Unbelievable

Way to ignore a post too. It was quite obvious that by gravy train in the context of my post I meant Premiership (TV money etc).

Because any player who does well is going to be tempted away by clubs with more ambitious salary scales, and it's only the bargains that turn out not to be bargains that will stay? Until that starts to happen regularly then that's conjecture. Ba is the only person who has shown any real desire to leave and he was apparently offered terms that would've almost gave him parity with our highest earner. I don't quite understand why the board are coping flack for adopting a sensible wage structure. We've been down the road of paying grossly over inflated salaries to players whose performances and/or ability haven't justified them. It got us into trouble and was clearly unsustainable. Why do it again? Our position in that wages table is being obsessed over but whether 1st, 13th or 20th, it's completely moot. The figure that does count for something is wages to turnover. 70% is hypothesised to be the tipping point between a club that can cope and one that is in danger and we're not a million miles off that. The only way we can really begin to pay more is to increase turnover. I think there are some very justified criticisms of the board, for example the extremely ponderous way we approach transfer windows which seems to be borne out of a belief we can come out on top in the sagas that pass for negotiations nowadays when all evidence points to the fact that clubs are getting wise and preferring to play hard ball with us, but our wage structure? Christ, it's one of the things the current owners have got very, very right. It's flexible enough to allow us to reward players who perform well (as we did with Tiote in his first season and Krul last year) but won't see us get taken for mugs. What prize do we win for having the lowest wages to turnover ratio? Well done, you've missed my point. No I haven't. Wage total in absolute numbers is a pretty good predictor for league position as tollemache correctly argues, wages to turnover ratio isn't. Wages to turnover matters because it's the only figure that gives you a real indication of whether the club's policy is conservative, reasonable or reckless. Agreed on that count, I didn't say it doesn't matter at all. I challenged your statement that wages in itself in absolute terms is a moot point, and that wages to turnover is what really matters. In actual effect, a football club should in my mind try to maximize its revenue whilst trying to spend as sensibly as it can (note: not as low as it can) in order to offer its fans (customers) the best experience possible (note: not hang on to the gravy train as long as they can).

Great finish Puncheon

Holy shit!

Well yes, problem is for some reason or other we can't "afford" them.

Because any player who does well is going to be tempted away by clubs with more ambitious salary scales, and it's only the bargains that turn out not to be bargains that will stay? Until that starts to happen regularly then that's conjecture. Ba is the only person who has shown any real desire to leave and he was apparently offered terms that would've almost gave him parity with our highest earner. I don't quite understand why the board are coping flack for adopting a sensible wage structure. We've been down the road of paying grossly over inflated salaries to players whose performances and/or ability haven't justified them. It got us into trouble and was clearly unsustainable. Why do it again? Our position in that wages table is being obsessed over but whether 1st, 13th or 20th, it's completely moot. The figure that does count for something is wages to turnover. 70% is hypothesised to be the tipping point between a club that can cope and one that is in danger and we're not a million miles off that. The only way we can really begin to pay more is to increase turnover. I think there are some very justified criticisms of the board, for example the extremely ponderous way we approach transfer windows which seems to be borne out of a belief we can come out on top in the sagas that pass for negotiations nowadays when all evidence points to the fact that clubs are getting wise and preferring to play hard ball with us, but our wage structure? Christ, it's one of the things the current owners have got very, very right. It's flexible enough to allow us to reward players who perform well (as we did with Tiote in his first season and Krul last year) but won't see us get taken for mugs. What prize do we win for having the lowest wages to turnover ratio? Well done, you've missed my point. No I haven't. Wage total in absolute numbers is a pretty good predictor for league position as tollemache correctly argues, wages to turnover ratio isn't.

I doubt it but that's not what anybody is asking for. What many supporters want to to see is an NUFC that tries to punch its weight, something more ambitious than the small time mentality we have now. A middle ground that reflects the size of the club, not the owners' bargain basement business philosophy. Oh, and get that SD s*** off the stadium. It's very difficult to define that middle point though isn't it? I mean, we already buying people like Cisse and Debuchy... you could argue we have found the middle ground already. As long as we are fielding Williamson in nearly all of our matches so far this season I beg to differ on having found that happy middle ground.

Because any player who does well is going to be tempted away by clubs with more ambitious salary scales, and it's only the bargains that turn out not to be bargains that will stay? Until that starts to happen regularly then that's conjecture. Ba is the only person who has shown any real desire to leave and he was apparently offered terms that would've almost gave him parity with our highest earner. I don't quite understand why the board are coping flack for adopting a sensible wage structure. We've been down the road of paying grossly over inflated salaries to players whose performances and/or ability haven't justified them. It got us into trouble and was clearly unsustainable. Why do it again? Our position in that wages table is being obsessed over but whether 1st, 13th or 20th, it's completely moot. The figure that does count for something is wages to turnover. 70% is hypothesised to be the tipping point between a club that can cope and one that is in danger and we're not a million miles off that. The only way we can really begin to pay more is to increase turnover. I think there are some very justified criticisms of the board, for example the extremely ponderous way we approach transfer windows which seems to be borne out of a belief we can come out on top in the sagas that pass for negotiations nowadays when all evidence points to the fact that clubs are getting wise and preferring to play hard ball with us, but our wage structure? Christ, it's one of the things the current owners have got very, very right. It's flexible enough to allow us to reward players who perform well (as we did with Tiote in his first season and Krul last year) but won't see us get taken for mugs. What prize do we win for having the lowest wages to turnover ratio?

I think you may have misunderstood the point I was trying to make. I think our transfer is very good on a number of aspects: - we are getting value for money - we are buying players just before or in their prime - the characters coming into the club are professional - our first team looks very good on paper ("eleven purples") There are also some quite obvious problems with it: - we do not focus on the positions that need strengthening, but on getting a bargain, meaning we can literally go for years without filling a position - we do not place value in building a squad, so beyond the first team are players with neither much ability nor potential - despite publicly stating we invest heavily in youth we barely ever do and we have no apparent structure to bring young players through My entire point is that if Ashley was willing to trust the football people around him, and back them accordingly to even an average Premiership level in relation to our club size/revenue/potential we could work on the weak points of the policy effectively and be so much better for it. In my opinion Mike Ashley just seems on some kind of mission to prove you can run a Premiership club at a profit, which would be great news if we were shareholders, but is in reality not so much considering we are fans.

Wor Demba scores

Let me start of by saying I applaud the general direction of financial stability, extensive scouting and looking for player value in the transfer policy that Mike Ashley has set out for the club, as I don't think the late spending spree that was overseen by his predecessor was sustainable and the results were hit and miss to say the least. His approach to running a football club has a lot of merits, and when things go well (as they did last season) he will get a lot of credit. However, if you look at our transfer and wage figures compared to other Premiership teams, it becomes clear that "last season" was a flash in the pan, and that our current season is about where you'd expect a club of our transfer activity/wage structure to be. In terms of transfer fees, this is the Premiership league table for nett investment over the last five years, i.e. roughly since Ashley took over: http://i.imgur.com/bBUiA.jpg Source: http://transferleague.co.uk/league-tables/transfer-league-table-last-five-seasons.html In terms of wage total, here's a fairly recent breakdown of wage totals of Premiership teams from the 2010/1011 season teams marked with an asterix are 2009/2010 figures): http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GD4P0rhmO2w/T2hAJj3JJmI/AAAAAAAAFcg/sXBXt61En_Q/s400/23%2BNewcastle%2BWages%2BLeague.jpg Source: http://swissramble.blogspot.nl/2012/03/newcastle-united-life-in-northern-town.html So 19th in terms of nett transfer investment and 13th for wage total. Now, I'm willing to accept that we can't compete with the oil rich sugar daddy clubs like Chelsea and Man City, or traditional powerhouses with huge commercial value such as Man U, Arsenal and Liverpool, but beyond that I fail to see why we shouldn't be able to compete financially for our transfer targets. If we are only willing to pay lower midtable transfer fees and wages, what else can we expect long term other than lower midtable Premiership finishes? Serious questions have to be asked about what Ashley's level of ambition is for Newcastle United and why he bought us in the first place. (Posted these figures earlier in the Remy thread when it went 100mph, so sorry if you've seen them before, but I thought it was worth sharing in the Ashley thread).

57 with Hazard © and Ivanovic to play. Still not in the N-O league top 100..

Voetbal International are running with a Daily Mail (I know) story of a rejected 12 million euros bid from AC Milan, saying we are holding out for 25 million. Surely not... Source: http://www.vi.nl/achtergronden/Transferdagboek-1/234213/Transferdagboek-1601-Beckham-Krul-en-Mourinho.htm

Makes pretty grim reading that. The text of the report suggests that that was in the Championship. The year before that you were 63rd, which would have been about a 40Kpw average. What text? I think the figures are from the 2010/11 season, when we were back up. Swiss Ramble (http://swissramble.blogspot.nl/2012/03/newcastle-united-life-in-northern-town.html) has roughly the same figures: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GD4P0rhmO2w/T2hAJj3JJmI/AAAAAAAAFcg/sXBXt61En_Q/s400/23%2BNewcastle%2BWages%2BLeague.jpg That's because that's from the 2009-10 season as well. f*** me, unbelievable. Aye, amended my post as just noticed the note at the bottom. I seriously doubt it is currently much lower though, especially with Ba gone. Will be interesting to see the nest set of accounts with regards to this. Edit: Actually, is that not just the ones with a star next to them? I'm confusing myself now.. Edit2: I don't think it is you know.. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ovdX3eWmlZU/T2g9Xwt5xRI/AAAAAAAAFZg/7yhcd0ftCKM/s400/7%2BNewcastle%2BProfit.jpg

Makes pretty grim reading that. The text of the report suggests that that was in the Championship. The year before that you were 63rd, which would have been about a 40Kpw average. What text? I think the figures are from the 2010/11 season, when we were back up. Swiss Ramble (http://swissramble.blogspot.nl/2012/03/newcastle-united-life-in-northern-town.html) has roughly the same figures: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GD4P0rhmO2w/T2hAJj3JJmI/AAAAAAAAFcg/sXBXt61En_Q/s400/23%2BNewcastle%2BWages%2BLeague.jpg Edit:noticed note at bottom of pic. Will be interesting to see what the current wage total is. Doubt it is much higher.

Makes pretty grim reading that. Well, we're 13th in the wage table and 19th in the transfer fees table, so I guess our current position in the Premiership table is just about right for our spending. In all seriousness, we couldn't sustain our ludicrous spending under Shepherd, but we seem to have completely gone the other way with Ashley. We will never compete with the top 8 consistently if we aren't prepared to compete with them financially, and that is the sad truth.

Alright, here's a fairly recent breakdown of wages compared to other Premiership teams to go with that earlier table of nett transfer spend that showed us second bottom over the last five years: http://www.sportingintelligence.com/2012/05/01/revealed-the-worlds-best-paid-teams-man-city-close-in-on-barca-and-real-madrid-010501/ I have taken out the Premiership teams for your convenience: Rank (last year) – Team – League – Ave player pay, £ per year (week) 3 (10) Manchester City * EPL £4,486,580 (£86,280) 4 (6) Chelsea EPL £4,118,227 (£79,197) 11 (16) Manchester United EPL £3,345,911 (£64,344) 16 (22) Arsenal EPL £3,199,678 (£61,532) 18 (20) Liverpool EPL £3,169,631 (£60,954) 41 (51) Aston Villa EPL £2,464,831 (£47,401) 51 (110) Tottenham EPL £2,308,494 (£44,394) 104 (136) Fulham EPL £1,469,616 (£28,262) 108 (120) Everton EPL £1,437,370 (£27,642) 110 (130) Sunderland EPL £1,434,654 (£27,590) 112 (151) Bolton EPL £1,419,805 (£27,304) 113 (94) West Ham EPL £1,417,310 (£27,256) 127 (63) Newcastle EPL £1,357,295 (£26,102) 137 (132) Blackburn EPL £1,311,509 (£25,221) 155 (178) Stoke EPL £1,182,425 (£22,739) 165 (152) Wigan EPL £1,107,821 (£21,304) 174 (-) Birmingham EPL £1,036,592 (£19,934) 180 (185) West Bromwich Albion EPL £1,000,064 (£19,232) 186 (-) Wolverhampton Wanderers EPL £887,146 (£17,061) 213 (-) Blackpool EPL £435,640 (£8,378) Ambition anyone?

You can say that about every other case. We reportedly couldn't give Ba, one of the top strikers in the country, the very reasonable 60/70k he wanted, now we can't compete with f***ing QPR for his replacement. It's the same story for transfer fees, where we are being massively outspent by most other Premiership clubs. Ashley's business model has its merits, but it's also holding us back massively when it comes to realising our potential. There. I've bolded the other bit now where you equated the transfer fees with our wages policy. Happy now you pedantic t***?

You can say that about every other case. We reportedly couldn't give Ba, one of the top strikers in the country, the very reasonable 60/70k he wanted, now we can't compete with f***ing QPR for his replacement. It's the same story for transfer fees, where we are being massively outspent by most other Premiership clubs. Ashley's business model has its merits, but it's also holding us back massively when it comes to realising our potential. I doubt that's true. Misrepresenting the facts isn't going to help any. There you go sir: http://i.imgur.com/bBUiA.jpg That's transfer fees only though isn't it? You were mentioning wages in your first sentence. Does that figure still hold if you take those into account? What the f***, you bolded a section and outright questioned its validity. Now you change your question. I don't have a ready graph that takes wages into account no. What I do know is our wages to turnover is one of the lowest in the league at the moment, which isn't bad in itself but it is obviously hurting us when we can't even compete with QPR for wages or offer our top scorer the going rate for a top Premiership striker. I don't think anybody can argue with that really.. Oh right. I should have realised you only wanted to discuss transfer fees and NOT include other significant expenses like wages because you wanted to make a daft point using partial truths. My bad. Are you thick mate? You bolded this particular segment in my post: and said: Those are the facts with regards to that section you questioned.

You can say that about every other case. We reportedly couldn't give Ba, one of the top strikers in the country, the very reasonable 60/70k he wanted, now we can't compete with f***ing QPR for his replacement. It's the same story for transfer fees, where we are being massively outspent by most other Premiership clubs. Ashley's business model has its merits, but it's also holding us back massively when it comes to realising our potential. Source? Tell me, who else in this league would offer Remy £80k+? You're going on as if QPR are one of the lesser paying clubs and we can't even compete with them, bollocks quite frankly. It's not bollocks. I reckon a club like Sunderland vastly outspends us terms of wage total and maximum wage their structure will allow. So you believe Sunderland would match QPR's offer? QPR are currently one of the most mental teams in the league for offering crazy wages and clauses, yet you're talking as if it should be easy to compete with them. We can offer those wages, we can do that if we wanted, but its a f***ing stupid thing to do. Yes, I don't think Sunderland would have much trouble spending 80k/week for their number one striker, especially if they could get somebody of his quality. They spent a combined 25 million or so on Adam Johnson and Steven fucking Fletcher six months ago.

You can say that about every other case. We reportedly couldn't give Ba, one of the top strikers in the country, the very reasonable 60/70k he wanted, now we can't compete with f***ing QPR for his replacement. It's the same story for transfer fees, where we are being massively outspent by most other Premiership clubs. Ashley's business model has its merits, but it's also holding us back massively when it comes to realising our potential. I doubt that's true. Misrepresenting the facts isn't going to help any. There you go sir: http://i.imgur.com/bBUiA.jpg Source?, the numbers look very odd even at first glance. http://transferleague.co.uk/league-tables/transfer-league-table-last-five-seasons.html All the transfers are there. Knock yourself out.

You can say that about every other case. We reportedly couldn't give Ba, one of the top strikers in the country, the very reasonable 60/70k he wanted, now we can't compete with f***ing QPR for his replacement. It's the same story for transfer fees, where we are being massively outspent by most other Premiership clubs. Ashley's business model has its merits, but it's also holding us back massively when it comes to realising our potential. I doubt that's true. Misrepresenting the facts isn't going to help any. There you go sir: http://i.imgur.com/bBUiA.jpg That's transfer fees only though isn't it? You were mentioning wages in your first sentence. Does that figure still hold if you take those into account? What the fuck, you bolded a section and outright questioned its validity. Now you change your question. I don't have a ready graph that takes wages into account no. What I do know is our wages to turnover is one of the lowest in the league at the moment, which isn't bad in itself but it is obviously hurting us when we can't even compete with QPR for wages or offer our top scorer the going rate for a top Premiership striker. I don't think anybody can argue with that really..

You can say that about every other case. We reportedly couldn't give Ba, one of the top strikers in the country, the very reasonable 60/70k he wanted, now we can't compete with f***ing QPR for his replacement. It's the same story for transfer fees, where we are being massively outspent by most other Premiership clubs. Ashley's business model has its merits, but it's also holding us back massively when it comes to realising our potential. Source? Tell me, who else in this league would offer Remy £80k+? You're going on as if QPR are one of the lesser paying clubs and we can't even compete with them, bollocks quite frankly. It's not bollocks. I reckon a club like Sunderland vastly outspends us terms of wage total and maximum wage their structure will allow.

You can say that about every other case. We reportedly couldn't give Ba, one of the top strikers in the country, the very reasonable 60/70k he wanted, now we can't compete with f***ing QPR for his replacement. It's the same story for transfer fees, where we are being massively outspent by most other Premiership clubs. Ashley's business model has its merits, but it's also holding us back massively when it comes to realising our potential. I doubt that's true. Misrepresenting the facts isn't going to help any. There you go sir: http://i.imgur.com/bBUiA.jpg

You can say that about every other case. We reportedly couldn't give Ba, one of the top strikers in the country, the very reasonable 60/70k he wanted, now we can't compete with fucking QPR for his replacement. It's the same story for transfer fees, where we are being massively outspent by most other Premiership clubs. Ashley's business model has its merits, but it's also holding us back massively when it comes to realising our potential.