bealios

Thinking about it more widely, there aren't a lot of players in recent years who leave Newcastle and go on to really hit form and perform significantly better than they did at NUFC. Bellamy maybe, but he was pretty good here. Bassong might do so. I think Given is just continuing his decent form here, but I don't think he is as good now as he was at his peak here.

If everyone would just stop buying their cheap tat at sportsdirect and buy it somewhere else then although it probably wouldn't hurt Ashley that much directly, it would show anyone thinking of sponsoring next season that it might not be the best move for their brand. This is one form of "protest" I would support as it wouldn't have an affect on the team or create a negative atmosphere on matchdays. Or how about we try and fight this another way - take banners to the game relating to whatever brand is competing with the stadium sponser - "I'd rather shop at JJB", "Sportsdirect kill kittens" or something similar.

The deal on the table is £80m (just over, but close enough). This is the purchase price for the outstanding Ashley debt, the shares are £1 - probably so Ashley can move the huge loss on the share disposal elsewhere in his group, but I'm no tax expert. I don't think I'm disagreeing too much with what you say, I accept that if new buyer borrows money to acquire the club, and has to service that debt at a proper interest rate, then you're close to back to where you started. However if the new owner puts in equity, it has scope to borrow more funds to invest in the team. Going back to my original point which was trying to take an optimistic view on life, if (big IF) we get promoted, and the club gets sold to a new owner on the basis of the deal on offer, financially the club is liekly to be on a better financial footing in terms of debt and running costs (long term commitments to crap players on lucrative contracts) than we were just before Ashley took over. That is my reason to be optimistic - yes there are big IFs with promotion and whether a new owner doesn't borrow to the hilt to get the club, but we can but hope.

I've read it a dozen times and I don't understand what this post is trying to say at all, but it's got me intrigued as to what you think Ashley's plan was/is. Are you also saying we should be grateful we're not Chelsea or something? There is a clause against his loan saying he can charge interest at 0.5% over the inter bank lending rate (from 07-08 accounts). He didn't charge it that year but he could in the future (though to be fair, it's still a very good rate for a football club loan even if he does charge it). He could be charging the club for it now for all we know (but it would currently only be just over £1m a year). There's nothing to stop a buyer from borrowing money against the club to fund the purchase (apart from the current difficulties in borrowing cash, but that will ease in the future) so saying that the debt to Ashley will be written off is meaningless and not even necessarily true. If Ashley manages to sell the club (even if we're promoted) for anything near what he has spent on it, it will be absolutely criminal considering the significantly worse state the club will be in. If Ashley doesn't sell I have no doubt that at the very best we will be a constant PL struggler as he claws back his investment bit by bit. How can it be meaningless? Ashley bought a company for for £130m which had £70m worth of debt it needed to service. Also the existence of that £70m worth of debt mean that borrowing any more was highly unlikely, if not dangerous. If the club gets sold, £80m or so will purchase a company with £0 debt, ignoring any working capital overdraft, which will be less than £10m in any event. This means less debt to service, but also the ability (if a purchaser wants to) to gear the company up and borrow at the appropriate level, when borrowing conditions improve.

There's plenty to be optimistic about. We're top of the league of course, and this has been achieved whilst missing some key players - both central defenders and our best striker missing for the recent poor performances. The crippling running costs are heavily reduced due to the departure of expensive underperforming players, and will be reduced even further at the end of the season when we lose Butt and Geremi. We do have other high earners, but at least they are contributing with performances, save for Barton at the moment. There are also a lot of talented kids getting some valuable experience - this was a massive factor in the success of the early 90's with the likes of Watson, Clark, Cole and Howey getting blooded in the second tier before stepping up the Premier League. And although its boring, we're one of the few clubs effectively free of debt. Whilst Ashley is the owner we pay no interest. Once he sells the debt is effectively written off.

Its a short step from re-naming the ground to playing fucking music after a goal, and then we become one of those clubs, and we might as well just fucking relocate the ground to a retail park in Gateshead.

Arsenal had to pay £390 million to build a 60,000 seater stadium, we have a ready made 52,000 seater stadium thrown in with the price. We don't own the land which the ground has been built on but for football purposes that doesn't matter as we will not be looking to sell it as we couldn't play without it. If we owned the land we could sell it and move to cheaper land to build a new one but a new build would cost more than the land would be worth. As for Portsmouth, yes they were given away, they still have debts which could be up to £40 million, they look like playing in the Championship next season and they have a s*** ground which would cost a fortune to replace, I don’t see what they have going for them yet they have been taken over twice this season. The stadium bit is also a bit more complicated than that, in that we have to pay a rent up to the Council for the stadium land, which is based upon a certain % of matchday turnover. So the club is a tenant under a lease and has to pay rent to its landlord, which makes the stadium less valuable than the Emirates. The reason why we we can't sell the ground and move somewhere cheaper is not that we don't own the land, its because the lease says that the use is restricted to use as a sports ground, and there isn't a lot of demand in the region for a 52,000 seater sports ground other than Newcastle, so effectively you can't really sell it, hence why its difficult to raise bank funding for a purchaser - there isn't a big enough asset to offer as security.

Who are you like, Llambias No, I don't look as good naked.

The price of the club is £80m. There is no payment to Ashley afterwards or anything else, no instalments, no payment on promotion. The £80m is actually the price of buying Ashley's loan, the shares are acquired for £1. The reason nobody bought to club so far is that there are two ways to buy an asset like this, with bank funding, or with spare cash. Those with spare cash are the uber-rich, who buy a club as a status symbol, not a work in progress. So they want a Premier League club, not a Championship club. The other way involves raising finance from a bank or other fund, and as well as being difficult in the current climate, the club doesn't have anything to offer as valuable security. This is why Moat's bid stalled.

Not shit for the fans of those clubs. I would rather watch Newcastle Doncaster 10 times over than any premier league game this season.

The protests worked to an extent, in that Ashley bought the club to enjoy himself, and when it became clear that he became a hate figure, he could not enjoy himself any longer, so the only option is to sell. After that, I don't think the protests have that much effect, and might even have a detrimental effect on the club. Initially Ashley promised that he would ensure the club was kept going until it was sold, and that to an extent he did, by guaranteeing the overdraft with Barclays, without which NUFC would now be in the hands of administrators. Obviously I appreciate that this was in his interest as well. However, bearing in mind what we know about his rash decision making, often based on personal feelings, there is nothing at all to stop him winding the club up out of spite and selling the assets. Yes he would probably get less back than he would if he sold for £100m, but it wouldn't be a lot less. As the main creditor he could effectively force a sale of assets, and once the liquidator and the taxman had there own bit, he would share what is left with Barclays, him getting about 90% and Barclays getting around 10%, although it depends on what price you could get for the stadium, training ground and academy, these being the main assets other than the players. So in short, I think the protests at the moment achieve absolutely nothing.

Two words. Arse. Nil. Get the team playing well, get the crowds and corporate guys in, finish off the third section of the Gallowgate, and then look to generate revenue and market worldwide before the "Entertainers" are forgotten worldwide. We still have some global appeal if we get back their quick. No, we won't ever compete with Chelsea, Man City and Man Utd for cash, unless the benefactors start wanting a return on investment, but we can certainly look to compete with Liverpool, Arsenal long term.

Because, quite frankly, the "bosses" at NUSC appears to be complete and utter mindless tossers. It's like telling Hitler under WW2 "I don't really mind the jews, you know? How bout we just all be friends?" You think he'd listen to your opinion? Whilst I would love to agree with ewerk, after listening to the live NUSC meeting last year I'm on Kaizero's side of the fence on this one. Not sure about the Hitler comparison though - despite your views on NUSC, you cannot doubt that they are a group of fans that care enough about the club to get involved, even if you (and I) don't agree with them much of the time.

I remember at the time thinking Dalglish was the perfect appointment. We'd just lost the league title, mainly because the team didn't have the experience of how to win a league. Dalglish had done it with two different teams, particularly with Blackburn where the situation was very similar to the "new money" at Newcastle. When he came in an got us second place, in a season of massive transition, I thought we would get the league the following year. Then came Stephane Guivarc'H

I counted only 17, 18 if you count the cup too. Thanks for the clarification, I just picked a random number. However due to this statistic this was always going to be one of our harder games this year as they are clearly pretty good at keeping attacks quiet. 7 goals conceeded away from home would beg to differ. To be honest that's not the worst away record. We've got the best defense by a long way and we've conceded 3.

Were you right over 20 days ago when you said this... All legal work complete. US duo flying in this weekend. Sheard has turned down tickets to Cardiff because he is hounded by the media. The deal, subject to the vaguaries of MA and DL will COMPLETE tues or weds I know US people and Sheard have requested to got to Blackpool and definitely will be there Plymouth home on 19th. you will be surprised at one of the USA people - darling!!!!!! WUM isnt it clear? I'd say so To be fair he might not be. Even the people who are genuinely close to the deal don't know a whole lot about what's going on, partly because its all been done through middle men, and partly because of the way Ashley is conducting the deal. If he's close to the Sheard group then he would know a lot of stuff about their bid, and whatever tickets they've asked for, although to claim a deal will be done in 7 days does cast doubts on his reliability, even Ashley doesn't know how long this all will take, so I doubt Silius does. an internet message board poster close to the takeover group? im going to lol this. lol Except that the way a deal like this works is that you have some people at senior level making the decisions, but they have a team of more junior people who do a lot of the work. There's a fair chance that one of those people might just be a Newcastle fan, and has access to the internet.

100% WUM Probably, but you would have probably said the same thing when Keegan took over in 1992 and said we would be one of the top 3 teams in the country within 5 years!

Porn?

Were you right over 20 days ago when you said this... All legal work complete. US duo flying in this weekend. Sheard has turned down tickets to Cardiff because he is hounded by the media. The deal, subject to the vaguaries of MA and DL will COMPLETE tues or weds I know US people and Sheard have requested to got to Blackpool and definitely will be there Plymouth home on 19th. you will be surprised at one of the USA people - darling!!!!!! WUM isnt it clear? I'd say so To be fair he might not be. Even the people who are genuinely close to the deal don't know a whole lot about what's going on, partly because its all been done through middle men, and partly because of the way Ashley is conducting the deal. If he's close to the Sheard group then he would know a lot of stuff about their bid, and whatever tickets they've asked for, although to claim a deal will be done in 7 days does cast doubts on his reliability, even Ashley doesn't know how long this all will take, so I doubt Silius does.

Perhaps the only person who will come through the whole debacle of the Ashley era with his reputation improved as a result of his association with NUFC.

And I'm sure if they were watching us on Wednesday they would say the same thing. The quicker we get out of the mentality that we are going to piss this league the better. It was only about two weeks ago were we were second in the league - one place above not getting promoted.

I think if you have a decent commercial revenue then you can live without a rich benefactor - there is no particular reason that Arsenal are a top 4 team and NUFC aren't, other than consistent good management over a long period of time.

The most realistic chance of having any fan representation on the board is that Moat gets the club and one of his appointments is someone who has followed the club and actually has fans best interests at heart. Although I would love it to happen, I don't think its realistic to think that a group of fans could club together and buy a stake, and then elect someone who did have the fans interest at heart, rather than having his own agenda. This might not necessarily be a bad thing - for example, does anyone really think that if the smoggies clubbed together, bought a stake in the club and got fan representation on the board they would actually do a better job of doing good for the club than Steve Gibson is doing already?

Although I seriously doubt this actually happened, it wasn't complete fantasy. Beckham would have paid for himself in commercial revenue etc - it would have effectively been a free transfer. Henry was also not completely out of the question. Lampard however was never going to happen.