Is Mike Ashley steering Newcastle United in the right direction?

[Guest malandro]

The best thing about AC lamping Taylor was it appeared to push this thread away. No such luck.

 

The whole thing seems pretty pointless. Most people think that Ashley made bad football decisions but he has saved the club financially and most agree with the proposed new transfer and budget structures. So the club is heading in the right direction for most people, albeit from a lower standing.

However some will never forgive him and will blame him for eveything forever. If he doen't sell he's a t***, if he does want to sell he's a t***, if we're relegated it's all his fault so he's a t***, if we go up he's just doing it so he sells us for more so he's still a t***.

Nobody is going to be convinced otherwise. Those who hate him REALLY hate him, so as I said before they should just assasinate him and get on with the rest of their lives. This thread is not going to change anyone's opinion.

 

What a crock of simplistic rubbish.

 

If you had said  " some will never forgive Shepherd and will blame him for everything forever " you'd be on the right lines.

 

Ashley could well turn it around, he just hasn't done so yet. He's done a crap job so far, simple as that.  When/if he does turn it around and has done a good job I will admit it, which is a damn sight more than others manage regarding the efforts of the previous Board.

 

I don't hate Ashley at all. I think he's an inept tosser who got lucky in business with his "blueprint" of cheap sports goods.

 

Yeah whatever.

Some of us think the club is being run for Mr Ashley benefit not NUFCs and when the dust settles this season’s so called progress will turn out to be nothing more than one step forward two steps back. That’ll we’ll end up being further away from being a stable club capable of fulfilling its potential than ever.

 

It’s not about him being a twat, it’s about where he’s taken the club and how he’s planning on sorting out the mess he inherited/created for himself. If you don’t think this is worthy of debate why not ignore this thread instead of getting your knickers in a twist?

 

[Howaythelads]

The best thing about AC lamping Taylor was it appeared to push this thread away. No such luck.

 

The whole thing seems pretty pointless. Most people think that Ashley made bad football decisions but he has saved the club financially and most agree with the proposed new transfer and budget structures. So the club is heading in the right direction for most people, albeit from a lower standing.

However some will never forgive him and will blame him for eveything forever. If he doen't sell he's a t***, if he does want to sell he's a t***, if we're relegated it's all his fault so he's a t***, if we go up he's just doing it so he sells us for more so he's still a t***.

Nobody is going to be convinced otherwise. Those who hate him REALLY hate him, so as I said before they should just assasinate him and get on with the rest of their lives. This thread is not going to change anyone's opinion.

 

What a crock of simplistic rubbish.

 

If you had said  " some will never forgive Shepherd and will blame him for everything forever " you'd be on the right lines.

 

Ashley could well turn it around, he just hasn't done so yet. He's done a crap job so far, simple as that.  When/if he does turn it around and has done a good job I will admit it, which is a damn sight more than others manage regarding the efforts of the previous Board.

 

I don't hate Ashley at all. I think he's an inept tosser who got lucky in business with his "blueprint" of cheap sports goods.

 

Yeah whatever.

 

Suggestion: Reply to what is posted rather than to stuff you've made up.

[High Five o]

I think Routledge and Williamson will prove to be decent signings.  What I am more focussing on is the undeniable fact that Newcastle could stay up next year by buying 'cheap' players.  It would be quite easy to come up with a sizeable list of players who have been bought over the last 2-3 years for small amounts (ie max of 3 million) by Premiership clubs that would keep us up.

 

There is absolutely no footballing or economic need to make big signings for next season.

 

congratulations on setting your sights as high as Wigan

 

 

 

I don't know quite where you have got the idea that big signing equate to success though?

 

so Chelsea and ManUtd have been doing it wrong ?

 

Just read this....

 

Dude, go out and stick you finger in the earth.

What planet are you on man.

 

[madras]

happy face:....... Thats a profit on transfer fees. Like a shop making a profit on beans but losses on most other things.

[dilligaf]

Genuine question

A lot seem to think that Ashley is/was willing to write off the debt to sell, how do we know that?

as anyone who was interested had to sign non disclossure agreements.

I would have thought that we would have been snapped up debt free for 80mil, even running at a loss.

It seems to me that he wanted 80mil plus the debts to him still had to be paid and thats why we had no buyers.

If thats the case (but its only my take on it) then we are a lot worse off.

Only time will tell I suppose.

 

 

The price for the club was £100m in the summer, and this would have been for a debt free club, apart from the Barclays overdraft facility. THere would have been no money owed to Ashley. The price dropped to £80m at the last minute, but nobody had the cash.

 

I thought everyone had accepted this? THe idea that Ashley was trying to sell the club for £100m and after the sale the new owner would still owe Ashley £100m is nonsense.

 

And your source for this is?

 

The horses mouth.

He told you personally?

interesting that no one has pointed to where it is officially stated that the debt was to be written off yet

[UV]

Whereas referring to anyone bright enough to spot the difference between being being hock to a bank, and an owner supporting his own business, as a "know-nowt moron" is completely par for the course.

 

You mean the Gaydamak way to administration (and near winding up) is better than the Ridsdale way?

 

Personally as a supporter with no control of how the owner runs the club I would feel more secure with an owner who was stuck within the financial restraints of what the banks would lend them than one who could rack up the club's wage bill to well over what it could support in future years without their input and then run into financial problems themselves or just fuck off when they get bored or daddy pulls the plug. Owners putting in external money is also what's fucked the game up so much financially as clubs without that artificial aid risk more just to try to keep up.

 

Everyone is just waiting for Abramovich to get bored and leave Chelsea in the shit. If Lerner ran into external financial trouble now Villa would be in the shit as they are running at a big loss year on year. Neither of these clubs could sustain where they are now without their owners. Liverpool and Man U have a different problem in that they can sustain where they are now without their owners (who are taking out rather than putting in) they just can't sustain it if they drop down the league. There are risks either way, one is dependant on football results, the other is dependant on external forces. Personally I'd rather the club's fortunes were dictated by the football than live with the chance that no matter how well you might be doing on the pitch the rug could suddenly be pulled from beneath your feet. That's not to say I'd turn my nose up at a rich benefactor, just that I'd feel it was a more solid foundation if it were self-sustaining as long as the footballing side of things didn't go tits up.

 

Obviously having an owner with their own money has the advantage that they can put money into the club that a bank just would not risk. This is however promoting a far higher risk strategy to running the club than the one the old board were able to take, so I'm not sure why some who are post-fact dismayed with the risk level set by the last owners are happy with being completely dependant on the whims and finances of one man, especially when that man has shown nothing so far but an abject inability to run the club successfully or hire competent people to do so and a desire to offload any responsibility and sell at any opportunity when the club is in the shit.

 

Having a rich incompetent owner of the club is of course better than having a poor incompetent owner of the club, however some seem to have extended that to meaning having a rich incompetent owner of the club is better than having a poor competent owner. It's not.

 

People exaggerate how bad things had got footballing wise here prior to Ashley, we'd had a bad season due to having more injuries than I can ever remember having before, but we still pretty comfortably avoided relegation in the end and certainly had a massively better squad when Ashley took over to the "relegation enhanced" one we have now. If people judged the squad then with the expectations we have for the squad next year they'd be over the moon with it. Without all the injuries we'd have been competing for Europe again, if we were to have the same injury problems next year I think there'd be absolutely no question of us going back down again.

 

People also exaggerate how bad things had got financially with regard to the debt.

 

the difference isn't the debt anyway, as many have said all along, it's the way it is structured. far betteroff owe the money to the owner as he is unlikely to call it in (gibson,lerner,abramovich) than owe it to financial institutions and the taxman who will call it in (cardiff,portsmouth,leeds etc)

 

To put this in context for us prior to Ashley, the majority of the debt was the stadium expansion loan (around £45m) which couldn't just be called in on a whim. The last set of accounts before the stadium debt was shifted to be a current liability (due to the sale of the club) in 2006 had current liabilities from debts of £5.5m overdraft + £10.9m loans. This was with £9.3m cash in the bank as security against capital and interest repayments on the stadium loan. There would have been around an extra £5m overdraft and £5m in loans in 2007, ie a total of around £25m. I'd suggest this is a lower current debt liability than most premiership clubs other than those recently promoted or owned by a sugar daddy, and certainly within the means of a club with our turnover as was.

 

Contrast this with the £40m overdraft facility Ashley was running the club with on top of his £150m loan.

 

Is Ashley steering the club in the right direction or is he overcompensating after causing a skid?

[Happy Face]

If you had said  " some will never forgive Shepherd and will blame him for everything forever " you'd be on the right lines.

 

 

Spot on.  What's incredible about being labelled an entrenched Ashley hater without the capacity to consider the facts is that my view of him has constantly changed along with events as they happen.

 

Arrived - Thank christ for that, no need to worry about our debts any more.  Legend

 

Stand with fans & Pint downed - strange decision...but legend still

 

Appoint Keegan - Absolute Legend

 

Appoint wise - strange decision, but still a legend

 

Sack Keegan - Woah, you wanker what the fuck?  OK Keegan was unreasonable.  Benefit of the doubt.

 

Appoint Kinnear - Howay man dipshit!  What you deein?

 

Sell Given & Nzogbia - This is getting stupid. Is he trying to get us relegated?  I'm going to set up a blog to compare what he says and what he does because they seem completely disparate.

 

Appoint Shearer - right, now he realises. Howay the lads!

 

Relegation (club for sale) - good riddance.

 

Keegan Tribunbal - Christ i knew he was a liar, but that takes the biscuit.

 

Off the market - You utter fucktard.  No mangerial decision, no chance for the manager to mould his squad.  How incompetent can you be?

 

Stadium Name - Now he's just taking the piss.

 

January deals - That could get us automatically promoted or even win us the championship. Good work.

 

Most people defending Ashley on here are still stuck on the same emotion we all had on day one and nothing that's gone on since has wavered them one iota. 

 

Is it just a refusal to accept being wrong (as I freely admit I have been)?  Makes you look dafter than clinging to the dream that Ashley saved us.

[Happy Face]

happy face:....... Thats a profit on transfer fees. Like a shop making a profit on beans but losses on most other things.

 

Aye but I fully expected him to finish in profit in January.  I know he's still in profit overall, but he spent a modest amount in January and it was just enough investment to keep the first team strong enough for the final push.

 

You've got to give him credit for that.  Even if it was in his best interests, it was in ours too so I was glad to see it.  It's what he refused to do last January though it would have been in his best interests at that time too, so it's an improvement.

[TRon]

Whereas referring to anyone bright enough to spot the difference between being being hock to a bank, and an owner supporting his own business, as a "know-nowt moron" is completely par for the course.

 

You mean the Gaydamak way to administration (and near winding up) is better than the Ridsdale way?

 

Personally as a supporter with no control of how the owner runs the club I would feel more secure with an owner who was stuck within the financial restraints of what the banks would lend them than one who could rack up the club's wage bill to well over what it could support in future years without their input and then run into financial problems themselves or just fuck off when they get bored or daddy pulls the plug. Owners putting in external money is also what's fucked the game up so much financially as clubs without that artificial aid risk more just to try to keep up.

 

Everyone is just waiting for Abramovich to get bored and leave Chelsea in the shit. If Lerner ran into external financial trouble now Villa would be in the shit as they are running at a big loss year on year. Neither of these clubs could sustain where they are now without their owners. Liverpool and Man U have a different problem in that they can sustain where they are now without their owners (who are taking out rather than putting in) they just can't sustain it if they drop down the league. There are risks either way, one is dependant on football results, the other is dependant on external forces. Personally I'd rather the club's fortunes were dictated by the football than live with the chance that no matter how well you might be doing on the pitch the rug could suddenly be pulled from beneath your feet. That's not to say I'd turn my nose up at a rich benefactor, just that I'd feel it was a more solid foundation if it were self-sustaining as long as the footballing side of things didn't go tits up.

 

Obviously having an owner with their own money has the advantage that they can put money into the club that a bank just would not risk. This is however promoting a far higher risk strategy to running the club than the one the old board were able to take, so I'm not sure why some who are post-fact dismayed with the risk level set by the last owners are happy with being completely dependant on the whims and finances of one man, especially when that man has shown nothing so far but an abject inability to run the club successfully or hire competent people to do so and a desire to offload any responsibility and sell at any opportunity when the club is in the shit.

 

Having a rich incompetent owner of the club is of course better than having a poor incompetent owner of the club, however some seem to have extended that to meaning having a rich incompetent owner of the club is better than having a poor competent owner. It's not.

 

People exaggerate how bad things had got footballing wise here prior to Ashley, we'd had a bad season due to having more injuries than I can ever remember having before, but we still pretty comfortably avoided relegation in the end and certainly had a massively better squad when Ashley took over to the "relegation enhanced" one we have now. If people judged the squad then with the expectations we have for the squad next year they'd be over the moon with it. Without all the injuries we'd have been competing for Europe again, if we were to have the same injury problems next year I think there'd be absolutely no question of us going back down again.

 

People also exaggerate how bad things had got financially with regard to the debt.

 

the difference isn't the debt anyway, as many have said all along, it's the way it is structured. far betteroff owe the money to the owner as he is unlikely to call it in (gibson,lerner,abramovich) than owe it to financial institutions and the taxman who will call it in (cardiff,portsmouth,leeds etc)

 

To put this in context for us prior to Ashley, the majority of the debt was the stadium expansion loan (around £45m) which couldn't just be called in on a whim. The last set of accounts before the stadium debt was shifted to be a current liability (due to the sale of the club) in 2006 had current liabilities from debts of £5.5m overdraft + £10.9m loans. This was with £9.3m cash in the bank as security against capital and interest repayments on the stadium loan. There would have been around an extra £5m overdraft and £5m in loans in 2007, ie a total of around £25m. I'd suggest this is a lower current debt liability than most premiership clubs other than those recently promoted or owned by a sugar daddy, and certainly within the means of a club with our turnover as was.

 

Contrast this with the £40m overdraft facility Ashley was running the club with on top of his £150m loan.

 

Is Ashley steering the club in the right direction or is he overcompensating after causing a skid?

 

The main damage to the club under Shepherd was done by Souness with his reckless signings. This went a long way to devaluing the squad and putting Shepherd in a position where further strengthening of the squad was impossible without selling players especially considering the size of the wage bill. We were on a slippery slope by the time Shepherd left and to say otherwise is just spin as far as I'm concerned.

[Guest malandro]

Genuine question

A lot seem to think that Ashley is/was willing to write off the debt to sell, how do we know that?

as anyone who was interested had to sign non disclossure agreements.

I would have thought that we would have been snapped up debt free for 80mil, even running at a loss.

It seems to me that he wanted 80mil plus the debts to him still had to be paid and thats why we had no buyers.

If thats the case (but its only my take on it) then we are a lot worse off.

Only time will tell I suppose.

 

 

The price for the club was £100m in the summer, and this would have been for a debt free club, apart from the Barclays overdraft facility. THere would have been no money owed to Ashley. The price dropped to £80m at the last minute, but nobody had the cash.

 

I thought everyone had accepted this? THe idea that Ashley was trying to sell the club for £100m and after the sale the new owner would still owe Ashley £100m is nonsense.

 

And your source for this is?

 

The horses mouth.

He told you personally?

interesting that no one has pointed to where it is officially stated that the debt was to be written off yet

They couldn’t even point to an ‘unnamed club source’ - whether or not the £100m was for a club that owed Ashley at least £100m was a big secret.  This makes it impossible for supporters to work out if the asking price was ‘reasonable’ or a joke. 

[Hughesy]

The debate around 'models' and 'blueprints' is horseshit.

 

It's all well and good marvelling at how Wigan did well to bring in Valencia, Palacios and Figueroa while ignoring the their more expensive f*** ups like Marlon King, Jason Koumas and Julius Aghahowa.

 

Because maybe King, Koumas and Aghahowa cost less than Owen, Luque, Coloccini, Boumsong, Barton, Smith etc?  Just a guess.

[Happy Face]

The main damage to the club under Shepherd was done by Souness with his reckless signings. This went a long way to devaluing the squad and putting Shepherd in a position where further strengthening of the squad was impossible without selling players especially considering the size of the wage bill. We were on a slippery slope by the time Shepherd left and to say otherwise is just spin as far as I'm concerned.

 

Peter Storrie might talk a lot of bollocks but he had it right last week when he pointed out that you can't blame Redknapp for spending the money they threw at him.

 

I blame Souness in as much as his signings were shite (wheras Redknapp's won a cup and got into Europe), but in allowing Souness to spend £50m (in 8 months) that we didn't have or weren't due, Shepherd has to carry the can like Gaydamak at Pompey.

 

 

[madras]

Whereas referring to anyone bright enough to spot the difference between being being hock to a bank, and an owner supporting his own business, as a "know-nowt moron" is completely par for the course.

 

You mean the Gaydamak way to administration (and near winding up) is better than the Ridsdale way?

 

Personally as a supporter with no control of how the owner runs the club I would feel more secure with an owner who was stuck within the financial restraints of what the banks would lend them than one who could rack up the club's wage bill to well over what it could support in future years without their input and then run into financial problems themselves or just f*** off when they get bored or daddy pulls the plug. Owners putting in external money is also what's f***ed the game up so much financially as clubs without that artificial aid risk more just to try to keep up.

 

Everyone is just waiting for Abramovich to get bored and leave Chelsea in the s***. If Lerner ran into external financial trouble now Villa would be in the s*** as they are running at a big loss year on year. Neither of these clubs could sustain where they are now without their owners. Liverpool and Man U have a different problem in that they can sustain where they are now without their owners (who are taking out rather than putting in) they just can't sustain it if they drop down the league. There are risks either way, one is dependant on football results, the other is dependant on external forces. Personally I'd rather the club's fortunes were dictated by the football than live with the chance that no matter how well you might be doing on the pitch the rug could suddenly be pulled from beneath your feet. That's not to say I'd turn my nose up at a rich benefactor, just that I'd feel it was a more solid foundation if it were self-sustaining as long as the footballing side of things didn't go tits up.

 

Obviously having an owner with their own money has the advantage that they can put money into the club that a bank just would not risk. This is however promoting a far higher risk strategy to running the club than the one the old board were able to take, so I'm not sure why some who are post-fact dismayed with the risk level set by the last owners are happy with being completely dependant on the whims and finances of one man, especially when that man has shown nothing so far but an abject inability to run the club successfully or hire competent people to do so and a desire to offload any responsibility and sell at any opportunity when the club is in the s***.

 

Having a rich incompetent owner of the club is of course better than having a poor incompetent owner of the club, however some seem to have extended that to meaning having a rich incompetent owner of the club is better than having a poor competent owner. It's not.

 

People exaggerate how bad things had got footballing wise here prior to Ashley, we'd had a bad season due to having more injuries than I can ever remember having before, but we still pretty comfortably avoided relegation in the end and certainly had a massively better squad when Ashley took over to the "relegation enhanced" one we have now. If people judged the squad then with the expectations we have for the squad next year they'd be over the moon with it. Without all the injuries we'd have been competing for Europe again, if we were to have the same injury problems next year I think there'd be absolutely no question of us going back down again.

 

People also exaggerate how bad things had got financially with regard to the debt.

 

the difference isn't the debt anyway, as many have said all along, it's the way it is structured. far betteroff owe the money to the owner as he is unlikely to call it in (gibson,lerner,abramovich) than owe it to financial institutions and the taxman who will call it in (cardiff,portsmouth,leeds etc)

 

To put this in context for us prior to Ashley, the majority of the debt was the stadium expansion loan (around £45m) which couldn't just be called in on a whim. The last set of accounts before the stadium debt was shifted to be a current liability (due to the sale of the club) in 2006 had current liabilities from debts of £5.5m overdraft + £10.9m loans. This was with £9.3m cash in the bank as security against capital and interest repayments on the stadium loan. There would have been around an extra £5m overdraft and £5m in loans in 2007, ie a total of around £25m. I'd suggest this is a lower current debt liability than most premiership clubs other than those recently promoted or owned by a sugar daddy, and certainly within the means of a club with our turnover as was.

 

Contrast this with the £40m overdraft facility Ashley was running the club with on top of his £150m loan.

 

Is Ashley steering the club in the right direction or is he overcompensating after causing a skid?

http://www.newcastle-online.org/nufcforum/index.php/topic,62694.msg1855931.html#msg1855931

[Guest malandro]

Are you blaming Shepherd for the dire financial position the club are in now?

[madras]

Are you blaming Shepherd for the dire financial position the club are in now?

partly,not entirely.

[Guest malandro]

Are you blaming Shepherd for the dire financial position the club are in now?

partly,not entirely.

Why not blame McKeag? The club were in a right mess when he sold up.

[cp40]

Are you blaming Shepherd for the dire financial position the club are in now?

partly,not entirely.

Why not blame McKeag? The club were in a right mess when he sold up.

 

 

he was just trying to deal with Westwoods shit.

[madras]

Are you blaming Shepherd for the dire financial position the club are in now?

partly,not entirely.

Why not blame McKeag? The club were in a right mess when he sold up.

true enough, then hall, fred and co done some good work on maximising the clubs financial potential to get us into a very good position. then they let it slip.

[Happy Face]

Are you blaming Shepherd for the dire financial position the club are in now?

partly,not entirely.

Why not blame McKeag? The club were in a right mess when he sold up.

true enough, then hall, fred and co done some good work on maximising the clubs financial potential to get us into a very good position. then they let it slip.

 

They didn't "need" to go down a division before moving in the right direction either.

[madras]

Are you blaming Shepherd for the dire financial position the club are in now?

partly,not entirely.

Why not blame McKeag? The club were in a right mess when he sold up.

true enough, then hall, fred and co done some good work on maximising the clubs financial potential to get us into a very good position. then they let it slip.

 

They didn't "need" to go down a division before moving in the right direction either.

bloody right.

 

weren't accusing me o such silliness were you ?

[Happy Face]

Are you blaming Shepherd for the dire financial position the club are in now?

partly,not entirely.

Why not blame McKeag? The club were in a right mess when he sold up.

true enough, then hall, fred and co done some good work on maximising the clubs financial potential to get us into a very good position. then they let it slip.

 

They didn't "need" to go down a division before moving in the right direction either.

bloody right.

 

weren't accusing me o such silliness were you ?

 

I wouldn't dream of it.

[Guest malandro]

Are you blaming Shepherd for the dire financial position the club are in now?

partly,not entirely.

Why not blame McKeag? The club were in a right mess when he sold up.

true enough, then hall, fred and co done some good work on maximising the clubs financial potential to get us into a very good position. then they let it slip.

 

They didn't "need" to go down a division before moving in the right direction either.

This was where they went wrong. They should have let Keegan walk out over the ‘brochure’ incident and got relegated to Division 3. Then we’d all have been happy to finish 17th in Division Two and wouldn’t have needed to waste money on players like Shearer, Beardsley, Ginola, Lee etc.

[Doctor Zaius]

Did anyone sense a slight change in opinion after the Portsmouth debacle. Seeing what happened down at Fratton Park, I think has shcoked the life out of some folk in realising we could go the same way.

 

The way I see it is, if Ashley is willing to give it a go, which it looks like, then good. However he needs to learn from his mistakes. Certain things insinuate that he wont though; Like that fact Llambias is still here, and that at boardroom level there is still no-one with any experience in the game or in the running of a football club. I also seem to remember Llambias saying that they were reverting back to Ashley orignal plan on how to run the football club, the same orignal plan that saw them put in place a hurrendous system undermining the manager and making a total mess of everything.  Also they showed a great deal of naivety and, what could be described as arrogance in coming out and saying that supporters had no real right to critisize ashley, and those that did were critisized by Llambias when he basically claimed they wernt proper supporters. Naivity like that somewhat got us into the state we were in at the start of the season.

 

There is no doubtthat Ashley has the financial muscle to turn this club around, however what frightens me is the total lack of experience as well as the fact he's fucked it up all before after making some utterly mad decisions, and that he's capable of making those decisions once again.

 

 

[Guest malandro]

Whereas referring to anyone bright enough to spot the difference between being being hock to a bank, and an owner supporting his own business, as a "know-nowt moron" is completely par for the course.

 

You mean the Gaydamak way to administration (and near winding up) is better than the Ridsdale way?

 

Personally as a supporter with no control of how the owner runs the club I would feel more secure with an owner who was stuck within the financial restraints of what the banks would lend them than one who could rack up the club's wage bill to well over what it could support in future years without their input and then run into financial problems themselves or just f*** off when they get bored or daddy pulls the plug. Owners putting in external money is also what's f***ed the game up so much financially as clubs without that artificial aid risk more just to try to keep up.

 

Everyone is just waiting for Abramovich to get bored and leave Chelsea in the s***. If Lerner ran into external financial trouble now Villa would be in the s*** as they are running at a big loss year on year. Neither of these clubs could sustain where they are now without their owners. Liverpool and Man U have a different problem in that they can sustain where they are now without their owners (who are taking out rather than putting in) they just can't sustain it if they drop down the league. There are risks either way, one is dependant on football results, the other is dependant on external forces. Personally I'd rather the club's fortunes were dictated by the football than live with the chance that no matter how well you might be doing on the pitch the rug could suddenly be pulled from beneath your feet. That's not to say I'd turn my nose up at a rich benefactor, just that I'd feel it was a more solid foundation if it were self-sustaining as long as the footballing side of things didn't go tits up.

 

Obviously having an owner with their own money has the advantage that they can put money into the club that a bank just would not risk. This is however promoting a far higher risk strategy to running the club than the one the old board were able to take, so I'm not sure why some who are post-fact dismayed with the risk level set by the last owners are happy with being completely dependant on the whims and finances of one man, especially when that man has shown nothing so far but an abject inability to run the club successfully or hire competent people to do so and a desire to offload any responsibility and sell at any opportunity when the club is in the s***.

 

Having a rich incompetent owner of the club is of course better than having a poor incompetent owner of the club, however some seem to have extended that to meaning having a rich incompetent owner of the club is better than having a poor competent owner. It's not.

 

People exaggerate how bad things had got footballing wise here prior to Ashley, we'd had a bad season due to having more injuries than I can ever remember having before, but we still pretty comfortably avoided relegation in the end and certainly had a massively better squad when Ashley took over to the "relegation enhanced" one we have now. If people judged the squad then with the expectations we have for the squad next year they'd be over the moon with it. Without all the injuries we'd have been competing for Europe again, if we were to have the same injury problems next year I think there'd be absolutely no question of us going back down again.

 

People also exaggerate how bad things had got financially with regard to the debt.

 

the difference isn't the debt anyway, as many have said all along, it's the way it is structured. far betteroff owe the money to the owner as he is unlikely to call it in (gibson,lerner,abramovich) than owe it to financial institutions and the taxman who will call it in (cardiff,portsmouth,leeds etc)

 

To put this in context for us prior to Ashley, the majority of the debt was the stadium expansion loan (around £45m) which couldn't just be called in on a whim. The last set of accounts before the stadium debt was shifted to be a current liability (due to the sale of the club) in 2006 had current liabilities from debts of £5.5m overdraft + £10.9m loans. This was with £9.3m cash in the bank as security against capital and interest repayments on the stadium loan. There would have been around an extra £5m overdraft and £5m in loans in 2007, ie a total of around £25m. I'd suggest this is a lower current debt liability than most premiership clubs other than those recently promoted or owned by a sugar daddy, and certainly within the means of a club with our turnover as was.

 

Contrast this with the £40m overdraft facility Ashley was running the club with on top of his £150m loan.

 

Is Ashley steering the club in the right direction or is he overcompensating after causing a skid?

 

The main damage to the club under Shepherd was done by Souness with his reckless signings. This went a long way to devaluing the squad and putting Shepherd in a position where further strengthening of the squad was impossible without selling players especially considering the size of the wage bill. We were on a slippery slope by the time Shepherd left and to say otherwise is just spin as far as I'm concerned.

Shepherd backed his manager with money the club didn’t have, in much the same way Ashley backed Fat Sam with money the club didn’t have. The difference is that Souness’ spending spree was offset against guaranteed future income, whereas Fat Sam’s was just money we couldn’t afford given the perilous state of our finances  everybody keeps going on about.

[TRon]

Whereas referring to anyone bright enough to spot the difference between being being hock to a bank, and an owner supporting his own business, as a "know-nowt moron" is completely par for the course.

 

You mean the Gaydamak way to administration (and near winding up) is better than the Ridsdale way?

 

Personally as a supporter with no control of how the owner runs the club I would feel more secure with an owner who was stuck within the financial restraints of what the banks would lend them than one who could rack up the club's wage bill to well over what it could support in future years without their input and then run into financial problems themselves or just f*** off when they get bored or daddy pulls the plug. Owners putting in external money is also what's f***ed the game up so much financially as clubs without that artificial aid risk more just to try to keep up.

 

Everyone is just waiting for Abramovich to get bored and leave Chelsea in the s***. If Lerner ran into external financial trouble now Villa would be in the s*** as they are running at a big loss year on year. Neither of these clubs could sustain where they are now without their owners. Liverpool and Man U have a different problem in that they can sustain where they are now without their owners (who are taking out rather than putting in) they just can't sustain it if they drop down the league. There are risks either way, one is dependant on football results, the other is dependant on external forces. Personally I'd rather the club's fortunes were dictated by the football than live with the chance that no matter how well you might be doing on the pitch the rug could suddenly be pulled from beneath your feet. That's not to say I'd turn my nose up at a rich benefactor, just that I'd feel it was a more solid foundation if it were self-sustaining as long as the footballing side of things didn't go tits up.

 

Obviously having an owner with their own money has the advantage that they can put money into the club that a bank just would not risk. This is however promoting a far higher risk strategy to running the club than the one the old board were able to take, so I'm not sure why some who are post-fact dismayed with the risk level set by the last owners are happy with being completely dependant on the whims and finances of one man, especially when that man has shown nothing so far but an abject inability to run the club successfully or hire competent people to do so and a desire to offload any responsibility and sell at any opportunity when the club is in the s***.

 

Having a rich incompetent owner of the club is of course better than having a poor incompetent owner of the club, however some seem to have extended that to meaning having a rich incompetent owner of the club is better than having a poor competent owner. It's not.

 

People exaggerate how bad things had got footballing wise here prior to Ashley, we'd had a bad season due to having more injuries than I can ever remember having before, but we still pretty comfortably avoided relegation in the end and certainly had a massively better squad when Ashley took over to the "relegation enhanced" one we have now. If people judged the squad then with the expectations we have for the squad next year they'd be over the moon with it. Without all the injuries we'd have been competing for Europe again, if we were to have the same injury problems next year I think there'd be absolutely no question of us going back down again.

 

People also exaggerate how bad things had got financially with regard to the debt.

 

the difference isn't the debt anyway, as many have said all along, it's the way it is structured. far betteroff owe the money to the owner as he is unlikely to call it in (gibson,lerner,abramovich) than owe it to financial institutions and the taxman who will call it in (cardiff,portsmouth,leeds etc)

 

To put this in context for us prior to Ashley, the majority of the debt was the stadium expansion loan (around £45m) which couldn't just be called in on a whim. The last set of accounts before the stadium debt was shifted to be a current liability (due to the sale of the club) in 2006 had current liabilities from debts of £5.5m overdraft + £10.9m loans. This was with £9.3m cash in the bank as security against capital and interest repayments on the stadium loan. There would have been around an extra £5m overdraft and £5m in loans in 2007, ie a total of around £25m. I'd suggest this is a lower current debt liability than most premiership clubs other than those recently promoted or owned by a sugar daddy, and certainly within the means of a club with our turnover as was.

 

Contrast this with the £40m overdraft facility Ashley was running the club with on top of his £150m loan.

 

Is Ashley steering the club in the right direction or is he overcompensating after causing a skid?

 

The main damage to the club under Shepherd was done by Souness with his reckless signings. This went a long way to devaluing the squad and putting Shepherd in a position where further strengthening of the squad was impossible without selling players especially considering the size of the wage bill. We were on a slippery slope by the time Shepherd left and to say otherwise is just spin as far as I'm concerned.

Shepherd backed his manager with money the club didn’t have, in much the same way Ashley backed Fat Sam with money the club didn’t have. The difference is that Souness’ spending spree was offset against guaranteed future income, whereas Fat Sam’s was just money we couldn’t afford given the perilous state of our finances  everybody keeps going on about.

 

Not really sure where you are coming from tbh. On the one hand you are saying that Ashley should be spending big on quality players, then in the next post you are saying he shouldn't have backed Fat Sam at all. What is your point exactly?