Taylor Swift

Head says Bruce, heart says Shearer. I think I'd be more excited about next season if we went into it with Shearer in charge, which isn't to say he'd necessarily do a better job. Exactly how I feel.

Coloccini's been linked with Sevilla for £4m. Says we're holding out for £6m.

Ok, so who would you rather have managing our club? Shearer or Bruce?

I'm still a bit lost why we can't do a Juve and just keep the quality and bounce back. What quality? Juve were forced to be relegated. They came 2nd or whatever in that season so they had a fuckin title contending team. They could command their players to stay because they were going to be promoted right away, no matter what. We are not doing a Juve because we are shit. We've got a bunch of shite and have deserved relegation so personally, I'd like it if I never saw half of the first team in a black and white shirt ever again.

Who cares? We actually lost to fucking Derby during this ridiculous 'best start' so Allardyce shouldn't be bragging about his time at the club and speaking as if the sacking was out of nowhere; the fat cunt deserved it and we would have been relegated with him.

Good on Ashley. Get Shearer signed and that's two things that he'll have done right in a row. Must be a record or something. Back him with some money and give him time then we can say that he's done his job - hopefully that'll be enough to fix the mess of the last two years.

Get in, that's half our starting defence sorted.

We haven't actually sacked any managers, so there's no real difference to the wage bill in how many we've had. We probably even saved a bit of money (!) because for a long period, Hughton was manager and coach. Just the way Ashley and co like it.

Actually, now that I think about it, the figures were for last year. So that won't include the three managers (but since we only fired one, that shouldn't affect things so much). The £74m also won't include Coloccini, Bassong, Gutierrez, Guthrie and the new kids signed this year. It'll include Emre, Rozehnal, Milner - those who left last summer. Yeah, the cost of sacking Allardyce is there but there's a chance that we still have to pay Keegan £9m so I'm not sure how that affects the total. I'm not sure. I think it should still be around £70m. I'm not sure the backroom staff will be paid that much too. Maybe a combined £5m per season? That still leaves the majority of our first-team squad earning something like £60-65m, with the youngsters making up the difference left.

Take it like a man; no crying, no anger, just laugh it all off no matter how much it might piss you off. If you've ever dished it out, you gotta be willing to take it too.

If you think Xisco and Bassong's wages are higher than they should be, then you need to add a lot more to Smith's, Owen's, Viduka's etc. to get our wage bill up to what it was in the financial report.

Add them all up and you get £1.16m/week. x52 = £60m. We're still actually missing about £11-14m from our calculations. So either the board is being paid a lot, the kids are being paid a lot, or these guys are earning a lot more than we thought they were, in which it'll actually be easier to cut the wagebill. Let's hope so, anyway.

Good post. I was thinking though, if our wage bill is 75m, the players must be on more than we think. If you take away the players listed above, the players left cannot be getting paid 45m. It cannot be right. So Viduka, Duff, Colo etc must be on more. That's true. You could probably bump up the 6 main players I listed there, and take off about £5m-7m more, and the other players, if we are able to sell them, would lose us about £15m, instead of £8m. That still leaves our wage bill around £30-35m, which is still quite a lot, imo, especially when you factor in the new players we have to buy (since this calculation assumes we're getting rid of ELEVEN first-teamers). I think we'll be lucky to reduce our wage bill to about £40m, which is still 70% of turnover. We need to get promoted right away or Ashley's going to have to dig even deeper into his pockets. If we do, somehow, miraculously get promoted, then the wage-turnover ratio drops to around 40% or so, leaving us some room to sign some better players to compete in the Premiership. But, with the NR deal coming to an end and adidas probably not going to be our shirt makers, we're going to lose even more revenue after next season. It's so crucial that we're promoted in our first attempt.

Ha ha, that tickled me for some reason. Rarely has the disconnect between supporters and players been so total. What about Caroll though? I think he assumed the kids will stay regardless.

Llambias said they were going to lose £7m this year, if we had stayed in the Premiership. They've gotta make plans for losing about £25-30m, easily.

Our turnover in the past year was £100m. Of this, £40m came from TV money. We get a parachute payment of £12m and maybe £1m for TV money in the CC, so we're down £27m in terms of turnover. That leaves estimated turnover at £73m. Match day income has generally been around £30m per year. I'm just going to say that we lose 33% based on reduced ticket prices and reduced gates. So our match day income is expected to be around £20m. That now leaves estimated turnover at £63m. Our transfers have a net zero value (or around there, not varying too much, I think), so that doesn't affect turnover. Our commercial turnover was at £26m. I'm just going to say that it'll drop down to about £20m. So our turnover is now £57m. Our wage bill right now is £74m. The normal ratio is 50% of turnover being spent on wages, which means we need to lose, easily, £45m from the wage bill. Owen - £100k/week = £5m Viduka - £60k/week = £2.8m Smith - £60k/week = £2.8m Barton - £60k/week = £2.8m Duff - £60k/week = £2.8m Martins - £60k/week = £2.8m So far, that gets us only £19m. If we get rid of Coloccini, Geremi, Ameobi, Cacapa and Nolan, I think that takes about £8m-10m off the wage bill. That still leaves us with a hefty wage bill of £45m. We'll then need to buy new players for the CC and pay them reasonable wages. In conclusion: our finances are fucked.

Just out of interest, Gemmill, what do you think of Owen?

Why on earth would they reduce prices if there's going to be 10,000 less people turning up? We need the money. Reduce prices so that people actually come? We might lose 25k if the prices aren't reduced.

Turning out as I thought it would. New backroom staff which should really affect the way our team plays. Shearer was here for the short-run and made the players play the type of game he thought would help us scrap some points, but if he's here for the long-run, I think the style that we've seen isn't necessarily the one that we should now expect.

I'm all for loans. If we could some decent kids in from Arsenal or Man Utd and actually get promoted, we'd have a real chance to keep them because of the potential of our club. And we gotta get back up asap. Whatever needs to be done, must be done.

There's no doubt I'll be joining in with the banter next season. Why should I stop giving Man Utd and Liverpool fans shit? When Liverpool get knocked out of the CL, I'm going to be on the phone to my mates right away and I couldn't give a shit that we'd be somewhere in the Championship. Just pretend like you have no shame and the banter will still be good.

Has Krul or Forster shone in the Premiership? I must have missed those matches.

Grow a pair of balls, ffs What they did was totally expected, and it was fine - it's football banter, what else do you expect? If you're over 15, stop crying about a freaking banner or two.

He's been fine. He saves the shots that he's supposed to save and doesn't save the ones that he's not supposed to save. It's ok. He's an average gk and unless he's on a big wage, I think he's more than good enough for us. Forster and Krul haven't played a competitive football match in over a year, and Krul did it in freakin' Scotland too. I'd rather sell one of the kids (like Forster or Krul, depending on who's worse) and let Harper mentor the better kid.

Properly sums up the way I feel about Jonas, that. I reckon he'd have been ace in Robson's midfield for example. So Gutierrez is neither the disease nor the remedy really. I even reckon that extends to Collocini too - I think they'd both complement good players but we haven't really got any good players. Yep. I definitely think Coloccini will be an awesome player in a team where he's not being forced to make last-ditch tackles again and again. If he could just be himself, be someone who anticipates what's coming and doesn't have to face a healthy dose of quick strikers running at him, then he'll be good. It's not a perfect comparison but I see a lot of Vidic in him. Of course, Vidic is strong and gets his head to the ball but he's not the paciest defender nor is he the best tackler. He's good at anticipating the game and being in the position to deny the attacker a clear shot or run at goal, thus slowing down the attack. If you have players running at Vidic (like Torres did, like Gerrard did, like Martins did) then he'll struggle too. That's how I feel about Colo.