Colos Short and Curlies

I'm working in Glossop at the mo, looking over their 'ground'. The towns gone Wembley mad

Imagine the celebrations. Especially if it sent Sunderland down. From another thread. I'm the only one on here who wants the mackems to stay up? To me the perfect season for the Mackems is 6 points given to the Toon and for them to finish 4th from bottom. I miss derby days when they are not around. Fuck Boro though, let both them and Hull go down so they can have their derby in the Championship.

I'm not saying forgive, but I do think that the club will move forward this summer once we secure survival. Removing the likes of Geremi, Cacapa, Viduka, Owen (potentially now..), even Given will give the club so much more room for adding to the playing staff. We'd miss one and half of them and their wages would cover 7 or eight new player wages easily. I'm definitely cooling towards Ashley but I do hold the belief that this painful season was a painful necessisty to get us to a position where we can start again I don't see how us losing Given was a step forward. Hence we'll miss the one and a half (Owen obviously being half). It goes without saying that Given is a better keeper then any of Harper, Krul, Forster but... If selling Given leads us to having available wages to sign a proper midfielder then the team as a whole would be better. yes mate, but Newcastle shouldn't be thinking of such cost cutting. At the end of the day, as tooj says, selling Given - or creating the situation where he wanted to go to be more precise - is never a step forward. Its a huge step backwards and has sent out a bad message to the footballing world. Of course Newcastle shouldn't be thinking along these lines. But....... We made an investment intended to get us back to the top 4 or top 6 at least and regular European football. The investment failed and now we have to act on this basis. It would have been the same if Fred was still here. There is no blame attached in this post to either Fred or Ashley, Fred made the investment, which didn't come off but most people agreed with at the time (even if the players themselves were debated, the fact we were spending money wasn't) and Ashley is dealing with the fall out. Of course a team with Given and Owen in it which is challenging for Europe is preferrable to not having players of this ilk. But paying wages geared towards European football is not sustainable when you are struggling to even stay in the league. We're now getting to the stage where we may be able to spend a bit on new wages and have another crack at it, and this is the positive coming out of the current situation. Whether this is under Ashley or another new owner remains to be seen.

First England game I've wathced for quite a while. Still as boring as fuck to watch

I'm not saying forgive, but I do think that the club will move forward this summer once we secure survival. Removing the likes of Geremi, Cacapa, Viduka, Owen (potentially now..), even Given will give the club so much more room for adding to the playing staff. We'd miss one and half of them and their wages would cover 7 or eight new player wages easily. I'm definitely cooling towards Ashley but I do hold the belief that this painful season was a painful necessisty to get us to a position where we can start again I don't see how us losing Given was a step forward. Hence we'll miss the one and a half (Owen obviously being half). It goes without saying that Given is a better keeper then any of Harper, Krul, Forster but... If selling Given leads us to having available wages to sign a proper midfielder then the team as a whole would be better.

unlike Alan Oliver Is he the one that works for the Chronical. He's the highly respected journalist who looks like the bloke from Rainbow (go on do a google images search and see the resemblence) who is now banned from SJP

I'm not saying forgive, but I do think that the club will move forward this summer once we secure survival. Removing the likes of Geremi, Cacapa, Viduka, Owen (potentially now..), even Given will give the club so much more room for adding to the playing staff. We'd miss one and half of them and their wages would cover 7 or eight new player wages easily. I'm definitely cooling towards Ashley but I do hold the belief that this painful season was a painful necessisty to get us to a position where we can start again

unlike Alan Oliver

Long term I agree, but........ For our remaining home games the crowd need to be expecting miracles and support the team in this vein. Its kind of a positive feedback loop, the team and crowd will build each other up and the results will follow. We can't afford and 'wait and see approach' in SJP in the next few months

http://www.skysports.com/Images/skysports/experts/phil_thompson.jpg

So who reckons Berbatov will be knocking on Ferguson's door demanding his dream move to play under Shearer this summer?

The segment they've just had on with the black lad from The Mirror, talking about how the timing of this story f***ed up the London Press who were all out congratulating themselves at the British Press Awards last night, only for this to be "a story of such magnitude...it's rare that England get knocked off the back page on the day of an England match...but Newcastle have definitely done it" small club, eh? G20 has even been shifted in place of our news Dollar is on the way up. I bet the FTSE posts gains today. All down to one man.

This is wrong. I'm a 28 year old accountant. I'm supposed to be level headed but I've got up this morning believing in football again. How and why can this club produce sugar rush moments on such a regular basis?

I can see Beye being given the armband if/when Owen is not on the pitch

Before Management finally does in that little bit of hair which prevents a full on egg frontal?? http://www.thespoiler.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/shearer2.jpg

Nah, started a 1, staying a 1

Keegan's appointment was during the day wasn't it? I remember Adrian Durham breaking it on Talkshite when I was driving home so I'd say between 4 and 5pm

Realised he's made a mistake a running into departures?

I just wonder if Shearer has been pulling any strings from the inside.....

All we need now is for Lampard and Terry to get crocked tomorrow to complete a wonderful 24 hours

Only man who could potentially save us really. Hopefully give Owen a new lease of life

I can't remember the club being in over £250m of debt under FS like. Now it is and boy are we paying for it. The debt levels under FS were worrying but manageable all the same. Unlike Ashley who it appears doesn't recognise at all the seriousness of the situation we are in, FS did hence the appointment of Sam Allardyce, a manager capable of doing wonders on a small budget and building from the bottom up. Oh and when the club goes down.... it will make the level of debt we were in under FS seem like pennies. So much for Ashley's plan eh. We are not £250 million in debt. Ashley paid about £130 million for the club and has loaned at least £120 mllion since. The amount paid for the club is not debt. The question that will not go away, it has been asked on here several times but no one can answer it, is how would the previous board have financed the club if they had still been in control? The glib answer that all successful football clubs have debt does not cut it, other clubs have debt because someone is prepared to lend it, meaning that they can demonstrate to the lender that the debt is secured and has a prospect of repayment. Who would have loaned us more money in the situation we were in? It is like you have a 100% mortgage on your house, everything in your house (furniture, kitchen appliances etc) and your car are bought on HP - plus your annual income is less than than your annual costs. Now go and find someone to lend you some money in the current climate to allow you to speculate to accumulate... There are people on this board, like me, who aren't Ashley believers. In my case I think he is a chancer who made some money floating a chain of downmarket sports retail shops at a grossly inflated value. He has bought us to show off to his mates and is now way out of his depth. We all know that there are indefensible actions relating to the Ashley regime. But until someone answers the above fundamental question about the previous regime it is hard to put the current shambles into perspective. superb post quayside, gets to the heart of the matter...i'm with you on all points is it possible for someone to get a clock up on the banner of the site adding up the days/hours/minutes 'til this question is answered? it'll need to run pretty fucking high mind It's a trap! Okay, at the risk of being banned for talking on a taboo subject and upsetting some people: It's a false assumption that the club would have had to pay out the same £50-£60m above it's income in the last 2 years that Ashley has loaned the club. Factors affecting the club's losses in Ashley's time: 1) Wages are the largest outgoing. The year prior to Ashley wages were £62.5 (71.8%). Last year they increased to £70m (70.4%), and this year according to Llambias they will be around £76m (76% of a £100k turnover). That's an increase in wages of £21m over the 2 years. Remember, the wage bill Ashley inherited included "high earning wasters" such as Parker, Dyer, Emre, Luque, Carr, Babayaro, and also Solano. If their supposed wages are to believed, that's almost a third of the wage bill he inherited right there. These players are all gone yet the wage bill has still risen both in absolute terms (by over 20%) and relative to turnover (in spite of a £18m per year hike in the turnover from the TV revenues) under Ashley. 2) Player purchases - Ashley's decision to pay up front for players has increased the amount we have had to pay out for players in his first 2 years even though we have had a negligible net transfer budget. I did this rough calculation before we knew Coloccini actually cost £12.5m rather than £10m, but for a rough figure it will do: So due to Ashley's pay up front policy, up to this point we have probably paid around £25m more in advance than if we had continued to pay in instalments for players. This is money that we would not have had to loan from banks, but would be effectively loaning from the selling club. 3) Allardyce - There's no way Shepherd would have sacked Allardyce in his first year, so the £6m(?) payout would not have been necessary, not in the first year at least. [i'm no fan of Allardyce, but I think if he hadn't been working for someone who didn't really want him there, he wouldn't have been looking over his should wondering when he was going to be sacked all the time and would perhaps have been less cautious in his approach than he was which was his ultimate downfall.] 4) Loan repayments - For last year the early repayment charge on the stadium debt was around the same as we would have paid in interest on the whole debt so that cancels out any benefit from Ashley's takeover. This year however, we are around £7m better off if the loans to Ashley are interest free. 5) Reduced match day income- you can argue some of this is down to the credit crunch or that it's due to a build up of suffering from years of having to endure only UEFA cup football, but surely Ashley and his appointments have to take some of the blame for the reduced attendances and corporate box sales this year, and the lack of any decent cup runs to bolster the income. Having said that I'm not even going to try and quantify this. So, guestimates all, but that's 21 + 25 + 6 - 7 = ~£45m additional expenditure so far which is purely down to the decisions and actions of Ashley and his employees, NOT attributable to some ill defined "state of the club when he bought it", "spiralling debt", "heading into administration" argument implying the current situation was inevitable anyway. When people talk about Ashley turning around the club's finances I just shake my head in disbelief and wonder what the hell they're basing it on. Does it simply boil down to the fact he's currently covering the debt and has a pipe dream of finding a bunch of wonderkids who are going to save us? Ignoring the abysmal staffing decisions he's made which in themselves are financially disastrous for the club, as far as I can see it he's also running the club in an increasingly worse way financially than ever before. How he has the nerve to constantly complain about the old board getting the NR sponsorship money up front and then in the next breath ask for 3 year's advance season ticket money from supporters is beyond me. Getting 5% of your future annual income up front is a terrible way to run things but trying to get 30% of your future income up front is perfectly fine? If we have any financial problems it was and is due to the wages not the debt. The debt was £70m. Of that, £45m was a fixed long term loan for the stadium expansion which easily paid for it's own interest repayments. I hope no-one is going to say that was a bad idea, that we should have saved up until we could pay for it in cash, or should have paid it off as soon as possible instead of putting the money into the squad which eventually got us back into the CL. That leaves £25m attributable to the running of the club over the previous 15 years. Is that the sort of debt the 13th or so richest club in the world can't afford to have? Something which is going to cause it to go into administration within months if Mike hadn't come along to save us? I know 1 injury ravaged season where we don't qualify for Europe is enough for some to declare that the sky is falling in, but I personally doubt it was. Ignoring the impending financial implications of relegation due to his negligence, can someone explain to me why they think Ashley is running the club so well financially even if we do somehow manage to stay up? Only going to comment on the NR/Season ticket point... There is a big difference in paying out your fixed sponsorship fee at the front end of the sponsorship period and trying to fix a currently variable income stream. We were guaranteed £x million from Northern Rock over 4 years. This under normal cicumstances would be received in 25% lumps (or maybe a larger up front payment and 3 smaller installments). We were not guaranteed that season ticket holders would renew each year, therefore by offering a slighlty reduced fee for taking a 3 year ticket you are fixing that income and removing uncertainty in your cashflow. We don't know if the season ticket money will be spent in one go, it certainly won't hit the profit in one go.

I would rather us play with ten men than with Ameobi, to be honest. Which we almost are, if we're starting Owen as well. Shirley Owen and Shola would equate to playing with nine men? Effectiively 7 with Butt as he is like giving Chelsea a 12th man

Seems like the Mail has cobbled together two quotes from different dates to try and make a story. Personally, I think Bruce would come IF we avoid relegation. A big if at the moment. I think they are freh comments. By preparing for preseason he will mean arranging friendlies etc. Shows just how far we have dropped now that Bruce is looking like a good option. Whilst everyone will agree in part, Bruce has also proved over the past 12 months that he is a better manger than he was 4 years ago, so there is a bit of pull and bit of push to thinking he is a decent option now

surely that must go for more mature players aswell then. i agree with your 2nd bit. Sort of, though it's a lot easier for supporters to know if were buying quality or dross. It doesnt change the glaring whole in Ashley's club saving youth policy. Its not just Europes elite that are scouring the world for the best kids. All clubs have scouts, dressing the job up with a fancy title doesnt make our system superior to anyone elses. Most supporters thought we were getting a bargain with Duff. Going further back most fans thought we were getting the real deal with Shaka, and Barton was going to be a great right back. A lot of Villa fans were extatic with Milner. Juan Veron anyone? Shevchenko? Counter that, a lot of fans thought Bobby was mental paying £6m for Bellamy etc etc There's no guarantees with young or old players, even Michael Owen has overall been a flop for us. I do agree about the required standard of the coaches, the one area we have seriously overlooked