Is Mike Ashley steering Newcastle United in the right direction?

[huss9]

one on the gallowgate roof and in the milburn leazes corner tunnel thing.

 

bit of a problem for us in the milburn paddocks towards the gallowgate - for us it to see one it would have to be in "the corner" or the leazes/east stand corner.

[Guest fraser]

He should put individual screens in the back of every seat and supply headphones; then we can go the whole game without looking at what's happening on the pitch or being disturbed by shouting or singing rude songs at the owner. Bit awkward when somebody wants to go for piss though.

[huss9]

really hope we dont get them. it'll be cheerleaders next.

[womblemaster]

The Mouth of Mike Ashley??

 

http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/m/mouthofsauron.html

[Guest Roger Kint]

really hope we dont get them. it'll be cheerleaders next.

 

No it wont dont be stupid. How many stadiums in English football have no scoreboard at all? As long as they dont interfere with fans seats and bring in a few quid(plus the World Cup requirement bonus) whats wrong with it?

[huss9]

really hope we dont get them. it'll be cheerleaders next.

 

No it wont dont be stupid. How many stadiums in English football have no scoreboard at all? As long as they dont interfere with fans seats and bring in a few quid(plus the World Cup requirement bonus) whats wrong with it?

 

i meant huge tv screens not scoreboards, and dont call me stupid.

[Guest Roger Kint]

really hope we dont get them. it'll be cheerleaders next.

 

No it wont dont be stupid. How many stadiums in English football have no scoreboard at all? As long as they dont interfere with fans seats and bring in a few quid(plus the World Cup requirement bonus) whats wrong with it?

 

i meant huge tv screens not scoreboards, and dont call me stupid.

 

Sorry i didnt realise you were unable to understand the difference between a person making a stupid comment and a stupid person.

 

I am on about huge TV screens too, most grounds these days have them in some form(be it the giant ones or more traditional screens) and as it will benefit the club whats the problem? We have nothing and 2 screens as long as its not moving fans isnt something to cry at tbh

[LoveItIfWeBeatU]

7/Mar/10 

 

Mike Ashley struck bank deal to save Newcastle - Brian McNally, The Mirror

Newcastle owner Mike Ashley struck a lifesaving deal with Barclays Bank this season to prevent the cash-strapped Championship club going to the wall.

Ashley, who claims to have pumped in ­£30million to keep Newcastle afloat since December, secured the Barclays deal against future income from the transfer instalments from the sale of stars such as James Milner Damien Duff and striker Obafemi Martins.

 

The Sunday Mirror can reveal that a financial mechanism known as a “guarantee and debenture” agreed with Barclays’ was the vehicle Ashley used to ensure that the club’s biggest creditors didn’t try to call in Newcastle’s estimated £20m debt following relegation.

 

A Newcastle source told the Sunday Mirror keeping Barclays onside was crucial to Newcastle’s survival.

 

 

“Newcastle could have gone down the same route as Portsmouth or Palace after relegation without Barclays support,” said the source. “Ashley had a massive wage bill of around £74million, Premier League income of £100m that was about to halve and a worried bank that was owed a lot of money.

 

“That lot would have had disastrous consequences for some clubs. Ashley was juggling a lot of balls in the air and they could have come down to hurt Newcastle.

 

“The bank was nervous about who might buy the club and how the money they were owed was going to be paid.

 

“But he managed to come up with a solution that suited both the bank and the club and he has since gone on to put more of his cash into the club to keep it going despite the heavy losses that are being made every week.”

 

In return for the deed which removed the obligation to make crippling bank repayments at a time when the Magpies were losing £500,000-a-week, Ashley put up club assets as security.

 

The deal granting the bank security on future income due to the Magpies from Championship and Premier League payments was detailed in a supplementary deed in November.

 

Also secured in the bank’s favour were deferred transfer fee payments from the sale of star players such as Milner, Martins, Duff, Charles N’Zogbia and David Rozehnal.

 

Companies House documents show, for example, that among the transfer cash secured to the Barclays deal is just under £4m payable by Aston Villa to Newcastle for Milner on August 29, 2010 as an installment on a deal which was completed two years earlier.

 

Other transfer payments secured to Barclays included £1.5m due from Fulham for the Duff transfer on August 15, 2010 as well as two payments totalling £3.36m for Martins from German outfit Wolfsburg due on August 31, 2010 and August 2011.

 

The deal took the financial heat off Newcastle at a time when the club, valued at £100m by Ashley, was taken off the market after Barry Moat’s takeover bid came to nothing.

 

United claim to have cut the wage bill from £74m to £40m.

 

But with their income slashed from almost £100m to £50m, virtually 80 per cent of their income is being eaten up by the highest wage bill in the Championship.

[Guest BlacknWhiteArmy]

And where would these "giant screens" go?

 

Only place I can think of are above the Gallowgate.

 

Aye, yeah, I could imagine that.

 

Would stop any further Stadium expansion like.

 

We won't expand under Ashley. We wouldn't fill it, anyway.

[Guest Brummiemag]

5 years ago relegation would have been unthinkable but this clown Ashley has now managed to lower expectations to such an extent that a lot of people will now be happy to see us cling to 17th place by scraping around for bore draws playing shit defensive football next season.

 

He is now even getting credit for doing a decent job in some quarters - unbelievable

[Cajun]

Do you have to put that in every Ashley thread? It's bad enough I am toontastic as well so had already read it twice before opening this thread

[Benwell Lad]

5 years ago relegation would have been unthinkable but this clown Ashley has now managed to lower expectations to such an extent that a lot of people will now be happy to see us cling to 17th place by scraping around for bore draws playing s*** defensive football next season.

 

He is now even getting credit for doing a decent job in some quarters - unbelievable

 

Considering the number of fans and "pundits" who had us down for relegation again and going to the wall like Leeds just 6 months ago, a lot of people will be f@cking ecstatic at that !

Personally I won't. I expect something higher and could never be happy with S*** defensive football.

[quayside]

5 years ago relegation would have been unthinkable but this clown Ashley has now managed to lower expectations to such an extent that a lot of people will now be happy to see us cling to 17th place by scraping around for bore draws playing s*** defensive football next season.

 

He is now even getting credit for doing a decent job in some quarters - unbelievable

 

The season before Ashley bought the club we finished 13th with 43 points, with an expensively assembled squad - but of course the football was fantastic and the previous board appointed Allardyce to take it to an even higher level........

[STM]

He's right though, Ashley has lowered expectations. Regardless of whether relegation came our way or not.

[Howaythelads]

He's right though, Ashley has lowered expectations. Regardless of whether relegation came our way or not.

Wot he said

[UV]

5 years ago relegation would have been unthinkable but this clown Ashley has now managed to lower expectations to such an extent that a lot of people will now be happy to see us cling to 17th place by scraping around for bore draws playing s*** defensive football next season.

 

He is now even getting credit for doing a decent job in some quarters - unbelievable

 

The season before Ashley bought the club we finished 13th with 43 points, with an expensively assembled squad - but of course the football was fantastic and the previous board appointed Allardyce to take it to an even higher level........

 

If Ashley allows us to put together a squad which can sustain having over 10 first team players out for more than half a season and still stay well clear of relegation, I'll give him credit for being able to match one of the low points in the previous board's tenure. He'll have spent a hell of a lot more than them to get there like.

[fredbob]

He's right though, Ashley has lowered expectations. Regardless of whether relegation came our way or not.

 

Lowering expectations isnt neccasarily a bad a thing, lowering ambition is. Having high expectations has been a big downfall for us as a club, an example being when we sacked SBR for finishing 5th, 5 years after saving us from relegation. It arguably paved the way for what was to come, no stability, no stable manager, influx of many players and countless pennies wasted.

 

NUFC fans have been typecast for many years about there overly high expectations.

 

Expectaitions should rise with progress, not vica versa.

[Howaythelads]

He's right though, Ashley has lowered expectations. Regardless of whether relegation came our way or not.

 

Lowering expectations isnt neccasarily a bad a thing, lowering ambition is. Having high expectations has been a big downfall for us as a club, an example being when we sacked SBR for finishing 5th, 5 years after saving us from relegation. It arguably paved the way for what was to come, no stability, no stable manager, influx of many players and countless pennies wasted.

 

NUFC fans have been typecast for many years about there overly high expectations.

 

Expectaitions should rise with progress, not vica versa.

Robson had taken the team as far as he could take it, we were going backwards when he left but the club had ambitions to go forward. That was to do with the great job done by Robson along with the support of the Board of the day.

 

Liverpool did the same when they sacked Hoolia. Chelsea have done the same in recent times. Showing ambition like this is a good thing. The reason it went wrong for Newcastle isn't because expectations of anybody were too high, it went wrong because the wrong man was appointed to take the place of Robson.

 

Move on a bit and it can be seen Ashley can't even appoint and keep a recognised, proven manager of any stature at all.

 

By the way, what you're describing above is expectations in the strict meaning of the word. What we have as Newcastle supporters is hope. Ashley has crushed it and he's crushed it by lowering the ambition of the club. To argue anything else in the face of the evidence is futile.

[Guest bobthemag]

he might be. We can't afford the excessive amounts spent in the past. Find our own young players is the important thing and the way to go like Arsenal do.

[fredbob]

He's right though, Ashley has lowered expectations. Regardless of whether relegation came our way or not.

 

Lowering expectations isnt neccasarily a bad a thing, lowering ambition is. Having high expectations has been a big downfall for us as a club, an example being when we sacked SBR for finishing 5th, 5 years after saving us from relegation. It arguably paved the way for what was to come, no stability, no stable manager, influx of many players and countless pennies wasted.

 

NUFC fans have been typecast for many years about there overly high expectations.

 

Expectaitions should rise with progress, not vica versa.

Robson had taken the team as far as he could take it, we were going backwards when he left but the club had ambitions to go forward. That was to do with the great job done by Robson along with the support of the Board of the day.

 

Liverpool did the same when they sacked Hoolia. Chelsea have done the same in recent times. The reason it went wrong isn't because expectations of anybody were too high, it went wrong because the wrong man was appointed to take the place of Robson. Showing ambition like this is a good thing. Ashley can't even appoint and keep a recognised, proven manager of any stature at all.

 

By the way, what you're describing above is expectations in the strict meaning of the word. What we have as Newcastle supporters is hope. Ashley has crushed it and he's crushed it by lowering the ambition of the club. To argue anything else in the face of the evidence is futile.

 

See, I'm of the opinion that Robson had one more season left, we played terribly that season and were still in with a shout of CL footbball not 3(?) games away from the end of the season. Ive said this before and I understadn why its a contentious point but it stands in my opinon. Agreed, think that the board did support him well but did also let him down at some crucial times.

 

I dont rememebr Houlliers tenure exactly but I'm sure he had longer, he didnt have to turn the club around as much as SBR did he didnt have them playing good football at times and he wasnt made a victim for his season(s) outisde the CL, one season was all i would of given SBR, at least enough time to get his removal properly planned, relegation was never going to be an issue with him in charge, not like it was with Souness.

 

Chelsea have done the same but at the same time they can afford to do such things, I doubt they could had Roman not been the owner.

 

Agreed about Ashley horrific appointments, but in my opinion that includes all of them. I think these decision have cost us our premiership status and there is no excuse for that.

 

It may of crushed your hope but I honestly think theres good to come from this, be it a club becoing a more healtheir proposition for prospective buyers or even being healthy enough for Ashley to put his hand in his pocket (ultimate optimism) and take advantage of our healhty finances whilst other clubs struggle.

 

I look back to clubs like Villa and Spurs and see similiarities between them and us when their chairman were tight and "unambitious", this frugality now had paid off and i think we may be in a similar situation.

 

EDIT.

 

Ignoring all the crap in that post, the main point I was trying to make was that expectaitions (in the strictest sense) was far too high and it cost us in the long run albeit thorugh the set of events that followed, hence why i think building expcations gradually will be a good thing for the club.

 

[UV]

he might be. We can't afford the excessive amounts spent in the past. Find our own young players is the important thing and the way to go like Arsenal do.

 

Do you also fancy the £104m wage bill that comes with having the large number of promising youngsters on your books it takes to be able to find enough who can make the step up to the first team?

[Colos Short and Curlies]

5 years ago relegation would have been unthinkable but this clown Ashley has now managed to lower expectations to such an extent that a lot of people will now be happy to see us cling to 17th place by scraping around for bore draws playing shit defensive football next season.

 

He is now even getting credit for doing a decent job in some quarters - unbelievable

 

In the last 5 years we've been in danger of being relegated more than once to be honest

[fredbob]

he might be. We can't afford the excessive amounts spent in the past. Find our own young players is the important thing and the way to go like Arsenal do.

 

Do you also fancy the £104m wage bill that comes with having the large number of promising youngsters on your books it takes to be able to find enough who can make the step up to the first team?

 

To be fair I'd quite fancy the £235m turnover to go with it as well.

[Cronky]

5 years ago relegation would have been unthinkable but this clown Ashley has now managed to lower expectations to such an extent that a lot of people will now be happy to see us cling to 17th place by scraping around for bore draws playing shit defensive football next season.

 

He is now even getting credit for doing a decent job in some quarters - unbelievable

 

In the last 5 years we've been in danger of being relegated more than once to be honest

 

Following Sir Bob's departure, it was every year.

[jdckelly]

5 years ago relegation would have been unthinkable but this clown Ashley has now managed to lower expectations to such an extent that a lot of people will now be happy to see us cling to 17th place by scraping around for bore draws playing shit defensive football next season.

 

He is now even getting credit for doing a decent job in some quarters - unbelievable

 

In the last 5 years we've been in danger of being relegated more than once to be honest

 

Following Sir Bob's departure, it was every year.

yup and it was getting dodgier each season, apart from roeders miracle run for europe as caretaker