bealios

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.

 

£80m or £100m- it's a stratospheric price for an organisation that needs a lot of investment to get back to operating on an even keel at the top level. I cannot fathom the rationale of people who think it's a bargain of some kind.

 

As for Portsmouth- they were sold for a nominal fee due to the need to pay down imminent debt repayments and to meet future obligations.

 

If we got promoted we'd need considerable investment to have a strong chance of staying up. Ashley thinks that if we go up we'll be the whole package, ready to sell off the shelf- in fact we'd need a major squad overhaul and a considerable upgrade to the talent on the coaching side.

 

Ashley thinks he will get a better price as he thinks we will go up. It's far from a certain conclusion- one more year in the championship and our perceived value is zero.

 

 

 

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.

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.

 

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.

load of none sense really. however, some of this season's PL fixtures, on paper at least, looks really horrible. Too many shit teams, shit clubs.

 

 

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.

The old, 'what can I change line'? On your own you can probably change fuck all but if others who share your opinion join or you can influence others through coherent, logical arguments then you might have a chance.

 

If you don't try you'll never know.

 

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

Didn't Bristol City keep 26 clean sheets last season?

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.

Crave attention?

 

We will see who is right in 7 days time

 

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.

OK, lets also look at some history here on Keegan.

Remember the comments after the Chelsea home game where he admitted we werent good enough to compete with the best and KK was hauled down to London for a please explain>

Well, I bet the conversation went something like this:

MA: So, Kevin, we are not good enough to compete with the best?

KK: Thats right

MA: and what is your 3 to 5 year plan to make us compete with the best

KK; Lampard, Henry, Beckham and T

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!

Actually... come to think of it... have they ever done something like this before? Just flicking through a couple of bank statements - i appear to be paying £3.99 a month for something i never realised i had. Hmm. Time to investigate methinks. I can remember signing up for like a 24 hour pass for 99p or something a while back? Think it was something like that.

Porn?

Crave attention?

 

We will see who is right in 7 days time

 

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.

keegan's targets were beckham, henry, ronaldinho and lampard. and stephen warnock. as well as bassong and guthrie. of course we know the last three are facts, but the previous 4 names are of the same calibre so it makes sense and i doubt the club would lie to us.

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?

KK: Lampard, Beckham, Henry and Tom Finney

MA: Denissssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

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.

I don't want to see his greedy monkey face anymore.

Seriously this guy gave the toon a lot of good memories, but I am shocked at the reply "He's good, passion, good memories bla bla bla", it's like in the football you only know a manager and he's called Keegan.

Wake up mates, you have tons of managers out there with passion and better football tactical knowledge and most importantly they won't walk their ass off and leave the fans and team helpless. (Not to say I totally blame Keegan here, but I meant many other managers won't do this).

You're most likely a WUM but i shall humour you.

Could we have some names please ?

 

Are you implying that Keegan is the best manager there is?

 

I would guess not, so I'm assuming that you're implying that he's the best available to us. If so then how do you know that?

 

None of us know who'd be available to us, not even the club at this stage I'd expect, so all that the people who are wanting Keegan back are doing is pre-empting the result of that process, why? The answer can only be that they're letting their sentiment towards Keegan make them unwilling to consider anyone else.

 

That's not a good idea in my view and it's been one of the major factors in NUFC being in it's present state of turmoil. Shepherd allowed sentiment to influence his decisions and ended up buying players we couldn't afford, bringing in both players and managers based upon reputation rather than benefit to the team, trying for instant success rather than building something on solid foundations for the future, and that left the club in a perilous financial state when it didn't work. Ashley let sentiment influence his decisions and bought the club without finding out the true financial position of the club and then make the same mistake as Shepherd by appointing a manager to appease the fans when he wasn't in a position to give that manager what he wanted without considering the consequences of not doing so. Far too often crucial decisions have been made based upon sentiment rather than rational thought at this club and look where it's left us. Now is the time for that to end.

 

So basically what I want is for there to actually be a process to deciding the next manager and I want that process to result in us employing the best manager available to us at that time. At this point no-one can know who that is, we don't even know our options, let alone who amongst those options is going to be the best for the club. So, anyone who is certain about it at this stage is making a bit mistake and I only hope that whoever it is that will end up being responsible for making that decision doesn't think they know the answer already.

 

For the record, if after that process has run its course the decision is made that either Alan Shearer or Kevin Keegan is the best man for the job then fine, I'll be happy with that. I have to say that I doubt that either of them is the best available to us, but as with everyone else that's an opinion made without even knowing who the candidates are, let alone being qualified to decide between them. I also doubt that Keegan's even a candidate as I don't think he'd want to come back here after all this.

 

Basically what I'm saying is that I want a professionally run club from now on and you don't have a professionally run club if you make decisions as important as who the manager should be by saying: "This bloke's the only man for the job" without even considering who's available.

Although I agree with much of this, I think that if you look at the last 20 years or so, the only manager that NUFC have appointed who was the sensible considered choice and which wasn't based upon local bias or hero worship was probably Kenny Dalglish. It doesn't always work out. Our most successful managers in the modern era have been emotional appointments - Keegan and Robson. Although I accept Robson was a world class manager at the time, I think Shepherds decision to go for him was less for that and more for the local connection.

If Moat gets the club it will be also acquired almost entirely with debt to be honest - certainly more than the £70m or so that we had before Ashley got involved.

We'd be completely up shit street by now if the debts hadn't been dealt with. It's seriously deluded to think otherwise.

True, although "dealt with" doesn't necessarily mean cleared.

There's a common misconception that debt is a bad thing - its not - gearing/borrowing is how businesses become successful. Certainly hasn't done Man Utd any harm. Trick is to get good terms so that the interest payments are comfortably met, and run the business properly so that you are not incurring further borrowing to meet the interest payments i.e. £40m overdraft facilities.

I know this sounds a bit daft now, but I think there is a reasonable chance that in 5 years time people will look back at the Ashley era and not have as much hatred for the man that they do now.

 

When you take the emotion away from it, you are essentially dealing with a bloke who has invested more of his own cash in NUFC than any other person in the history of the club. He was also responsible for the appointment of Kevin Keegan and Alan Shearer. And he liked a few beers in the away end. If someone told us 5 years ago that we would end up with such an owner, but he would become perhaps the most criticised owner in the clubs history, we would have thought them a bit mental.

 

I don't have any ill feelings towards Ashley, I just think its a shame that he couldn't get some proper advice and make it work. I saw him on Wednesday night and he just looked like a broken man, but couldn't help admiring the fact that he still comes to the games, he could quite easily think fuck it and not bother at all.

 

It's true that he invested his own cash, and let's face it not many other people including Kevin Keegan have done that, but it's the deceit I can't stomach. If he was just up front and stuck to the line that the club was strapped for cash I could support that, but the bullshit and lies spun by his team have been unforgiveable. If it was just incompetence you could at least feel some sympathy.

You're right of course, but football is a dirty corrupt game - anything with that amount of money in it attracts the worst types of parasites. For all we know every club may need to keep the top agents sweet - it wasn't long ago that we lost out on Luca Modric even though he was perfectly happy to come to NUFC - I know in that case it was the selling club's owner who favoured the move to Tottenham, but you can see how in the real world these sort of deals might be the sort of things that need to be done all of the time - there must be a ton of reserves at a number of clubs in the Premier League where the reason for signing the isn't completely apparent. But if they ultimately end up with you getting a top player over another club, then maybe it is worth it. In the past NUFC used to pip clubs like Everton and Tottenham to most players, but we did it by paying £20K a week more, which over a 5 year contract is a hell of a lot more than £1m.

Not defending the deal that was done, the important thing is that the final decision on these matters is made by the manager.

I know this sounds a bit daft now, but I think there is a reasonable chance that in 5 years time people will look back at the Ashley era and not have as much hatred for the man that they do now.

When you take the emotion away from it, you are essentially dealing with a bloke who has invested more of his own cash in NUFC than any other person in the history of the club. He was also responsible for the appointment of Kevin Keegan and Alan Shearer. And he liked a few beers in the away end. If someone told us 5 years ago that we would end up with such an owner, but he would become perhaps the most criticised owner in the clubs history, we would have thought them a bit mental.

I don't have any ill feelings towards Ashley, I just think its a shame that he couldn't get some proper advice and make it work. I saw him on Wednesday night and he just looked like a broken man, but couldn't help admiring the fact that he still comes to the games, he could quite easily think fuck it and not bother at all.