SteV

Think we'll slot in nicely between Man City and Man Utd.

This quote combined with your avatar amuses me.

That's wildly optimistic i'm afraid. If we got relegated, Rafa walked, we sold off the majority of decent players, and Ashley turned round and said 'sorry, no money for transfers', our attendances would crash as well. Often the perception of whether the right things are being done at a club, are as important to fans as anything else. Look at Arsenal. 6th in league, latter stages of a european competition, but the fans are unhappy because (perhaps rightly) they feel that they could and should be doing better. We're in a pretty good place at the moment. OK, we want to see the back of Ashley, but as long as we have Rafa and he gets even moderately close to being funded correctly, we feel as if we're going the right direction. However, it really wouldn't take much for that to come crashing down.

Yep. If they’re right up the top attendances will be good (might even have to open the top tier!). Around the playoffs and they’ll probably be not too bad. Anything less than that and they’ll be woeful.

Obviously their season ticket sales will fall off a cliff next season, but whether attendances go drastically down (15k) will probably depend on whether they can cobble together a half decent side that might actually win a few matches. It doesn’t really matter what league you’re in, if you can get a winning side together, you’ll attract people. However, whether they can even manage to do that in League One seems questionable at the minute.

Wouldn't say destined for 5th if they beat spurs in their next match they will be only be 2 points behind 4th with 7 games left Well yes, they could well still get top 4, but at the minute it’s looking more likely they won’t. Hopefully it’s decided one way or the other before the last day.

With Chelsea now likely to be in the Cup final and seemingly destined for 5th, I wonder if there’s any chance of them turning half a team out against us last day of the season? Hopefully the result won’t be critical to us by then, but you never know.

By “doctor” I assume you mean report the number of tickets sold* rather than actual attendees. Much like us and the vast majority of teams. *or given away for free

How much truth is there in this? Appears to be quite a sore point.. the Keegan side. Comes up a lot. (Not from the North East. ) But they didn’t ‘lose’ any fans did they? Their numbers didn’t go down. Ours went up but that was more in line with the general increase across the country following the increase in exposure/popularity due to the formation of the PL.

You can, it's just 'frowned upon' by UEFA. But yes, April 17th/18th looks favourite I would say.

Hopefully they get past Milan in the Europa cos the QF 2nd leg is the Thursday before this so if they could be away in Kiev or somewhere similar, that would be marvellous . Away to Moscow will do nicely.

There is no foreseeable prospect of their finances improving, the club is running at a huge loss and there's no realistic prospect of being able to refinance the debt at the end of the loan term. There are no assets or income of equal value to secure it against once the parachute payments end and there almost certainly won't be enough not enough income to cover repayments. For both Short and the loan company cutting their losses at this point makes sense because the longer they leave it the larger their losses are likely to be. I'm not sure they are running at a "huge loss" anymore, at least nothing in comparison to what they have been in previous seasons. That's why the spending has completely dried up, because Short has decided they need to get their house in order or at least stop the hemorrhaging of money that has been happening over the past few years. Obviously they've had to this because their income has fallen off a cliff, but business-wise they've acted sensibly this season. However that's had a disastrous knock-on to the football side. I would also disagree that there's "no realistic prospect of being able to refinance the debt". They'll get it refinanced, but at a worse rate, allowing them to survive, but making it even harder to get out of their current malaise.

Doesn't seem like someone planning to leave soon. You're right it doesn't, but he's so meticulous you get the feeling that he's the kind of bloke that would still try and make sure everything was in place for the future even if he was leaving next week. Still positive tho.

They're not going into administration this season like. Would make absolutely no financial sense whatsoever.

I think it's probably questionable that he's losing as much as £2M a month, that would seem very excessive given all the players (bar Rodwell) seemingly had a 40% pay cut and they've spent virtually nothing. Even if he was losing £2M a month, I still don't think he'd sack off the £69M owed and walk away, maybe a portion of it, but he isn't just going to walk away for nothing. But essentially, without substantial new investment, it's a long road back, administration or no administration.

There's no way they go into administration. At least not this year anyway. Short isn't just going to write off somewhere in the region of 50 - 100M (which is what's owed to him/his company) just because he can't be bothered with the hassle anymore. All the cost-cutting that they've been doing is an exercise in making sure they are able to avoid administration. The parachute payment for this year will have covered the running costs and hopefully from there point of view, paid off a little of the external debt/loan to that American company. There's an potentially an issue next summer when that loan is supposed to be repaid, but in all likelihood they'll be able to refinance what's left of it (albeit at a worse rate) and they'll just continue on. No administration but no investment and no hope unless they can find a buyer who's capable and willing to pay off the debt. Which gets more unlikely the further they sink.

Supposed to getting announced next week.

Glad they managed to squeeze in that Liverpool corner that went straight out of play. Watching it this morning, was that not for the generation who still avoid the scores until they watch MotD? The corner came from a mix-up between Smalling & De Gea so it might have teased them into thinking a Liverpool goal came from the resulting corner, when in fact it was Man Utd who did. Rodney Bewes is dead now.

Can’t understand why there appears to be nobody sitting anywhere near him??

I'm hoping that Swansea vs Spurs doesn't go to a replay and they announce this for Wednesday 28th March as it'll be virtually a nice week off work with Good Friday and Easter Monday! Possibly too short notice to arrange but you never know with them lot! England are playing on the 27th so can’t be then unfortunately.

Away fans staying in Level 7: https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/newcastle-not-move-away-fans-14375744.amp

Yep, now looking like if they get past Juve it’s gonna be right at the end of the season.

Hopefully they get past Milan in the Europa cos the QF 2nd leg is the Thursday before this so if they could be away in Kiev or somewhere similar, that would be marvellous .

Not football related, but as a broadcast journalist Mike Costello is absolutely unrivaled IMO.

He done that very well in his last few performances for us this season as well. I forgot who we were playing but he came on for 20 minutes or so at home in his last outing and was brilliant, done almost everything you want a big CF to do. When we got smashed 0-3 off Watford?