quayside

Didn't want to get involved in all this crap but

He was very good the first time he came back this season. The first two times he started this season we got our two of our best performances of the year and two wins. He was instrumental in both. Undoubtedly so, but am I wrong or was that after a behind closed doors game and a reserve match or two, though? No time for that this time around, which is what worries me. He'd be getting chucked straight in at the deep end with people expecting the world from him. Don't know if the world is expected tbh, just passing to a member of his own side would be an encouraging start....

He's the only central midfielder we've got who can open up any defence and pick a pass. Hardly missed a match at Citeh and for a couple of seasons was their only attacking threat. But since joining us he has been Clattermoled, found other ways to break bones and gone to prison. Maybe he was always a custodial sentence waiting to happen but I can't help thinking we've got unlucky. Another case of the curse of Hughie Gallagher?

In a really miniscule way the whole Royal Bank of Scotland story has parallels. After Sir Fred Goodwin took control the bank went from being an ordinary, low achievement, high street bank to being a major player in the global arena. Under his stewardship the bank achieved record growth, record profits, record dividends for shareholders and record bonuses for its staff. Ultimately, when everything unravelled, what was left was a mess and, don't misunderstand me here, I am well aware that there are differences in scale - our previous Board did not play a major role in kicking off a world wide recession. Of course Goodwin was in a position of responsibilty and was rewarded for that, he certainly showed ambition but he thought he was better than he was and gambled on some very big decisions - and f*cked up massively. Should we applaud him? Opinion will be split between those who say the buck stops with him and he should be strung up for the shambles that was left under his watch, and those who say that he should be thanked for giving the investors and employees some great times...... Ultimately you are judged on what you leave behind and the previous board's greatest legacy is St James Park as it now is. No matter that there was a mortgage on it etc, it sits there as one of the best football grounds in the country and it would not be there if not for the previous board. But the memories of our European football are as meaningless now as Nottingham Forest's European triumphs or Leeds foray into the latter stages of the Champions League. It is a level playing field though and ultimately Ashley will be judged on what he leaves behind.

In retrospect, Lee Cattermole pretty much sent us down. Is the truth - whilst we had a squad that was obviously too weak, that c*nt took out our best defender and only creative central midfielder for the best part of a season.

The single costliest decision in terms of this club. There are many decisions after this point that made things worse, but Souness is where the downfall began. It hasn't been said in a few years, but f*** SOUNESS. What a useless fucker he was. 50 mill on emre, owen, luque, boumsong. k cya europe wonder what that figures amounts to if you include wages, given they've all returned very very little on the pitch could be the costliest money ever spent, with the probable exception of o'blarneys ridiculous spree at leeds The annual wage bill for that lot was probably about £13 million or so Souness was an absolute disaster without doubt. And some of the players he bought in were utter dross. Although there's conflicting evidence on how much he had to do with the Owen deal, and some strong evidence that he had nothing much to do with the Luque deal (both from Souness and the player himself). None of which alters the fact that someone made a decision to spend £26 million on two players who, in hindsight and for different reasons, haven't delivered anything close to value for money.

Whatever anyone says about Oba his goals kept us in the Premiership in the 2006/2007 season. He's dysfunctional and unpredictable but he is always a threat against average Premiership sides. I can't see that his performance today against Chelsea means much in the context of where we are as a club right now. I'd judge him more against the likes of Boro, Fulham, Stoke, Pompey and Spurs.

Loven isn't a midfielder though. Alright then, he's not an out and out striker, that's what I was getting at. Imo the only midfielder we've got who can split a defence and create something is Barton. Without him our central midfield is at best hard working and at worst totally ineffective. Guthrie is a decent workhorse who would be a good squad player (in a decent squad) and Guttierez, for all his hard work, lacks any sort of end product - well at least he had done so far this season.

I can't remember the club being in over £250m of debt under FS like. Now it is and boy are we paying for it. The debt levels under FS were worrying but manageable all the same. Unlike Ashley who it appears doesn't recognise at all the seriousness of the situation we are in, FS did hence the appointment of Sam Allardyce, a manager capable of doing wonders on a small budget and building from the bottom up. Oh and when the club goes down.... it will make the level of debt we were in under FS seem like pennies. So much for Ashley's plan eh. We are not £250 million in debt. Ashley paid about £130 million for the club and has loaned at least £120 mllion since. The amount paid for the club is not debt. The question that will not go away, it has been asked on here several times but no one can answer it, is how would the previous board have financed the club if they had still been in control? The glib answer that all successful football clubs have debt does not cut it, other clubs have debt because someone is prepared to lend it, meaning that they can demonstrate to the lender that the debt is secured and has a prospect of repayment. Who would have loaned us more money in the situation we were in? It is like you have a 100% mortgage on your house, everything in your house (furniture, kitchen appliances etc) and your car are bought on HP - plus your annual income is less than than your annual costs. Now go and find someone to lend you some money in the current climate to allow you to speculate to accumulate... There are people on this board, like me, who aren't Ashley believers. In my case I think he is a chancer who made some money floating a chain of downmarket sports retail shops at a grossly inflated value. He has bought us to show off to his mates and is now way out of his depth. We all know that there are indefensible actions relating to the Ashley regime. But until someone answers the above fundamental question about the previous regime it is hard to put the current shambles into perspective. superb post quayside, gets to the heart of the matter...i'm with you on all points is it possible for someone to get a clock up on the banner of the site adding up the days/hours/minutes 'til this question is answered? it'll need to run pretty f***ing high mind It's a trap! Okay, at the risk of being banned for talking on a taboo subject and upsetting some people: It's a false assumption that the club would have had to pay out the same £50-£60m above it's income in the last 2 years that Ashley has loaned the club. Factors affecting the club's losses in Ashley's time: 1) Wages are the largest outgoing. The year prior to Ashley wages were £62.5 (71.8%). Last year they increased to £70m (70.4%), and this year according to Llambias they will be around £76m (76% of a £100k turnover). That's an increase in wages of £21m over the 2 years. Remember, the wage bill Ashley inherited included "high earning wasters" such as Parker, Dyer, Emre, Luque, Carr, Babayaro, and also Solano. If their supposed wages are to believed, that's almost a third of the wage bill he inherited right there. These players are all gone yet the wage bill has still risen both in absolute terms (by over 20%) and relative to turnover (in spite of a £18m per year hike in the turnover from the TV revenues) under Ashley. 2) Player purchases - Ashley's decision to pay up front for players has increased the amount we have had to pay out for players in his first 2 years even though we have had a negligible net transfer budget. I did this rough calculation before we knew Coloccini actually cost £12.5m rather than £10m, but for a rough figure it will do: So due to Ashley's pay up front policy, up to this point we have probably paid around £25m more in advance than if we had continued to pay in instalments for players. This is money that we would not have had to loan from banks, but would be effectively loaning from the selling club. 3) Allardyce - There's no way Shepherd would have sacked Allardyce in his first year, so the £6m(?) payout would not have been necessary, not in the first year at least. [i'm no fan of Allardyce, but I think if he hadn't been working for someone who didn't really want him there, he wouldn't have been looking over his should wondering when he was going to be sacked all the time and would perhaps have been less cautious in his approach than he was which was his ultimate downfall.] 4) Loan repayments - For last year the early repayment charge on the stadium debt was around the same as we would have paid in interest on the whole debt so that cancels out any benefit from Ashley's takeover. This year however, we are around £7m better off if the loans to Ashley are interest free. 5) Reduced match day income- you can argue some of this is down to the credit crunch or that it's due to a build up of suffering from years of having to endure only UEFA cup football, but surely Ashley and his appointments have to take some of the blame for the reduced attendances and corporate box sales this year, and the lack of any decent cup runs to bolster the income. Having said that I'm not even going to try and quantify this. So, guestimates all, but that's 21 + 25 + 6 - 7 = ~£45m additional expenditure so far which is purely down to the decisions and actions of Ashley and his employees, NOT attributable to some ill defined "state of the club when he bought it", "spiralling debt", "heading into administration" argument implying the current situation was inevitable anyway. When people talk about Ashley turning around the club's finances I just shake my head in disbelief and wonder what the hell they're basing it on. Does it simply boil down to the fact he's currently covering the debt and has a pipe dream of finding a bunch of wonderkids who are going to save us? Ignoring the abysmal staffing decisions he's made which in themselves are financially disastrous for the club, as far as I can see it he's also running the club in an increasingly worse way financially than ever before. How he has the nerve to constantly complain about the old board getting the NR sponsorship money up front and then in the next breath ask for 3 year's advance season ticket money from supporters is beyond me. Getting 5% of your future annual income up front is a terrible way to run things but trying to get 30% of your future income up front is perfectly fine? If we have any financial problems it was and is due to the wages not the debt. The debt was £70m. Of that, £45m was a fixed long term loan for the stadium expansion which easily paid for it's own interest repayments. I hope no-one is going to say that was a bad idea, that we should have saved up until we could pay for it in cash, or should have paid it off as soon as possible instead of putting the money into the squad which eventually got us back into the CL. That leaves £25m attributable to the running of the club over the previous 15 years. Is that the sort of debt the 13th or so richest club in the world can't afford to have? Something which is going to cause it to go into administration within months if Mike hadn't come along to save us? I know 1 injury ravaged season where we don't qualify for Europe is enough for some to declare that the sky is falling in, but I personally doubt it was. Ignoring the impending financial implications of relegation due to his negligence, can someone explain to me why they think Ashley is running the club so well financially even if we do somehow manage to stay up? I'll try and have a go at some of the detail in there if I get time later! First impression is that there are a lot of good points in there UV. Just on point 2 I don't think there's any evidence that Ashley funded player purchases up front from the word go so I'm not sure the likes of Smith, Enrique and co were bought in that way. It seems pretty obvious that Nolan was, and maybe Collocini, Xisco and the other Summer 2008 transfers. The main point of my post was questioning how the previous board would have found the finance the club needed when there was nothing left to borrow against. It is wrong to think that Ashley generated the concept of cash deficits at the club. Going back to 2006 and 2007 the club soaked up more cash than it generated (I'm talking cash here not accounting losses). In 2006 the cash shortfall was £14 million and in 2007 it was £5 million. Both of these deficits and all previous deficits were funded by taking on external loan. External loan needs security and by the summer of 2007 among the loans the club had taken out were two secured on the training ground, one on future sponsorship revenue and one on future season ticket revenue obviously in addition to the stadium loan. The club had finished lower mid table, was incurring trading losses and had no assets to borrow against. With cash losses in 2006 and 2007 (and maybe in earlier years as well) what would the board have done to fund a cash loss in 2008? If the board couldn't fund it how would they have prevented a cash loss in 2008? Furthermore how would the board have found the finance to move forward (speculate to accumulate)? Football clubs are a different type of business to most but no bank will ever lend money unless it can see a way of recovering it, and it is harder now to make the case for a commercial loan than it ever was I don't think Ashley's financial running of the club has been fantastic, it seems aimed at ridding the club of external debt and making it easier to sell tbh. It certainly doesn't fit the nature of the business. But then I don't think too many people are still bigging up Ashley - and the point of my post was to ask a question about the previous regime. They may have had a cunning plan, and if so what was it?

I can't remember the club being in over £250m of debt under FS like. Now it is and boy are we paying for it. The debt levels under FS were worrying but manageable all the same. Unlike Ashley who it appears doesn't recognise at all the seriousness of the situation we are in, FS did hence the appointment of Sam Allardyce, a manager capable of doing wonders on a small budget and building from the bottom up. Oh and when the club goes down.... it will make the level of debt we were in under FS seem like pennies. So much for Ashley's plan eh. We are not £250 million in debt. Ashley paid about £130 million for the club and has loaned at least £120 mllion since. The amount paid for the club is not debt. The question that will not go away, it has been asked on here several times but no one can answer it, is how would the previous board have financed the club if they had still been in control? The glib answer that all successful football clubs have debt does not cut it, other clubs have debt because someone is prepared to lend it, meaning that they can demonstrate to the lender that the debt is secured and has a prospect of repayment. Who would have loaned us more money in the situation we were in? It is like you have a 100% mortgage on your house, everything in your house (furniture, kitchen appliances etc) and your car are bought on HP - plus your annual income is less than than your annual costs. Now go and find someone to lend you some money in the current climate to allow you to speculate to accumulate... There are people on this board, like me, who aren't Ashley believers. In my case I think he is a chancer who made some money floating a chain of downmarket sports retail shops at a grossly inflated value. He has bought us to show off to his mates and is now way out of his depth. We all know that there are indefensible actions relating to the Ashley regime. But until someone answers the above fundamental question about the previous regime it is hard to put the current shambles into perspective.

Is this true? Who got the job ahead of Hitzfeld and Mancini? Source of info would be appreciated too.

There were strong rumours that the club have tried to sell him in recent transfer windows. In fact at one point iirc Anal Oliver stated it as a stone cold, unarguable fact that Oba was for sale.

We aren't one of the worst three in the Premiership but right now that's irrelevant. The good results such ManU away, Chelsea away, Everton away and Villa home are nothing when you bear in mind that from home matches against the likes of Stoke, Wigan, Hull, Blackburn and Sunderland we have picked up a grand total of 3 points. Those games should have been bankers for a good haul of points but we failed and the opportunity has gone never to return. We now are in the position of being desperate to get something from the final sequence of 9 games, most of which are potentially harder than those we screwed up.

id argue that west broms is just as easy. thats why i have them staying up. They do have a decent run in but they may have too much to do. But horrible as that game was tonight I don't think we would have beaten that WBA line up. When we beat them a few weeks back we were lucky to catch them with a heavy injury list that led to them having two complete donkeys in central defence.

Are we f***. It becomes more likely, but it's not over until it's over. Is the truth. All manner of carnage happens at the end of a Premiership season - tomorrow's match is another great opportunity to pick up points though - and Christ knows we've already lobbed away a few valuable opportunities that won't come again.

You make it sound like Hull will be kicking lumps out of your players, because they fear the expansive flowing football that would occur otherwise. You arejoking/exaggerating, right? We are the new Arsenal so we have to put up with this sort of sh1t when we play sides like Hull. It goes with the territory.

Don't mind the lad at all and I'm glad he's on our books, imo he has talent and commitment but isn't mature enough yet. If everyone is fit he doesn't play in the team I would pick. I really can't get too excited about PR driven articles like this with the shyte thats going on at the club right now.

sooner the better, his transfer has turned into pretty much everything a lot thought it would be. Big wages, doesn't care, never fit, money that could've been better allocated elsewhere (on the team). Although he did help keep us up it's no different to what he did when he went on a little run for Boro prior to us signing to him. The signing of overpaid, under performing and/or injury prone players like Viduka are why Ashley took the whole DOF/ Dennis Wise trip. If we get relegated and Kinnear remains our manager its all Viduka's fault - we have a real scapegoat at last Shows Ashleys ignorance/stupidity in the early days then as the signings of Smith & Duke were never going to be anything but how they've turned out (although Smith has probably been worse than expected - we didn't really need either) To be serious for a moment - a lot of the crap that the club is going through now stemmed from the signings in the Allardyce transfer window and the owners reaction to preventing it happening again. It's weird because Sam has a track record of doing decent business in the market. Did it go wrong because he didn't get who he wanted (takeover going on etc), couldn't hack it at our level or was it just our luck that he f*cked up whilst on our case? However you look at it Viduka was certainly a player he wanted and was not on his B list.

sooner the better, his transfer has turned into pretty much everything a lot thought it would be. Big wages, doesn't care, never fit, money that could've been better allocated elsewhere (on the team). Although he did help keep us up it's no different to what he did when he went on a little run for Boro prior to us signing to him. The signing of overpaid, under performing and/or injury prone players like Viduka are why Ashley took the whole DOF/ Dennis Wise trip. If we get relegated and Kinnear remains our manager its all Viduka's fault - we have a real scapegoat at last

what a load of s***. mort said keegan knew the system/situation and agreed to it before he signed. any talk from keegan himself about breaking world records was sheer stupidity. Your the one talking s*** - Keegan would not have returned unless he had been promised significant funds and control over transfers. Why do some people on here prefer to believe Ashley rather than Keegan, amazing really at what point in ashleys time here has he or anyone connected to him claimed we would spend "significant funds"? the club would NOT have said "here kev have £200 million m8" as a lure. keegan most likely came back for the money he would get, not spend. sad, but very possibly true. The 16 million quid they were going to spunk on the croation tranny? and Woodgate in January Deals we were never going to get. Ashley would have crapped himself if the waters had parted and he'd been left holding the winning bid imo.

Why ? Because they're realistic ? Hope doesn't get points man. How many points have we thrown away in the last minute ? And we aren't scoring many. It all adds up to disaster. The disgusting messes being made at the likes of Blackburn and Bolton and the like will be hugely costly And if ever there was a modern version of "Lions led by Donkeys" its this lot Only it's DONKEYS led by Donkeys. I'd settle for staying up on goal difference. Just makes me chuckle how people pick this result of all results to start doom monging. Of course - it was this result that started anyone thinking about relegation. Check out the date this thread started by the way.....

He did skate round some issues but, to be fair to him, I was surprised at the level of some of the information that he did pass on. A couple of examples: The stuff about Xisco and Gonzalez was interesting if not earth shatteringly surprising. What was more surprising was that he said anything at all considering its high relevance to the Keegan dispute. Also the situation with Given was that clearly Given wanted to go, Man City knew that and expoited it. And it isn't a good idea to hang on to a player who wants out especially when it is one of the more senior (and probably inflential) players in the squad.

I defy anyone to come up with anything that has happened so far that indicates that this is a false description of Ashley's plan. You think that was the plan with Keegan too then? I deft anyone to find someone who can blame Ashley for this "plan". Of course he's going to want to make as much as possible if he sells. Didn't we, the supporters, all want him to sell anyway? Well all evidence would say yes that was his plan when Keegan was here. He didnt back him with any sort of money. There were rumours from day one that he was looking to sell which many people including me didnt believe at the time. Ashley then went on to say that he was looking for local investors to invest in the club and then from this he was selling up! He could easily have taken the heat out of the Keegan situation if he was here for the long term. Even now people are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt even though I think its blindingly obvious that he doesnt care about the club. He used the whole Keegan episode as an excuse to try and get out openly. It all goes back to him buying the club with out conducting due diligence. At the time I and many other people had a good right to think he must be loaded to buy a club without conducting due diligence. As it turns out I and many other people were wrong, he was simply clueless. You have to be an idiot to buy a club without looking at the books when you havent got bundles of cash to pump into the club! To be honest I think Keegan's appointment further domonstrates the cluelessness. Keegan was a huge mistake by Ashley and demonstrates how naive he was/is about the running of a football club. Keegan was never going to fit in to the structure that Ashley has put in place (and neither would Redknapp).

I defy anyone to come up with anything that has happened so far that indicates that this is a false description of Ashley's plan.

That's assuming a lot about a potential buyer to think they give two flying f***s about the current crop in the academy. It might be a passing afterthought for them. I would imagine first and foremost and encompassing the vast, vast majority of their concern, is finances. And not the fanciful 5 year projections on squad needs based on current academy talent type of finances, but the concrete debt, turnover and revenue types. Quite honestly team needs shift so much and the %age of youngsters actually coming through academies is so small it's not worth spending much time on. edit: sorry that came off harshish. The non-t*** version is : I don't think a nice crop of youngsters is even a minor selling feature of this club to a potential buyer. Fair enough. But I think most people buying a business look at the future - it's a lot more important than past performance. Of course the youth recruitment policy at Newcastle could fail to deliver any worthwhile players, but even if only a couple of first teamers come out of it it could be £15-20 million less that needs spending. Anyway my main point was that it seems to me that the way its being run at present is aimed at making it easy and clean to sell, with no nasty external debt to complicate things. Relegation would shaft any ideas on that score of course. Looking at Ashley's face on Sunday that thought would seem to have crossed his mind as well.