Hughesy

Refs are under pressure from their assessors to implement the rules regardless of emotions attached to a certain celebration - I have no qualms about the ref issuing the card at that time, all he is doing is following orders (which he is under pressure to do) - the FA should IMO just rescind the card now after the event FWIW Claude Puel said he accepted the card as Leicester City approached the game professionally and he expected everyone else (i.e. the refs) to do the same Agreed - it's a yellow card offence. The referee shouldn't have make decisions on what events are or aren't worthy of being commemorated by taking your shirt off.

Was thinking the other day - in 1995 we bought Les Ferdinand for £6m. In 2018, we've have a striker who made 9 appearances this season who cost £5m. Just sums us up really.

Totally agree - can't imagine the only one who still watches the 'I'd love it' interview and actually take pride in it.

Harper was such a weird one for us. He could easily have been a PL No.1 at his peak and arguably would have been a shout for England, noting that David James was England keeper for a time. He was too good to be a second choice keeper, but ultimately, we had the best pair of keepers in the league for a period. I think you may be onto something saying that Harper pushed Shay. In the same way that Krul was perhaps pushed by Forster. Bit tragic that we now have Blob doing the pushing. Dubs must know that as long as he doesn't get injured, the shirt is his. Wonder if/when Woodman will emerge as a contender... With hindsight, Harper should have moved when he got dropped by Robson after that good spell he had. Could easily have picked up some England caps in the early-mid 2000s if he had.

Not having VAR. I know it's fashionable to hate VAR, but it's ridiculous that a game changing decision like the handball on Saturday didn't result in a penalty.

Agree with this - Given was a very good keeper, but his real strength was his shot-stopping. His command of the box, coming for crosses etc was pretty average. With Dubravka superior distribution and ability to come off his line, he could become a better keeper than Given in time.

Totally agree - make sure Muto isn't isolated and hit them on the break with a decent amount of pace with Shelvey clipping balls in over the top.

Just met KK in London for a book signing. What a man - had so much time for everyone and he'd been there for 2 hours already when I spoke to him. Just a great person.

Absolutely love having a keeper who can actually kick it as well. Makes such a difference.

Played really really well today. Couple of great tackles on Zaha.

Obviously it's great that the gap between us and midtable is pretty small at the moment. A couple of wins and you are basically midtable. It's a real shame that we've had such a tough start - if you look at Bournemouth and Watford's starts, they've got about the number of points I would hope we would have if we played the same games. We've got a relatively kind set of fixtures in November and December, so hopefully we can get going then.

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.