bealios

Aiming for 16th is a bit dangerous though, little margin for error!

From day one the plan was to run the club as it is being done now, to bring in players with potential - not to develop them and keep them and build a team for the long term - but with the aim of selling them on for a profit. Keep the club in the Premiership and the running costs are covered, and as a bonus you have a prime global marketing tool for free.

 

Have to say completely disagree with this. People don't buy football clubs to make money, surely all of the evidence shows that, how many profitable clubs are there around?

I can't imagine for one second that Ashley was prepared to spend £130m because he thought it would be good marketing for Sports Direct, and there was a slim chance he could defy the odds and make a profit. Too much risk, too little possible reward, does not fit with his (anyone else's business decision making).

He bought it on a whim without much thought, he liked football, hence when an opportunity comes along to own one of the most famous football clubs, he jumped at the chance. After all, £130m was only a small part of this fortune as it was back then. And he would have a spare £100m to invest in the team - or so he thought.

Things are different now of course, and I genuinely believe he is trying to run the club as efficiently (cheaply) as possible whilst retaining Premier League status to help with a sale (and avoid any further cash injections from himself).

What a fucking pointless argument and fatuous point. Encouraging journalists to make our manager look a dick in public is the stupidest thing I've heard for ages.

 

Wish people could stop their crusade and just support the club for a while.

 

Football management is full of bullshit, spin and half-truths, nobody tells the public what we seem to think Pardew has a duty to tell us. This whole argument really annoys me, it's based on a premise of truthfulness that nobody in football lives upto.

 

it's based on the fact that Ashley and Lambias are using our football club as an advert for Sports Direct and aren't interested in the slightest in improving us a football team, not now, not ever. and for that i want them hounded out of town at the nearest opportunity, the only way i can see anything like that happening is if journalists start to highlight what they're up to so the common fan comes round to the idea.

 

it doesnt mean i dont want us to win next weekend.

Seems to be a fairly expensive way to advertise Sports Direct, £240m + for some signs on a stadium where a reasonable chunk of the people in that stadium would like to burn Sports Direct to the ground...

This article is illuminating re agents: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/feb/12/the-secret-footballer-agents

Those Secret Footballer articles are quite a good read, I wonder who it is?

I thought I read somewhere that part of their aim was to have us running self sufficiently at a £10m profit each season in a few years?

 

On Ashley's New Year Resolution list, along with getting down to 13 stone.

Think it was on that 'our aim is to finish 10th or above every season' thing. Not sure though, might just be talking out of my arse.

If you think about it the perfect football financial model would be to maintain Premier League status (and not risk relegation) so that you keep the massive TV income, and do it by filling your club with young cheap low wage players with sell on value (and keep the player profit).

The UEFA slots are not worth it, since the change in income isn't that great, and you further risk stretching the squad and need a bigger squad to compete in the larger number of games. Champions League places are out of reach realistically, without spending insane amounts, and even then the existence of Chelsea/Man Utd and Man City means that there is always a risk of spending insane amounts and still finishing 5th.

So the sweet spot is probably between 12th and 7th - no higher or lower, and to hit the sweet spot by buying cheap players with potential sell on value, having a sensible wage cap.

Seems depressingly identical to the model Ashley is running.

In answer to the question to what happens to the loan if Ashley sells, nobody knows for sure, but a good indicator is that when the club was for sale in 2009 for £100m, the deal was to be structured so that the buyer would purchase the loan for £100m, and the shares for £1.

In laymans terms, after paying Ashley £100m the club would owe Ashley nothing, and he would have written off £140m (approximately).

It is a bit of a basic mistake to make - in any deal to buy a company which still has debt in place the first thing you check for is a "change of control" provision, lesson number one.

It is the sort of thing you can find out within about 10 minutes if you have the document in front of you, it isn't something that needs a team of expensive lawyers working on for weeks.

As an aside, the more obvious way that that Ashley can get some money out of the club, is to re-finance.

In the same way you would re-mortgage and move your mortgage from Natwest to HSBC, NUFC could move its loan from Mike Ashley to HSBC.

Mike Ashley would be repaid whatever the new loan is, and NUFC would owe HSBC Xm. It would also need to pay HSBC interest, and I imagine these large football loans are around 8% or so.

Issue is of course in the current market any lender wanting to loan NUFC £140m, they would struggle to get half of that.

Back to the original question, the answer is no it is not.

A leveraged buy out is when someone uses third party debt from a bank for example to buy something (i.e. a football club), and then places the debt into that thing (i.e. into the football club) so that the football club is responsible for paying the interest, rather than the person who bought it. These interest costs are high, and they reduce the club from a profit making thing to a loss making thing, which for football clubs who rely on profits to invest on players etc. Instead they are being spent on interest payments, and that is why they are considered a bad thing.

If the club is owned by a shareholder with no debt, there is no interest payments, so no reduction in profits available to spend.

The Ashley purchase was simply structured so that he made the original purchase by acquiring all of the shares for £130m or so, and then loaned another £110m, but interest free. So the problems generally associated with a leveraged buy out don't apply. That lack of an interest charge like it or not was a good thing for the club, it meant we were not paying the £7m - £8m a year to Northern Rock.

Don't think there is anything wrong throwing someone young in, the bigger issue is playing someone decent next to them, particularly at centre back.

Playing Situ for a few games in the Premier League next to Colo would hopefully do wonders for his development.

A historic problem NUGC has had with introducing defenders new to the Premier League is playing them next to existing naff players i.e. Titus Bramble. Can't have helped Steven Taylor's development some of the centre backs he has played alongside over the years.

Sometimes you need someone in the dressing room having a go at the players telling them to pull their fingers out, and I can't see anyone on the pitch or in that dugout who could do that better than Barton to be honest

The worrying thing about this is that at any point in the season you will normally have 4 or 5 players out injured, and this 11 is therefore not a million miles in quality away from the team we will be fielding in the majority of premier league games as things stand.

I was woken up in the middle of the night by my missus, and then couldn't get back to sleep because for some reason I was angered about the thought of Alan Smith and his "great bloke" imagine and the fact that he "just wanted to play football", and what a load of complete bollocks that statement is, since he would rather sit in the reserves for Newcastle picking up his £60K per week than take a pay cut and go and play for a team (Leeds) he supposedly supports, to help them get back to the Premier League, after their tremendous fall from grace (where he was part of the team that kick started it).

All footballers are cunts. Except  :colo: and 

So he was, should check Wikipedia first.

120 appearances over 4 years, at a net cost of £12m ish? Actually, when you look at it that way, probably one of the better value for money signings of the last 5 years.

You could argue that over the 5 year contract Enrique was not value for money. We made zero net on transfer fees, and paid £3m per year to get two good seasons. So roughly £15m net spend for two good seasons, one in the Championship.

I love Enrique by the way and think he will be considered by the wider football world to be the best left back in the league by the end of this season.

I read the article and it's nothing I didn't know already. We should still have cash to spend with the tv money which hasn't been accounted for in that piece. There's money there, we are just f***ing about getting it spent in a p*ss poor attempt to save a million here, a million there.

 

Does the TV money not cover our existing wage bill?

 

For any of the doubters, cast an eye of the previous available NUFC finances in black and white, you will see there is rather more money to spend than we are being lead to believe. That said, what is happening is the loan(s) put into the club from Ashley are simply being repaid, but rather than being transparent, we are being fed lies and being taken for fools by being told the money will be spent on players. Had the club been honest, I think we would all have been a lot happier about what is happening now with our eyes open. I've posted this previously with links to proofs of finances on another thread a month ago.

 

Ashley is simply reducing the debt of the club to make it a more attractive asset to sell.

 

Although I haven't looked at them, don't the latest accounts show that the loan to Ashley is still the same or higher, not less? Not sure how he is paying himself back if that's the case.

Stuck in traffic near Buckingham Palace heading to a pub where I'm not even certain the game is on. This is not helping the nerves.

Hard to believe Seth Johnson was part of a CL-chasing side back then.

 

Just checked his Wiki to see what he was upto. He left Derby in '07 at 28 years old and just hasn't joined a club since? Injury problems or what?

 

There was an interesting anecdote allegedly about Seth Johnson doing the rounds. In his personal terms negotiations with Peter Risdale (Leeds Chariman) Johnson and his agent agreed in advance to hold out of £16k a week. So Risdale opens up the talks with “We are willing to pay you £26k a week”. The flabbergasted agent replies “Well that wasn’t quite what we were expecting". “Right so, £32k a week is my final offer” said Risdale.[citation needed]

 

Isn't there an identical story about Shepherd and Luque doing the rounds, although the numbers involved are about £30K and £70K!

 

Love it. Wouldn't surprise me if true, either.

oh oh Tiote has this morning landed in London

 

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01967/riots-london_1967142c.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LlyEfT7NFTA/S-Ray7tdImI/AAAAAAAAB_Q/AU2PQ_kuojc/s400/ve_day.jpg

Brilliant

As an aside and on the subject of aiming for Europe, as things stand at the moment would we even be allowed in under the football fair play rules? I know we're aiming towards a break even point in 2015, but if we qualify before then would we pass the financial tests, although I appreciate they don't apply yet.

I think much of what Pardew says about being realistic about challenging for the top four is right, although the one thing that might change that in the medium term is these financial restrictions, if they are applied properly (I'm looking at you Man City and your £400m shirt sponsorship deal....).

Haing read the various posts over the last 24 hours or so I'm absolutely astounded that anyone can think that the club have done the right thing in all of this, regardless of your view of Barton's role in all of this.

fingers crossed history repeats itself as we got bellamy and robert after failing to get jeffers and zenden...........or so the story goes.

Or Ginola after being turned down by .... Jon Salako

He was on about £3m a year, so I imagine they have settled for a figure significantly less than that - benefit to him is that he can go off and get a new contract, with (for example) £1.5m in his pocket. Benefits the club as they save some money from the £3m, and benefits the player (he gets to find some match time and still gets a fair bit of wedge, plus a new contract elsewhere).

Seems like a decent bloke, but a disaster here.

Only concern is that the fantastic spirit everyone talks about seems to have been based upon Nolan, Smith, Harper, and to a lesser extent Carroll and Barton. Two of those gone, two of those are likely to be a bit pissed off about contract situation, which leaves Harper, who I imagine will be under a lot of pressure from Krul/Forster next year.

If Ferguson wants rid he will be off, regardless of whether he wants to stay and fight for his place. His wages will need to be removed from the bill to help Ferguson rebuild to match Barca next year.

Would love this to happen, I have visions of a Beardsley type situation where we sign him on a 3 year deal and it just brings out the best of everyone playing around him.

However, can't help feel Mr Mojo is spot on - the Ashley regime will simply see a circa £17m+  outlay with no resale value. Too short sighted to see that having Berbatov sign might convince a couple of wonderkids we are tracking that we are an ambitious club. It isn't as simple as just £17m going out, convincing even one young foreign star like Ben Arfa or Tiote that we are a better option than Valencia for example might offset a large chunk of that £17m once they move on.

The situation has arisen because of the Carroll sale. After that, none of the players can be sure that the club won't ship out the core of the squad, and are more apprehensive of it than they might have been if the Carroll sale hadn't happened. Nolan is in that core. He is without a doubt one of our most important players, at least  this season, and the players most likely view him as an important player for next season.