OzzieMandias

How do you know it's true? Why did it only momentarily drop to £80m for Barry Moat? Why was that opportunity not afforded to the several other interested parties sniffing around? The £20 million difference was obviously the amount that either Ashley or Moat was immediately going to have to put into the club to cover outgoings. I don't believe there were any other "interested parties sniffing around" at that very late stage in the negotiations.

Come on Fulham! It'll only take one goal!

Me too.

Before a ball is kicked we won't have played that way.

This. Except to be fair I don't feel THAT sorry for him. But he's done absolutely nothing wrong.

Try dividing the £20 million per annum that Ashley's been putting in to make up for the club's losses by the number of weeks in a year. If you need help with figuring out how many weeks there are in a year, do get back to me.

Well, it might not be very good, but it's miles better than the last time I saw us play (Swansea).

What's Psycho doing there?

It's hard to want any of the likely candidates to do well, but definitely not Tottenham or Liverpool or Chelsea North, so I suppose either Villa or Everton. If they had a chance, I'd say Fulham, as they've never done anything to make me dislike them, and I've got a lot of respect for Roy Hodgson.

Mike Ashley signed the contracts of EVERY player at the club so it's totally his fault. Would be interesting to find out how he would have been treated if he'd shipped out four or five more of our best players to reduce the losses to £10m a season. I suspect the headlines would be 'NUFC losing £250k a week!!!' and also 'Mike Ashley asset stripping c***'. Something along those lines. The headlines should just be "Ashley spouts more bollocks". The papers should report our profit and loss when the accounts are released and only then. Thecertainly shouldn't run a headline about us losing half a million every week as a statement of fact, when the source is the same people to have admitted in court that misleading fans and the media is what they do. On the other hand, as quayside has already pointed out upthread, whenever they have made a statement about the finances, it has proved, on later examination of the accounts, to be true. Really? Back in 2008 they were contradicting themselves all over the shop. "This club had £100million-worth of debt which has now been cleared" "I then poured another £110 million into the club not to pay off the debt but just to reduce it. The club is still in debt. Even worse than that, the club still owes millions of pounds in transfer fees." "Financially we're very sound. We don't owe a bean as far as the club are concerned" Then the accounts showed United’s debt was £22.6m. Selective choice of quotes there, to make it sound like Ashley claimed he had loaned £210m when he never said any such thing. The facts were that he did stick in £100 million and Llambias said that a further £10 million had been stuck in post June 2008, which should show up in the 2009 accounts, making £110 in total. And the club didn't owe a bean to anyone external at that stage. And the accounts did not show a debt of £22.6m, where did you get that from Note 14 in the 2008 accounts says the " loan of £100 million from Mr MJW Ashley is unsecured. The loan agreement is that interest can be charged at a rate of LIBOR + 0.5%, however no interest has been charged in the year to 30 June 2008." I never intended that to come across as " he said £210m". The first quote said £100m had cleared all the debt. The second unrelated quote said £110m hadn't been enough to clear the debt. Two contradicting stories that show, on finances, like everything else, they make it up as they go along. The £22.6m figure came from this report on the accounts... http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2009/01/23/newcastle-united-club-accounts-reveal-state-of-play-61634-22758691/ Overdraft, Payroll taxes, amounts due on transfer fees, amounts owed to other creidtors for eg food offset by amounts owed to the club - money due from transfers, television money etc. The £22.6 million does not mean that the club had any further loans other than that to Ashley I don't get your point. I'm not arguing about the costs of anything or what the debt position was or might be. People are saying Ashley plays with a straight bat on finances and I'm pointing out he's as inconsistent on finances as he is on any other subjectc. In May 2008 he claimed we had no debt whatsoever and by September we'd only partially reduced it and had millions outstanding on transfers. Clearly Keegan's departure had an impact on how he wanted to portray the situation. EDIT: Not to mention we were all FAR more likely to buy 3 year season tickets if we thought it was going to be spent on new players rather than old ones. And quayside has essentially just pointed out that the problem is not that "Ashley is inconsistent on finances" but that you simply don't understand them.

Mike Ashley signed the contracts of EVERY player at the club so it's totally his fault. Would be interesting to find out how he would have been treated if he'd shipped out four or five more of our best players to reduce the losses to £10m a season. I suspect the headlines would be 'NUFC losing £250k a week!!!' and also 'Mike Ashley asset stripping cunt'. Something along those lines. The headlines should just be "Ashley spouts more bollocks". The papers should report our profit and loss when the accounts are released and only then. Thecertainly shouldn't run a headline about us losing half a million every week as a statement of fact, when the source is the same people to have admitted in court that misleading fans and the media is what they do. On the other hand, as quayside has already pointed out upthread, whenever they have made a statement about the finances, it has proved, on later examination of the accounts, to be true.

Sporting really are the club of death for English teams.

This sounds fair enough to me. If a child's mother's income and/or means has changed, then the father is entitled to a re-assessment of his contribution. And she did just get several hundred grand from Terry to stop her from selling her story.

So what is so "totally" different about us that we couldn't get into trouble by having an unsustainable wage bill relative to turnover?

Surely everyone knows that Ashley is really trousering £7 million a month!

Bobby Moncur Malcolm McDonald Kevin Keegan Alan Shearer Peter Beardsley Joe Harvey Jackie Milburn Hughie Gallacher Nolberto Solano George Robeldo Paul Gascoigne Les Ferdinand Not quite sure what kind of "joke" you want... Stéphane Guivarc'h? Ian Rush? Kevin Phillips?

"The positive crowd" Would you like to be relying on Ranger next season for Premiership survival if we go up? I wouldn’t and I think he’s a good player who should have been given more time on the pitch than he has and I see that as one of the flaws in Hughton. Not specifically Ranger but what he’s done in general. I still think we should have had Kadar at left back instead of a player who will go back to Chelsea with the experience that one of our own players could have done with. I think we could have had a better balanced side with LuaLua in it. I know he’s only at Brighton but Poyet is signing his praises after two games and banging on about the class that LuaLua has taken to Brighton; it’s a pity that we hadn’t tried it ourselves instead of keep pushing Guthrie out of central midfield so that we could play our statuesque has-beens. The comparison I made was meant to be wacky and that's why I used who I did. This division is miles behind the Premiership and that's why we can still get to the top with what we've got. What we have wasn't good enough to keep us in the Premiership and people want Hughton to manage in it because he will probably get us promoted, yet the players who will do the same aren't good enough. How is getting promoted a good guide to the capabilities of the manager but not the players who get us promotion? I don't quite get this. So was it wrong to keep Keegan in summer '93 while loads of the players who had brought us up were released?

"TV Blackouts" could have the unfortunate effect of making it work against you if you have a big stadium.

we'll find out in the accounts. When they are eventually released. Are they overdue? Wouldn't surprise me if so. Last time they were early, IIRC.

I didn't know this. For real? Yep.

I would take that in a heart-beat in our first season back up, and then season after season push on. Me too. And I don't think it's that far-fetched.

Vialli used to like a tab.

Shepherd tried to hire him twice.

The best thing about Bruce's misadventure in mackemland is that it completely erases any question of him ever becoming our manager.