Taylor Swift

Shola just jogs to every ball. What a fucking wanker.

Jose is on hardcore drugs.

Shola.... hopeless.

Indeed. I wish him nothing but the best. He's been through some very shit times lately and it's no surprise that he wants to leave. There's nothing wrong with this decision even though he's professed his love for the club and the city many, many times. He's earnt our support whatever he does, to be honest.

What positions are you thinking about, Chez?

Like Ipswich and Crewe. If we'd produced as many good young players as the likes of Ipswich over the years, then we wouldn't be paying multi-million pound fees and wages to the likes of Butt, Smith, Viduka, Duff etc. and we'd have plenty of money to spend on other transfers. the desperation of some people to grasp at straws and demean as much as possible, a setup which qualified for europe more than any other club bar 4 over the course of over a decade, never ceases to amaze me. Ipswich were a better and more successful club than us, guess when ? For over 20 years prior to 1992. Surprise eh ? And now, people want to match their current smaller club standards. Well, the way we are going now, we might. Youth systems at the likes of Crewe, Ipswich, West Ham etc are acknowledged throughout the game for producing good players so I'm hardly saying anything contentious, or what it has to do with our qualification for Europe. But thanks for your input. Your cherry picking of Smith, Duff, Butt and Viduka is what I'm talking about. Do I/you want to be run like Ipswich, or would I/you rather sign players like Bellamy, Shearer, Solano, Given, Woodgate, Robert, Dyer, Woodgate, Ferguson, Speed, Hamman, Owen, Parker for starters. And as has been said by spence, who from the likes of Ipswich has been significantly better than Taylor, Hughes, Harper, Chopra, Caldwell and Ameobi ? Nowt like a good cliche is there ? West Ham have produced some good youngsters, but sold them in true 2nd rate style, under Ashley we may have eyes on this particular direction and spunk the money from the sales on anybody we do find on 2 inferior replacements to shore off relegation, but if thats what you want I hope you think you will be happy, but I'm telling you - just like the last 18 months - when it hits you, you won't be. I wonder how many people would have wanted us to be like Burnley if they had got through tonight, words fail me, they really do. Speaking of Burnley, back in the 1970's they had arguably the best youth system in the country. Where did it get them ? Answers on a postage stamp. Our spending wasn't sustainable, mate. The way we operated, which although got us to pretty lofty heights for a few years, wasn't sustainable. We want the club to challenge, but the way we did with KK and maybe SBR was just for a fleeting moment.

He's paid the debt off. as a loan As opposed to doing what? Genuine question. as opposed to 'putting his hand in his pocket to pay off the debt' something for which most on here praised him. for over a year. probably repeated a thousand times over. people thought that, dont try and reinvent the past to make it look like everyone thought it was a loan from the start. im not criticising Ashley for it but at the same time im not going to praise him as, thus far, we've not had the knock-on effect of the money freed up being used to make us better. He did put his hand into his pocket. The club is his. The holding company is his. The 'loan' is just a technicality. It would be different if were a PLC and he only owned a part because that would be a genuine loan but this is not the same. This is just him putting money from his other accounts into this account which can be equated to him putting money into the club. The key point is also that he has not collected any interest payments for it, so it is just like giving money to the club. I don't know how you can twist it to say something else. You can say that if we get sold, then presumably this money will be included in the price of the club and Ashley will recover it, but right now, he's 'given' us £70m to pay off the debt and sunk a further £30m in to help us get closer to breaking even, which we're still far away from doing.

He does, but these next couple of years will be miserable to tolerate. I still think he'll go when the markets recover in a year or so unless the fan angst subsides so we still don't have a bright or stable future.

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. I think Chelsea are the only club that actually values their players as assets and includes them in the accounts as such. They are far away from breaking even, which was Abramovich's 5 year plan. Another Russian failing with a 5-year plan

Damn, they're going to Wembley again. 90 mins away from Europe.

Once Owen, Viduka and their like are off the wagebill the club will start generating a profit allowing us to consolidate slowly. Theoretically, after a few years of that we can just pick a moment to take a bit of financial risk to pull us up the table. (The "Villa model" so to speak) Until we get all the wasters off the wagebill though, it does indeed look like we're just going to have to struggle to keep our head above the water and stay in the Premiership. One thing's for sure: the age of "ambitious/insane" Shepherd-level spending is over. Forever. All of the players brought in will have to be on "sensible" wages therefore won't be top notch. This again puts pressure on the scouting/recruitment to find Bassongs more often than not. Again I'd advocate a mixed approach - if we stay up we shouldn't give up the idea of having a couple/a few well paid players. I agree, but there needs to be a right quota of highly paid players and low-risk/high-reward youngsters. Right now, we've got nearly half our first team squad on unsustainable wages and not living up to their contract. That has to be sorted out, first and foremost. If we do that, reduce the wage bill by £15-20m/year, then that's £15-20m per year that can be spent on new players and their wages. We're paying top 4 money and not getting top 4 performances. Look at Villa, they've got a great team, loads of youngsters and they're spending money, but I bet they're not paying anyone 80k+/week. Our finances weren't planned well. We banked on staying in the CL or Europe in the least and failure to do that in the past few seasons has cost us a few seasons, which will pretty much be rebuilding. And with regards to what johnny said earlier about Ashley not putting in any of his money: that's not true. He's essentially 'loaned' us money from the holding company, but since that holding company is his, he's given us the money. And it's also technically not a loan because he's not taking interest (according to quayside). So it's just a straight £100m from Ashley's pocket to the club. The silver lining is that there does seem to be a plan but it's long-term and most fans will have to tolerate a few years of consolidation before we can make another push up the table. We could get lucky if we spot a few more Bassongs which would speed up the process but if we don't, then the finances have to be sorted before we can spend again.

Would not any money spent/received on player transfers be included in the operating expenses (whether it be for transfers in the current year or for delayed payments for transfers in previous years) ? No - money spent on players isn't charged against profit in operating expenses in the year it is incurred. That money physically (okay, electronically) moves from one place to another in a particular year though doesn't it. Surely it must be accounted for somehow in that financial year? It gets shown as an asset in the balance sheet. It is then, as discussed, amortised through the annual results over the life of the contract. Eg If a player cost £10 million we record a £10 million asset in our balance sheet. Say its a 4 year contract so £2.5 million gets written off every year against the overall profit/loss for the year. If he's sold in year 4 his value has been written down to £2.5 million by then, if we get £8.5 million the profit is recorded as £6 million in the result for the year. FWIW Given will be on the books at zero so if he's sold its all profit. What happens if a contract is extended? I assume Owen will have gone from £16m to £4m, if he signed tomorrow (I know....) for another three years how would that affect things? My understanding is that his value would then be zero i.e. if we sold him, it would be all profit. No amortisation after contract renewals.

Good man, Kaka. It's an admirable decision (if confirmed). I like him even more now. Let's hope City end up drawing Milan in the UEFA Cup at some point so Ricardo here can show them what they're missing.

well done, very topical.

Silver lining is we don't have a match for another week so things can still change. If games were coming thick and fast then there'd be a full-scale riot. Ashley's also lucky in that the Sunderland game will actually come before the window closes, so if we win that game, the feelings wouldn't be so strong if we ended up with only one or two players coming in.

Well, I've seen us play 'live' 8 times and we've lost all 8 games. So with all the expectations that we're going to get raped, maybe I'd be reverse-jinxing the team and we'll end up winning. Hopefully, anyway.

Scenario 1, but I'm not a local so I don't feel as much 'hatred' for Sunderland as Geordies do. Newcastle 17th, Liverpool 18th. That's a scenario that's much, much more appealing. But even so, I want the team to do well, regardless of who finishes above or below us.

How has he steadied us? We're in worse turmoil than when he took over. Financially we're much better off. If someone else buys us, they won't have to deal with the huge amount of debt which was crippling us when Shepherd left. They could take out new loans again and fund transfers that way for the first few seasons.

I agree. It is almost torture to see the look on Shay's face after we've lost another silly goal when you consider the heights that we've reached with him, the despondency in the team and most in the team, especially our captain, seemingly so apathetic as to whether we actually win the game or not. But what can we do, especially now during this financial crisis? Ashley's not going to sell because he won't even recoup back his money, no new, better manager will come because of the instability and I think it'd be pretty dumb to let Kinnear spend money without some sort of supervision. I don't quite understand your #2 point. How could Ashley have made money if he had just kept the team in the Premiership? The tv money has increased but player's wages and transfer fees have likewise increased. If he had merely kept us in the Premiership, the fans would have stopped going sooner or later and he'd lose a significant source of revenue - match tickets - thus not making any money. Look at other clubs around us when they release their financial reports, none are making any significant money. Ashley invested £200 something million in the club, if we make £5m per year, which we haven't in about 6 or 7 years, that's a 2.5% return. You'd get nearly as much, if not more, if you put your millions in a bank and a lot more if you put it in a fund. So I'm not sure he was in it to make money but the situation is disappointing nonetheless. Welcome back, by the way.

Agbonlahor flipped like Stone Cold had just stunned him.

Amazing. 2-0, Henry.

Haha, that boy is nuts.

With the exception of our match, everything else went our way. The big teams, the teams that we cannot catch up to, all won: Chelsea, Man Utd and Villa. Most of the teams below us still remain below us: Sunderland, Stoke, Bolton and Boro, all of whom could have jumped if they won.

JAMMY FUCKING BASTARDS. We're just jealous, mate. Don't mind the whinging.

Ha, get in, Chelsea!