macbeth

who said that ? They must be mad, who has been embarrassed, who has said they wished to go back to the 70s or 80s ? This thread began to discuss Shepherd's good shape. You have twisted it, as ever to not be about Shepherd but to be about 20 or 30 years ago, or about Ashley. You would make a great politician. "Mr Brown how do you justify the mess the country is in at the moment ?" "Well if you don't support me you must want John Major back" "Yes but Mr Brown we're talking about now, not 12 years ago, how do you explain that the country is so worse off now, afert all your time as either Chancellor or PM?" "In 2003 we increased the pay for nurses, and built lots of new hospitals and nurseries. Compare this to how Mrs Thatcher took free milk from schoolkids in the 70s and then closed down manufacturing in the1980s. Is that what you want instead ?" "But Mr Brown the banks are collapsing, the country is running out of money, what are you doing about it". "Back in 1991 under the Conservatives inflation was at 10%, interest rates were over 14%, do you wish to return to that"

it's too easy sometimes

if you don't back Shepherd you must therefore back McKeag and Ashley if you don't like Halls and Shepherds taking out over £12m in wages from the club, it proves you must prefer McKeag and Ashley if you don't want the club to lose £33m in a year it proves you want us to get relegated two divisions you'll learn

for a while we also had the top average finishing position outside some other teams. The list of other teams we have to ignore is increasing all the time. 4 top half finishes in 11 years of success ?

that is the first time you have ever written down clearly what you think, and feel. EVERY other time you have tried to put words into peoples mouths, made accusations about what you think they think, or what they want. If you had expressed yourself as you have in this post then you would have few arguments from me, or others. My grouse with Hall and Shepherd began in 2003 when they seemed to take their eye off the ball. Up to then they had speculated to try and improve, then, for some reason they just started randomly increasing salaries, givinbg out 5 year contracts, randomly appointing managers, and not speculating to improve, but gambling to survive. That was the difference. Without a shadow of a doubt staying in the top division was a major achievement, worthy of credit. I am old enough to appreciate this. Every side in England has a new stadium, or vastly improved stadium, though, us having one doesn't Shepherd apart from the rest. The last season under McKeag we lost £3m, on only £4.2m coming in to the club. The club spent £440,000 on new players. We also spent £300,000 getting rid of a Jim Smith. We had a wage bill of £2.6m. We had debts of £7m. The reason I quote all these boring numbers is that if you multiply them all up it is essentially the state that Shepherd left the club in 16 years later. £32m loss on £87m income. Spent more than 10% of income on new players. Spent the same sort of percentage sacking the manager, again. Wages were 70% of income, debts of £70m. To me Shepherd has left the club with the same financial mess that John Hall inherited, we have had great fun along the way, many fortunes have been made, but looking at what he has passed to his successor, it is scarily similar to 1991. Just as it couldn't go on in 1991 it could not have continued in 2007. We were fortunate to get Sir John, we have been unfortunate to get Mike Ashley. If Shepherd had stayed in charge there would have been no money to "speculate" cos there was nowhere to get the money from, it had all gone.

Thanks, excellent stuff. I think all the Northern Rock money was up front. I think it is the £13.1m fixed rate loan mentioned in note 14. The £3m for the financing seems very expensive. The loss for 2007 was £32.9m, compared to £12m the previous year. The main issue was player wages, I doubt we manage to make much difference to that during 2008, may have done so at season end, but not really on the way through. The deferred income at the end of 2006 was £24.6m which ultimately became £33.6m in matchday revenue. We had 10 Cup matches that year (Interoto, Uefa, LC and FA Cup). I think all the season ticket money was in the deferred income and the Cup money, and visiting fan made up the difference. The Cup game bringing in £800k per game ?? For 2008 season we had one LC and one FA Cup game at home. I'd expect this to mean about 200,000 paying fans less at Cup games so say £4+m less income compared to previous year ? The other big drop in income for 2008 was the loss of the £6.7m of insurance money on Owen. The annual exceptional chartge known as "change in team management" was probably higher, as Allardyce was getting more than Roeder. The only big plus to the books would be the reduction in interest payments from Ashley paying off the debt, saving the club roughly £8.3m. These savings would not have been available to Shepherd With Ashley owning I struggle to see the loss being much better than £15m-£20m. With Shepherd it would have been £8m worse. You didn't touch on the cash position. I don't understand how this all works, so it'd be great if you could have a look. The accounts just have a raw figure saying Cash of £198k, down from £10.5m the same time the previous year, and £13.4m the previous year. This doesn't look good but I have no feel for what it really means

well, after all the scaremongering you've done about us becoming another Leeds through overspending etc it will be interesting [or not in my case anyway] to see you and those who have made links etc to your site, explain how we are heading the way of Leeds because of underinvestment in the team I thought they taught grammar in the 60s ?? I need help with your question/statement. Do you think we are looking bad cos we ran out of money ? Are you trying to say we looked really good under Shepherd cos he spent £114m more thn he took in, in just 11 years. Shepherd was in control up June 2007 I'm just trying to clarify

should be able to get the 2007 accounts from http://www.football-finances.org.uk/newcastle/nufc2007.pdf just for you - a pound cheaper than from Companies House

Whilst taking your point about experts here all some of us do is seek further clarification of the position. What is clear is that the club was approved as a going concern on the basis of cash injections undertaken to be made in the forthcoming twelve months (from the date of the accounts). That sounds pretty near the knuckle i.e. would the club have been signed off as a going concern in the absence of such undertaking and, if it had been, would the auditors have issued an exception. If the discussion of this very important issue sheds further light on Ashley's role (I am a wavering anti by the way) in ensuring the club being able to continue without admin and the inevitable penalties that follow, my position and that of others may change. The debate about the rightness or wrongness of the current situation depends entirely upon us all having the most accurate information available to us. If MacBeth and, to a lesser extent, I had not begun discussing this then the experts here, to whose opinion I will bow, might not have examined the accounts under discussion so forensically. fpr two years the Hearst auditors ahve expressed concern at the "going cocern" status of the club. They keep spending. They must currently be petrified as they have been only surviving due to the bank backing them

sorry I'm not at home till Sunday. The stuff above is what I have on my site.

thats the value though,not the viability. plenty of firms have gone under with future profit in the pipeline and full order books etc due to f***ed up cash flow. That is true, but the point I was trying to get across last night was that the club may have high liabilities at the end of June but they get a huge cash injection during July and August due to season ticket money coming in. It's a bit like looking at your bank account the day before pay day (for a lot of people they will be touching an overdraft) and a day after (nice and healthy). The one thing that most clubs (and I'd say all Premier League clubs) have are 'lumpy' cashflows, those who deal with this (banks etc) recognise this and therefore won't necessarly take the balance sheet into account. I'll also repeat that if Fred had continued to operate the club as a going concern when we were about to go into administration then he would be on criminal charges right now The club has generally banked the season ticket money by the end of June, and has it set aside when the accounts are published each year. This was why 2007 was so desperate, there was no cash around and the season ticket money was alread included. The season ticket figure was £19m. They release the money as the games are played. So there was no future revenue likely to help things along. The general total for crowd related revenue completely depends on home Cup matches, and that is so up to luck.

I have the 2007 accounts at home, I'll send a copy to anyone who can't afford the £1 it now costs to download them Just say if you want them. It'll be Sunday before I can do though

The key is that they are showing profit BEFORE player trading. Essentially it suggests that we have a net £2.6 million a year to spend. It could of course exclude other 'paper' costs which yu would need to factor into a longer term view Well exactly. Nearly every team in the league are running at a loss before player trading and then nearly every club in the league go and spend more than us on transfers. How can this be? cos they are gambling the way Shepherd did. They also have tiny wages compared to ours.

The whole "industry" is in a mess? I really don't care whether Leeds go bust, or Liverpool can't finance a stadium, or the state of others. NUFC had £19m in the bank in July last year. We had borrowed against everything, ground, training ground, future season ticket, sponsorship money there was no where else to get cash from. The banks were lending to us at 13% we were such a bad risk. The £19m would have paid the wages for 4 months, then what ? We wouldn't have been able to pay players, we wouldn't have been able to buy goods to sell itn he club shop, we wouldn't be able to pay the police to stage games, we wouldn't be able to pay hotels to put players up for away games, we wouldn't be able to pay visiting teams their share of the gate receipts. We would have gone bust. I''ve just re-read all that and it sounds over the top, and wil raise the question "why is it different fomr any other season". Well the answer to that is that things deteriorated hugely in 2006 onwards. I hate to shwo graphs but I will cos it highlights the way things spun out of control as Shepherd chased his dream, and ran the club into a mess ... http://www.football-finances.org.uk/newcastle/2007/assets14.gif So up to 2005 he coudl always borrow more, as peopel knew we had asssets. By 2007 we didn't have any assets. no more borrowing. The end.

Most of the time. Not particularly. I am not a fan of Ashley at all. But I'm amazed you say "yes/no" about Shepherd and "not particularly" about Ashley ? Shepherd made losses of £114m as the person in chare of the club, left £70m debt, left a club losing £32m a year, left the club as close to adminstration, and therefore relegation as anyone could possible do. I really struggle to see the "yes" bit in there. Ashley looks to have put exactly the same amouny of his own money buying players, and improving the squad as Shepherd did, to the penny. He has matched Shepherd's hiring and firing of managers, the absolutely key thing for the board to do. He has been hopeless at PR, in that he just never did it at all. This compares with Shepherd who was fantastic at PR, even if everything he said was lies. As far as we know at the moment Ashley has taken no money out of the club, which would make him different from Shepherd & Hall. The thing is I don't really see this as a plus for Ashley, at all. I don't expect my owner to bleed the club dry. NE5 got it absolutely spot on with his "I don''t care who the chairman is, so long as he has the good of the club at heart, and understands that the whole heart of the football club begins with having quality players in the dressing room, and he has to back his chosen manager, and if you want to be like the other big clubs then you have to act like they do. " That has to be the way we all feel, that is the way who ever the chairman is should be. The difference, as ever, between NE5 and me is that I think Shepherd & Hall extracting £34m worth of cash from the club, and then running it to the point where it was about to go bust was a hugely short term view. The bit I'd add on the end of NE5's desire, would be something along the lines of "and the club should still exist in 5 years time". Spend, spend, spend to be like the big clubs was the Leeds way. Don't spend, don't' spend, don't spend to survive, was the Norwich way. The extremes don't work

I'm not up to keeping the analogy going The alternate way of accounting for players which was in place up to the late 90s was to write off the cost of a player in the year he was bought. This would have meant the £16m for Owen would have been one year and not spread across his contract. I'm pretty sure this would have caused financial problems far more quickly than the amortisation route. The amortisation way means you only get a 20% or 25% hit each year. If all the transfer fees were in the year concerned then we would have had roughly £40m more costs across the last four years. (I'm guessing, by looking at the book values of the players). That would have closed us down before now

I don't really see H&S making up a bad view of the accounts for ten years in a row ! I can imagine Ashley trying to put them in a bad light when it was reporting the last year of Freddie, but those last accounts just look like a natural progression form previous years.

Is the current squad any thinner now than it was before Ashley took over? Viduka hasn't played yet so it is difficult to tell

The site came to a natural end as I thought there would be no more company accounts to look at. I was surprised when Ashley published the last accounts in as much detail as he did. At the time I felt that he didn't make enough PR about the mess, it makes his moans now less powerful. If the NUFC accounts are easy to get to them the NUFC site will keep going. I don't for a moment doubt that Shepherd has a monolpoly on financial incompetence I also moved on to doing the same thing for other clubs. So I've done all but two of the SPL clubs.

If they are not factual then Shepherd has been lying to everyone, which I cannot believe for one second. If they are not factual then he has opened himslef up to prosecution. The Financial Services would have him for fraud. The other reason to not doubt them is that they are appalling results. If he had been making them up they would look okay