quayside

40m of our turnover was in the tv deal, attendances are down by 7000 how much the corperate sections been hit we don't know and no transfer anywhere is payed up front its all over a few years in instalments Apart from when Ashley decides to buy players then NUFC buy up front, we paid the full amounts up front for Nolan and taylor, despite letting Man city with all there money pay on tick for Given and for less than he's worth! Money received for transfers isn't included in turnover regardless of whether its paid up front or in instalments, in the same way money paid out for players isn't included in annual costs. Its a bean counter thing.....

I'm actually quite positive about our finances if we go up. Wage bill will be around 35M which is respectable. Yes but the squad costing us around £35 million is nowhere near good enough for the Premiership.

FFS they knew ALL this would happen and could have been avoided in january by spending a little bit to see us through and away from relegation, THUS saving porkpie money. THEY DIDN'T LISTEN TO ANYONE! Its their f***ing fault the club is where it f***ing is!!!! f*** ME!!! Does no one ever question these twats!!!!! :angry: :angry: And are they suggesting they havn't cut the wage bill from £70m to to below £50m now because I'm sure they have and other than that the outgoings have been zero despite us having transfer fees coming in. It still makes no sense. Much as I hate to say it but it does make sense. In 2008 on a turnover of £100 million the club lost £20 million which Ashley funded. The turnover now is £50 million so in order for the club to break even they will need to have made cost savings of £70 million since 2008. No way have they done that. So the club is still making losses and the owner has to fund them. And yes it is Ashley's fault the turnover has halved, and had we remained a Premiership club he would still have had to fund losses.

I can't see any reason for the sportsdirect.com naming thing other than to piss off the fans. The philantropist in me says the have to do it intentionally because I hope for their own sake that they are not that thick. It is stupidity. Look at the history of Ashley's ownership of the club, starting from the day he bought it without even doing due diligence. He is not doing this to piss off the fans. He has been successful at building up a chavvy chain of sports shops using marketing tactics that are based on fictitious discounts and false closing down sales. And thats the extent of his business skills. When it comes to doing something else and working out a way of running a different type of business he is as thick as it gets.

As a marketing idea the very best you could say about it is that it lacks any sort of class. In reality it is nothing more than an attempt to copy what his arch rival, Whelan, did at Wigan. To Ashley the history, tradition and standing of the club mean nothing and there is no material difference between us and a club like Wigan. I don't think any of Ashley's decisions, including this one, are aimed at taking the piss. He is simply applying the same business principles that he used to build up Sports Direct and, as he has done since he bought the club, he demonstrates that he doesn't understand the first thing about the club and who his customers are. The sad fact is he is as thick as sh1t in a bucket when it comes to operating outside the business area he knows and understands.

So you obviously didn't see Laurent at the end of his career at Pompey then - worse than useless and believe it or not worse than Jonas. Name that winger with pace and end product that Ashley will buy to replace Guttierez and you will have an audience.

Shouldn't be dropped. Get Guthrie in the team and drop Butt of at a retirement home. As much as I want to like Guthrie he was very poor in some of his recent games. Would be good to see him play when the team is playing with confidence though because he has the quality. Guthrie has played his part this season and there's more to come. It's a squad thing innit?

Yeah - can't argue really but he gives us an outlet/option that commits the oppo defence. They can't ignore him....maybe in a weird way he's a holding midfielder. I really don't mind when he's on the pitch.

Hope he continues to do so tbh. His "added value" is that he gives a sh1t and seriously tracks back.

Puppet manager has already said at his press conferance that the 20 million is not for transfers Surely you didn't ever believe that 20 million was going to be used for transfers? In one transfer window? By Ashley? Sorry if anyone else has put this forward but I've been away for most of the last fortnight and can't be arsed to trawl. It seems to me that the reduction in price from £100m to £80m was simply down to the sum that's got to be funded by the owner whether that be Moat or Ashley. For whatever reason (and that's another discussion) it isn't going to be Moat so fat Mike has to cough. There's been some theories on here that somehow the club has been making a profit after getting rid of Owen, Viduka and co but it simply isn't the case. The club is making losses and the owner (whoever it may be) has to fund them. And Hughton won't get anything much to invest in January, maybe a loan and should we be lucky enough to sell one of our under-performing high earners he might get some of the proceeds to reinvest.

I wonder how much they did offer? and does it mean keegan is a proven liar ? No - Keegan was very specific in his choice of words and only referred to an offer of £4 million and no other sum. I drew attention to this on here at the time and suggested it might be a true statement but a bit misleading. I seem to remember being told that KK would not play with words in that way.....

where is this? What was he saying? http://www.newcastle-online.org/nufcforum/index.php/topic,65151.msg2032492.html#msg2032492 That is one seriously ITK post by golfmag. How does he know that stuff?

Paragraph 4 is quite revealing: "Moreover, we reject the Club’s attempt to rely on the various offers which it made both prior to and during the hearing to settle the claim since none of them involved the Club’s acceptance that he had been constructively dismissed and all of them involved a condition of secrecy or confidentiality." So, contrary to most reports, they did offer to settle (which is exactly what Wise said had happened) but wanted the whole thing kept quiet so no one would get to know the true extent of their incompetence and lack of integrity. What an absolute mess.

Ketsbaia v Bolton tbh, piss myself every time I see it.

I've no idea whether Sillius is genuinely ITK or not. But knowing what we know about Ashley and his ways of doing business surely no one expected any possible sale of the club to be anything other than convoluted and messy. False deadlines, false bids, real bids denied, continually changing the terms of the deal etc would be about par for the course imo. And even after all that lot he could well hang on if he thinks he can squeeze more money out at a later date.

He did resign - you can't sue for constructive dismissal unless you resign. Guess it all depends on if the ruling that the clubs actions had already "amounted to a repudiation of his contract" retroactively means that he didn't actually have a position from which to resign from at the time. EDIT: For example, if you get divorced and a few months later when you go through the paperwork you realise a legal error meant you were never really married in the first place, did you still get divorced? He resigned on 4th September. The whole point about constrctive dismissal is that you are trying to prove that you were forced to leave because your employer has made it impossible for you to continue. You can't take such an action if you don't resign. If you are sacked then the action becomes one of unfair dismissa.l

Didn't just walk out on him tbh, walked out on us. Should have just went public with the story then Ashley would have had to either fire him or back him. Anyone with any sense would blame Keegan as well as Ashley. The above response spells out what he should have done. I know how much I love this club, Keegan says he loves this club, I know that I would NOT have done what he did and would have done something like what is suggested above. Someone who loved the club and the city and the supporters (in his position) would do a MILLION things, would do ANYTHING . . . rather than walk out on the club and supporters so soon after he came back to 'finish unfinished business'. I know that genuinly blind and almost obsessed Keegan lovers CAN NOT accept that he is even partially to blame. They just never will, which is a shame. If Keegan had of waited until he was sacked, he would have been entitled to even more money !!!! And you would have still been having a go at him for that as well, how about looking at Ashleys part for putting Keegan in the postion where he had to do what he did ? If he had waited to be sacked he would have got the same £2 million he got for being constructively dismissed.

He did resign - you can't sue for constructive dismissal unless you resign.

Yeah but he'd still need to find a buyer. The club's been on the market for the most part of the last 12 months, and it's proved to be pretty difficult to find someone who's willing and able to put up 100m for the club, I'd imagine it'd be just as hard to find someone who'd fork out even more at the end of the season even if we're promoted. I assume we'll have the same squad as now, and while we'll receive ~20m more in TV revenues next season, we'll have to invest just as much or even more in new players if we don't want to go down again, so the club's true value wouldn't rise a whole lot imo. While all evidence point towards that Ashley is a grade A idiot, I'm sure that either he or one of his advisors are aware of that. It sounds like he's eventually managed to generate some interest at somewhere near £100m as a Championship club likely to be promoted. And with our following and potential that has to be worth more (dunno say £130m?) when you are actually promoted. As I said earlier he's a gambler, and I doubt he can even spell the word credibility, let alone give a toss about it, so if I was him I'd hang in there.

Maybe trying to shave a bit off the price because of his preferred bidder status? The thing I keep coming back to on this is that if I were Ashley I just would not sell now. He won't get his money back if we are promoted but he'll get a lot more back than he would if he sells right now. Ashley seems thick skinned enough not to give a s*** about being branded a liar and being hated - so why sell? But what if we don't get promoted and they have to sell off more players - he would not get £100m then. He's a gambler - and its a good punt that we will get promoted.

Maybe trying to shave a bit off the price because of his preferred bidder status? The thing I keep coming back to on this is that if I were Ashley I just would not sell now. He won't get his money back if we are promoted but he'll get a lot more back than he would if he sells right now. Ashley seems thick skinned enough not to give a s*** about being branded a liar and being hated - so why sell?

So quiet in fact that you'd hardly notice him in the away end at WBA, Palace and Ipswich to name but 3. My own opinion is that he jumped ship because he could foresee what was coming and didn't want to be associated with it. Dunno about that. He was never a club employee and the club paid Freshfields for his services. I think it was always intended that he stick around for a year or so to oversee things after the takeover and then return to Freshfields.

It was Mort and his "strategic review" that led to the implementation of the so called continental management structure, probably as a reaction to the business done in the Allardyce transfer window. The decision to implement that structure was bad enough but the attempt to recruit first Redknapp and then Keegan to fit into it showed a shocking lack of judgement, as did the appointment of Wise. Having said that I always felt the club was in safe hands when Mort was around and he was a decent communicator - and in no way could either of those comments be applied to Derek "Baldrick"Llambias. I also have a suspicion that the Keegan fiasco would have been better handled if Mort was in charge but obviously that's just a gut feeling.

Well yes, the presence of c**tishness from Ashley’s posse could not be in doubt from their actions (or lack of them) in most areas involved in running the club. However there was always the possibility of KK having contributed to the situation by throwing a hissy fit. His gifts as a manager are obvious but the downside is a somewhat fragile temperament. The judgement does substantially vindicate KK and if he did throw a hissy fit it was fully justified. I think the £26 million was thrown in by KK’s legal team simply because they would be deemed negligent if they don’t launch a claim for the maximum possible sum, but I can’t believe there was any expectation of getting anywhere near that. The £2 million clause does, as you say, define the value of damages in the event of dismissal however one of the aspects that the panel had to decide upon was whether that clause was valid or not. The issue was whether it was too restrictive and, as such, whether KK could be entitled to more if he successfully proved constructive dismissal. Having decided that the clause was valid (and KK himself saying he thought it fair) the value of damages was not in any doubt.

It must be clear to all but the most deluded of gibbons that KK perceviered to get the judgment and all the facts out into the open regardless of cost or settlement. Keegan has denied getting any offer of an out-of-court settlement. Wise is probably just repeating the story that he would have read in the papers a few days ago. Is there no end to the s**** you post? Extract from Keegan's statement on the LMA website after the Tribunal - 'I want to state categorically that the allegation that has been made in the press that I turned down an offer of £4million to settle the claim is simply untrue. No such offer was made to me.' Over to you, mate. And if he was offered anything other than the exact sum of £4 million KK is still telling the truth btw. I believe that the way it works is - if one side wants to settle for a particular sum they "pay the money into court" which means they cough up what they want to settle for and it is stuck into an independent bank account. Once they have done that the offer to settle is official. If the final judgement on the case is for less than what was offered as a settlement then the plaintiff (KK in this case) picks up the costs. But if no money was paid into court then it's all hot air .i.e. Ashley verbally offers £3.9 million and KK says no but no money is paid into court then that = a big nothing.