OzzieMandias

There’s been a few five years plans, but the last one was mentioned in the no capital outlay statement “The Board have therefore structured a five year plan in which the ultimate goal will be to ensure that the club is run at a break even manner by the year 2015/2016” This official club statement also talks about “an estimated loss for 2009/2010 of £32.5 million”. Given that Lambias claimed relegation cost the club £50m, it seems reasonable to assume our return to the PL should be worth a similar amount - giving the club a projected profit of nearly £18m this season. Plus there’s also the extra money from the new shirt sponsor and kit deals, not to mention the money from selling off the naming rights to the ground . With a current outlay of about £5m on transfers fees and probably a slight increase in wages - if we’re not breaking even this season I’d like to know where the money is going. http://www.nufc.com/2009-10html/2010-05-09nufc-statement.html http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/article6904319.ece And you'll find out when they publish the accounts. The biggest item in those is always the wage bill, which is conspicuously absent from your back-of-an-envelope suppositions. Butt's gone but we've just added wages for Campbell, Tioté and Ben Arfa, who are all probably on a decent whack, plus Gosling and Perch.

Craig Levein, discussing why Arteta can't play for England, on attempting to get Shola to play for Scotland: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/aug/30/scotlandfootballteam-craig-levein

IIRC, it was a statement after the last time Ashley gave up trying to find a buyer for the club.

So the club was worth only £35 million by the time the last lot had finished with it?

Also allowed Hughton time to grow into his job. He never would have had that in the Prem.

Right. It was a bad thing that we made the best of.

That has to make Harper smile Yeah, it'll be funny if Shay's on the bench and Harper's on the field when they come to our place.

Looks like Shay's decided to keep the bench warm at City rather than moving to Fulham and taking a big drop in wages... http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/aug/30/shay-given-stays-manchester-city

Who's our goalkeeping coach these days?

If any of them were loss-making private businesses in a cash-hungry sport that depended on sponsorship for revenue then probably yeah.

Isn't that what everyone is supposed to want?

Now we can start a sweepstake on how many weeks before he gets in a huff and goes on strike.

Maybe a slightly strengthened version.

Oh well.

I don't often like the Guardian when it's being "funny", but this is good... http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/aug/28/england-fabio-capello-andy-carroll "No doubt in Denmark they dream of the next great balding utility midfielder."

Keane would be a Sol-style acquisition. Brings a bit of experience to the squad, decent back-up in a position where we're short on talent, player who already has a relationship with the manager. What's not to like?

We all know it's unlikely to be repeated, but it was definitely good for morale. Reminded the team, and the club, what it's capable of.

A similar thought has been going through my head. We needed a couple of people to take their chance and (much as I hate using a baseballism) "step up". Hughton and Carroll both seem to be doing that. We needed to be phenomenally tricky in the transfer market. We appear to be pulling that off. Against all the odds, even with plenty of people still looking for things to moan about, there's a note of hard-win optimism and confidence in the air. A couple of crap results could change all that -- and there will be plenty of the usual moaners just gagging to pounce on them -- but right now, compared to 18 months ago? Yes, we are definitely on the up.

Nothing's done yet..... Nope, sill every possibility he'll choose to go elsewhere still. Fuckin Hell, your are a kind of a pessimist. Fuck me...I really hope you'll apologize for your numerous "still think he'll not join us" comments in case we sign the guy. :-) I think BottledDog is doing a sterling job of counteracting the hoodoo represented by all the people posting formations before we've even signed the guy.

I'm disappointed no one did a Ben-Arfa-Flies-to-Newcastle one.

I only really know one Villa fan, and haven't seen him in a few years as he lives in Brazil, and today of all days he suddenly pops up to say hello on Facebook, not immediately realizing his mistake...

So far we've brought in: Perch, Gosling, Campbell, Tiote, Ben Arfa (loan, hopefully) If Taylor goes out of the door for about £3m then we'll have brought in all of that lot for a couple of million quid net. That's a superb transfer window considering that statement. There's even the option of getting another defender or striker in on loan which wouldn't cost too much. It's what annoys me a lot about the SJP stuff. I don't like the concept anyway, but things are going pretty well otherwise (by this regime's standards) and yet they still manage to find a way to piss fans off. OTOH, there's a lot of people apparently desperate to find something to get pissed off about.

Sounds to me he'll be more like Tino than like Robert.

Did you not read Ikri's post? Yes, and? I don't see how making public is anything other than to manipulate the fans, like they tried to do before. Treating us like mugs again? Dunno, but there's no reason to believe them now. In what way do you feel "manipulated"?