I date it to the introduction of transfer windows and Dougie Hall running his family's wider business into the ground. The Summer of Bowyer and Belgrade followed soon after. Suddenly the thick fuckers thought they could get away with not buying anyone by just lying (to Robson as well as us) and saying 'we're going to buy loads' up until and during an open window, knowing they'd be 'forced not to' at other times. The (absolutely major) issue of 'should we back or sack Bobby? I dunno, let's do neither' was also related.

Can't say for sure as an outsider but every indication I've seen is that that's not the case. Believe Arsenal could have a vastly better squad if Wenger had spent really pretty piffling money on certain types of players, who he seemingly thinks would 'taint the purity' of whatever failed project he thinks he's still pursuing. Maybe the most damning thing I can say about Wenger is that if he had the chance to buy a 26 year old Martin Keown for £3m today, I think he'd sooner be sick. And yet these were the players he completely venerated after spending a couple of years with them and built his success upon, as others have said. Just think how different he's appeared since Ferguson got the better of him a few years back compared to when he first arrived in England. Wrapped in a sleeping bag, on his knees, face twisted and fists beating the ground when they conceded yet another late goal vs. 'the professor' of the 1990s. Said it a long time ago and feel I've been proved right, he should have left years back for his own good. Think he'd have been much better off if he'd got some wind in his hair and started something new somewhere like here.

':mackems:'

Can only imagine certain people in this thread are either employed by Mike Ashley or have their very own pages dedicated to them in DSM IV.

Total Network Solutions. Red Bull Salzburg.

Yeah Merson you twat

Krul is the best we've had, I'm pleased to say. Never rated Given as highly as some admittedly, but at his best he was a pocket rocket - great reaction saves, flying along intercepting 30 yarders and the like. But Krul offers those - still love thinking back to that Palermo header, it was one of the most in non-goals I've ever seen - and more, not least as I think he's a better character. Given was a bit of an old woman.

Moscow in the final would've been a lot tougher than people make out nowadays. Nobody was that confident at the time, they'd spent massively. And it wasn't a complete capitulation against Lisbon - half a dozen injuries midmatch and a f***ing idiot referee saw us off. That's what I mean. The injuries which led to our capitulation were something that could only happen to a club that's cursed and destined to never win any thing. That's why it was so soul destroying. Ah right, got you, thought you meant we'd surrendered like last night. Yeah, Nut's just put it well, it got Newcastled.