Jackie Broon

I don't actually think he's taking money out of the club, not in a direct way anyway. In the past it was relatively easy for a club like Newcastle to just be kept ticking over in mid table mediocrity, that was the sweet spot for him in terms of risk/cost vs. reward. That is now much more difficult and expensive to do and I think he now sees the 'sweet spot' as yo-yoing between the Premier League and Championship. In the past his model was to do just enough to stay in the Premier League, saving a pot of money to spend in January if/when relegation looks possible. I think he's now intentionally running the club as yo-yo club, he will not spend while in the Premier League but will save a pot of money to spend on ensuring we get back first time if/when we are relegated. Can't see this being true, considering we miss out on £50-60m of revenue (taking into account the 1st parachute payment) if we get relegated. Ashley absolutely would take 17th each season but his willingness to throw money at the problem (in 2013 and 2016) if we are in trouble shows he doesn't want to get relegated in my mind. I think things have changed since January 2016 he spent then and it didn't work. In January we looked in desperate trouble and he wouldn't spend. Of course he wants us to stay up, but he will not gamble on it as he has in the past. He will only sanction significant spending to get us promoted. That is clearly what is happening.

I don't actually think he's taking money out of the club, not in a direct way anyway. In the past it was relatively easy for a club like Newcastle to just be kept ticking over in mid table mediocrity, that was the sweet spot for him in terms of risk/cost vs. reward. That is now much more difficult and expensive to do and I think he now sees the 'sweet spot' as yo-yoing between the Premier League and Championship. In the past his model was to do just enough to stay in the Premier League, saving a pot of money to spend in January if/when relegation looks possible. I think he's now intentionally running the club as yo-yo club, he will not spend while in the Premier League but will save a pot of money to spend on ensuring we get back first time if/when we are relegated.

i find this a strange criticism myself unless there's more detail i'm unaware of, at the time he bought the club ashley was a very successful but reclusive billionaire with the money to buy and run a football club don't know how anyone could predict how things have gone personally Wasn't it also the case that Hall felt he'd took the club as far as he could, and that it would take someone a lot richer to take it to the next level? I don't think Shepherd's mis-management helped, it got to the stage we were getting in a bad way IIRC, by the end I think they just wanted to cut and run and let someone else deal with it. possibly yeah, i'm just intrigued by the idea that hall should have identified ashley as a complete cunt at that point in time when no one even knew who he was... i mean if one of the richest men in the country came in to buy your club and one of his stated aims was to use it to help market his business it's a reasonable assumption he would do more or less the absolute opposite of what ashley has done Hall didn't give a flying fuck about the good of the club. He was entrusted with it for buttons then refused to put a penny of his own money into it (so much so that his wife did to keep Keegan) and allowed it to be used as a cash cow, paying his family millions in dividends, even when we were in the red. I don't believe that he would've considered the good of the club for a second, just the good of his wallet.

He had clearly been asked to drop deep and support midfield leaving Stirling/Rashford to push forward. He did that well, but I think he and the team would've benefited from him as a lone target man with an extra midfielder when we had obviously lost control of midfield tonight, in the 2nd half against Colombia and Sweden. Southgate has done a brilliant job of building team spirit but he's been literally one-dimensional tactically.

Oh well, so it's Croatia losing heavily to France on Sunday rather than England. Has there ever been a weaker pair of teams contesting a world cup semi-final?

I see they've just signed a player from Burton, who let him go on a free despite a year left on his contract. The delicious irony that they've gone from taking the piss out of us for being in the same league as Burton to having to pick up their cast-offs.

Off topic but, the size of that pussy pad Impressed that we have Rogue racks though.

I don't think that would necessarily be the case, the money is predominantly just going into player's and agent's pockets, it's resulting in a lot of very average players on massive wages. On the whole I don't think a shift in funding would result in a huge loss in quality below the top six.

In many ways I think the equality of income within the Premiership is a big part of the problem. I'd actually welcome seeing the TV money distribution being less balanced, going more towards the top half. The massive rewards for just being in the Premiership are largely responsible for driving this desperation of clubs to get there. They're also driving the swing away from traditional clubs to less well supported clubs, whose success is just based on being in a desirable location for players to live, that are making is making it more difficult than ever for clubs like ours to stay in the Premiership. The top six may pull even further away if they got a bigger slice of the pie, but it doesn't look like any club is going to break up their stranglehold anyway.

Not with our owner, we could be relegated to the Northern League and he'd still want £400m for the club. His ego clearly won't let him sell under any circumstance unless he makes a hefty profit.

It's very unlikely that anyone else is out there that would be willing to throw the amount of money at them that they've become accustomed to. I'm sure someone would want to buy them but I doubt that they'd get another sugar-daddy type owner. There just aren't that many mega rich blokes out there that are willing to plough hundreds of millions into football the way Abramovich, Mansour and the PSG owners have. The likelihood is that all of the people with that much of an interest in football and that much money already own clubs. They are not in a position to compete for titles as a self sustaining club, without a sugar daddy they'll drop out of the top four and that global brand position will quickly be forgotten.

I get the impression he's losing interest Chelsea now Man City are looking like they'll dominate the league for the foreseeable future. I think he's looking for a way out, at least of funding them to the extent he has, and the visa issues are a convenient excuse.

https://yellowsforum.co.uk/threads/charlie-the-big-don.903/post-51703 Methvan posts under the username lundinsponytail on there. He seems to be pretty universally considered to be a bit of a bellend by his fellow Oxford supporters.

Some guy called the Donald getting his rocks off on Twitter, who'd have thought? Let's make a marra's clerb great again!

Ashley started in much the same vein with Mort the slick Charlie to his Don. It will eventually turn very sour. At best they're going to end up stuck in the middle of the Championship without the funds to challenge for promotion.

Blind eye or deaf ear. Thanks for that, I'm as grateful as the pontiff would be for a roll of Andex when defecating in woodland.

Lots of them seem convinced that there are more investors waiting in the wings to just hand the club loads of money to spend. They seem to have turned a blind ear to the part of that podcast where they said any transfer dealings would be with the "fan's money" and that part of the problem with the club is that the fans expect the owner to bankroll spending.

It's not unusual for people to buy a business with a loan then transfer the liability for the loan to the business. It's what the Glazers did with Man United. Rather than being that type of circumstance it seems like it's just a roundabout way for Short to give the club away but take the parachute payments, they've probably done it like that for tax reasons or something. It really doesn't look good for them though, they're still going to be stuck with huge overheads for a few years and now their biggest income stream is gone.

I was at the SJP game, honestly if I were them I wouldn't let that one die either. We had had the much better season finished some 6 points ahead of them in third, the first leg we got a good result 0-0 with Budgie saving a last minute dodgy pen they got. It looked all set for us to finish the job at home, we had a lethal strike force in Quinn and McGhee, but we just didn't turn up on the evening and all I remember about that night was that fat thighed bastard Gabbiadini killing us. In recent memory it probably the most important game between the two sides and they took all the bragging rights. Still annoys me to this day that they went up that year despite them getting beat in the playoff final by Swindon. If we had've won that playoff there's every chance that the Keegan managerial years would've never happened. Much like the six in a row, they ended up languishing back in obscurity with their "bragging rights" even deeper in our shadow than before.

What a night it must've been for them... only to be relegated the following season and see us go become title contenders within a few years.

Because he didn't fling himself to the floor according to Sky. Of course, if he had he would've been a cheating forrin.

They're a strange bunch like. Their billionaire owner who had enough money to cover their operating losses out of his own pocket has been replaced by bloke who has been trying, unsuccessfully for years, to buy promotion from the conference. Cue unbridled rejoicing on Wearside They seem to be suffering from some sort of collective form of bipolar disorder. There's going to be a crashing low for them when reality hits. They're an odd bunch the mackems, after all they've been through they don't seem to have developed an ounce of healthy skepticism.

On the basis of this: https://www.sunderlandecho.com/sport/football/sunderland-afc/stewart-donald-reveals-substantial-investment-in-sunderland-once-takeover-is-complete-1-9143153 He's actually talking about putting around £10m into the consortium that he's now a 'major player' in, which is a substantial amount for him, but a pittance in football terms.

In his statement Short said there were higher bidders, but these guys were the preferred bid. So there must be some cash being paid to him at some point. I think it's very likely that if/when the full details of the deal drip out the current blind euphoria on rtg will very quickly turn around. They've pretty much all gone from despising him to being entirely confident he's a good bloke with the interest of the club at heart and has given them a parting gift of £140m. There will almost certainly be some very big strings attached to that. I wouldn't be surprised if he's walked away retaining the ownership of all their land and property, rights to the parachute payment income, player sales and lots of other caveats.