Mick

I wouldn't mind knowing how our loan from him went up to £112 million and ended the year at £111 million. My guess is that he had to put in a short term loan and was repaid at some time. He's since put in a lot more though so he's not looking for pay back just yet.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/matt_dickinson/article7115262.ece You could have warned that the article you linked to contained a photograph of Rod Liddle, I nearly hoyed up.

I haven't got a clue what you're on about, you're right it is drivel. How was the overdraft going to remain the same considering that it had gone from less than £1 million to £35,781 million in 1 set of accounts? At the same time as the overdraft went through the roof we were getting handouts of £11 million from Ashley. Also, our attendances were not brilliant before Keegan had left the club and we had more at the first game without him than we had during the last game with him.

If something is worth doing then no effort should be spared.

No but I'm building up a portfolio to help me get in. Do you think I’m doing OK or do I need a bit more work?

That's next years thread . We were financially shit before Ashley arrived and I can't see how we could have kept on pissing our money up the wall in the manner that we were without somebody with deep pockets to finance it, we've been living beyond our means for years.

It's expected to be £47 million but the actual figure will not be known until the end on June when the financial year comes to an end.

It was easily manageable, all we needed to do was keep borrowing and paying out £6 million in interest which was up by £400k on the year before. We could have borrowed against our sponsorship money, oh wait, we'd already spent that on Michael Owen.

It's probably been said but here goes, remember this covers our last season in the Premiership and includes some information for this season: Turnover was down from £99.4 million to £86.1 million. Media revenue fell from £41.1 million to £37.6 million, mainly due to our league position and the reduced payments tied to that. Match day revenue was down from £32.352 million to £29.025 million. Commercial revenue was down from £25.890 million to £16.415 million mainly due to our catering being outsourced during the season. League attendances fell from 51,321 to 48,750. Our wage bill had gone up from £70 million to £71.1 million which was partially to blame for our wage to turnover ratio going up from 70.4% to 82.6%. The main cause of the increase was due to the fall in turnover. Keegan walking out cost us £5.3 million, this was to cover his pay-off and all of the costs which the club had to pay. We've now paid out something like £10 million for Allardyce and Keegan leaving the club. We employed 395 permanent staff during the season, down from 425 the season before and part way through the season the number of match day staff of 1,380 was wiped out. Most, if not all will have transferred to the company who took over the catering. Our operating loss after player amortisation was £37.6 million, up from £24.7 the year before. Net debt was just over £105 million at the beginning of that year and over £150 million at the end. We sold players for just over £21 million after the year end and spent just over £3 million. Ashley loaned the club £11 million during the year, we had £111 million owed to him in total up to the end of that financial year. He's since put in another £25.5 million so we owe him £136.5 million unless he's put anything else in during the last few weeks or taken anything out. Our bank overdraft had gone up from less than £1 million to almost £36 million; add that to the £11 million Ashley put in and you can see we have a major problem. The money we owe Ashley is now to be paid on demand which means nothing as he's put more in since. The loan from Ashley isn't interest bearing or secured, we also have a bank loan which is secured against future sponsorship. I’m guessing that Ashley has taken money out of the club as our loans to him were up to £112 million at one point during that year but ended at the £111 million mentioned earlier, unless he’s written £1 million off. We had deferred income which includes season ticket money and sponsorship, the total value is just over £18 million and most of that was due in during the first 2 years and £10.3 million will have already come in to the club as it was due within 1 year. I may have got a few things wrong, especially the use of tense as the accounts are out of date by almost a year.

My wife said that she didn't think you could get sent off for bringing your own player down.

The shittest club with the least amount of money to spend.

I liked him and felt sorry for him today, he wasn't the best player in the world but he tried and wasn't as bad as some try to make out.

I don't think any of our players have had me off my seat more than Jonas this season.

I wouldn't disagree but we have higher priorities, central midfield and up front need a major upgrade if we're to stay up.

I do expect to see Jonas tearing through Premiership defences if he's up for it and still here, he's got excellent close ball control and balance.

None of what you've said makes any difference to anything, converting debt to equity doesn't stop the others taking money out of the clubs if that’s what they want to do. All they need do is pay a dividend if they wanted to take money out of the clubs.

And that makes how much of a difference?

He will know what it has been used for but I haven't asked him, at a guess it will be the running costs as we pay up front for players but don't get paid up front when we sell.

Somebody who works at the club but didn't give me permission to quote him so he's nameless. And the income was about £47 million, not £48 million.

This years wages £40 million, income £48 million.

have

That's because it didn't happen in Liverpool.

I'm sure he died.

The fire had only taken 4 minutes from starting to covering the whole stand, it's amazing that more didn't die when it spread that fast.