Mick

You fat cockney ba****d, get out of my car.

I would love to see your face when you go to sell that £15,000 car you bought a few years ago and expect to get that back for it.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/mort-brings-sea-change-to-tone-of-business-on-the-tyne-460911.html They had the same accounts that we're discussing in here and did no more than that until they carried out the strategic review of the whole club. It doesn't matter if one calls it due diligence while another calls it something else. Due diligence is an action, not a measure of an action.

That was from the first set of accounts which they signed off and they were for the season before they arrived. The accounts covered up until 30th June 2007. Are you sure you've got that right The accounts released in January 2009 said... http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2009/01/23/newcastle-united-club-accounts-reveal-state-of-play-61634-22758691/ That's covering 2007/2008 isn't it? Otherwise there's been no accounts covering any of Ashley's time at the club. I'm 100% certain, I've got the accounts open now and it covers the takeover and specifically mentions buying out Sir John Hall in June of that year, the end of that financial year was 30th June and just over 3 weeks later. Not like NUFC-Finances.org.uk to get it wrong. Their 2008 results say... http://www.nufc-finances.org.uk/ If only yours wasn't a hard copy and you could quote it. :-[ Wages during the 2006 to 2007 financial year were £62.5 million but that was for the whole club so included everybody who were paid by the club. The figures you quote will be the same and include every employee.

We'll never know I guess, we needed another Bobby Robson appointment and they don't come around very often.

I've just had another look at the accounts which were showing a £33 million loss, it included a one off payment of £6.7 million for the Michael Owen injury while playing for England. Take out that and we would have lost almost £40 million during the season before the takeover.

That was from the first set of accounts which they signed off and they were for the season before they arrived. The accounts covered up until 30th June 2007. Are you sure you've got that right The accounts released in January 2009 said... http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2009/01/23/newcastle-united-club-accounts-reveal-state-of-play-61634-22758691/ That's covering 2007/2008 isn't it? Otherwise there's been no accounts covering any of Ashley's time at the club. I'm 100% certain, I've got the accounts open now and it covers the takeover and specifically mentions buying out Sir John Hall in June of that year, the end of that financial year was 30th June and just over 3 weeks later.

That would have been suicidal as we'd let so many players go after the season before had ended. I know you don’t seem to want to discuss what might have happened but if we’d stopped incoming transfers I doubt we would have stayed up that season.

That was from the first set of accounts which they signed off and they were for the season before they arrived. The accounts covered up until 30th June 2007.

I agree with most of that.

The debt wasn't £70 million, we had spent future income so the debt was higher and closer to £100 million as Michael Owen was our future Northern Rock and Adidas sponsorship money. The season before we were taken over saw our annual debt almost treble, our gates had fallen by almost 2,000 per game and our wages to revenue ratio had risen from 63% to 72%.

Smith was the first signing they made, the others were lined up before they were in control and all they did was agree to the transfers before they knew the true state of the club. They weren't in a position to do much different at that time without knowing the state of the club, what do you think would have happened if they had refused to sanction those transfers at that time? The club was running and they had to allow the club to function on a normal basis at that time. As for the losses, the season before we lost £33 million was an 11 month season and we lost £12 million. I think we made a small loss in 2005 and a £4 million profit in 2004 so I don't know where you're getting your figures from, mine are coming straight from our accounts. I can't be arsed to look to see when we got something like £10 million to cover the injury to Michael Owen, we had to pay his wages once his injury cleared up so we had a boost one financial year.

Our financial health has been stabalised and it should begin to improve. If anything good can come from our relegation then it will be getting rid of the dead-wood which we've picked up over the years and probably couldn't afford to get rid of while in the Premiership. We need good management at the club to gain from our current situation and start to build once again. Can we do that with Ashley and llambias? No idea, they haven't looked like being able to do that so far and they must deliver if we go up.

Do you not think that the state of the club which he bought has something to do with why we are where we are? I know that he could and should have acted differently to certain situations and that he could have avoided our relegation. That doesn't mean that it's all his fault and that we wouldn't have been in a worse state without him, I'm not saying that we would but our future didn't look good when the debt trebled within 12 months and we had no obvious way of turning things around. The Halls appeared to be almost broke and Cameron Hall appeared to be getting run into the ground by Douglas. I'm sure that they were fined for putting in accounts months too late and they were losing cash as if it was going out of fashion. Do you think they could have bailed the club out when our gates had already started to fall and debts were spiralling and we'd mortgaged our future income? Do you think the banks would have carried on lending at a time when everybody knew that a credit crunch was coming? I know we hadn’t hit the recession by then but we all knew that it was coming at least 12 months before it arrived because just about every financial analyst was predicting it.

Your post totally dismisses the state of the club at the time that Ashley bought it. I could have sworn that this thread was discussing our current situation and why we are were we are and the benefits or not of having Ashley. It’s too easy to pretend that this is about Shepherd v Ashley, which it isn’t and bury your head in the sand when it suits you. My post is about what Ashley inherited and it being part of the reason why we’re in the shit.

Our loss during the last season we had the Halls and shepherds was £32 million before tax, up from £12 million the year before. It is clear which direction we were heading long before Ashley came here. We had originally taken out a loan for almost £33 million which was to cover the expansion and we were paying 7.36% interest on it. We had another loan for almost £10 million which we were paying 7.65% interest on, both were secured against future ticket sales. We also had a loan for almost £17 million which was secured against future TV income. And we'd spent future income from sponsorship which was showing on the balance sheet as future income. When the club was floated we had a pot of money which the club spent over the years and once that money was frittered away we were in the shit and losses just increased. Basically we'd spent our future income long before Ashley appeared on the scene and for anybody to think that we were safe without him is crazy, we'd pawned the crown jewels and were living on future income, we had nothing else to pawn.

It's still an informed choice as you know that we could be in either division.

They are shite, I was sitting amongst them and they were the most arrogant bunch of tossers I've ever had the misfortune to spend 2 hours with. They moaned about everything that happened during the game and they all did it.

Trafalgar Square was the only place where I actually saw a Man U fan, it wasn't the only place where I was drinking during the day. As for Chelsea fans, I would have expected that the Semi Final of the FA Cup is a bit more than on ordinary game and worthy of making a day of it. Maybe they remained in Chelsea, I doubt that they all live in Chelsea anyway. As for my memory of Man U fans being shite, that impression was because of the way they acted during the game when I was sitting in the same end as them.

Was that tournament over 2 days? I remember watching our two games and a mackem game and others in between ours then going home the same night. Did the mackems go out to Tranmere before us?

I was drinking around London from 5am and only spotted 1 Man U fan before we went to the ground and that was at Trafalgar Square. I didn't see any after the game either so my only memory of them is of them being s****. It was almost the same when we played Chelsea in the Semi, I didn't see any of them until we went close to the ground, they were also s**** and they tried to have a go at us and then realised that it wasn't a good idea so they stood behind the police and threw beer glasses at us until some of our lot got sick and crossed over the road and then they dissapeared again and I didn't see another that day until inside the ground.

I was sitting amongst Man U fans when we played them, they were really shit.

One of the only good things about the old wembley was the atmosphere, I think they should have saved it and upgraded what they had. I can't think of a better sight in football than walking up Wembley Way an seeing the twin towers.

I've been 5 times and only seen us win once, I also went to see England V Northern Ireland and we won 4-1, I only managed to see 1 goal and it was scored by Keegan.

Do you not think that he might lack consistency because he's not getting games? He should have been playing on our right before we brought Routledge in and he should be playing now that Routledge is injured.