TheBrownBottle

100%. While I still back Howe, even he doesn’t come out of this smelling of roses. Sounds like there’s a lot of petty ego-driven power-play shite going on, and some of it just sounds like basic incompetence. Mitchell sounds like he may be a bit of an arrogant bloke based on that article, but it would Eales who would be the one who worries me - I’m afraid I don’t hold his time at Atlanta as proof of his being an elite level football executive. Maybe he’ll prove to be that, but I’ll happily write off the MLS as meaningless when it comes to the pressures of running a big English club. Howe and Mitchell would walk into another top job at a top half PL club if they left NUFC. I can’t say I think that re Eales. I can’t even dismiss it as I’d trust Caulkin and Waugh to actually be diligent - they’re not sensationalist hacks, they never struck me as the sort who produce copy to just to create headlines. Feels like the season starts now, tbh. The celebrations after the Forest game have given me hope that despite everything the dressing room (including the management) remains united. Hopefully the players haven’t been too unsettled and get on with it.

Fuck me, that was a grim read. At some point in my lifetime I’d love for NUFC to just be a normal, well-run club. We always seem to be in chaos or on the verge of it. I really do think we’re bastard cursed.

I completely respect your position WM - I can also remember the years before 1992. I can’t agree re Hall, but know why plenty will share your view

I sat in the stadium he built - the one he gave to his and Shepherd’s construction firms for inflated prices, built by fans’ money, not his. I watched the teams Keegan built, before Keegan was chased by Hall and Shepherd because of their greed in the club’s flotation. I saw the money we’d poured in squandered by their bad decisions and sent as profit to his son sat in a Gibraltar tax haven. And then I was still in that ground when Hall sold the club down the river to Mike Ashley. Fuck Hall.

100%. It also opens up the potential for ground sponsorship - a model which doesn’t work with SJP

I’ve always thought it wasn’t a great approach for supporters to simply buy whatever is being pitched by a club’s owners. Actions not words etc. And as you mentioned earlier, the owners - Al Rumayyan and Staveley - have both made some pretty big claims about what is going to happen. I’d like to be a lot more confident that we’ll see it - but I’m not at the moment. If there is an announcement that we’re off to a great big new super stadium - then I’ll buy it.

They’d been implemented by that point. The last of the big changes came a month after the takeover.

Nothing wrong with trying for top four, but expecting it seems unreasonable to me

I get that there’s a lot of pissed-off people re the window, but we’ve still got a very good manager and a very good squad of players. I don’t see why the same target of aiming for top 6/7 and a cup run would have changed.

Sorry, ‘keep politics out of football’ in defence of John Hall doesn’t work when the cunt is inside SJP to promote a Tory leadership candidate It was Hall who pulled politics into football on this occasion

I keep reading ‘it’s all gone tits up since Amanda went’. Maybe the last couple of months are a bit hazy - wasn’t she still here when we’d fucked up PSR so bad that we had to panic sell on deadline day otherwise face a huge points deduction? Weren’t there rumours that said cock-up may have been a factor in her leaving?

It should be remembered that all European clubs will be adhering to UEFA’s FFP rules going forwards. There is no indication that they’re going anywhere. The hope would be that the PSR and VFM shite is torn up - if not, we’re whistling.

Yeah it’s definitely him

I still take the Brian Clough / Len Shackleton approach to club directors tbh But I still can’t get riled up by Eales doing slightly cringe stuff - none of that feels even vaguely important to me, and there’ll be lots who find it engaging, I don’t doubt

We didn’t have the time that we would this year to offload at that point. Our income is going to be roughly the same as last season. Our players costs are roughly 100% of turnover, so there is no headroom. This is the last season where you can run a £105m FFP loss over three seasons - but remember we ran up a big loss in 22/23, then last season we had a big clawback, but the issue would be that we’re already maxed-out in terms of player costs vs revenue. The likely deficit available would be c.£70m for the season based on the last two years - but we’ll already starting out at a loss, even without the Hall and Olunga transfers. We need to actually start selling players - but we don’t seem able to do this (other than in a panic).

He represents a sizeable minority of our support I reckon. Incredible it’s taken this long for the penny to drop, even then.

I mean, they know that Ulysses 31 isn’t worth £20m too - they’re aware that Anderson isn’t a £35m footballer. They were parties to the same scam

‘Hello Forest, we’d like Elanga - would you like Almiron and some lose change from the back of the settee?’ ’No’ Another deal ended before it had a chance to become exciting

I don’t recollect seeing much in the press about our impending FFP issues last season - and the few of us raising it were constantly poo-pooed. Even when Swiss Ramble raised in back in May, that was shouted down. The sums aren’t difficult - though apparently they are to our region’s sports hacks, who somehow manage to spill ink on the most asinine of NUFC-related shite, but can’t do simple arithmetic.

Wouldn’t have made that much difference in the FA Cup last season - the gate receipts are shared 50/50, and we played the Mackems and Man City, both games having big crowds. League Cup - yep, it would have brought in an extra million or two if they were all home ties.

I’m aware of how it stacks up - and our commercial revenue won’t go up by 50% this year never mind year on year. You need to look into how those commercial revenues are made up. Arsenal are the lowest of them - their ground and shirt sponsorship are £50m per year (our deal is already done - for half this); their adidas deal is £60m per season (almost double ours); sleeve sponsorship £10m - so there’s £120m of those commercial revenues. So the remainder is around £50m - these are the other partnering and commercial deals, or around 30% of the total commercial revenue. If we managed to get deals in line with this, then our commercial revenues would cap out at around £100m. The other problem is that ‘becoming more attractive’ requires success on the pitch at a minimum - and to do this, you need to be able to sign top players. But we’re hampered by the inability to boost income to allow this to happen. Which is why something quite dramatic needs to occur - ‘organic’ growth from here would require either perfect decision making or perfect luck.

Yep, there’s a lot that could (and should) have been done - there’s no doubt several millions still out there for all kinds of sponsorship. The problem is that it’s not going to be enough to really do any significant gap-closing against the sky six. Our revenues are now roughly where they would be if Ashley had competently run us as a going concern. What would now be needed is a steroid injection - otherwise, we’re pretty much coming up to what NUFC would be able to bring in under its own steam. Let’s hope something genuinely significant is going to happen - if the promises made by Al-Rumayyan and Staveley were real, then this is the moment when we find out. What’s been done to date could have been done by pretty much any competent NUFC owner.

Where’s the headroom, then? The biggest sponsorship deals a club can get are: stadium (not an option for us); kit manufacturer (just signed a deal with adidas); shirt sponsor (already done); sleeve sponsor (already done); training ground and kit sponsor (still on the table) The commercial team has been in place for two years and hasn’t yet managed to get a training kit sponsor onboarded - but even with that, we’ve already taken the the biggest commercial deals likely to be made.

The revenue spurt wasn’t the result of any business genius - it was the result of Ashley flatlining commercial income to the point that it was lower in 2021 than it was when he bought the club in 2007. That growth was never sustainable. We already haven’t grown at that pace in terms of revenues - everything points to revenue basically flatlining this season. When the books are published for 23/24 they’re unlikely to show an increase of much more the 25%, tops - and that’s with CL money coming in. There’s been no significant commercial deals coming in, ticket prices have not gone up by anything like enough to cover the gap (nor could they), and there’s no European football boost. The likely outcome is that this season we fall even further behind the pack that we’re meant to be chasing. A new ground with a big sponsorship deal, and a new training ground (and training kit) the same, are the two big income boosts now available to the club. If the club announces that they’re just extending the Gallowgate, then we’ve got our answer from the owners as to what the real ambitions are - regardless of the words they’ve come out with. edit: NB Guehi likely wasn’t within budget - they would have had to do some selling to cover the signing before 30 June next year.