Colos Short and Curlies

Why put the Chelsea and Aston Villa owners together? They are very different types of owners. I'm now at the stage where I'd be happy if we bought our way to success. Ask any Chelsea fans if they prefer the days before Abramovich. For me, I hope the new owners are 'money no object' rich and are happy to throw that money at NUFC. I guarantee that you wouldn't enjoy winning a trophey under 'money no object' rules as much as you would if we did it from building a base and bringing young players through. Its like winning the lottery, of course you will enjoy spending the cash and the material things it brings, but you'd appreciate every one of the trinkets more if you had earned the millions first

I voted yes (after voting no first time around). He wouldn't be my first choice but I would welcome him back. However, he seems to have lost the main drawing factor to bringing him back - the fans are now split on him and whilst he would have the majority supporting a return, its not the 99% support back in January. If we are going down the Icon route again with new owners then Shearer would be a better bet, but I'm not 100% sure on him either unless there was a senior figure alongside him

Thats what I said (maybe) But then again we do have a bye this round....

Swansea Cardiff tonight. There will blood in the Valleys later! I've got to drive from Cardiff to Swansea at 5 tonight to get home, not looking forward to that. But the game should be a cracker. Man U v Boro should be a decent game aswell, hope the Smoggies get a battering to be honest, even though Man U going out would be good for us. Arsenal predicted to be putting out the youngest team ever for this round.

Where have you been? it was Nile Ranger.. I missed the concluding episode!

Tune in next year for the next exciting installment Watford vs Reading

Did we ever find out who the Black Dood with the dreads was? The plot thickens. Or maybe not

The Daily Mirror will link us with every Nigerian going in the next week or so.

Thanks, excellent stuff. I think all the Northern Rock money was up front. I think it is the £13.1m fixed rate loan mentioned in note 14. The £3m for the financing seems very expensive. The loss for 2007 was £32.9m, compared to £12m the previous year. The main issue was player wages, I doubt we manage to make much difference to that during 2008, may have done so at season end, but not really on the way through. The deferred income at the end of 2006 was £24.6m which ultimately became £33.6m in matchday revenue. We had 10 Cup matches that year (Interoto, Uefa, LC and FA Cup). I think all the season ticket money was in the deferred income and the Cup money, and visiting fan made up the difference. The Cup game bringing in £800k per game ?? For 2008 season we had one LC and one FA Cup game at home. I'd expect this to mean about 200,000 paying fans less at Cup games so say £4+m less income compared to previous year ? The other big drop in income for 2008 was the loss of the £6.7m of insurance money on Owen. The annual exceptional chartge known as "change in team management" was probably higher, as Allardyce was getting more than Roeder. The only big plus to the books would be the reduction in interest payments from Ashley paying off the debt, saving the club roughly £8.3m. These savings would not have been available to Shepherd With Ashley owning I struggle to see the loss being much better than £15m-£20m. With Shepherd it would have been £8m worse. You didn't touch on the cash position. I don't understand how this all works, so it'd be great if you could have a look. The accounts just have a raw figure saying Cash of £198k, down from £10.5m the same time the previous year, and £13.4m the previous year. This doesn't look good but I have no feel for what it really means I'll try and have a look tomorrow, but it may be Wednesday as I'm a bit busy in work

Watch it - I'll quote you!

A full house on Weds would give Ashley/the club £1.5million. (assume a £30 average ticket price). That is enough to make a noticable difference. But as you would only expect a crowd of 35k for this the maximum hit would be £1million, and lets be honest you would get 15k there regardless so really he is only going to feel £600k if the crowd was 15k only. As posted above, one game aint going to make a difference to Ashley, but a ghost crowd may affect the players performance

any other Ghanaians they might want to bring? I hear Benni McArthy is high on their list

Duff and Shola of course

Something daft like 8 wins from 18 games in 96/97, and in most games he played Les, Al and Tino upfront. Something happened to him in that summer

running out of straws to clutch at..... No its not, We weren't beaten by a team filled with better players, we weren't beaten by undefendible goals, we did create a few chances. All this despite being poor.

It was 2 poor teams out there on Saturday. And as poor as we were, in another game the deflection wouldn't have happened and Owen would have planted his header a yard to the left.

If you are on about the Shearer story then not quite 'bang on'. In the right ball park maybe

There are people higher on my list. I would love to see Martinez here. But Bruce is at worst a competent Premier League manager, and I think that he could withstand the pressure here - he did play for Man Utd afterall, and I reckon that he would have been under constant presure and scutiny there.

Ok, I’ve had a quick look at the accounts…. Re the season ticket money being received pre or post the accounts date – I think it’s a bit of both! The deferred income (excluding capital grants – government cash) (cash received in advance in effect) is £25 million, of which £10 million is sponsorship money (2 years of £5m each) if we believe that 100% of the money was received up front – this would also account for the £5m fall from 2006. There is also a little bit of bond and corporate money in there – probably only a million or so, therefore we will ignore it, leaving c. £15 million season ticket money. Lets assume an average season ticket price of £400, with 48,000 tickets sold = £19 million. So either some of the season ticket money had been received by the end of June or the club had not received any money for the final 2 years of the Northern Rock deal. Based on the dot cock numbers I think the average ticket price used may be a bit low, as it assumes an even number of child and adult tickets. It would be fair to assume that half of the season ticket money had not been received – There would also be another £3 million ticket money to be received during the year for general sale tickets and away fans (4,000 tickets at £35 each for 19 games). I have taken no cup games into account here. Re the going concern, I was correct in my assumption that the auditors make no comment on this – although it is implied that they agree with Chris Mort’s comments in the director’s report by stating in their opinion that the report is accurate. Basically the club does have net liabilities – and did so in the previous year as well. Eventually the club would have become insolvent if they continued to make losses, but this was not necessarily imminent! Chris Mort makes reference on the cash injection (£75 million) from SJP Holdings making the club a ‘going concern’ (basically the club will be solvent for a period of more than 12 months). However from this only £45m (!) was only needed to ensure this as the change in ownership resulted in £45 million of loans originally due over a period of 11 years becoming due in 60 days. So if Ashley hadn’t bought the club this would not have occurred and the cash injection would not have been needed. The remainder of the injection was at Mikes discretion - he did not need to do this to keep the club afloat. So, in summary the club was not about to go into administration last summer if we had not been bought out! On the other hand there is no doubting that the accounts will look a lot better this year. The other interesting thing was the £3 million spent on refinancing projects which were aborted due to the takeover. This is a lot of money to be spent on this type of thing unless it was pretty much secured (imo of course). I would guess that it was to do with the casino and hotels which were mooted by Fred – and maybe he did have the outside finance in place which he claimed. I know it’s a bit of a ramble, but if anyone wants me to clarify any specific point please shout

Swansea manager

I've been known to swear, hoy the remote control and punch various objects when we concede but I find myself not even bothered - a new feeling that tells me I'm on the verge of having had enough. Couldn't agree more. On top of the entire debacle of Keegans demise, what's the point really when it's already abundantly clear we'll finish between 9th-15th and go nowhere in the cups? Its been clear since September 1. And I don't think it will feel any better if some zillionaire buys the club and gets in 15 'galacticos'... I'd rather we got someline like Martinez in and tried to rebuild the club whilst retaining a semblance of relevance to the city in which we are based and our fans. Others feel differently, but to me a team bought by a zillionaire and filled from 1 - 11 with £20m players would not be Newcastle United. Man City fans will find this out, the football may be good but they will lose the affintiy between players and fans. Oh and Wise out!

Any league like that will not involve Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal as they will be in a European Super League. The rich look after themselves and all that jazz. Just imagine having live top flight footy on ITV again though

Has anyone else posted that Ashley is at Upton Park? Heard it % Shite earlier. Surely the fans will get wind of this, and we know how loud our away support can be when they want to say something.

Unless he wants to get back at us. Whats 150 million to him? These types of idiots would vote Nazi if the papers told them to Like the tories being 20 points up on Labour in the opinion polls. All media led bollox

Do you honestly think that I am stroking my ego here? Trust me, being an accountant is not top of any egotistical stucture! All I'm doing is trying to dampen down the flames of 'administration' etc through pointing out what I've experienced - for the record I worked for the worlds top accountancy firm for 4 years have a chartered qualification and have worked on the audit of Manchester United - I have a fair idea how football accounts work (ok that bit was ego massaging). If anyone took a premier league football club into administration they need shooting, it should be virtually impossible - Leeds were a Championship club when they went in btw. As I said I haven't seen the auditors report in the accounts but it would be VERY unusual to issue a 'clean' audit report with the provision that x amount of cash is injected, either the cash is guaranteed and the report is clean or it is not guaranteed and the report modified to show the club not being in a going concern basis. I'll repeat a point I made earlier, Companies can recover from havng an audit report showing them not to be in a going concern position, of course just a smany don't but its not simply a case of 'not a going concern' = 'administration'. Conversly many companies who go into administration had a perfectly healthy balance sheet at the previous year end. As for the Shepherd is shit argument, I've tried to remain neutral in this thread, but fwiw: Shepherd - tried his best for the good of the club AND himself. He wanted a succesful club and he wanted the rewards for it. He bollocked up in the timing of sacking Bobby and the appointments after that were disasterous. But rightly or wrongly he gambled high stakes to get us back in the top 4, unfortunately his managerial appointments rendered the cash impotent in many ways. His time was up when Ashley came in. I also don't think that he and Doug should have returned to the club after the fake Sheik sting. Ashley - had/has a vision and it is a longer term approach. Again he bollocked up in his appointments of both Wise and Keegan. I (like many) was caught up in the emotion of Keegan coming back, but looking back it was never going to last. Given time I do believe that Ashleys vision could bear fruit, but it would take a season or 2 to rebuild. A large enough percentage of fans are not prepared to wait for this. I fully understand NE5's viewpoint, I'm sure then manner in a lot of what he says is for effect though. Conversley though, I was a big supporter of Ashley, and was prepared to see where he was going to go post Keegan. Unfortunately though I think it has reached the point where anything he does will be ridiculed by fans and again his time has come and gone. A final point, I have no axe to grind with MacBeth or anyone else who comments on the finances of the club, however puttnig together http://www.football-finances.org.uk/ suggests a financial expert has compiled the website - I wouldn't attempt to do something like this without knowing what is behind the numbers as you only have one viewpoint on the website. Its a good website, but it is flawed. I have simply tried to explain why I think some of his statements are exaggerated. Oh and Dave, I know my English is crap - thats why i went into numbers (and use spell checker on my professional work!)