AyeDubbleYoo

http://www.premierleague.com/page/FormGuide I know we're not in good form, but we still have the fewest losses of the bottom 7 teams in that form guide. I don't think we're 'safe', and I'm still sweating about relegation, but on balance we're good enough to pick up the 3-6 more points we'll need to survive. There are a lot of games left.

That's basically my view Decky, it's scarier than it was but still would require a lot of teams to out-perform us by quite a lot.

I'd bet on Shola and Ranger to get a few goals if they get a run together. Fingers crossed anyway!

Does anyone know anything about Folan? When I saw him in that photo I thought he was just Stephen Ireland's life partner.

I'm not sure if I agree with positive discrimination, in an ideal world it wouldn't be needed. But unless white scottish blokes really are the only people who are any good at management, people from other ethnicities could argue they need a bit of help to level the playing field.

Don't think it needs to be dismissed out of hand like, there is a lack of Black managers at the top level.

Excited about this lad, heard great things about him. Hopefully the likes of him and Ferguson will get their chances to impress.

Nolan made 0 successful forward passes in the opponents half against Fulham then? Wowza.

The logic doesn't really follow though... paying four players 80k in total is likely to be better for the strength of the squad than paying one player 60k. It's not just about the total.

UV, I'm not going to bother with a quote-for-quote response to your post as I know I'm never going to make a dent in your opinions and I'll just be seen as an Ashley sympathiser, lover, ophile or whatever. I just didn't say any of those things you seem to be attributing to me, that I want the club to make a big profit, that I don't understand that better players command higher wages, etc etc. All of those points are irrelevant to what I was saying anyway. What I was saying was that a large turnover doesn't matter if it is still leading to year-on-year losses that are adding to an already-unsustainable debt situation. I don't want NUFC to make any profits, like any football club it should be investing everything it earns. I quoted a great interview from the Arsenal CEO that said basically that a week or two ago. But like it or not football clubs have creditors and debt that they may or may not need to repay/service. Mike Ashley's view is that he's not prepared long-term to subsidise NUFC like Abramovich does for Chelsea, so we need to face that.

Don't disagree, I just think we have much more chance of turning it around than last time. Also, every other team in the bottom half of the table is thinking the same thing. We need to get 3 or 4 points on the board ASAP though obviously, will make everyone breath a bit easier.

We're definitely no where near as bad as we were in the relegation season. That relegation was inevitable, this one is just worryingly possible. I still think we'll win a couple of games and wonder what we were worrying about. Even against Stoke we didn't do that badly, and we were unlucky to concede late equalisers in a couple of games before that.

Assuming that Nolan does the "easy passing" well, if he ends up getting the same amount of goals as a more creative AM gets assists, isn't he essentially doing the same thing? (In a much less pretty way, of course) Maybe yeah, it's pretty hard to tell. My personal view is that the team would function better without him in the long-run, but we're not at the point where we should be leaving him out yet. He's basically a relatively tidy but immobile central midfield player who has a knack of getting into the box at the right time because he reads the game well. I wouldn't even call him an attacking midfielder in the sense we're discussing.

Thanks for spending so much time going back through my posts, but those two aren't contradictory. When I said turnover is nothing in business, I explained that it needs to lead to a healthy profit for it to be good for the business. Whether we can afford to spend money on players depends on how much of a profit/loss we're likely to make and whether that's sustainable, not on how high our turnover is. I'm assuming you know that 'turnover' just means income.

Nolan's never been known for providing a killer pass though, has he? The whole reason he's in the team is because he gets on the end of things and scores goals.

Those players were already at the club, no additional spending was required. If you think we'll successfully chase Europe by selling our best players and not replacing them then fair enough but I disagree. Unless we're about to 'disappear from the face of the earth' (like all those other Premier League clubs have) then I still don't give much of a shit about the finances of the club, just like I don't care which of our players is paid £x per week. I support the team that comes out onto the pitch on a match day, and I don't like to see that team weakened because I believe it reduces our chances of winning. Simple as that. Well fine, I just can't take that simplistic a few of the situation. I know you don't really believe that I think our best chance of qualifying for Europe is to sell our best players, so I'll ignore that one. Two great posts btw, Dave and Wullie. FFS man, I always try my best on here to argue my point properly, then people resort to the facepalm smiley. Dave said he just worries about what happens on the pitch and doesn't care much about the finances. I was saying I don't think like that - what's so facepalm-worthy about that?

Those players were already at the club, no additional spending was required. If you think we'll successfully chase Europe by selling our best players and not replacing them then fair enough but I disagree. Unless we're about to 'disappear from the face of the earth' (like all those other Premier League clubs have) then I still don't give much of a shit about the finances of the club, just like I don't care which of our players is paid £x per week. I support the team that comes out onto the pitch on a match day, and I don't like to see that team weakened because I believe it reduces our chances of winning. Simple as that. Well fine, I just can't take that simplistic a few of the situation. I know you don't really believe that I think our best chance of qualifying for Europe is to sell our best players, so I'll ignore that one.

I've never rated Long when I used to go and watch Reading, but that was before he really broke into the team (Doyle/Kitson was the front two). Seems he's come on recently, but I haven't watched him enough to comment really.

Well obviously it affects our ambitions on the pitch if we can't afford to spend as much money, that's so obvious that it hardly merits discussion. I was responding to the asset stripping point, which I maintain clearly isn't happening. I can remember when all we had to worry about was results on the pitch as well... that was before we realised what financial shit we'd got ourselves into. I wish I could just pretend that what happens on the pitch is everything, but now we know to much for that. On your trying to qualify for Europe point, haven't the club just said that's exactly what they are doing?

Can you provide any evidence of this? Can you provide evidence against it? If anything, we've seen more 'evidence' of what Big Geordie is suggesting. Anyway, it's just his opinion man. Do you want to live in a world where everything you say has to be supported by evidence? That's gold!

Weakening us on the pitch for the financial benefit of the club is not asset stripping, no. The money is still in the business. If people mean that then fair enough, Ashley 'asset stripping to claw back the cash' definitely doesn't sound like that to me. Well the club is in debt to Ashley, by a huge amount. If a proportion of the £35m goes to reduce this debt then is that not 'clawing back the cash' instead of strengthening the team? Well it's not asset stripping, but if you want to talk about it in those specific terms then I suppose Mike Ashley does benefit. If that's always negative then fair enough, but I would go back to the issue of a football club not being able to take football decisions in a vacuum isolated from finance. Is it so bad that we pay back our major creditor?

Weakening us on the pitch for the financial benefit of the club is not asset stripping, no. The money is still in the business. If people mean that then fair enough, Ashley 'asset stripping to claw back the cash' definitely doesn't sound like that to me.

He runs like the T1000 as well.

FFS, not the asset stripping thing again.

A football supporter who wants his club to make sizeable profits for it's owner Alarm bells should start ringing if a large turnover is reducing year on year in comparison to it's competitors. Maybe people with a vested interest in that company should think twice before praising the management for running the company well financially by cutting pay and selling off assets. If you don't think turnover is important, I guess you think it should be quite easy for us to get back into Europe, the top 4, and even compete for the title? We did it before with a poor chairman hamstrung by a high wage bill, so now we have the dream team of Ashley, Llambias, Pardew & a low wage bill, it should be pretty easy to do. Man, I know you have an opinion and it will never change, but could you at least try to understand what he's trying to say before applying the usual straw man? FFS UV, I wasn't saying that at all. I was saying that constantly referring to our 'massive turnover' doesn't mean anything IN BUSINESS, unless it leads to a healthy profit. Not that I should have believed it was possible to have a decent debate in this thread once the broad brush strokes started coming out. Reductio ad absurdum should be the motto of this forum at times like.