80

unlucky there wasn't the season before ? Given the way we started at Old Trafford, I think that wound was self-inflicted. yeah one game proves a lot. Plus the end of the previous season.

those that were offered it. th rest stayed as no-one wanted them or wouldn't meet their prices. Exactly. In that way we were lucky, as I think if he had the choice Ashley would have sold off more players, and we may have struggled to get promoted. Forced ambition if you like. This season we've only had an average injury list, and not all at the same time, so it hasn't impacted us so much. The players still with us who got relegated have done far better than most expected. Tiote was a good piece of scouting no doubt, but there's also luck that a player who was a sub in a Dutch team hit the ground running in the Prem, and we were especially lucky with the way Carroll developed, as going into the season our strikeforce looked terrible. so surely the things that have gone against us must be unlucky then or does it only work one way ? I'd expect a mixture of good and bad luck. This season aside from a few injuries, it's mostly been good luck on the playing front, and most of the players have hit good form. When we got relegated there was a bit of bad luck, yes, especially with all our strikers and attacking midfielders playing poorly at the same time in the second half of the season, but we should never have been in the position where a bit of bad luck was enough to get us relegated. That took help from a lot of poor decisions from the management. For a club of our means, a season of bad luck should mean a bottom half finish at worst. but it's not luck either way that the majority of our squad stayed due to being on high enough wages to put everyone else off. It wasn't luck that got us into that situation, no, it was down to Ashley's choice to give them those contracts. But once there I'd say it was fortunate (form our point of view as supporters) we were somewhat hamstrung in who we could easily dispose of, as given a free choice I think Ashley would have let more go. Clubs might have preferred to buy Coloccini and Jonas ahead of Martins and Duff... Then where would be have been? Martins and Duff would have raped the Championship. If they'd stirred themselves from the physio room.

As it's no longer a PLC, what gives you the impression that the club have any need to disclose this information? Whether it's to a fan or to a competitor, the club will simply tell you that it's "sensitive commercial information" and then smile politely (if that). They don't need to do that and it wouldn't be a great sign about their intentions, though...

Very little IMO. Had we stayed up most of the big earners were still in line to leave. The main difference is we could have kept the players on lower wages like Bassong, or at least made money from them. As it is because of the relegation we lost £30m cash and all the profit from players like Bassong and Martins, so in effect we lost nearly £60m in cash and assets. Yes we've come back up with a leaner wage bill (maybe £10m less per year then if we hadn't been relegated), but our debt is now significantly bigger. Club debt has stayed the same as ashley forked out for our losses in the championship. Club's debt has risen. It's just that our debtor is our owner. It still will be paid back, and makes it harder to be sold.

Do you think that Ashley (or Llambias) is aware of the tremendous fillip the team spirit contributes, and further, how easily and quickly that could be eroded by continually transferring the better players out whilst crossing ones fingers about the players transferred in? So far we only have the sale of Carroll to hypothesise on, sales preceding that one were at a different time and under different circumstances. I am uneasy as he (Ashley) can be such a loose cannon, but am prepared to wait until the end of the summer transfer window before I make any deductions about what the future holds. Nope. They come from a different world, more Apprentice-style shouting, bullshit and betrayal than teamwork, loyalty and contentment. There was an epic culture-clash between Llambias and Hughton.

He lost £30m through that despite bringing in £30m in transfer money and cutting the wage bill in half. How did he not find it so bad then? But what your suggesting would turn us into a highly efficient little club. You seem to think that the advantage we hold over other clubs in revenue and stature will always be there no matter what. Mirror West Brom over the next 10 years and our name/stature and revenue will drop to their kind of levels. 1) He found it survivable, less personally abusive, and was given time and space to consider how it could have been even easier if the club hadn't been in an appalling financial position well before the relegation had taken place. 2) No, more a highly efficient club with sizeable resources run on his unusual terms. I think you're too pessimistic about the footballing future of the club run in this way, I don't think we'll share a similar league status even if run in a similar way because our natural and currently existent strength mean we can pay wages and attract players who will see us survive more often than not instead of yoyoing every season. Had things turned out differently, Ben Arfa might have been the difference between relegation and survival for us this season, whereas he would never have signed for them last Summer and it could be the difference between them staying up and going down themselves. So we'll have to agree to disagree on that. And to say once again because it doesn't seem to get through, what I think of our future doesn't matter, and neither do you, because we're looking at what Ashley and Llambias think.

I'll try and keep this short and sweet given my prior post. My fifth point above regards this, essentially. I think they'd largely disagree. Personally, I think there's a significant but not spectacular risk regarding long-term squad morale. I think staying in the Premiership is far more achievable than you do, though, as is maintaining a positive transfer balance so long as you keep any footballing ambitions in check. As such, so many of the worst ramifications need not come to fruition, with people being suitably thrown off the scent by occasional cup runs, cracks at European spots and maybe even one more emulation of Hughton's Heroes down in the Championship. The key is supporter attitudes. My point is they've come to be of the view following our relegation that our entire financial-strategic outlook can rest upon a bedrock of a large turnout on the terraces, people turning out to support the lads if not the Board, and people locked into long-term deals when they thought things were looking up. I hope they're wrong, and I appeal to people to prove that. There's no guarantee of success, so the value may well not increase that way. Beyond that, the logic doesn't much add up. It's hard to find good players but we'll sell the good players we have now so that we can buy more of them. And then we'll keep selling them so that we have the money to pay their wages. And we'll do that without raising the wage bill to competitive levels in such a way as to make the club unprofitable again. And we'll do that while still not having a guarantee of success so that if it all goes wrong we might have a bunch of overpaid, under-motivated players in the squad, just like 08/09. And we might well increase our debt to him, meaning he'll have to ask for more money from potential buyers. I say that of course because even if we don't relegated, you make the point that it's hard to discover brilliant players, especially in a shit team, so we might go through a few seasons with no big sales to cover the four and five year contracts we had to offer players the market had previously valued as being European calibre. And someone will definitely offer him more money than they would now for the privilege of owning that situation? This is the lower-risk strategy? Even compared to just taking a few respectable chunks out of the club's debt to him so that any potential buyer won't have to offer quite so much money to him up front as he has previously demanded? Seriously? The higher you go, the more revenue can suddenly drop, suddenly sickening a previous healthly ratio. Only Milner and Martins came before him, the first in an Ashley-esque relegation raid on Leeds. They and the others still demonstrate that there is money to be found in transfers - I'm just pointing out the £100m or so that he's invested in the club (I don't know how many times the £220/250m figure needs to be removed from the debate on his investment) starts to look a lot smaller when offered that context - nothing like 8-10 seasons away. You're right that a lot of money made early on was there to cover lost revenue, not make clear profits, but they demonstrate what can be done both in lean and plentiful times - and in the latter it's all profit. He's now stopped having to put money into the club, so if he keeps behaving the same way he can take it back out instead.

1) Other clubs are run with other ambitions. In footballing terms, there are clear restraints to what I'm proposing, so it will not be popular with everyone. 2) There's been a semi-artificial barrier of fear between clubs and relegation from the Premiership. Ashley was forced through that and found things need not be so bad. 3) Strategy is contextual. It's not only about aims but means. We're the stupidest big club in England, not a highly-efficient little club, which makes us nice to own. There are a number of 'tweener' clubs who float between the top two divisions and are financially healthy, but not necessarily hugely profitable. This is because they tend to have lower or less loyal supports, and are less attractive as clubs, lacking the stadium, reputation and history that the average 20-something footballer will be even vaguely aware of. It may not mean a huge amount, but it does at least mean something for Leon Best to play in our colours, and even mercenaries will recognise St James Park as being a bigger stage to showcase their talents in. Combined with our essential financial muscle, we play by different rules to all but a handful of clubs (and they're generally already successful, so their owners don't need to think about ways of recouping their investment even if that was their only interest...). 4) It seems I can't stress enough to you how much the plan I identify is centred on minimising risk. Profit is a bonus, albeit one he's likely to get and will be delighted to receive. His main aim, however, is never to stretch himself in such a way that creates the risk of serious loss, with only smaller, more affordable risks taken for potentially massive reward (the ones where winning some and losing some see you coming out massively ahead - e.g. Routledge (no loss) and Tiote (big gain)) 5) Just because you think it's not a sensible approach to running a football club, just because lots of people don't, it doesn't mean Ashley and Llambias agree. I reckon Llambias, the day to day decision maker, in particular reckons they're uncommonly savvy guys who know how to pull moves and have a lot of good ideas about the game. (This is more for the Teasy post I haven't addressed yet)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/8595655.stm If we finish mid table, and with the high number of games we have on TV, we should easily get over £50m. Poor old Ashley, with income like that there's no hope for him getting his investment back. Aye add that to the almost £50m profit the club has made in transfer fees since 2006 and things are indeed pretty grim for Mike 'Oliver Twist' Ashley. He must have loaned the club £130 million for fun then. Its amazing how many times this kind of thing needs to be said isn't it? People seem to see money signs and forget the money that needs to be spent running the club, especially during a promotion season. Its amazing how often it needs to be pointed out that the future is not the past, and that television money has gone up and outgoings have gone down. Did he need to loan the money? Yes, no one suggested otherwise. Can he get it back? Yes.

It's Llambias that brings the sick to my mouth.

It is so blatant from everything we've seen that neither he meant a slight against the likes of Williamson nor that the likes of Williamson will take offence at these comments. Can't believe some of the sentiments. It's obvious he's referring as much to contract renegotiations with the Tiotes and Enriques as anything else. I think it's established that Barton himself is prepared to take a wage cut himself, indeed I think the contract is virtually there to be signed - it's just that recent events have thrown things into a little doubt, as he explained. It's fine to take an unproven, grateful player in on the cheap, but when he's given good service and proven himself to all and sundry, he's due more. It's the culture, it's the way of things, it's the market in action.

those that were offered it. th rest stayed as no-one wanted them or wouldn't meet their prices. Exactly. In that way we were lucky, as I think if he had the choice Ashley would have sold off more players, and we may have struggled to get promoted. Forced ambition if you like. This season we've only had an average injury list, and not all at the same time, so it hasn't impacted us so much. The players still with us who got relegated have done far better than most expected. Tiote was a good piece of scouting no doubt, but there's also luck that a player who was a sub in a Dutch team hit the ground running in the Prem, and we were especially lucky with the way Carroll developed, as going into the season our strikeforce looked terrible. so surely the things that have gone against us must be unlucky then or does it only work one way ? I'd expect a mixture of good and bad luck. This season aside from a few injuries, it's mostly been good luck on the playing front, and most of the players have hit good form. When we got relegated there was a bit of bad luck, yes, especially with all our strikers and attacking midfielders playing poorly at the same time in the second half of the season, but we should never have been in the position where a bit of bad luck was enough to get us relegated. That took help from a lot of poor decisions from the management. For a club of our means, a season of bad luck should mean a bottom half finish at worst. but it's not luck either way that the majority of our squad stayed due to being on high enough wages to put everyone else off. It wasn't luck that got us into that situation, no, it was down to Ashley's choice to give them those contracts. But once there I'd say it was fortunate (form our point of view as supporters) we were somewhat hamstrung in who we could easily dispose of, as given a free choice I think Ashley would have let more go. Clubs might have preferred to buy Coloccini and Jonas ahead of Martins and Duff... Then where would be have been?

unlucky there wasn't the season before ? Given the way we started at Old Trafford, I think that wound was self-inflicted.

I like how we've gone from being a "trophy signing" club to being a trophy sale club, and it's being spun as a good thing. IMO Ashley's been as lucky as f*** this season and last. We'll see how it all pans out in the future, and if we do well in the next couple of seasons I'll give him credit for it. FWIW I hope you're right about the direction of the club. They say there's a first time for everything. I agree that Ashley has got lucky in the last couple of seasons. He should thank the players and Hughton for that - if they didn't have such a good team morale, personal pride and collective responsibility then we could have seriously struggled if the attitude of the players when we got relegated had prevailed. lucky ? we had the best squad in that divison last season. We were lucky they weren't the worst. Attitude is a gigantic determinant of success, and one of our futures was laid out before us at Leyton Orient.

I think I'm right in saying he's attended a respectable number of games to be fair, especially given his circumstances - plenty of locals with less to their name. I didn't know he was a Southerner until you told us he was. It's not as though he supported Chelsea last week, Man Utd the week before and is just playing political games on here for a laugh, though. Saying that, I suppose he's more mental than most Cockneys to be hanging round here getting belts given he hasn't got £200m at stake. Not all Newcastle supporters are season ticket holders, in fact most aren't. That's not the point, imagine someone without kids of their own telling you how you should be treating your own kids "for the better of society" - you'd be aggrieved that they had the barefaced cheek to do it. I'd say a better analogy would be your brother offering you advice on how to help your son who's getting bullied at school... Even if you disagreed, you'd hopefully know his heart was in the right place for his nephew.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/8595655.stm If we finish mid table, and with the high number of games we have on TV, we should easily get over £50m. Poor old Ashley, with income like that there's no hope for him getting his investment back.

Eloped with his heart. Fucking little cunt.

But he might see it and start to cry

No, because the club now has the value of the player in cash form. Hypothetically, if someone bought the club from him tomorrow, they'd also effectively be buying Andy Carroll's value (either in terms of an available balance, or more likely reduced debts). So the value of the club need not be reduced by selling players. (Fyi, there's more to that conversation regarding possible club value outcomes following a player sale) It would of course be stupid to sell all the competent players at once, which is why I don't think I've seen anyone suggest that. But bleed it steadily, say by removing a couple of top class players per year and hoping internal development and good scouting will make up most of the shortfall, that definitely can be achieved. Of course that reasoning only works IF the team is kept as successful as before those players were sold. As obviously the value of a Football club is more then simply the value of its assets minus its debts. Trying the sell off the clubs best players every season, and replace them with more players you can sell for a profit the following season while keeping the club in the Premiership sounds like an unbelievably difficult way of going about getting his money back. Do you reckon he believes he can do that for the 8-10 consecutive seasons necessary to get his investment back?.. Would he even want to spend that amount of time slowly dripping the money back into his personal account? Surely the better way would be to try his best to improve the value of the club, through financial stability and improved performances on the pitch, to the point where he can sell it on. As hard as that could be its not going to be as risky or arduous as your suggestion. I don't see why you A) think he has any other option for getting his money back faster or in as risk-free a manner. First of all, what I'm suggesting will improve the financial stability of the club - it will be run in such a way as to see very few monetary skeletons in our closet should bad fortune befall us. At this point I'd like to make clear there's a difference between financial stability and prosperity. Now that said, I also believe this route can continue to improve the club's financial prosperity. What you suggest, improving performances, presumably with a view to out-competing the well-funded top 7 and gaining revenue from European competition will 1) cost money, some would argue a lot of money, even just to retain our good players like Andy Carroll, and 2) add risk - that is to say there's no guarantee such an investment will be successful when there are patently a lot of richer, more enthusiastic club owners around who would want to do the same thing. It's the law of marginal returns - you tend to have to try a lot harder to get increasingly small rises up the table. Such investments could go wrong... who knows, we could end up with the 6th (iirc) largest wage bill and 18th best club again like 08/09... And that is a nightmare for him. Far more profitable to scout well, pick up lots of hungry hot prospects, or damaged goods (Ben Arfa), and try to add value to them and strike gold with 20% of them (Carroll, Tiote), while hoping to get acceptable performances out of the others (Williamson, Best). It won't be easy to maintain a high/consistent rate of success for the team with this policy, no. I think even he knows that, although he makes such shit judgements you wonder sometimes. But the realistic ideal scenario for him is to go through success cycles that run along the lines of 'lean year (15th), good year (8th), lean year, good year' etc. The fundamental value of owning a well-supported Premiership team would be retained, with the additional benefit of not employing anybody on wages intended for more than a severe relegation battle because so soon as other clubs notice they're worthy of earning a great deal more than that they will go elsewhere. A certain quality and consistency will be maintained by a section of club stalwarts (a supine but steady manager who signed up to this future or knows he'll not get a better position/proving ground for himself anywhere else, for example...) so as to keep the club's business as coherent and smooth as possible. Now that said, we may go down eventually. These things happen, he knows that better than most. But we will be designed for relegation - playing staff and a financial situation that can survive it, like West Bromwich do (relegation doesn't always equal oblivion, of course). Furthermore, he knows we have better reserve finances (his personal wealth) and believes we have the best-supported relegated team in history, so that he won't actually lose money in the mean time and, maybe with an extremely modest investment (Routledge £1m+ish), can power back out of the Second Division without too much fuss soon enough afterwards and return to the land of profits. If he thought our attendances would ever collapse to the standard or even below average levels of other clubs, he'd have a lot less phlegmatic attitude to the risks of relegation, and would accordingly seek to handle this club differently (almost certainly by trying much harder to sell the club and reducing his over-inflated asking price - because try as they might, sellers don't get to dictate the sale value in an unhealthy market, just ask a real estate analyst...). But so long as he can rely on 40,000 paying him Premiership ticket prices in the Second Division, he doesn't have to worry. B) Why would it take 8-10 seasons? Remember he'll get a hefty amount from the sale of the club, he doesn't have to recoup every penny he spent on buying and financing the club through player sales. It's reasonable to imagine he can get (very conservatively) £60-70m for the club, if not £120m or much more... It was the loans he wanted immediately repaying in full to him which held things up last time. £12m for James Milner, £9m for Oba Martins, £8m(?) for Sebastien Bassong, £35m for Andy Carroll, £8m-16m for Jose Enrique, £20m for Tiote... soon adds up. Across four season (allowing for the latter two), that's not bad going. As I say, I'm not suggesting he only can or will make money through player sales - run in an efficient manner, a handsome profit can also be made from standard yearly operations. The aim would be to have a trend-buckingly low wages-profit ratio. I want to make clear, he isn't guaranteed success with this strategy - because players and supporters can put a stop to it through our own actions. Whether either group will though is another question.

What I didn't get with that was his assertion that it woud be good for Enrique and the club to wait til summer. I can get the Enrique part... but the club? /actually thinking about it, it may have just been to take some heat out of any criticism of Jose's decision? Fair play if that was the case, just seemed odd at the time. Maybe, but hypothetically it would also it would be a big contract to support in the Second Division. Sign him up and risk getting lumbered, would be the idea. Whey, yes, that would be another way of looking at it. Get to bed man On the same train of thought, with a slightly more positive spin, it would maybe in Pardews eyes give us more leeway with Ashley to offer him a far bigger contract once we're safe than we can at the moment - so we could hold onto him. G'night! You never know... according to Johnny.

What I didn't get with that was his assertion that it woud be good for Enrique and the club to wait til summer. I can get the Enrique part... but the club? /actually thinking about it, it may have just been to take some heat out of any criticism of Jose's decision? Fair play if that was the case, just seemed odd at the time. Maybe, but hypothetically it would also it would be a big contract to support in the Second Division. Sign him up and risk getting lumbered, would be the idea. Whey, yes, that would be another way of looking at it. Get to bed man

Certainly not leaving the players' sides

What I didn't get with that was his assertion that it woud be good for Enrique and the club to wait til summer. I can get the Enrique part... but the club? /actually thinking about it, it may have just been to take some heat out of any criticism of Jose's decision? Fair play if that was the case, just seemed odd at the time. Maybe, but hypothetically it would also it would be a big contract to support in the Second Division. Sign him up and risk getting lumbered, would be the idea.

I wondered about that. But... well.. we'll have to see. I fear you've correctly predicted the outcome of that initiative. If they were designed at least partly with a view to staying here, I think it was a misjudgement to make the comments quite so raw, though.

Sorry, misread your post, particularly this bit - "so if the aims of the club's government and its team's members diverge, problems could arise". Hopefully that's not what we're seeing. Tthe lads out on the pitch still look to be working for each other, fingers crossed both they and Enrique keep it up until the end of the season. It would've been cool if you'd edited that a bit quicker