Colos Short and Curlies

Because he's worth less than the overdraft is for would be my thinking. But surely on paper he'd be worth more if he owned the club. But there again if the club goes tits up where do Barclays get their money if there is no one with adequate resources to guarantee it? Government bail out probably

Where did you get this from? There's no way the club's worth anything like £200m+. Writing off that loan has to be part of any realistic deal surely. The key word there is realistic. I don't any more than anyone else on here but I could well believe that Ashley's insistence on recovering his loan is a key reason for there being no takers so far. I've seen nothing from any reliable source that indicates the loan is being written off. When you buy a business you inherit its assets and liabilities and the loan is simply a liability of the company. It is indeed, I put it in specifically. If Ashley is attempting to the sell the club for £100m plus £110m debt to Ashley plus any overdraft, then any and all bids have almost certainly been pure fabrications. If he is trying to sell the club for that, then he isn't seriously trying to sell it at all. (I don't believe this is the case.) The only realistic way he could sell the club for anything like £100m is if he wrote off the debt. If this is the case and if the money from player sales is going towards reducing that debt, then should a sale go through he is effectively "trousering the cash" as it is reducing his losses and is money the club will never see again. How does he get that cash out of the club though? People on here who are significantly more clued up on finances than I keep saying it would be illegal. There's nothing illegal about paying off a debt. The debt is to Ashley. The money would go into Ashley's bank account. I've said this before, but in order to get the accounts signed, Ashley (or more specifically SJP Holdings) will have signed a guarantee that the loan will not be recalled within one year from the date the accounts were signed. By using transfer fees to pay off this loan he would be comitting fraud. Of course the terms of the loan could show that (e.g.) £20m is payable each year back to Ashley on demand. If this is the case then there would be no reason why this could not be front loaded. I haven't seen the loan agreement so don't know its specifics, but I seriously doubt that it is structured in a way which would allow it all to be called in at once unless there is a major event (like a change in ownership)

Dear Merlin..... You usually close to facts but it is wrong the Portsmouth saga is still going on with the owner put the club on sale over a year now. Birmngham was on sale and use to negotiate with this HK bloke for nearly two years. So please lets not put false logic to raise our hopes.... I think the biggest difference between us and the other two clubs you mentioned is that they, if i remeber correctly, have both been run quite astutely, which means that £80m pretty much means £80m. With us you buy the club for £100m knowing you are inheriting the highest wage bill in the championship, a £100m loan and a club that is in no way financially prepared for life in the Championship. We need a major financial restructure or immediate promotion in order to avoid servious problems in the near future - that is a f***ing massive risk for any businessman. If i was buying a club as an investment i'd probably opt for Birmingham City Yup the fire sale at Pompey since January suggests a club that has been run astutley and within its means. Good ol Harry with his wheeling and dealing i'm sure i've heard Alex McLeish say that birmingham have overspent as well Yes, but they're sensible enough to do something about it before it gets ridiculous. They've made decent profits on Defoe, Crouch, Diarra and Utaka so they're probably OK now. They definitely have a much weaker squad than when Arry was managing them but if they can stay in the Prem they'll be alright. Buy 'run well' I mean relative to us - we're still paying for players who haven't played for us for fucking years, we didn't write relegation clauses into half the player's contracts, we paid ridiculous wages for players who were well past their best and we put ourselves on the verge of administration by spending well beyond our means. Birmingham may have overspent based on their own self-imposed financial constraints but they would still be sustainable in the Championship if they came straight back down. A self-sufficient championship club with a loyal fanbase and a decent shot at promotion is a much more attractive proposition than a debt-riddled Premier League underachiever whose only plus points are a big stadium and a fiercely loyal set of supporters. As we would have been. Pompey's form since the turn of the year has been as bad, if not worse, than ours. Only a good start saved them last season and this year they are one of the favourites to go down. So I would disagree that they did something before it was too late, they've just delayed the inevitable relegation - at which point they will have no saleable assets and will run administration very close. I'm not familiar enough with Brum to comment.

Dear Merlin..... You usually close to facts but it is wrong the Portsmouth saga is still going on with the owner put the club on sale over a year now. Birmngham was on sale and use to negotiate with this HK bloke for nearly two years. So please lets not put false logic to raise our hopes.... I think the biggest difference between us and the other two clubs you mentioned is that they, if i remeber correctly, have both been run quite astutely, which means that £80m pretty much means £80m. With us you buy the club for £100m knowing you are inheriting the highest wage bill in the championship, a £100m loan and a club that is in no way financially prepared for life in the Championship. We need a major financial restructure or immediate promotion in order to avoid servious problems in the near future - that is a fucking massive risk for any businessman. If i was buying a club as an investment i'd probably opt for Birmingham City Yup the fire sale at Pompey since January suggests a club that has been run astutley and within its means. Good ol Harry with his wheeling and dealing

Robbed I tells ya. But to counter BONTEMPI, the point is we finished in the top 4. Means nothing, change your shirts to red, finish fifth and get in anyway

But when the buyers have money the sales are less severe. We are in a recession - more sales with better discounts Once we recover - less sales Everton are going to get £20m + for Lescott, we should be seeing at least £15m of that, there is no way Taylor is only half as good as Lescott and the relative prices should reflect that (not that I rate JL anywhere near the £20m bracket mind)

I bet the conversation was started by Droopy though, probably brought up Bassong in conversation and then the 'we must keep' comments stemmed from that. If he had brought up Taylor the comments would have been the same

I've got the other problem - will I be able to get tickets from the box office for the Toon end for Cardiff and Swansea away seeing as my address is South Wales? Could always get them sent to the parents house, but running the risk of post delays then

Thought Marley was a bit quiet tonight

He had a £5 Morrisons fuel voucher so was in the Cowgate Morrisons earlier this evening. Spent the lot on Haribo

I can confirm that neither Shearer, Moat, Ashley or indeed anyone involved in the takeover are currently in Llanelli

You don't need me to point out all the flaws in your logic here. Yep. Maldini was a better defender than Campbell and Italian defenders tend to last longer. enough about the Italian's bedside manner. These days its all about pace and power, stuff the stamina its a squad game these days

Sorry for politics, but what do you know about Miloević ? Played for Aston Villa and was shite Went to Spain and became quite good

Found it.. 15th August 2004 (spooky eh?!) Everton 1-4 Arsenal. Everton finished fourth that season

Didn't Arsenal bum Everton at Goodison on the first day about 5 years ago? Everton then qualified for the Champions League the same season?

When'd you hear that? What does that even mean? They said that Lua Lua is linked to Southampton towards the end of the game. I've not heard anything of the sort. I'll try and find out. Was it not Rasiak being linked to Reading? Was said around the tim eKLL came on

Where did you get Wylie's name from? I read up on him and found out who he is but he hasn't been even rumoured to take over has he? i just plucked it out of the air like the rest of the lazy journalists, however i just thought it was an educated guess as he is a big newcastle fan, and one of the wealthiest we have that could work in tandem with the rest of them... oh and i live about 200 yards away from his racehorse trainer so i may just have a walk along and ask him if he has any craic lol Wylie would never buy the club. Happy to be a fan unfortunately

Due to the state of the club, in order to get the accounts signed off it is more than likely that he will have signed a declaration stating that he will not call in the loan within 12 months. Sets himself up for all sorts of legal action if he does this and the club went pop

50% of £50m is better than 100% of nothing though... What he could do in theory is sell the players and repay some of the loan he has made to the club - unless he has given a written declaration that the loan would not be called in during a specified period (and of course we are still in that period). My guess would be that in order to get a clean audit opinion he would have had to provide such a guarantee. Losing the wages would make the club more attractive, but the transfer fees received should not change the value of the club unless (as has been pointed out somewhere in here before) we are selling at figures grossly over or under what the buyers of the club valued the players at.

Would love it if it became a massive cult hit. A big 2 fingers up to all the press haters.

Not entirely sure we can get the SBRF on the shirts, there is an issue of exclusitivity, so unless we get a Randy Lerner or a Barca it is unlikely that will happen. I'm fully behind the academy though. I'm sure I've seen Championship teams with > 1 sponsor. Just under the players name would look class imo. I really couldn't see NR having an issue with it either

The Sir Bobby Robson Academy and the Bobby Robson Foundation on the back of our shirts. An annual tournament to raise funds for a number of local charities (not just the BRF) would also be a good idea. Of course the best tribute the players could give is to get promoted in style but that aint happening any time soon

Gerrard is world class. <Soz like> I understand why you'd not include him due to lack of International success, but does that mean the likes of Essien and Drogba should be disregarded here? Or what about the likes of Best, Cantona, Di Stefano, Litmanen, Weah, Giggs who never even played at a World Cup, should they be disregarded in laying claim to World Class status? Now I know the majority of them played for inferior teams than England, but Englands failings as a whole can be put to blame for lack of international pedigree. Drogba is worshipped like a god in the Ivory Coast, he's brilliant at international level. Colo's SAC didn't neccessarily mean success as in silverwear Isn't he worshipped like a god, because he's an absolutely amazing player playing for a nation that doesn't exactly have a massive history of producing world class players? Scoring goals against Burundi, Malawi, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Benin, Libya etc when you're the main focal point of a team's attack doesn't really go alot to proving whether you're a top quality international player? Not that I'm saying Drogba isn't, but purely for arguments sake. He plays well for them consistently, be it against Holland or Argentina or whoever. Gerrard on the other hand looks a different player in the england shirt Answered for me before I got a chance to! I take on board the point about Giggs et al, but Gerrard has had the platform with England to really stamp himself on the International game and time and time again has failed to deliver. Best and Giggs looked good in poor teams, as do Drogba and Essien. Gerrard looks ordinary at best in a team who should be looking at quarter finals at a minimum in each tournament. Thats not being England-arrogant (I couldn't give a stuff about England tbh), but England are constantly in the Fifa top 10 and as such should be looking at not reaching the quarters as failure. If you look at Gerrards top match winning/saving moments, a lot of them involve cheating. Give me Barry/Carrick and Lampard in the middle for England anyday over the sly scouse cheat edit: not sure I'm liking the abbreviation to Colo's Sac like, its one step too far!