Chris_R

IIRC Steve Staunton used to try it all the time. With a couple of successes.

Fucking state of that tweet. Random capital letters where they're not needed, but not used when they are needed. Repeated misuse of apostrophes and multiple exclamation marks all over the place. The man's borderline illiterate.

Pahaha, that's amazing if they've not even gone through the correct channels to contact him. That said, his record is about as good as they could hope to attract in a manager, so they have reason to be optimistic about his appointment.

Thank goodness, we can all stop worrying now.

No, he's taken no money directly from NUFC. But he does get free advertising for his tatty chav clothes shops from us via the entirely unpaid advertising around the ground, worth millions in lost revenue annually, and IIRC (please correct me if I'm wrong) the club shop profits don't go back to the club anymore. He might not have his hand directly in the till, but there's more than one way to skin a proverbial cat.

Are we still remembering to factor in all the revenue streams he's stolen from the club when being shocked at the "losses" announced? Free advertising for his tatty Chav clothes shops for starters, and isn't he creaming off all the profits from the club shop now through his own company? Or am I mistaken? He seems to keep doing this with different revenue streams so his other businesses make a profit and NUFC makes a loss, then he lends money back to NUFC, thus doubling down on what's owed back to him. He's a fucking parasite, he really is.

Surely the mackems aren't, in all seriousness and with a straight face, now using attendances to quantify relative club size? Though the laws of mackematics will doubtless somehow decree that this doesn't similarly apply to comparisons between them and us. Or are they just basing what they say on London being, in their eyes, a more affluent and attractive place to live than Newcastle? Again, rather shaky ground for them on that score too.

Sunderland winning that playoff game was the ultimate Pyrrhic victory.

Yeah, about 50p per place down there. Don't spend it all at once.

There's going to be a few stats like that because Man C have hoovered up so many of the available points this season.

Yeah, they're going to make billions. Because it's that easy. Short could have just paid off the debt and kept the club instead of paying off the debt and giving the club away, that way he could have made the billions himself. Any single one of them want to ask themselves why he chose not to do that?

Debt free is irrelevant, most of the clubs in that division are probably debt free. Whoop-de-fucking-do. Of far more importance is how much they'll invest to get out of the mess they're in. Doubtless they can fund a promotion push from Division 3 as they're larger than most clubs in there, but it'll be a little different when they find themselves in the Championship and needing to replace a Division 3 squad with a Premier League quality one, on an income based mostly on free tickets whilst in a division where half the clubs are bigger than them and their chairman has non-league funds to play with.

Wouldn't be the first thing one of their employees had fiddled...

Well we were speculating how many free tickets were dished out, I suggest we're pretty close to an answer now.

That will be going down well. Bit like Sunderland then.

Complete guesswork. Could as easily have just been bought by a consortium who’s major investor owns Eastleigh. It's not complete guesswork. Clubs in League One can only spend a maximum of 60% of their overall annual turnover on wages. Sunderland's turnover is 5 or 6 times most clubs down there, and 10 times in terms of some of the smaller teams, and they have the added bonus of being able to spend 75% of their income on wages as a relegated club from the Championship. Realistically based on the current contract situations it's only Cattermole and Rodwell who will be sitting around eating into the wage bill, leaving them a huge amount relatively to spend on building a team. League One clubs don't spend on transfer fees, which means they can outbid all the other sides down there for players in terms of wages. Unless Birmingham go down as well, they have no realistic rivals of a similar size. The only hope there was for them struggling down there was if they got stuck being unable to sell the club and were saddled with the debt. That's gone now and they have a whole summer to prepare. They will absolutely piss it. So you think they will do well by throwing large wages at players who only want to go to Sunderland for the money? Isn't that what's gotten them into this hole in the first place? I'm being slightly tongue-in-cheek mind, obviously having some financial clout is a benefit. I'm just cautioning that it's hardly a guaranteed route to success.

This is all excellent news for them, sadly. They could come out of this alright now, get back to the championship debt-free and things aren't looking too bad long-term. Saving Coleman also a good move, he's shit. Did well with Wales because Bale, but his club career is pretty dire and a far better indication of his abilities.

Not like that happens often, they shouldn't hold out too much hope. They couldn't even lose points for their players fingering kids.

Well it can't be their fault, can it? Greatest fans in the world, so it must be insider mags to blame. Obvious really.

Yeah, that really. Hard to be too pissed at losing the derbies when most weeks I was wanting the opposition to score anyway. Obviously it was bad and I'd rather it hadn't happened, but I can't say it hurt for more than a day each time and it wasn't made any worse by being a sequence of 6. To me, they were just individual matches. And it's such a non-event now that I find it hilarious that this is what they're clinging to.

Cattermole has 3 years left, my god that's amazing Rodwell without a relegation clause I knew about, but still: I just can't stop laughing about it all. The way it happened on Saturday was just perfect as well. - Calling it a pub league when we went down then dying on their arse in the same league we won - Saying "Enjoy Burton" to us but then playing them in a relegation 6-pointer themselves - Going 1-0 up giving them hope - The equaliser by the man who's mother they racially abused - The stoppage-time winner - The disallowed goal - Not realising they were down for about 20 minutes afterwards It was just utterly superb, if I'd written a script for it I couldn't have done half as good a job as reality did.

Then when you get to the end of the street, you see that everything beyond it has just collapsed and fallen apart.

Their attendance figures are completely made up anyway, so there's no way we'll ever know.

They'll win this today, no doubt about that.

But that's where Ashely would be being short-sighted. Rafa can keep us in the Prem with almost no money, and we'll finish 10th-15th. Ashley will make a small profit and get a modicum of exposure for SD. Or he can give Rafa some money, we'll finish higher and so get more prize money, and the players he buys will be able to be sold for a profit as the whole squad appreciates in value under his coaching and SD get even more exposure from us doing well. Oh, and the fans will be happier and off his back. If only this could be seen by the one person who actually matters in all of this.