bealios

If Guitierrez carries on the form he has shown in the last few games then he might make a players team - most teams haven't been able to handle him, and his running has created a lot of space for others, and I'm sure he'll have a load of assists.

Sooty?

Lovely one touch pass to set up Cole at Old Trafford for equaliser after Giggs had scored opener from free kick, first Premiership point I think

Assuming UEFA/FIFA proceed with an unamended plan that effectively vetos Man Utd, Real, Chelsea...(pretty much everyone except Arsenal) from their flagship money making competitions. I'd love them to do something, but I can't seem them doing this.

I agree its more difficult but not impossible - Moat's bid was a leveraged buy out, although perhaps an example of why its difficult to get something like that in place. The trick is convincing the banks that it is a good investment - and a largely debt free premier league club with its own stadium (sort of) with a massive turnover and (very shortly) low wages isn't the worst bet in football terms. Although I'm massively in favour of some form of the new rules proposed by Platini coming in, but given the threat of a breakway competition, I think it will be a fairly weak compromise, if indeed anything that is implemented.

There are more potential buyers than you might think, and that isn't necessarily a good thing. If (when) NUFC are sold, the club will most likely be relatively debt free, give or take a small overdraft balance. What this means is that there is plenty of scope for a leveraged buy out, i.e. someone borrows most of the money to buy the club, puts in relatively little of their own cash, and then lumps the debt (and interest payments) on to the club itself. This is exactly the Man Utd/Liverpool model. It means that it isn't only the mega rich who can buy the club, its anyone savvy enough to be able to convince a number of banks/lenders to lend a huge amount of cash, on the basis that the club would be performing well enough to service interest payments. A rich cash buyer coming in isn't completely out of the question - there was serious Middle East interest which fell away just before Barry Moat's interest was announced. As a Premier League club, we have a better status, and might attract one of those types of buyer. The gates this season in the Championship might convince someone that this is potentially a massive club, on a par with Liverpool, with a bit of investment - and this is what the mega rich owners are looking for, status and fun.

I'm asking about next season. If we don't go up, nothing at all. We'll be seriously fucked, and will lose any talent we have left. If we do go up, and have a big gap opening up around Easter, I think the club will be on the market unofficially from about April/May, so Ashley will again spend nothing. I can't imagine him wanting to hang on for another season in the Premier League and risk being relegated and devaluing the asset again, so I think we'll definitely be sold this summer, quicker than we think. The longer he leaves it next year, my suspicion is that the more buyer will start factoring the risk that we'll be a Championship club the following year again.

We're starting to look as though we might not be as nailed on for promotion as we think. So Ashley won't risk saddling us with Premier League players (and wages) until we're definitely up. So not a lot will happen in January.

Aye, one of the better atmosphere's this season, especially when we weren't the better team. East Stand is getting worse though. It used to be just quiet, now it is probably the most critical side of the ground. I swear that there are more boos and attacks on our own players from that stand than anywhere else in the ground. I wonder if its because its where a lot of the older fans now sit, and they're just pissed off after so many years of failure?

He was hardly the worst player on the pitch either. He's being criticised for letting players run at him, but if you have got no cover behind you then you can't dive in, you'll leave the player clean through on goal. Most times when he was being ran at he had no-one behind him, and Taylor was not back with play yet, so he had to wait until Taylor was covering until making the tackle.

How come if a player who has been playing particularly well all season in the league's leading team, makes one mistake (as he undoubtedly made for the second goal), everyone starts thinking he's not Premier League quality? Have you watched the Premier League, it is full of defenders making mistakes. Including Ferdinand, Vidic and Terry.

No point arguing over what was supposed to be released and when. Bottom line is that they are speculated to have £50m worth of pledges. I think its been mentioned before, but about half of the pension related pledges might not make it into cash due to legal technicalities. You then have to factor in that not everyone who pledges will come up with the cash, as we haven't yet reached the stage where people have been asked to pay a deposit. So in short, there isn't enough cash to buy the whole club, and then more importantly fund the club. The only way there would be enough, is if we miss promotion for a couple of years, the value then drops to sub - £50m. The notion of being able to buy the club outright and elect a president should be ditched. It isn't going to happen. Concentrate on getting a stake from Ashley and srating a proper dialogue as a respected fans body. Once you've got that, more fans and backers may come on board in the very long term, perhaps enough to increase the stake.

To be fair I've said all along that NUST would make a lot more progress and get a lot less (often undeserved) criticism if they came out with this as their long term goal, and forget about any statements about buying the club, owning the club or being involved in running the club. With statements such as yesterdays, at the moment they are miles away from being a respected consensual voice for NUFC supporters. They still, despite recent improvements, seem imo to be a slightly better organised "Ashley out" pressure group. It is amateurish, but to be fair these guys are not professionals and they are devoting their own time and hopefully learning as they progress. Which is why if they are to retain any real reputation after this, they need to change their goals, and work slowly towards a more realistic goal. There is nothing wrong with the ultimate aim being to own a small stake in the club, if only so that they have a little more weight to the group. Its been done before, with the PLC thing, although the fans were not organised in any way. However in the current world, to buy any sort of stake, the ultimate owner of the club, whoever that may be, needs to be willing to sell. And since most sensible people now seem to accept NUST are not going to be able to buy the whole club, the owner must be able to work with NUST on an ongoing basis - and no owner is going to be willing to sell any sort of stake and work with any body who issues official communications like the one that came out yesterday.

Reading the posts in this thread from those close to NUST, the £7m claim has nothing to do with turnover, wages, player sales or gate receipts - it is based upon an estimate of the market value of the club now, and an estimate that if we returned to the Premier League there would be an £84m increase in the value of the club, so in 12 months it would have increased by £7m a month on average. This is being put to investors to justify a return on their investement. This is an estimated increase in value of the club, and not the profit that anyone is making every month, which is something different. The message seems to be that if Ashley holds on to the club until the summer and then sells, he will have made £7m per month profit. What that ignores though is the massive losses per month he has made in the 12 months before last August. What the statement should say really is that Ashley had lost close to £150m on the club as of August 2009, and if he holds on to it until the end of the season he will only have lost £65m. I'm all for sensible debate on both sides, but you can only have that if both sides accept certain obvious facts - and the fact that Ashley will in any way make money from his association with NUFC is not one of them.

If you were playing deal or no deal and had an 8 box game containing 1p, £1 (some other amounts), £100,000 and £250,000 would you take an offer of £25k for the box knowing that you were potentially one round away from at least £100,000? all about the risk takig view of the player/seller. Ashley may get £150m if we get promoted, but if we don't then he is stuck with a loss making lame duck in the eyes of potential buyers and he may walk away with the penny I completely agree, hence why the club was still available for a reasonable price as recently as September/October. There was still a very real risk that we would be languishing in this division for a while. However, sitting in January a considerable gap between us and third place, and certainly guaranteed to make the play offs I would hope, then the promised return of almost doubling your money outweights the risk of not being promoted.

There were a number of offers but none of those offers provided evidence that they had the cash behind it. To be fair to Ashley he said the club was for sale, he instructed his lawyers to do it, and he dropped the price to a reasonable level in the circumstances at £80m. Not one buyer came forward who had the money available. Now its fairly clear that the club won't be sold until the summer - why the hell would you sell something now for £80m or so, when you could quite easily get close to £150m if you hang on for 4/5 months? Whilst great in principle, the economics of the whole NUST aim to buy the club has heavily flawed for many different reasons; the current economy, the demographic of many NUFC fans, the fact that rich Arabs and Russians have pushed all prices up in football, lack of any return shown by all but a few football clubs etc. NUST should stick to trying to establish some credibility, getting as many members as possible, and set as its long term goal raising enough pledges to get a nominal stake in the club with some sort of representative voice at board level.

But if you mislead investors into parting with their cash with statements that just aren't true then you tend to go to prison. Ask Bernard Madoff.

Shocking bit of communication. To answer earlier questions, I think the document they are referring to will most likely be a draft Information Memorandum, these are almost like an informal prospectus, which lists financial details about a proposed investment and is circulated to investors who are considering investing in some sort of fund/company, to give them all of the necessary information on the company/investment to allow investors to make an informed decision. The Information Memorandum will have been prepared with the intention to circulate to those who have expressed an interest in the NUST scheme, not by Ashley or by earlier purchasers. This makes the most sense. I stress the word "draft", because there are very very stringent rules when raising funds from the public, moreso when pensions are involved. I would suggest that if the text in yesterday's e-mail ever made it into a more formal investment document sent out to potential investors in the NUST scheme, and it somehow went ahead, those responsible would perhaps face criminal charges - the rules are that strict. I don't think they can come back from this. I have always been sceptical (just for pure economic reasons), but I pledged my cash nontheless, as it is a worthy idea. I'm lucky enough to be able to afford to lose it, but if I wasn't I would be very nervous putting any investment (moreso a slice of my pension) in their direction.

I can't imagine the state funded Northern Rock investing in NUFC

I suspect you're talking about different Peacock's, an easy mistake, in life and in football. I was only talking about defensively, and yes I think Enrique, Simpson, Taylor and Colocinni are better defensively than Venison, Beresford, Scott and Kilcline. I also don't agree the other teams were stronger in 92/93 either - back then the top division wasn't as full with foreign talent, therefore a lot of the players who nowadays are playing in the second division would have probably been playing in the top flight, since there were less foreign players to force them out.

After Shearer's 201st goal Sky or BBC did an hour long special on Shearer, and Jack Hixon did a fairly long commerative interview about Shearer, was interesting to watch. Have kept it on the Sky Plus box for over 3 years, despite missus threatening to delete it when I've been bad.

One thing that occurred to me yesterday which reminded me of the latter half of the 92/93 season was the reassuring knowledge that we would win. No tension from the crowd, even when we were doing Ole's at 1 - 0 up. After watching the defensive display of Colocinni and Enrique yesterday, this side just edges it on the defensive side over the 92/93 side IMO, never thought they would score at all, and if they did always thought we had a spare gear or two to knock another one in. Although it can be quite frustrating when the side isn't busting a gut to get a third or fourth when 2 - 0 up, given the amount of games played in this season its probably the sensible thing to do.

Contract expired. Big news. Surely everyone knew this has been about to happen for 4/5 years now?

Mate, at £80m for a potentially top 6 Premier League club free of debt, there is a lot of desire to buy out Fat Mike, its just a lot more difficult raising enough to buy the club and fund it as one might think. The only people who are rich enough to buy and fund it without bank finance are the status buyers, and by that I mean the rich Middle East interest. Rest assured, if we're still up for sale and a Premier Laeague club come May, there will be plenty of buyers.

Harwoods loan will get extended if Villa will pay a higher proportion towards the £25K per week wages. Simpsons loan will be extended. Colo might go if anyone comes in at the price stated in the summer, and Kilgallon will come in if he goes, maybe even if he doesn't depending on how Sheff Utd play it. Club will be marketed "off market" from about March onwards, assuming we're still well clear of third place.