Is Mike Ashley steering Newcastle United in the right direction?

[Neil]

Fair enough - thought he had actually wiped it. Isn't their stuff about you generally being in a decent financial state for the long-term, or is that fabricated rubbish?

[Neil]

What debt has he wiped?

 

I thought he'd drastically reduced your long-term liabilities?

 

Source?

 

My fading memory.

[Cronky]

The big problem is we got relegated, and doesn't Keegan and his little flounce bear at least some of the blame there?

 

A lot boils down to how you see that particular episode. While Ashley made some mistakes, we could have expected a bit more of Keegan.

 

If you think Keegan had absolutely no choice in the situation, then you'll blame Ashley entirely, I know. I'd say he was looking for a way out and didn't care what mess he left behind.

[Dave]

Who owned the club when we gave lucrative contracts to Smith, Barton, Butt, Geremi, Coloccini and Xisco?

[Dave]

Fair enough - thought he had actually wiped it. Isn't their stuff about you generally being in a decent financial state for the long-term, or is that fabricated rubbish?

 

Someone needs to tell Llambias, he's still running around telling everyone we're fucked.

[Guest]

Who owned the club when we gave lucrative contracts to Smith, Barton, Butt, Geremi, Coloccini and Xisco?

 

And Beye, Enrique, Viduka...

[Dave]

Who owned the club when we gave lucrative contracts to Smith, Barton, Butt, Geremi, Coloccini and Xisco?

 

And Beye, Enrique, Viduka...

 

Remember this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/newcastle_united/7578328.stm

 

I don't know, it just seems daft that cutting an inflated wage bill is mentioned as something Ashley has done well when plenty of the stupid money we're paying was sanctioned on his watch to start with.

[Neil]

Who owned the club when we gave lucrative contracts to Smith, Barton, Butt, Geremi, Coloccini and Xisco?

 

And Beye, Enrique, Viduka...

 

Remember this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/newcastle_united/7578328.stm

 

I don't know, it just seems daft that cutting an inflated wage bill is mentioned as something Ashley has done well when plenty of the stupid money we're paying was sanctioned on his watch to start with.

 

I think my point is, as I have said, whilst much criticism is justified, the impression emanating from the club is that he is starting to get his head screwed on.

[Guest]

Keegan lied to fans!  :omg:

 

"The owner is absolutely and totally committed to the club, there is no doubt about that, and it is a case of us trying to get the quality we want in,"

[Dave]

Who owned the club when we gave lucrative contracts to Smith, Barton, Butt, Geremi, Coloccini and Xisco?

 

And Beye, Enrique, Viduka...

 

Remember this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/newcastle_united/7578328.stm

 

I don't know, it just seems daft that cutting an inflated wage bill is mentioned as something Ashley has done well when plenty of the stupid money we're paying was sanctioned on his watch to start with.

 

I think my point is, as I have said, whilst much criticism is justified, the impression emanating from the club is that he is starting to get his head screwed on.

 

We'll only be able to judge that when the summer transfer window closes IMO. That's not to say we need to spend silly money, but a lot of work is required if we are to stay up.

 

Assuming we are promoted of course.

[binnsy]

Who owned the club when we gave lucrative contracts to Smith, Barton, Butt, Geremi, Coloccini and Xisco?

 

And Beye, Enrique, Viduka...

 

and then later signed Nolan and Ryan Taylor during a relegation scrap but still didn't think of inserting a relegation clause into the contracts!!

[Thespence]

Who owned the club when we gave lucrative contracts to Smith, Barton, Butt, Geremi, Coloccini and Xisco?

 

And Beye, Enrique, Viduka...

 

It is amazing how many bad players Allardyce signed. After reading Morts interview regarding Jose signing I don't really class him as Allardyce signing it read to me like Tony J's first bit of wheeling & dealing for the club.

[Dave]

Chris Mort:

 

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/1187/snakeinthegrass.jpg

[Flip]

Fuck all of you guys ok?

 

You know why? Because i've come to realize I'm wrong, and I hate to say this but I'm wrong. And Ashley should just sell up and leave. Thank for ruining this for me, I was seriously hoping he would turn it around. But thanks to you lot I've changed my mind.

 

Great! Ashley is shiiiite!

[Ronaldo]

I see the big man was at training again today.

[UV]

 

It wasnt his own making at all. The wage bill need leaning out irrepspective of what division we were in. If you belive that Ashley could of got rid of many of those players whilst in the Prem then thats your opinion and pretty much the lynchpin to your entire argument, in my opinion we'd of found it very difficult to shift players who were picking up top wedge with mimimum effort whilst getting to play in front of 50k, no player had any incentive to leave bar Owen.

 

As I say, I'll credit him partially for cutting the wage bill without compromising our performance in the season, I'll credit him for keeping a strong nucleus of squad and I'll also credit him for addressing problems in our squad at January, I'll also credit him for spending money very sensibily.

 

I wouldnt exactly say he didnt know what he was doing but what I will say is that the cutting of the wage bill (which i think is the single most important thing for the future of this club) isnt all his doing and is rather a sympton of relegation.

 

Either way we are definitely going in the right direction.

 

The wage bill was of his own making. Correct me if I've missed someone, but I think there was only 1 high earning player who would have still been under contract this season (Duff) who was not signed or given a new contract under Ashley.

 

We sold 2, maybe 3 high earners in the Summer (Duff, Martins & maybe Beye although I doubt he was on that much). Are you saying that out of Duff, Martins, Beye, Coloccini, Gutierrez, Smith, Nolan, Barton, Geremi & Butt we would not have been able to sell 3 of them while in the Premiership, but thanks to getting relegated (and losing £40m+ revenue) we were luckily able to get 3 of the best of them off the books (saving £7-8m at most if you ignore the cost of paying their replacements). Great bit of business that was.

 

If hanging on to the rest of the high earners was due to the desire to have a very competitive team in the Championship rather than the fact no one was willing to pay their wages or give us a decent fee can you explain why for example we held on to the high earning, older, under performing Coloccini (who we had loads of offers for apparently  ) yet sold the low wage, younger and better performing Bassong?

 

I'm also interested in who exactly you think was making these footballing decisions? Unless he's the best liar I've seen, it certainly wasn't Hughton who repeatedly said he didn't have a clue what was going on in the Summer.

 

Until January, nothing that has happened this season has been by the good judgement of Ashley, it has just worked out like that fortunately for both us and him.

 

Will the new "plan" (whatever that may be) be better than the plan when he bought the club, or the revised plan when he brought in Keegan and a DoF, or the make it up as you go along plan trying to sell the club with Kinnear, or the "back on track" plan of a year ago when the club was off the market and he was definitely not selling, or the pre relegation get in a hero and sack the DoF plan, or the post relegation sell a club in limbo plan of the Summer? As we don't know what it really is who could possibly say, but do you really have any confidence he'd stick to it even if it was?

[Liam Liam Liam O]

Chris Mort:

 

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/1187/snakeinthegrass.jpg

 

 

Amazing so many people can't see it.

[Mick]

What debt has he wiped?

 

All of our external debt apart form a £20 million overdraft with Barclays, we've still got loans from Ashley but they don't cost us a penny.

[Thespence]

What debt has he wiped?

 

All of our external debt apart form a £20 million overdraft with Barclays, we've still got loans from Ashley but they don't cost us a penny.

 

He has loaned his own company money to save his company money.....well done I guess.

[Mick]

 

The wage bill was of his own making. Correct me if I've missed someone, but I think there was only 1 high earning player who would have still been under contract this season (Duff) who was not signed or given a new contract under Ashley.

 

We sold 2, maybe 3 high earners in the Summer (Duff, Martins & maybe Beye although I doubt he was on that much). Are you saying that out of Duff, Martins, Beye, Coloccini, Gutierrez, Smith, Nolan, Barton, Geremi & Butt we would not have been able to sell 3 of them while in the Premiership, but thanks to getting relegated (and losing £40m+ revenue) we were luckily able to get 3 of the best of them off the books (saving £7-8m at most if you ignore the cost of paying their replacements). Great bit of business that was.

 

If hanging on to the rest of the high earners was due to the desire to have a very competitive team in the Championship rather than the fact no one was willing to pay their wages or give us a decent fee can you explain why for example we held on to the high earning, older, under performing Coloccini (who we had loads of offers for apparently  ) yet sold the low wage, younger and better performing Bassong?

 

I'm also interested in who exactly you think was making these footballing decisions? Unless he's the best liar I've seen, it certainly wasn't Hughton who repeatedly said he didn't have a clue what was going on in the Summer.

 

Until January, nothing that has happened this season has been by the good judgement of Ashley, it has just worked out like that fortunately for both us and him.

 

Will the new "plan" (whatever that may be) be better than the plan when he bought the club, or the revised plan when he brought in Keegan and a DoF, or the make it up as you go along plan trying to sell the club with Kinnear, or the "back on track" plan of a year ago when the club was off the market and he was definitely not selling, or the pre relegation get in a hero and sack the DoF plan, or the post relegation sell a club in limbo plan of the Summer? As we don't know what it really is who could possibly say, but do you really have any confidence he'd stick to it even if it was?

 

It looks like it's escaped you and a few others but the thing about those who left and those who didn't is that the players who wanted to leave left, while those who didn't want to leave have stayed apart from Geremi who moved on in January.  Somebody within the club made a decision before January to keep a squad of players that would get us out of this league and that looks like its going to pay off.

 

They also decided to give the manager’s job to Hughton before January and again that's paid off and I've been one of his biggest critics but he seems to be growing into the job.  Whoever made that decision looks to be right and I look to be wrong about him.

 

[Mick]

 

He has loaned his own company money to save his company money.....well done I guess.

 

He's the first to do it since John Hall loaned the club something in the region of £600,000 in the early 90's.

[OzzieMandias]

Chris Hughton and his team are steering Newcastle United in the right direction, a direction from which Mike Ashley and co took us away from in the first place.

 

 

So it's his fault when it goes wrong and someone else is responsible when it goes right?

 

 

It was nowt to do with the previous Board when the team was doing well in the PL but it was their fault when things took a turn for the worse, or even when things didn't get better than 3rd. Surely you remember that? Why should it be any different for Ashley? In any case, the facts show quite clearly he's taken the club backwards since he took over and that's his fault no matter how you want to ignore it.

 

The strong position in the Championship we find ourselves in currently is nothing to do with Ashley, it is in spite of Ashley. In January 2009 and summer 2009 Ashley sanctioned the sale or release of a number of players, the only players who came in during the summer were either sub-standard loan signings or free signings. I'm talking here about Danny Simpson (loan), Peter Lovenkrands (Free), Zurab Khizanishvili (Loan) and Marlon Harewood (Loan). He also failed to bring in an established manager, in fact, he didn't seem at all bothered whether the club had a manager or not, such was his undermining of the football club.

 

Basically, Ashley didn't do anything permanent to improve the position of the team/club until January came around. It's open to debate whether bringing in a few Championship quality players is the best way forward given the club is in a good position for a return to the PL, however, it's obvious the squad did need more numbers due to earlier decisions by Ashley that reduced the size of the squad to an alarming level.

 

He made the decision to do something in January only because :

1. The manager and the playing/coaching staff had performed very well despite being handicapped by Ashley and his undermining of the football club. This saw the club top of the Championship, so a return to the higher revenue of the PL suddenly looked to be possible.

2. Ashley had once again failed to offload the club so he was left with either speculating in an attempt to recover PL money, or flounder due to a thin squad. The small squad was thanks to Ashley and he didn't give a damn about that until he failed to sell the club, he'd have handed that crap situation over to someone else.

 

The man's a plank. Simple as that. It's about time people stopped trying to defend the indefensible because it's laughable.

 

Or, looked at without the shit-coloured glasses on...

 

He gave the wage bill an obviously necessary trim by allowing various highly-paid underperformers to leave but kept a decent squad for the campaign by not selling off various other players. Had faith in Hughton instead of bringing in yet another in a long line of highly-paid underperforming managers that stretches well back into the previous regime -- a faith that has proved to be a resoundingly good call.

 

He made the decision to do something in January because:

1. There having proved to be no one else willing to put money into the club, he was prepared to resume doing so himself.

2. There were certain obvious problems with the squad that needed addressing, and this was duly done.

 

He handled last season very badly, but he's done well this season. It's about time people stopped whining and acknowledged that reality.

 

 

Stopped reading at the bit in bold. If you get rid of it and post properly without the added-on rubbish I'll read the rest of the post.

 

Oh well. You had the chance to engage properly but once again you choose not to do so. What a loser.

[jdckelly]

 

It wasnt his own making at all. The wage bill need leaning out irrepspective of what division we were in. If you belive that Ashley could of got rid of many of those players whilst in the Prem then thats your opinion and pretty much the lynchpin to your entire argument, in my opinion we'd of found it very difficult to shift players who were picking up top wedge with mimimum effort whilst getting to play in front of 50k, no player had any incentive to leave bar Owen.

 

As I say, I'll credit him partially for cutting the wage bill without compromising our performance in the season, I'll credit him for keeping a strong nucleus of squad and I'll also credit him for addressing problems in our squad at January, I'll also credit him for spending money very sensibily.

 

I wouldnt exactly say he didnt know what he was doing but what I will say is that the cutting of the wage bill (which i think is the single most important thing for the future of this club) isnt all his doing and is rather a sympton of relegation.

 

Either way we are definitely going in the right direction.

 

The wage bill was of his own making. Correct me if I've missed someone, but I think there was only 1 high earning player who would have still been under contract this season (Duff) who was not signed or given a new contract under Ashley.

 

We sold 2, maybe 3 high earners in the Summer (Duff, Martins & maybe Beye although I doubt he was on that much). Are you saying that out of Duff, Martins, Beye, Coloccini, Gutierrez, Smith, Nolan, Barton, Geremi & Butt we would not have been able to sell 3 of them while in the Premiership, but thanks to getting relegated (and losing £40m+ revenue) we were luckily able to get 3 of the best of them off the books (saving £7-8m at most if you ignore the cost of paying their replacements). Great bit of business that was.

 

If hanging on to the rest of the high earners was due to the desire to have a very competitive team in the Championship rather than the fact no one was willing to pay their wages or give us a decent fee can you explain why for example we held on to the high earning, older, under performing Coloccini (who we had loads of offers for apparently  ) yet sold the low wage, younger and better performing Bassong?

 

I'm also interested in who exactly you think was making these footballing decisions? Unless he's the best liar I've seen, it certainly wasn't Hughton who repeatedly said he didn't have a clue what was going on in the Summer.

 

Until January, nothing that has happened this season has been by the good judgement of Ashley, it has just worked out like that fortunately for both us and him.

 

Will the new "plan" (whatever that may be) be better than the plan when he bought the club, or the revised plan when he brought in Keegan and a DoF, or the make it up as you go along plan trying to sell the club with Kinnear, or the "back on track" plan of a year ago when the club was off the market and he was definitely not selling, or the pre relegation get in a hero and sack the DoF plan, or the post relegation sell a club in limbo plan of the Summer? As we don't know what it really is who could possibly say, but do you really have any confidence he'd stick to it even if it was?

low wage and better performing bassong may have been but he also had a much worse attitude at the end (including not travelling to a friendly if i remember right), given what was said by various players at this stage after the leyton orient defeat in preseason they had there own meeting where those who didnt want to be there were told to get lost essentially and it was only after that players were sold, no doubt bassong wanted out he was looking for a way out even before we got relegated

[Howaythelads]

oh and renamed the stadium

 

Could be worse.

 

If the club owned the ground he'd have tried to sell it for development and had us playing at either Gateshead or sharing the stadium of shite with the dirty, stinking, filthy mackems.

[Howaythelads]

 

It wasnt his own making at all. The wage bill need leaning out irrepspective of what division we were in. If you belive that Ashley could of got rid of many of those players whilst in the Prem then thats your opinion and pretty much the lynchpin to your entire argument, in my opinion we'd of found it very difficult to shift players who were picking up top wedge with mimimum effort whilst getting to play in front of 50k, no player had any incentive to leave bar Owen.

 

As I say, I'll credit him partially for cutting the wage bill without compromising our performance in the season, I'll credit him for keeping a strong nucleus of squad and I'll also credit him for addressing problems in our squad at January, I'll also credit him for spending money very sensibily.

 

I wouldnt exactly say he didnt know what he was doing but what I will say is that the cutting of the wage bill (which i think is the single most important thing for the future of this club) isnt all his doing and is rather a sympton of relegation.

 

Either way we are definitely going in the right direction.

 

The wage bill was of his own making. Correct me if I've missed someone, but I think there was only 1 high earning player who would have still been under contract this season (Duff) who was not signed or given a new contract under Ashley.

 

We sold 2, maybe 3 high earners in the Summer (Duff, Martins & maybe Beye although I doubt he was on that much). Are you saying that out of Duff, Martins, Beye, Coloccini, Gutierrez, Smith, Nolan, Barton, Geremi & Butt we would not have been able to sell 3 of them while in the Premiership, but thanks to getting relegated (and losing £40m+ revenue) we were luckily able to get 3 of the best of them off the books (saving £7-8m at most if you ignore the cost of paying their replacements). Great bit of business that was.

 

If hanging on to the rest of the high earners was due to the desire to have a very competitive team in the Championship rather than the fact no one was willing to pay their wages or give us a decent fee can you explain why for example we held on to the high earning, older, under performing Coloccini (who we had loads of offers for apparently  ) yet sold the low wage, younger and better performing Bassong?

 

I'm also interested in who exactly you think was making these footballing decisions? Unless he's the best liar I've seen, it certainly wasn't Hughton who repeatedly said he didn't have a clue what was going on in the Summer.

 

Until January, nothing that has happened this season has been by the good judgement of Ashley, it has just worked out like that fortunately for both us and him.

 

Will the new "plan" (whatever that may be) be better than the plan when he bought the club, or the revised plan when he brought in Keegan and a DoF, or the make it up as you go along plan trying to sell the club with Kinnear, or the "back on track" plan of a year ago when the club was off the market and he was definitely not selling, or the pre relegation get in a hero and sack the DoF plan, or the post relegation sell a club in limbo plan of the Summer? As we don't know what it really is who could possibly say, but do you really have any confidence he'd stick to it even if it was?

 

Excellent post. The replies may be interesting.