Cronky

What you've just said - Leon Best as the most in-form striker in the league. You obviously see something in him that I don't. Journeyman centre-forward who's not going to progress beyond the level he's on now. Who was then? When he got that goal against Everton he had 6 in 9 or something like that. What I 'see' in him doesn't come into it. Well perhaps there was a period when statistically he was the most prolific striker, but that could have been said in the past of such luminaries as James Beattie and Mick Quinn. Anyway, it looks like he's up for sale for about £4m and so far, no takers. You just dislike for the sake of it. Same with Coloccini. You often bring up this idea that there's some odd motivation behind someone's viewpoint. It's just an opinion. You rate Best. I don't.

What you've just said - Leon Best as the most in-form striker in the league. You obviously see something in him that I don't. Journeyman centre-forward who's not going to progress beyond the level he's on now. Who was then? When he got that goal against Everton he had 6 in 9 or something like that. What I 'see' in him doesn't come into it. Well perhaps there was a period when statistically he was the most prolific striker, but that could have been said in the past of such luminaries as James Beattie and Mick Quinn. Anyway, it looks like he's up for sale for about £4m and so far, no takers.

What you've just said - Leon Best as the most in-form striker in the league. You obviously see something in him that I don't. Journeyman centre-forward who's not going to progress beyond the level he's on now.

You can NAAHT be serious.

I think when Pardew was talking about a certain 'genre' of striker, he meant someone that could play off the main target man. I reckon he thinks he only needs two of Ba, Shola and Best, as they'd all have a similar role, and Best is the one who can go. Deal with it, peeps.

It does look like we made bids for Gervinho, Gameiro and Erdinc. It seems that the problem wasn't that the bids weren't high enough. The players didn't want to come because they had opportunities to join clubs who were already in Europe. The only way to get around that is to offer an inflated salary to overcome the player's reluctance. Do people think that's a good idea? Exactly who we're aiming for now I don't know, but we're still at the stage where selling clubs are holding out for transfer fees that are larger than the level that they'd actually settle for in the end. Again, do we do a Liverpool and hand over the dosh just to get the player now?

The figure that's quoted in the times is £400m over 10 years, although that seems to include things like the development of land around the ground as well. I think we can take it as read that City will try to stretch the rules of Financial Fair Play as far as they can. This sponsorship looks dodgy because Etihad Airlines and Man City are both owned by the Abu Dhabi Government. UEFA have given themselves the power to reject subsidies that are disguised as sponsorships, but how tough they'll be, remains to be seen. here's how they are hoping to get round it..http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/city-seal-sponsorship-deal-worth-400m-with-etihad-2309387.html.. If I've read this right, they're arguing that the element of the £400m which is going towards developing the 'campus' is going to the infrastructure rather than the football side, and is therefore immune from FFP scrutiny. However, I'd have thought that the 'infrastructure' rule was there to allow clubs to develop their stadiums, training facilities etc The rule isn't there to allow the club's owner to start up a separate business with only a tenuous link to the football club, and then allow the profits or benefits of that enterprise to go to the club. If that's what they're proposing, then that sounds like cheating to me. It also sounds dodgy that those Abu Dhabi companies are paying large sums to be co-sponsors. You wonder what links they have with the Abu Dhabi government.

The figure that's quoted in the times is £400m over 10 years, although that seems to include things like the development of land around the ground as well. I think we can take it as read that City will try to stretch the rules of Financial Fair Play as far as they can. This sponsorship looks dodgy because Etihad Airlines and Man City are both owned by the Abu Dhabi Government. UEFA have given themselves the power to reject subsidies that are disguised as sponsorships, but how tough they'll be, remains to be seen.

PSG are a club with good prospects so I'm not surprised he wants to stay. I suspect he asked for a huge wage from us to compensate for his reluctance to come here. As with Owen, that's not the way to go.

Interesting but flawed. 'Repayable' doesn't mean 'will be repaid', particularly when the owner has leant money to his own company. We'll have to wait till we see the accounts. Not being picky like, but for one thing, only one of those quotes is Ashley as far as I can see (about his kid where he says nothing about the police advising him in the first place, hell I would have advised him the same at the time), and two, without going through them individually, a number of them have a pretty misleading lack of context and to be frank you'd be hard pushed to call lies as such in the first place. /Obligatory Disclaimer: Not that they're not eejits sometimes, and of course dealt with Keegan very poorly indeed. Yeah. It's ironic when people who accuse Ashley of misleading the public then go right ahead and do the same thing.

To save money of course and in the same time to imitate some transfer action... How would it save money? In the form of not paying any money [if a straight swap as suggested], attracting a player and releasing one. Thus, no transfer fee, offsetting wages and showing the fans that they are working on new recruits. Outcome: Same numbers, no outlay. So they can say that they've attracted a new body, but in fact it's a freebie [sort of]. Most probably, Rout's wages are higher than these of McWhatever guy. But if the swap means that we've got a better squad, then we've moved forward. That's the important issue. Do you want Ashley to spend money just to prove that he's willing to do so?

He seems a quiet sort of bloke and not strikingly captain material. However, he is pretty sure to be a first-team regular, and the only other viable candidate is Tiote, who seems to be even quieter.

Good shout.

If we want the player, and he has his heart set on joining us, then we're in the box seat, as with Ben Arfa a year ago. We can just stick in an offer of, say, £6m, secure in the knowledge that even if we're outbidded, the player will refuse to move anywhere else. Wigan then have to decide whether they're going to take the money and re-invest it now, or spend the season with an unhappy player who they'll lose for nothing in the end. It's a no-brainer. I'm not convinced this is the right signing in the right position at the right time, but it seems to me there's no need to panic.

I always find it interesting that, despite the fact that promotion to the Premiership is supposedly worth anything from £30 - £100 million to a club, you don't tend to find those clubs rushing out and spending that windfall on £10 million + players like they've just won the lottery. The way modern football finances work demands a kind of complex planning and long-term strategic thinking that is some way distant from the piggy-bank mentality of let's spend this cash that we've got lying around here doing nothing. A lot of people seem to be expecting the £35m from Carroll to be spent like that. In practice, it'll be absorbed into the longer-term financial strategy of the club. If the money is actually being taken out of the club, that's something else, but we've no evidence of that.

Do you really believe it was for any reason other than his stock couldn't get any lower, therefore guaranteeing a profit should he come back anything like as good? The good words he is putting in for the club are simply an added bonus. No. You haven't sussed the guy out at all. Ben Arfa is an exciting player and he couldn't resist taking the chance any more than you or I would.

The gamble that he took, which he isn't really being given credit for, is Ben Afra, with a broken leg, signed on a 5 year contract after 3 games on loan. It seems to me that other talented players have responded to that.

There's no great mystery here. Despite all his airs and graces, Bendtner is an old-fashioned English-style centre forward, strong in the air with a good shot on him but not great technically. That's why he hasn't progressed at Arsenal. I'd rather take a punt on Long, if there's a straight choice between the two. I can't see that Bendtner's offering anything that we haven't already got.

Judging from Pardew's comments, he still rates Joey very much as a player. He's hopeful that, if Joey keeps his nose clean and turns in some good performances, the owner will offer him another contract and some compromise can be reached. Pardew is effectively trying to act as a go-between. I don't think he'll succeed. Firstly, I think he's underestimating the damage Joey did to his standing with Ashley by all these comments he's been making over the last six months about other players, the England manager, the club strategy etc etc Unfortunately, Joey's reaction to all this has been to behave in an even more headstrong manner, like some teenager who wants to prove to authority that he 'doesn't care'. I blame Pardew a bit for this, because he should have nipped all this in the bud. Pardew's second problem is how Joey will handle the situation with the other players. He won't like being marginalised and is going to want to make his presence felt one way or another. Pardew may fancy that Joey will listen to him and take advice, but he may be over-estimating his influence.

Well the players who have come in seem to think that the club has ambition, and that's significant. I don't know how much of the £35m will go towards transfer fees and how much will go on running costs, or what's really viable. It seems that we've made £10m + bids on certain players, but have lost out to clubs who are already in Europe. But none the less, the running costs issue is very important, because if you get into a situation where you're not balancing the books and the team has already peaked, you're at the risk of meltdown, unless you've got a sugardaddy.

Of course it is, but if they increase in value it's because they're doing the business for us, in which case why would we sell them? We should be signing players who we expect to perform well for us and that's it. Their value increasing should be inconsequential unless they specifically want out of their own accord. The scenario that people seem to be getting their knickers in a twist about is if a player like Cabaye does well, and then three years down the line attracts the interest of a CL club, who offer a big fee. Well at the worst, we've got three years of good performances out of a player who we didn't have to invest a lot of money in. Who knows, we may be on the fringes of the CL ourselves, and able to persuade the player to stay. A lot of people are worried that Mike will rub his hands, and sell at a profit. That's not necessarily the wrong decision, if the money is re-invested wisely. The likes of Arsenal (Anelka, Overmars, Petit) and Spurs (Berbatov) have been able to progress by selling players on at large profits. The main concern would be if Mike pockets the money himself and uses it for purposes outside the club, like the Glazers. I can't see any evidence that that is his aim. The Carroll sale gets cited as an example, but even Keegan has admitted that he went for an inflated price that he wouldn't himself have turned down. The danger is that because Ashley isn't popular, everything he does gets seen negatively - even the signing of Cabaye. I know a lot of people on here aren't sold on the plan that the club are working to, but more importantly the players who have come in seem to have been convinced that we're on the right lines.

I just think Joey's pride has been hurt. He was bigging himself up as a great English midfield player and, along with Nolan, as the guardian of the spirit that had taken our club out of the doldrums. By not offering him a contract, the club has effectively told him that he's not that great, and there doesn't seem to be any interest either from clubs that he considers worthy of his talents. He's turned it all into some master plan of going for a Bosman, but the reality is he's suffered a slap-down. Hence the need to feed off the love of his supporters via Twitter. Nolan faced up to the situation and got himself the best possible alternative. Joey is stubborn and still thinks he can win. My worry is what will happen this season if he turns up like he's still the big noise and other players don't see him that way.

Despite the expenses on transfers, Spurs have been able to keep their wage/turnover proportion to a very low 56%. That's been key to their keeping going.

off Ashley, tbh. But how would Keegan know whether Ashley would take the money out of his or NUFC's account ? He didn't know and evidently he didn't care.

So do you see 16 of 20 Premier League clubs going to the wall? Do you think your own Spurs will go bust because you've spent money and bought good players? Your point is perfectly valid, they are running up debt but that's football at the moment and that debt will improve them on the field. If Modric goes will you be happy if that money subsequently vanishes into nowhere and you start scrabbling round for free transfers and release clauses, and the noises out of Spurs are that your aim is to finish 10th? Saying you've got a plan to keep the wage bill down and not be stung for transfers is all very well in isolation but football clubs don't exist in isolation, they exist, in both our cases, in a league with 19 other teams who will all be spending money to achieve success on the pitch. Do you see our "model" as one which is likely to get us back to Europe and back to the Champions League? I'm not sure sunderland's accounts are good to compare with because they're shit as well. At the end of the day, I don't care about finances or figures or accounts, all I care about is success at NUFC, on the field. All the financial stability in the world means nothing to me if we finish 10th every year. It's crazy to take such a casual attitude towards debt. If you continue to run at a loss, your debt will increase and likewise the interest payments. At some stage, you have to start balancing the books.