Hughesy

I was never a massive fan of Shooting Stars, but I think Bob Mortimer is amazing on things like Would I Lie to You. That hour long clip is just brilliant.

From what I can see most of the stuff in the article and that Matt Scott is saying is absolute crap. I'm not an accountant so I do not necessarily know the modelling of bank debt, but to say the debt was unsustainable due to it being 15.5% of turnover is just wrong. Debt is usually calculated by a bank of the relationship between debt and EBITDA/operating profit. I haven't done the sums, but from what I can see in the accounts in the 2000s, the EBITDA was easily high enough to support the debt.

Doing DD for a business like NUFC wouldn't actually be that tough. It's not a complicated business - easily identifiable revenue streams, no foreign subsidiaries etc, but I agree that you couldn't do a full DD exercise in under a week (although Freshfields would certainly have the resources to do so in a very short period of time if they had to). But as I said above, the accounts would have shown the debt - and there's no chance that they didn't look at the accounts - the debt was well publicised as we had expanded the stadium, the mandatory prepayment clause was an absolute given and, in any event, you can still negotiate with the bank to roll the debt despite the change of control.

Sorry - phrased that as if it was directed at you. Was more a general frustration about how it's been portrayed by Ashley. Regarding the due diligence, it may well be right that he didn't do any. However, most acquisitions will have weeks and weeks of due diligence done to assess the assets and liabilities of the target. I've certainly never worked on a deal where no DD whatsoever has been done - there's no way you can value the company or know what you're buying. At an absolute bare minimum, you would look at the latest set of financial statements and that would show the debt. They knew the debt was there and they knew it had to be prepaid.

Someone with more accountancy brains might correct me here but... the £70m-ish debt Ashley inherited was comprised of some transfer fee instalments we still owed and a bank loan for the stadium expansion. That loan had a clause in it which demanded, in the event of a takeover, the stadium's mortgage repayments had to be paid in full. That's what people are getting at when suggesting Ashley cocked-up the due diligence (i.e. not realising the bank loan would have to be paid off). The other £70m debt we've accrued since then is through his own mismanagement. Made this point a few times over the years - pretty much every loan agreement (especially one for £50m+) will have a change of control clause that requires prepayment of the loan. It's absolute basic acquisition finance. There's no chance whatsoever that Ashley and Freshfields didn't know the loan agreement would contain this clause. No chance whatsoever.

Was one of our best players against Spurs. Let's allow him a few games before we write him off.

Teams are clearly looking to target Kenedy - even Spurs were trying to rough him up a bit. Unfortunately his reaction to that was 1) to lash out and 2) try and do everything himself. I am sure he will learn from the Cardiff game and improve as a result of it. At least he was still looking to take players on (however misguided this was) and had the nerve to step up and take the penalty, even though he'd had a bad game.

I'd love us to get Abraham but I'm not sure I could cope with people constantly calling him Abrahams.

Shame it didn't work out, there's a good player in there. Hope we've got a massive sell on percentage as no doubt Porto will sell him for 40m in 2 years. Unlikely Lee remembered to include it though.

Apparently Fulham are lining up Willian Jose as an alternative to Mitrovic. If Fulham end up getting Seri and Willian Jones, while we scramble around to get Rondon (who I don't actually think would be a terrible signing)..

One of the bigger issues is Ashley's unwillingness to actually incur any form of debt to cover short term cashflow issues. We shouldn't need to wait for cash to come through the door from Sky (or from other clubs for deferred transfer payments) before we spend - the Sky money is as good as cash in the bank.

That clip of Henderson's dreadful passes vs Croatia that is doing the rounds on twitter is somewhat damning..

Can't spend as much as clubs like Bournemouth because they've had a season of extra TV money, couldn't spend as much as Huddersfield or Brighton when they came up with us and now can't spend as much as newly promoted teams. Amazing work, Mike.

If we are going to accept a lower fee, whack in a huge sell on fee. Given it's Porto, they'll probably sell him in two years for some astronomical fee, so let's get some of the upside.

Such a great kit.

Interesting analysis of him here - https://statsbomb.com/2017/07/identifying-ligue-1s-next-big-breakout-talents-4-alassane-plea/

I do like Ritchie a lot, but the prospect of having Kenedy and Townsend on the wings would frighten a lot of defences. A lot of pace and trickery, whereas Ritchie just doesn't have that yard of pace to actually beat his man.

What a goal.

How good is Berisha? Remember reading articles about him being a promising youngster ages ago, but he's obviously not made a big move yet.

Was that someone's opinion or actual research. Actual research. Wasn’t the article I read but just saw something by freakonomics on momentum that referenced research - http://freakonomics.com/2011/11/20/football-freakonomics-is-momentum-a-myth-2/

I’m sure I read an article a while ago basically arguing that ‘momentum’ in respect of sporting mentality is a nonsense. In any event, would beating a weakened Belgium with a full strength team really make any difference? Some amazing amateur psychologists knocking around on twitter though.

Seems to be a lot of hints from the Chronicle that there's some release fee clause in Merino's contract - although they seemed very vague about what amount it was. Find it hard to believe it was as low as €15m though.

Should be getting far more than €15m for Merino. That's ridiculously low for the potential he has.

They absolutely blitzed the championship, and Boly, Neves, Jota, Costa, Coady, Douglas are all PL quality. Add to that they have tons of cash and good connections I have no idea why you'd predict that I think people are massively overestimating Wolves to be honest. There seems to be loads of talk of them finishing top half - genuinely don't see that happening.

If we are playing one upfront, they probably need to be pretty versatile to be honest and be able to hold the ball up as well. I imagine that's why Rafa was so keen on Abraham as he combined strength and pace.