Mick

It's fair to say they haven't done it on a regular basis yet but it's not fair to say that they don't want to now just because they haven't with NUSC.

They clearly don't want to communicate with who?

His business strategy may be for us to live within our means, it's potentially dangerous but it's still a strategy.

Are they the tree's that money grows on?

I doubt it if you're still having problems understanding the financial situation after 17 pages.

Most of the people I work with think he should start attending again and most would have strung him up from a tree a week ago.

I still think he bought the club for the fun factor and that went with the protests against him but I still agree that he should have tried to tough it out. He'll never have a better time to come back now that most people understand the state of the club and why some things have been done in the way that they have.

I think it's time Ashley came back to the games, we need him to be involved.

He is living with the consequences, he seems more able to live with it than most. The only time he's really mentioned money is when we've had a go at him.

Financial meltdown is something that is being felt around the globe, we're not unique. The only difference is that most people who invest in struggling companies win praise for doing so, we kick our investor in the bollocks. It's called biting the hand that feeds you.

The offer was take it or leave it.

Mort gave the OK to all deals done once Ashley had bought out Sir John because they thought they still had sponsorship money to come in which would cover additional wages.

They didn't do a full "Due Diligence" before buying the club as they didn't have the time because of deadlines set by Sir John Hall. They did go through the books before buying the club but other than looking at figures, they had no time. Once the club was Ashley's Chris Mort came in and performed a strategic review, that's when the problems were found. The loans and overdraft were known about but what wasn’t known was the fact that the money that hadn’t came into the club from Northern Rock and Adidas had already been spent.

No.

Another thread.

They are going to, they said in the press that they would be saying something after the transfer window has closed.

To be fair to this rant, a lot of people were feeling the same way, it's just that the rant has been overtaken by events and some people have a clearer picture of the problems we have as a club. What I would add is that I think it's time for the them V us to stop for the good of the club.

I can see both sides of the argument and I think few people think we're not in the shit so most will agree with that. If we knew for certain that we were going down then a gamble would be easier, as it is we could easily spend and make matters worse. I personally don't think we'll go down but it is a possibility, I just hope we survive and take stock of our situation in the summer and move on with a better manager than we currently have.

I would love Ashley to spend £20 million, £40 million or even £60 million. We don't know how much cash he's got at his disposal because his personal wealth could all be tied up in assests, the club and the loan could be a large chunk of his wealth. He also owns around 70% of the shares in SD so that will account for another large chunk of his personal wealth.

Agreed about the income to wages ratio, the wages went up but the percentage of income went down because of the Sky deal.

OK, I wasn't going to work out exactly how many the gates have gone down by but they are down and that means the money available to pay off debts is reduced. I understand that we have a lot of bigger games coming up which may lift the average attendances so overall things may not end up looking as bad as they currently do regarding gates. As for price increases, we had both increases and reductions and the source of gate money isn't relevant to where it goes.

He's paid the debt off.

As far as I'm concerned if we get a decent manager in then we'll start improving and that will generate cash in the way it did when Bobby took us up the league. The sooner the better for me.

The gates are 5,000 down so the season ticket sales wouldn't have paid off the loan, the ground expansion cost £42 million.