macbeth

I really am sorry if I seem to have put words into your mouth. I try not to. NE5 does it with me all the time and I hate it, so sincere apologies if I slipped to his level. I will answer anything you want me to. The question you seem to feel I know, I'm sorry but I genuinely don't. If you are asking anything about dividends then my position is that they are generally wrong, and they are particualrly wrong in the case of NUFC. The people who run the club should make thier profit on their investment through improving the business and therefore increasing the share price. The current board have rewarded their ability to make a loss of £23m by giving themselves dividends of £35m. Dividends on profits is understandable, nearly justifiable. Divis on incomepetence is taking the pis*, or robbery. If you say so..... Here we go again, my last attempt at getting a proper reply from you on this subject. Dividends I'm not really interested in dividends that much, although I hadn't reailsed they'd taken £35m in dividends in the last 3.5 years. They have taken £35m since the club has been a PLC. In 2003 they took 8.5m, in 2004 it was £4m and in 2005 a further 4m. So roughly the money required to replace Shearer with Owen I suppose that's the price of being a PLC though. Wouldn't it be great if the club wasn't a PLC, although I would wonder why the club didn't spend copious amounts of cash on players when previous people ran the club, assuming they weren't at that time paying dividends. Don't spend any time on that paragraph though, as I said, I'm not that interested having accepted a PLC plans into it's budget the paying of dividends. You can disagree if you like but imo successive managers have been adequately backed financially to produce a successful team irrespective of the money that has gone out in dividends. Football We were talking about wages and the concept of bringing in players in summer 2003, at which point you made the assertion (or clear implication at least) that the club missed an opportunity by not bringing in more players during summer 2003. We weren't talking about whether £8.5m spent on dividends would have been better spent on another player. I actually have no doubt you know what we were talking about. I'm asking you why you think it a good idea to increase the wage bill in summer 2003 by bringing in yet more players despite the documented fact the club had already strengthened the squad by bringing in 3 players in 2003. I'm asking you why you advocate spending yet more money over the £43m that had already been spent in those previous 32 months given how you try to put across an idea you believe in prudence, regularly using a lack of prudence by the Board as a stick with which to beat them. If the club could not afford to bring in players in 2003 then it was the correct thing not to bring them in. I absolutely agree with you if that is what you are really asking me. The board judged that the club could afford to spend £8.5m that summer. With hindsight they were wrong. The club could not afford tod spend that £8.5m, it is a major contributor to their being an overdraft now. If it was wrong to spend it on player(s) it was wrong to spend it on pension contributions too. If I am to be accused of double standards then you must be too If the club could afford to spend the money then you must want it to go on the team. Otherwise you are saying Douglas Hall's pension fund is more important to you than your football team. I'm pretty sure, unless you are Hall or Shepherd family member, that you do not believe this. Try not to refer once again to how much better it would have been had that £8.5m been spend on a player. That's not the answer and also don't tell me that I'd prefer the club paid dividends than bought players, that's the type of argumentative s**** I expect from mandiarse and isn't what I expect from you. I'm surprised that you view team -building as something that stops when you reach the top 4. Why do Man U and Liverpool keep investing ?

the only people sellign shares were the Halls anyway ?? whay was the dividned necessary, apart from to prop up the failing Cameron HAll business ? Dividends without operating profits is unheard of actually...... NUFC 2001 Op loss 5m, dividends paid 4.4m 2005 op loss 9m, dividends 3.9m If interest is included then there are more

the only people sellign shares were the Halls anyway ?? whay was the dividned necessary, apart from to prop up the failing Cameron HAll business ?

I really am sorry if I seem to have put words into your mouth. I try not to. NE5 does it with me all the time and I hate it, so sincere apologies if I slipped to his level. I will answer anything you want me to. The question you seem to feel I know, I'm sorry but I genuinely don't. If you are asking anything about dividends then my position is that they are generally wrong, and they are particualrly wrong in the case of NUFC. The people who run the club should make thier profit on their investment through improving the business and therefore increasing the share price. The current board have rewarded their ability to make a loss of £23m by giving themselves dividends of £35m. Dividends on profits is understandable, nearly justifiable. Divis on incomepetence is taking the pis*, or robbery.

I used to spend too much time on the RTG sunlun board explaining to them how bad Murray was, and how good Sheperd was in comparison. I had the financial results for both clubs, and could argue any fact that any mackem came up with to try and defend Murray. (Well all except one).[/quiote] I know you did, I saw you, although not quite so much as you claim. Anybody with any sense knew that letting 20,000 people in for nothing-half price would curtail future progress, rather than be the "caring club" they claimed to be and crowed about. I pointed this out to them once or twice. Those who whinge on about our own ticket prices should look at this, but I doubt that they will. Thank you for admitting that between 1997 and 2003 you were happy with the way the club was run. We won't mention again how I found an article by you in 1998 in the Mag whinging about dividends. That would be the "one thing" highlighted above. When a mackem came back and suggested that our board were bleeding our club of money I really had no answer He could hardly be worse, Murray was like our own ex directors. Those who advocate the removal of the current board, or just Shepherd, took take such remarks as further proof that there are a lot worse out there who could take over the club, as I keep pointing out. You also admit, as has also been pointed out, that the clubs current slip in fortunes began around that period which was accelerated by the appointment of Souness, which agreed was a disastrous appointment, but in the real world - especially in football - this happens to the vast majority of clubs in fact, as there are only 2 winners per season, unless you are prepared to accept that european football is fairly successful too, in which case we haven't been losers, but fairly successful. You so live in the past. You wish to compare our team, and our board witht he worst examples you can think of. So the board today is better than Murray who you fel "could hardly be worse". It would be like me suggesting Luque is better than Fereday, or Carr is better than Bruce Halliday. We should be aiming higher. I love th e way you just dismiss the appointment of Souness by Shepherd as just one of those things that happens. Of all the thingsa chairman has to do the key one, th eonly one that really really matters is to get teh correct first team manager in place. To get that decision so badly wrong, and for you to just shruig and say "this happens" just beggars belief. If he had gambled on a seemingly bright young manager and got it wrong, or gambled on a relatively unknown foriegn coach and got it wrong, or gambled on a manager who had seemed to have been successful elsewhere and got it wrong, then in all these case it could have been understandable. He didn't though. He used all his wide football knowledge, all the things he knows form having doen the job for years, all those contacts throughout the game and appointed Souness. You shrug. The rest of us wonder what the chairman gets his £10,000 per week pay for. Our fairly successful side, is now steeped in mid-table mediocrity. In four years we drop from CL qualification, to scrambling for an Intertoto place. The players have changed, the managers have changed, the only constant is the chairman. I don't think that paying 1m for Solano is overspending or a panic buy. Check your facts. Owen is a replacement for Shearer even though he cost a lot, or approx 1-2m more than Shearer, 9 years later to be precise. If he comes back and scores goals nobody will give a toss about the fee, surrounding him with players good enough for him will be the problem. Luque was bought as a direct result of Souness's bad decision to offload Robert and Bellamy, otherwise he would not and should not have been needed. Likewise, Boumsong was a bad choice to replace Woodgate. The total price here is approx 35-37m quid for those 3 players. plus Faye. I think the 16-17m paid for Owen is by far a much safer buy than Luque and Boumsong, as I believe somewhere that somebody has said that this "missing" 17m quid was the transfer "overspend". The manager chose those players, and the chairman backed him. I understand that Owen is the Shearer replacement. The big question that it raises though is why did the expense cause such a massive dent in the club's accounts ? Didn't anybody spot that Shearer was getting older? Didn't anyone think to actually start saving for the day his body finally gave in? The club did have the money available to them. Over the previous 3 years over £16m was gven away to shareholders. The club had stored money away for a Shearer replacement but the colapse of Cameron Hall meant it was more important for the money to go toi the Halls than in to buying a replacement for Shearer. My choice would have been to spend the money on Owen, you seem to believe Douglas Hall deserves it more. I accept we will never agree on this. Funny, but I don't blame either Shepherd or Murray for backing their managers, the fact Murray survived at the mackems for so long without doing it is amazing and it is notable he got away with it only until they saw how much we had improved by doing so, that caught up with him. In my view it is the manager's fault for choosing the wrong players rather than the chairman not backing their appointments. If Boumsong had been a suitable replacement for Woodgate, and Luque likewise for Robert and Bellamy, we would still have been knocking on the door of the Champions League and may even have won a trophy, so nobody would be giving a toss about the fees. What role do you actually see the chairman doign then?? Does he have any responsibility for the way things turn out? He just says to the manager, "Yes we'll buy him, I know we cannot afford him, but if you want him then that's okay". Madness. Wouldn't it be better to have said "this is how much we can afford, you can have what ever you want within what this club can afford". Shepherd seems to be d"oign that today, or the bank is anyway. If you don't compete with the other big clubs you will never have a chance of matching them, that is without question. It is interesting that some people slate the board for not buying Miguel for instance, rather than Carr. Is this not the same principle as choosing to back the manager when he gets it wrong, or are people simply moving the goalposts depending on how successful the player is ? Maybe he is. But stooping to buying players like Kevin Kyle is what happens when you stop buying good players to show ambition and keep the ones you have. He is the quality of player we have replaced the likes of Beardsley and Waddle with, when we also had a s*** board. And how do you view our last two signings of Sibierski and Bernard?

Gateshead 1935-36 : played 23, 12 goals, also played one FA Cup game In one of these games he played against Carlisle in a 1-1 draw, the Carlisle goal scorer being Bill Shankly. His last game was on 4th January 1936- a 2-0 defeat away at Carlisle

A Newburn lad, Jack Allen rosze to fame away from his native Tyneside and did not play for Newcwastle until he had seen service with Leeds, Brentford and Sheff Wed. It wa sat Hillsoborough that Allen hit the headlines as the Owls' chief goalscorer in the Championship wins of 1929 and 1920. Originally an inside-forward who joined Wednesday in 1927, he switched to lead the attack and grabbed 67 goals sin those two victorius seasons with Wednesday. Although his form then deserted him Newcastle had no reservations in paying £3,500 totak ehim to Gallowgate in June 1931. After a difficult period, he found his touch and scored frequently cinlduign two goals in the famous "over the line" Cup Final of 1932. Allen stood 5'10" tall and was an aggressive forward with a powerful left-foot shot. In 1934 he played for the Football League andin November of that year mo ved to Bristol Rovers, 12 montheds later signign for Gateshead. He retired in 1936 and settled in the area. For many years he ran a pub, the Travellers' Rest, in Burnopfield. He died in that twon in 1957. His brother played for Brentford and Charlton Year:Leage apps/goals:FA Cup apps/goal 1931-32:29/12:8/7 1932-33:36/19:1/0 1933-34:15/3:0/0 1934-35:1/0:0/0 Total apps 90, total goals 41

Are you a professional footballer? No? In that case please refrain from commenting on whether anyone was ever 'rubbish' etc. He is wrong, I run a business of 70 million sterling. yeah but I bet its not a football club, so you still aren't allowed to comment

I used to spend too much time on the RTG sunlun board explaining to them how bad Murray was, and how good Sheperd was in comparison. I had the financial results for both clubs, and could argue any fact that any mackem came up with to try and defend Murray. (Well all except one). They hated me. They hated me for two reasons. The first was that those who were prepared to look beyong me being a wind-up Mag could see that my comments on the financial mess their club was in was perilous. The other thing was that I could show that Shepherd ran NUFC the right way. NUFC invested at the right times, funded the ground redevelopment well, controlled wages, and helped the manager to produce a side that was in the CL. I loved it, just loved it. My arguments were water tight. (Except for one thing) There is no doubt that up 2003 Shepherd looked to be in control of what he was doing, and most clearly he was better than his nearest competitor in knowledge of how to run a football club. I am more than happy to agree that Shepherd pre-2003 was better than Murray. The thing is that I now see all the things I wound the mackems up with being repeated by Shepherd. Panic buying, so Murray backed Reid and paid over the top for Flo and Marcus Stewart and some others on the deadline day, Shepherd did it with Souness and Owen/Luque/Solano. Neither club coudl afford those deals, but both sets of fans justified it on "we'd have gone down if we hadn't bought". We got lucky, they didn't. (Or their buys were crap). In both cases enticing contracts were offered, that subsequently dragged the clubs down. The spiral downwards began. I am happy to say Shepherd is better than Murray, but it was like the argument that Shola was better than Kevin Kyle. A very parochial argument that fires up locals but just makes outsiders smile condescendingly at us.

NE5 and HTL ?! Never seen them accused of that before

I think that if the club were going to spend £8.5m that summer then it would have been better spending it on strengthening the squad than on enlarging the Hall and Shepherd pension funds. I will always look for the football side of the business to come first. You (and NE5) have consistently disagreed with me on this. We just have to accept that you see different priorities for the club from the ones I do.

Well obviously, but we aren't spending at a rate that would induce insolvency in any way, shape or form. It's already been established that the Sky revenue will cover our losses and any cut backs to the transfer fund will save money. I don't think we're getting worse than under Souness tbh but nevertheless do you think spending less money would make us better? How would this magical method work? Well obviously, but we aren't spending at a rate that would induce insolvency in any way, shape or form. It's already been established that the Sky revenue will cover our losses and any cut backs to the transfer fund will save money. I don't think we're getting worse than under Souness tbh but nevertheless do you think spending less money would make us better? How would this magical method work? It probably wouldn't work in the sense that you'd like the team to improve. The thing is that demonstrably the overspending by £59 in 9 years did nothing but get us to mid-table medicority. Most of the other sides in the Premiership, our competitors, will benefit from the new Sky money. We won't. All it will do will pay for the excess spending and poor overall running of the club of the last few years.

Except they started to give out longer, more expensive contracts bcefore the new Sky deal was agreed. If the new money generally goes on the players wages, asit has since Sky started paying up, then all teams will have to pay more, and no one (palyers apart) is any better off

In the 9 years as a PLC to June 2006 the club made a combined loss of £59.7m. I love your belief that there is a plan in there somewhere. I'd have hoped to see the club looking mroe healthy on the playing front than it is today. If we about to compete in Europe with a team of young players, led by a bright innovative coach, all ready to blossom into the next great team then the idea that there was a plan of some sort may be right. [Potential agenda alert} Of that 9-year loss nearly 60% comes from giving money away to needy causes, and is nothing at all do with the way the business has performed. If for the next 9 years we did exactly the same, but didn't give away ll that money we'd be doign very well. The sad thing is that the only reason we got away with giving so much money away was because of the money put in at the launch of the PLC. That money has now gone, and the current financial results show we're a bit stuck. [/Potential agenda alert]

The net assets of the club is the "intangible assets + Tangible assets + money owed to the club + cash in the bank - overdraft - mortgage - money owed to others". At 30 June 2006 I found my copy ) we had: Intangible asstes, essentially the players, and in this is roughly £48m Tangible asstes are the ground, the academy and other bricks and mortar types of things, this is roughly £90m Owed to us, and cash ~£25m So assets come to ~£164m in total. The liabilities are made up of the amounts of money owed to people for the assets, this is currently ~£147m. The net assets then come out to be £16.8m (Now these figures do not include anything to do with Martins. His purchase should make no difference as he will be in as an asset, but we will owe the same amount of money.) So all our players are collectively valued at £48m, and at that level the club has overall assets of £16.8m If we have continued to lose money at roughly the rate we were last season, then the club will be worth ~£6m less than it was in June.

The player value in the books is never marked up. The club have though marked some down over the last few seasons. This has been when they have had somebody (Viana was one) out on loan with the other club setting up the deal so that they knowthe purchase price at the end of the loan. I think there was a similar download revaluation of Robert when he was out on loan. The amortisation of the transfer fee across the length of the original contract does have some sense in it as at the end of their contract they can just leave for nothing,and wouldbe worth nothing to the club. So the valuation is always a worst case situation. The inability to revalue upwards stops unscrupulous clubs (so not of concern to us) from arbitarily bumping up the values, making the finances look better and using the new assets for "dodgy" purposes.

I try

when they published their accunts for the first 6 months of the 2005-2006 season the loss was £6m. When they published them for the full year to last June (only 11 months as they chanegd accoutnign dates), the loss for the whole period was over £12m. but as you well know that is different to losing £1mill per month.(ie,they could make a profit of £1mill per month for 11months then buy torres(knowing us fred torres from stevenage borough) for £23 mill which would show a loss of £12mill but isn't a loss of £1mill per month. it may seem pedantic but the way you make it sound and it may be that way,that we are losing £1mill per month on the day-to-day running of the club not the one off hits for transfers. if we didn't buy anyone for a year would we still be "losing" £1mill per month ? The first half of the seaosn included all the summer signings, so Luque, Owen and Solano. The second half os last season had no transfer activity in it. The club do their accounts by dividing the cost of the transfer fee by the length of the contract and saying that's the monthly cost to the businhess.o So Luque for £10m, on a 5 year contract means the club accounts shows a cost of £2m per year, or £160k per month. Obviously things like wages and ground maintenance costs are the same every month. The income and expenditure for games happens as the games happen. So there is neither game-related income nor expenditure in June as there are no games. The club spread the season ticket money they receive in the summer across the football season. So say they get £25m in season ticket sales, then at half way through the season the accounts would say they had used up £12.5m of it, but it would also say that they knew they were going to have to use the other half in the second half of the season. The other steady outgoing is the interest payments on the ground redevelopment, and on the loans they have taken out. The steady incomes are from things like sponsorship, and from catering and merchandising. The sponsorship one is a slight concern. The club were given £8m of future year's sponsorship money (I guess from Nortern Rock) early, to allow them to buy Luque, Owen and Solano. This means that over the next few seasons there will be a drop of that amount from what woudl have been expected. This probably won't matter inthelong run as the extra Sky will swamp the drop. So, basically, "yes" we'd still be losing £1m per month even if we didn't sign anyone. The number will reduce but it will be hard work to get it back to the level where we at least break even.

when they published their accunts for the first 6 months of the 2005-2006 season the loss was £6m. When they published them for the full year to last June (only 11 months as they chanegd accoutnign dates), the loss for the whole period was over £12m.

Okay. All those things you correctly mention, with players coming in, and them probaly being on increased wages to entice them to us, should have created a huge wage bill leap in 2003. They didn't. Or they may have done, but we were told it was down to the CL bonuses. In 2004 the wages were exactly the same as 2003. This either meant the wage jump the previous year had not been from CL bonuses, or that there had been a huge leap in basic pay. Something must have happened. And it all happened before Souness was even thougth about. The board sanctioned huge wage increases at that time. The decisions taken then are the ones we're still having to live with now. Those erros have been compounded by the policy of givign 5 year contracts to anyone who asked. This agenda of mine that you keep mentioning, could you remind me what it is, as you say I seem to have become so consumed by it I can't see it any more. Preciousssss

Agenda again. You just can't stop and it spoils almost every post you make. I'm sorry if it comes across as some sort of agenda. But isn't the bit you've highlighted just a statement? I don't know who was supposed to be responsible for finance within the club as there was no one on the board with those skills. But somebody must have been supposedly looking at these things. The new guy definitely has expertise in this area, and it is encouraging to see his arrival.

Aye because NUFC are the ONLY club to have used that money in future accounts get over yourself FFS It's like the comment that if £30m hadn't gone in dividends over a decade (or whatever it was) that this exact £30m would have been available to Roeder last summer to buy players. I'm understand why you say this, but where would it have gone? In the summer 2003 £8.5m was given away at the same time as no money was given to the team manager to strengthen his squad. For me that was a key turning point. It is far better to invest while things are going well, than to try and spend your way out of a mess. The moment has gone though.

You keep suggesting that. Souness joined September 2004, so had no impact on wages until the subsequent January, 2005. The bringing in of Boumsong, Baba and Faye for 6 months will have made the tiniest difference to the wage bil for the year. So Souness's full influence can only be seen in the 2006 accounts. He brought the expensive playersin for that season. That looked to be responsible for the £6m leap from 2005. He cannot be blamed for the rises up to 2005. Also it was quite clearly stated in the accoutns thsi year, for the first time, that all decisions regarding player wages were made purely at the board level.