Toonpack

We will miss Jonas hugely, am concerned for this one tbh

Bottom line, even if he'd wanted to (which I personally doubt) Shepherd did not have the wealth to stump up the circa £20Mill a year (or is it nearer £30Mill) subsidy the club needed by that time. It certainly would not have been available from the banks (we had secured all our assets away on pre-existing lending and the club had spent £6Mill the previous year unsuccesfully trying to find a buyer/finance). We were screwed without a Billionaire (no matter how insane the billionaire turned out to be).

When do you think we should have expanded the stadium Cronky? Considering the fact, the ground didn't start getting regularly sold out until '96. I guess the building work should have started in '97 instead of a few years later? I don't remember it at the time, but maybe the club was slow off the mark because wise sages like yourself would have been telling them what a bad idea it was to get the club into a completely unsustainable level of debt (£66m in 2001. I can just see a younger Bobyule warning of inevitably "doing a Charlton/Boro" ). Thank goodness Mike Ashley generously after 4 years of ownership put undersoil heating at the training facilities built under the old board, perhaps in another 4 years if we sell off a few more players we can afford to renovate the showers at the academy facilities built under the old board too. What a generous and forward thinking owner he is, without him developing a youth system at the club we'd never have been able to recruit and bring through the likes of Ameobi, Taylor, Carroll, Krul, and numerous others who filled squad places but didn't quite make it at the top level. Thank goodness also that the commercial revenue of the club is in the hands of someone as capable as Derek is of turning round the finances of the club and bringing in new revenue streams so we can continue to go from strength to strength and allow us to finally compete in the transfer market with the likes of Fulham, Stoke, QPR, Swansea, and Wolves who we can currently only look at with envy for their financial clout. http://i.imgur.com/5l8dI.jpg Typical Cronky postings. Big on rhetoric and imagined good intentions, but low on facts. Lots of history being rewritten and replaced with an Ashley aggrandising version. Quite appropriate in this thread then. You do realise that matchday revenue (and a portion of commercial/catering) is effected by number of games played, ergo, in Europe more "significant" games = more money. The peaks and troughs of your graph cannot simply be attributed to bad fiscal management. What about frozen ticket prices, catering is outsourced (so fixed sum guaranteed as opposed to variable sums) economic meltdown etc etc etc Turnover is all well and good, but the other side to that equation is running costs, taking tunrover in isolation as an indication of anything is nonsense. BTW Commercial revenues at the top of the pyramid have stagnated and any recent "growth" is down to the numbers Man City have pulled in. Edit: I would guess that in the next accounts our turnover will be at a record level for the club, using your argument does that mean mean Ashley/Lambias have become financial geniuses??

I'm not going to address the rest of your post (hey, it's late ) but i've heard the emirates and a few others mentioned many times both on and off the forum relating to this debate but to my mind those stadia have no relevance at all. Those are brand new arenas and hence they have no history behind them. Their relevance to St James' Park is zero as they were, on the whole, not named anything else before they were named as they are now or they were initially named for a corporate sponsor and have since switched to another different corporate sponsor. Had Arsenal decided to rename Highbury then i'm sure there would have been the same sense of outrage from their fans. Similarly the scousers or the fake mancs would go beserk should Trampfield or Old Trafford be renamed. Those fans would be outraged at the besmirchment of their history and tradition even with the extra funds that the desecration would bring, a consolation we inevitably find ourselves without. The mention(s) of the Emirates are totally valid IMO, Arsenal totaly obliterated their heritage, but hey that's OK apparently, a name change pales in significance compared to the bulldozers going in. I don't like the name change, but it's just another example of erosion of heritage in the search for more money. It is much less of an erosion than total destruction for the same purpose. If you believe OT or Anfield would be sacrosanct if either Man U or Liverpool really needed the money, you are extremely naive. When and how much money we will get is another topic, but the name change itself was utterly predictable. But SJP is still there and will always be SJP Check out the Stadium names in the Bundesliga ?? (a league btw where commercial revenues outstrip the Prem).

I agree with a lot of what you say there, drunken ranting is no way for an employee to go on much less a Managing Director, but on "a point of order" the bit I bolded, he didn't (the "Judge"). The oft quoted statement (5.2 The Club admitted to the Tribunal that it repeatedly and intentionally misled the press, public and the fans of Newcastle United). is from KK's legal team's statement NOT the tribunal itself as it has been portrayed in the press and seems to be believed by many.

And not renamed the Gallowgate the "Exhibition Stand" (and the Leazes for SJH for that matter)

But no-one who matters (fans, locals etc) will use the "new" name. It makes no odds.

His lack of due diligence which ultimately will lead to us being stuck with him unless someone of Man City's owners type wealth comes in to save the day. His lack of due dilligence was a godsend, hate to think where we'd have been without it. However bad he's been.

That sort of thing will never happen. Especially not when we're 3rd in the league. He's got absolutely nothing to worry about. If (big IF admittedly) we stayed thrid in the league, would we ourselves have anything to worry about

Vote for me, vote for me. twats the lot of them

How on earth do you come to this conclusion? We can't have repaid 'debt' because the debt is held by Ashley and as Dekka keeps saying 'Mike hasn't taken a penny out of the club' He has taken money out. I don't believe so, unless you can state when and how much ?? Nearly £30m over the last 2 years was the plan. We'll see in the 2011 & 2012 accounts if this happened, but I certainly wouldn't bet against it. Would you? Taking back (if he has) what you've put in, is not "taking out" Check out the previous regime for a real example of taking out. (£52 Millions worth of taking out) It's money the club is generating which is not being spent on the team whatever you want to call it, but if loaning the club money is called "putting in", then repaying that loan is surely "taking out". Does the whole of the £150m debt have to be paid off before reducing the amount of club generated money available to spend on the team & facilities can be called "taking out"? Why stop there, he paid £133m for the club, it's only right he should be paid back for that out of the club profits. The club wont miss £15m a year, it's only 1.5 players. Sell a Milner or an N'Zogbia & a Bassong every year, or a Carroll every 2 and the club will break even as long as there's no net spend on the other transfers. It's the Ashley model, guaranteed to succeed, unless you get relegated of course. I have no idea where you made up that £52m figure from btw. Taking out is taking out, i.e. money belonging to or generated solely by the club being creamed off. Paying back is a totally different thing, yes it could be detrimental, but less detrimental that the effect of not putting in, in the first place would/could have been. The £52 Million is not "made up" by the way, it is the amount of money taken out by the Halls and Shepherds during thier tenure The Halls - £20 million from share sales (to NTL and back to the the club itself), £15 million from dividends and £5 million in salary. The Shepherds - £7 million dividends and £5 million salaries. Does not include, warehouse deals or the paying of Kenny Shep's company to use offices at SJP and any other "commercial" deals. All generated by loans because the club didn't do profits.

How on earth do you come to this conclusion? We can't have repaid 'debt' because the debt is held by Ashley and as Dekka keeps saying 'Mike hasn't taken a penny out of the club' He has taken money out. I don't believe so, unless you can state when and how much ?? Nearly £30m over the last 2 years was the plan. We'll see in the 2011 & 2012 accounts if this happened, but I certainly wouldn't bet against it. Would you? Taking back (if he has) what you've put in, is not "taking out" Check out the previous regime for a real example of taking out. (£52 Millions worth of taking out)

How on earth do you come to this conclusion? We can't have repaid 'debt' because the debt is held by Ashley and as Dekka keeps saying 'Mike hasn't taken a penny out of the club' He has taken money out. I don't believe so, unless you can state when and how much ??

Footballs soul was sold the minute Sky bought the rights. You can't just expect a piece of your soul to be sold, it's all or nothing. Every single chance to create revenue (no matter how contentious) will be expoited (or attempted to be expoilted) to the absolute maximum and not just at NUFC

Well considering they hardly play these days if there's a snowflake about, I would suggest the ball colour change is more to get the kids all excited for their new yellow Christmas football. Not that I'm cynical in any way !!

Or Maybe Joey and Willie played it perfectly Refuses contract January Willie McKay (his agent at the time) turns up to talk contract and told not now being offered Joey joins twitter, I'm not going anywhere, I love the fans club blah blah, they can't make me leave Pause - no developments. Joey attacks club hierarchy on twitter making his position untenable Willie McKay all of a sudden no longer his agent acts for QPR and negotiates with Joey (acting for himself) for bumper payday and big contract. Perfect.

Another fool He'd need to take circa £150 Million out before he even started "lining his pockets"

That notion always makes me laugh

No and no. Worthy also of a third one. No. About all you have to say on anything, great contribution. Were you in 2unlimited? When I'm totally against something, of course. It will never be a "fantastic move" to replace our current captain with all his goals authority, spirit and love for the club, with Gardner. An absolute rubbish view. That's the first no. Second no - Gardner is not a cracking player like. He is decent/good, but not cracking. Third no - Most rate him as they should - a decent/good player. That's it. You don't actually believe that crap do you seriously !!

Whilst it may well be Nolan who's out the door, surely Gardner (if it came off) would be a huge upgrade on Raylor or Guthrie

How so? If we're in the running for him of course I don't see how we can compete with Spurs at present, they're miles ahead of us. And isn't that what everyone says when people complain about spending f*** all anyway? I think we're in for him, but it seems odd Lille said Spurs are the only club to have made a bid. I wouldn't say it's the end of the line but it makes a difficult task that little bit harder. The quote could have been referring solely to Spuds, as in first contact from them, he never said first contact from anyone. Lost in translation maybe.

A huge chunk of that figure is from the early repayment of the stadium expansion loan which was required when the club changed ownership. A "huge chunk" ?? around £40 Million is all Wasnt it closer to £70m? Ashley had to cough up £70 million shortly after he bought us but not all of that was stadium debt, some of it was simply working capital debt that allowed the club to pay its way. I haven't got any info to hand but Toon Pack's figure of £40 million for the stadium debt sounds good. £40 Mill was the mortgage (might have been £45, but certainly no more) the other £30 mill was other loans/overdraft that had to be paid, there was also £27Mill owed on transfers. If he'd done proper due dilligence he'd have run a mile, just like the other prospective buyers did the year before. And of course Barclays wasted no time in calling the whole lot in at the first opportunity. I wonder why? Dread to think what'd have happened if they'd done it when we didn't have a thick billionaire owner !!

A huge chunk of that figure is from the early repayment of the stadium expansion loan which was required when the club changed ownership. A "huge chunk" ?? around £40 Million is all Wasnt it closer to £70m? Ashley had to cough up £70 million shortly after he bought us but not all of that was stadium debt, some of it was simply working capital debt that allowed the club to pay its way. I haven't got any info to hand but Toon Pack's figure of £40 million for the stadium debt sounds good. £45 Mill was the mortgage (ssorry got mixed up) the other £30 mill was other loans/overdraft that had to be paid, there was also £27Mill owed on transfers. If he'd done proper due dilligence he'd have run a mile, just like the other prospective buyers did the year before.

A huge chunk of that figure is from the early repayment of the stadium expansion loan which was required when the club changed ownership. A "huge chunk" ?? around £40 Million is all