Colos Short and Curlies

Good point. Young - Talented - Big potential - Black - :thup: Power - :thup: :thup: :thup: Fyp Whats the deal with the balck power man - we've got Nile Ranger and he has more black power than Mr T and Apollo Creed put together

It looks inevitable so good bye and good luck Shay, thanks for the memories and performances over the years. Now is the time for Harper to step up, he has a chance to be a genuine number one and not just a place warmer. And I'm not worried if its £10m straight or a player swap, despite what most people seem to think in this thread the indications are that the whole £10m wil be reinvested in the team, we've not exactly run at massive transfer surpluses with Ashley have we???

Sporting was sickening, Man U the following weekend was soul destroying (although didn't Shola score?). The fans were fantastic that day btw. The team did not deserve them one bit

Chelsea semi for me. Honourable mention for the season where Graveson took Bernard out at Goodison (always get the 3rd/4th place seasons mixed up). Had we beaten Everton theat day we had a damn good shot at winning the league

The stock market price reflected the value of the company to the current owners (i.e. Halls and Shepherd). With hindsight it was overvalued as the proce did not factor in the fact that a large proportion of the company debt had a change of ownership clause forcing repayment within months rather than years. Had Ashley known this he could have argued that (a) the price was too high or (b) he should pay for the shares in installments rather than all at once. Every company has items which on the face if it look OK, but if you dig deeper could cause problems down the line. Its up to the auditors to decide on (a) the likelyhood of the problems and (b) their impact on the current standing of the company. When the last Hall/Shepherd accounts were signed (a) was pretty remote due to the revenue generated by the company and no trigger to change the payment structure of the debt. So before anyone jumps in, the accounts were not wrong at any time.

You can probably knock £11m off the loss straight away as Sams pay off and Interest payable re the change of ownership were one off hits. Who knows what we'll be lumbered with this year

That's what I was getting at earlier, just didn't phrase it that well. So if the 'real' loss is £2.5m, are people justified in claiming Ashley should have spent more on the first team? It wasn't the real loss in cash terms. We went from owing £70 million at 30th June 2007 to owing £100 million at 30th June 2008, increasing to £110 million after that. If you forget amortisation (which is a perfectly good concept btw) and all that and just focus on Ashley's cash position it puts it into perspective. £30 million of extra cash was stuck into the business for the club to (at best) stand still. where do you think that's gone, considering wages only went up £5m and player trading only cost half a mil net? is it a case of one-off costs associated with the takeover or is the club just not being ran all that well? I posted this earlier, it's the best I can do given the time and information at my disposal. It just shows where the cash went under fairly broad headings. Cash flow in basic terms: Operating cash flow - £5 million (ie cash loss on day to day business) Finance servicing costs - £8 million (mostly interest on loans now paid off) Net capital spend - £21 million (net spending on assets, haven't had time to look closer yet!) Loan repayment - £70 million (obvious) Total out = £104 million This was financed by : Ashley £100 million Overdraft £4 million Total £104 million cheers. the £21m looks like the key figure. the debt repayment is switching to a more favourable lender (ashley), £8m no longer applies and as we wont be paying that we shouldnt really be making a loss. wonder what the £21m has been spent on, something to do with 'the system'? Players as well I thought players fee's were only included as assets which are then depreciated over the course of his contract? How can they also be included as a seperate cost? Or am I misunderstanding what you've just said there? Two seperate things. In the P&L the cost of players is spread over the length of the original contract - i.e Michael Owen 'costs' the club £4m each year in ammortisation. The £21m is physical cash outflow, i.e what has gone out of the bank. The cashflow shows what goes on during the year and is a factual statement - you can't hide a cash flow (even if you can ahem rename it to fit your business). With the P&L it can be manipulated (legally) to tell the story that the business wants the readers to read. It may well be that some costs have been accelerated this year rather than holding them back for future periods to show a bad picture this year and a vast improvement next (or vice versa (what ever happened to those btw?).

Not sure if this helps: Yes but why not instead just look at what we paid for the likes of Coloccini ect vs what we made on players sold at the same time. That's a better indicator of real money lost and what Ashley might have had to put in himself to keep the club debt free. The fact is amortisation doesn't reflect real losses in this particular year. As in the £17.8 million "loss" did not actually require Ashley to spend £17.8 million, because its a paper loss based on depreciation of players values who were bought 3 or 4 or even 5 years ago. Cashflow my friend

As I've mentioned earlier Dave I agree with you to an extent, but the more I think about it the more sense it makes and I can't think of a better way of doing it. A players value might well go up, but that's only a theoretical value until he's actually sold and you can't base your accounts off that. (if you valued a player at £10m but he ends up selling for half that do you show a £5m loss on the accounts?) Also some people have said that in a years time we'll be much better off as the amortisation for Owen will be £0. True, but it also means he's left the club and we, in theory, have to splash more on a replacement. No it doesn't

At some point the money has been paid - the paper loss (i.e ammortisation) is just spreading it over a few years. For the most part that would have been pre-Ashley though. Let's face it, he's not exactly spunked loads on new players, has he? Hence being in debt

At some point the money has been paid - the paper loss (i.e ammortisation) is just spreading it over a few years.

Quayside is doing a grand job swimming agaisnt the tide of questions, but can I state re ammortisation, it is quite simple. The cost of the player (transfer fee, agent costs, signing on fee) are recognised in the accounts (ammortisation) over the length of the ORIGINAL contract. Doesn't matter if we pay a fee when renewing, its the original contract which counts. You can devalue a player by more than that one amount, but it very rarely happens as you cannot get a reasonable estimate of their value until they are sold. The value of players can not go up once you have bought them. The rationale for this is to spread the money spent over the useful life of the player (no Smith jokes please). As it is all to do with what you have spent on players, those brought through the youth team or free transfers have no value in the accounts. Other point. The p&l is not a good indicator of a clubs year really, look at Operating cash inflow/outflow then take of capital spend (pretty much player acquisitions and improvements to the stadium. Op Cash outflow of £5m isn't good as you are borrowing as soon as you buy one player. (btw we must have spent a shitload on the training ground/stadium last year seeing as we just about broke even in transfers - £21million!)

£3m, and loan back to Derby for the rest of the season. Let him build back his fitness there. I think they would consider that considering where they may be next season

Tim Krul playing for Carlisle?

I can, and I just did. How can a man who is Chairman during some of the best league positions the club has ever had, then have no ability to run a football club? far too logical a point there tooj If shepard was here still we would be under administration. So i guess it could be worse than this afterall .. Now you can't say this, its just an assumption. There's a thread buried somewhere where this is discussed in a bit of depth - we were not going into administration when Fred sold to Mike

I prefer spending good £££'s on high quality young 1st team players like Bellamy, Jenas, Parker, Dyer etc than youth team'ers. What about Colo, Jonas? We have spent money on good players as well as youth players. Not everything Ashley's team has done has been negative.

I was never one who particularly wanted rid of Freddy, and I'm also one of those who don't believe that everything we currently see is down to Ashley. Fred was on a downward slope, that much should be pretty much indisputable, but had he been able to generate a new partner to replace the Halls and inject some cash then he may have recovered - this we will never know. I don't like the Chelsea and Man City approach to team building, and have always supported Ashleys apparent aim of buying talented young players and building from within. I had however envisaged that all of these youth players would be mixed with some experience. If the bids for Modric and/or Aimar were genuine then it would support this view - and the signing of Colo suggests that money would be spent on the RIGHT individuals. Where it has gone wrong was Ashley listening to the fans and bringing back Keegan, there was no way on Earth that Keegan could coexist with Wise et al (who I believe have done nothing wrong) once Mort left as Lambarse is one of Ashleys new boys leaving Keegan out on a limb. If we had been a bit creative we could have appointed a better long term manager than Keegan last Jan and we wouldn't be in this mess (note whilst I can't understand the timing of KK walking out I also dont put all of the blame on him). Should we survive this season then the situation could be repaired, Lambarse has to go and ideally JFK will be thanked for having a go and he can get another role in Div 1 or something. We then need either a young manager such as Martinez to work within the structure or someone like Bruce to be given free reign. One thing I cant forgive the current management team for is the lack of communication, this is making the situation worse imo as it leaves us fans with only specualtion that the staus quo is the best we can hope for. I'm not going to get into a net-spend discussion here as its overplayed and some people don't seem to grasp the positives from being able to generate good fees for mediorcre players. I'm sure that should we shift Smith for £6m and signed Mbia for £!0m then people would complain that we've only spent £4m and would have been happier spending £15m and recuperating £1m.

My favourite... http://www.topnews.in/light/files/leona-lewis.jpg http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~ra831/group8/images/larsson1.jpg

I still think that a club should run on the principle that wages can not exceded a set percentage of turnover (say a five year average figure). This still allows the best teams to pay for the best players but removes the scope for stupid wages being paid to one player. It would also lead to a trickle down of better players playing for lesser clubs; Man Utd could still offer Ronaldo £150k a week, but might then not be able to pay Rooney the same, so Rooney has to move to Madrid to get his £150k, which then in turn pushes Raul out to Valencia etc.

A bit fruity.... Given Taylor - Colo - Bassong Jonas Zog (Wing backs) Butt Guthrie Lua Lua Duff Owen Or drop Duff and play Xisco up top with Owen, just can't see JFK playing Xisco twice in a week cos he's as idiot

More impressive if it were Snipes

out of that team only the 2 fullbacks and martins would get in tbh Barton as well maybe. But pushing Zog up to left wing, having Beye at the back and Martins upfront gives a massively different shape to the team then that one out there today.

Seriously? Either a cash rich takeoveree or the potential devastation which is relegation. Need to clear out all of the established 'stars' and bring in younger hungry players who want to play for the club and are not here because we pay big wages. I'm just not sure we would come back up quickly and that would be devastating for the club

So why the clause to always make him the clubs highest earner........

Never mind boots. Goalie gloves is where it is at. Adidas Fingersaves, £70 at JJB, £40 at the Mike Ashley Emporium (back in 2000-2003 anyway). Had fins in the fingers to stop them bending back too far. Reutsch (sp) back in the late 90s made decent mits as well.