Hatem Ben Arfa

[madras]

Dont think Ashleys done anything wrong. We didnt get him, oh well.

 

If he's not prepared to stick his hand in his pocket for the benefit of the team, he shouldn't be the owner of a football club.

 

He has done wrong in doing nothing to address problems that are 2-3 seasons old.

he made his position clear that he wasnt going to put his hand in his pocket

 

This season aye.

 

What happened to the Milner money and Given dosh that was promised to go back into the team? 20m a season kitty was also promised?

 

 

went to cover wages that were paid to players, the clubs made large losses last few years and the money to pay that had to come from somewhere

 

The wages are covered through the general income the club makes, so that's a load of bollocks tbf

the club had for several years spent considerably more than it had coming in. the catch 22 comes when needing to invest to try to make money to pay it off or what to do when it doesn't work.

 

Mainly due to blowing massive transfer fees on s**** for so many years and selling players for next to nowt, the wages however would be covered by general income.

we were spending close to 70% of the entire turnover on wages. thats not sustainable.

 

ashley has been at the club 3 years, if that isn't enough time to sort the payroll, then he shouldn't be managing any business tbh

 

And - he handed out many of these bumper deals that the likes of Barton, Smith, Colo and Nolan are on.

scroll back up a bit to "i thought thats what everyone wanted in an owner " type stuff.

[Guest sicko2ndbest]

This reminds me a lot of the Owen transfer this time we are Liverpool and Werder are us

[Guest neesy111]

Dont think Ashleys done anything wrong. We didnt get him, oh well.

 

If he's not prepared to stick his hand in his pocket for the benefit of the team, he shouldn't be the owner of a football club.

 

He has done wrong in doing nothing to address problems that are 2-3 seasons old.

he made his position clear that he wasnt going to put his hand in his pocket

 

This season aye.

 

What happened to the Milner money and Given dosh that was promised to go back into the team? 20m a season kitty was also promised?

 

 

went to cover wages that were paid to players, the clubs made large losses last few years and the money to pay that had to come from somewhere

 

The wages are covered through the general income the club makes, so that's a load of bollocks tbf

the club had for several years spent considerably more than it had coming in. the catch 22 comes when needing to invest to try to make money to pay it off or what to do when it doesn't work.

 

Mainly due to blowing massive transfer fees on s**** for so many years and selling players for next to nowt, the wages however would be covered by general income.

we were spending close to 70% of the entire turnover on wages. thats not sustainable.

 

ashley has been at the club 3 years, if that isn't enough time to sort the payroll, then he shouldn't be managing any business tbh

 

And - he handed out many of these bumper deals that the likes of Barton, Smith, Colo and Nolan are on.

 

exactly, he's wanting the club itself to repay back to him the losses for when he owned the club! this is fine in business, but not in the business of football where fans will not accept this

[madras]

No idea why people think that Ashley is not simply going to take money out of the Club and not invest in it. His statement at the end of the season was pretty clear. He's put in a lot and now it's payback time. The Sky cash, season ticket and corporate deals are in his bank account.

 

It's going to be a long season and at the end Ashley will either get a canny pay day if we survive and a decent parachute payment if not. We'll then have a squad to possibly come back up and the yoyo continues.

 

Apathy reigns and people will accept it. Only the drop of season ticket sales, corporate deals and match day tickets will make a little difference and maybe get him to sell up at a reasonable price. Can't see it though.

 

I'm not an Ashley supporter and I'm pretty peeved that we're simply refusing to spend money, but this ridiculous myth that Ashley is pocketing the TV money etc. just has to stop. He's not allowed to take money out of the club willy nilly, it's not how it works .

 

 

Its his business, he owns all shares and can do and take exactly what he likes. His investments are all loans and he's using the cash coming in to fill his own pocket.

even if he could (which i'm not sure about) it'll show up in the accounts....the same way it did when he put millions in.

[Guest Milburnthedog]

And who is interested in the accounts? The shareholder...who is?

[JH]

And who is interested in the accounts? The shareholder...who is?

 

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs by any chance?

[madras]

And who is interested in the accounts? The shareholder...who is?

unfortunatly we all have to be now. even man utd fans are. have you not noticed a tighterning of belts over the last year or so throughout most of football.

[TaylorJ_01]

Mike Ashley would have lost in some way however this would have gone through.

 

How?

 

Ashley is a business man, and as soon as things started to get out of hand at the club his "dream of owning a football club" transformed into a plain business plan.

He know no matter what he does he will be hated, i mean, can he really regain trust from the fans again? Not a chance.

So what was he supposed to do, give up on it and just run with a massive loss?

 

This is my opinion about the HBA deal though, not saying it's correct or anything, it's just MY opinion.

I think a real business man only can be pushed to a certain degree before a line need to be drawn.

 

With all these quotes from O'M president etc. that only seemed valid til the next day or so i can see why MA got fed up.

 

Sign the player and please the fans, bending for the "pressure" of O'M, or refuse to play games with them and show other clubs that were not in for that.

 

Even if it is a small amount of money which separates the deal the french have made him look bad, business/public wise.

But then you have us, the fans, who demands signings and rightfully so because we all see we need it.

So no matter how he would have done i think it was a lose/lose situation for MA and he probably decided that he would see it as a business man instead of pleasing us.

 

Even if we would have signed HBA we would hate Ashley, and by not signing him we will still hate him.

 

Meh, i`m not saying MA is totally blameless in this matter but tbh the french has pretty much toyed around with us probably from the first day knowing that a bid would come in.

It was against all logic that no one else would go in for HBA.

 

How is that clappable? He's saying 'meh, if we signed him we would hate Ashley and if we didn't we would hate Ashley'. To be honest, I don't give a f*** about how people feel about Ashley. The guy owns our football club, his own choice, yet he seems oblivious to the fact that you need to spend money to stay in this league.

 

Because he is right. If we signed him then MA would only be hated for the next player we missed out on. It wasn't that long ago a few of you on here were praising him for signing Gosling saying he could be a decent player for us, and also praising him for getting Campbell in saying he has the experience we need.

 

I'm really failing to see what you two are getting at. What is your actual point? That we shouldn't care because we'd hate him anyway?

[Guest Milburnthedog]

Remember this?

 

 

 

George Caulkin

 

In a parallel universe, a parallel Newcastle United released a parallel statement on their parallel official website yesterday evening. This is how it read...

 

Dear Newcastle United supporters,

 

First things first: thank you. Thank you on behalf of everyone connected with the club, from the players, from the managerial staff and from the boardroom, for your continued backing. Thank you for bearing with us over the past few, difficult seasons and thank you for persevering as we attempt to put things right.

 

Thank you for continuing to buy your season tickets, your replica shirts, your pies and programmes and thank you for trooping through the turnstiles to shout yourselves hoarse week upon week. We know that you have a choice, that you didn’t have to do what you did and we appreciate the sacrifices some of you made at a time when the economy is in turmoil and finances are tight. In a very real and meaningful way, we simply couldn’t have done it without you.

 

For a club that haven't won a domestic trophy since 1955 to record an average attendance of 43,387 in the Coca-Cola Championship was stunning and humbling. Once again: thank you.

 

Without wishing to open old sores, we recognise that we’ve made some pretty big mistakes. Hopefully, by acknowledging that and accepting it, the process of healing those wounds can gather pace. What’s been so productive about the campaign just ended is that it felt like we were all in it together; team, coaches, fans. In testing circumstances, the club began to renew itself and long may that continue.

 

In the spirt of that bond, we feel that we have a duty to be open and frank. Just as this is a different Newcastle from the club that were relegated a year ago, it also a very different environment. Money has coalesced at the top of the Barclays Premier League and it is all too easy for clubs to overreach themselves chasing an illusory pot of gold. There were some great times at St James’ Park under Kevin Keegan and Sir Bobby Robson and we’d love to repeat them, but we all have to accept that, for the foreseeable future anyway, things have changed.

 

We’re not trying to apportion blame here - and, in any case, we would deserve a slice of it - but, for whatever reason, the club got into a situation where they were paying exorbitant transfer fees, wages and agent fees, often at the expense of team-building. That can’t and won’t happen again. Successful clubs build and grow and we want to protect the team spirit that has been so evident in the Championship. We want to protect the football club as a whole.

 

It is our judgement - and that of Chris Hughton, our manager - that we have the basis of a squad that can compete in the Premier League next season. If you look at clubs like Wigan Athletic, Bolton Wanderers and, more recently, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Birmingham City, you can see that it’s possible to stabilise following promotion and that’s the route that Newcastle are going down. We’ll be relying on loans, free transfers and a bit of imagination. We’re not saying it’ll be easy and we’re taking nothing for granted, least of all you.

 

Put simply, the pot is empty. In our last season in the Premier League, we made a loss of £37.7m and we’re due to record another loss of £32.5m this season. That’s just not sustainable. Our overdraft - all clubs have them - stands at £20m and it’s already been allocated. Yes, our income from television money will shoot back up again, but the owner has already invested around £300m of his own money into Newcastle and, as far as he’s concerned, that’s enough. As our last accounts stated, there is an outstanding loan of £111m from Mike Ashley that is “repayable on demand,” and, ideally, he’d like some of it back.

 

That’s reasonable, isn’t it? He’s kept things ticking over this season and we’ve slashed costs, but it’s a matter of record that Mike has twice attempted to sell the club and he just isn’t willing to leave himself further out of pocket. You may not want to hear that, but we hope you appreciate the honesty. To borrow an old phrase, we are where we are.

 

In the meantime, we want to build a new Newcastle, if you will. We want this to be a Newcastle you can be proud of. A big part of that, as always, will be determined by what happens on the pitch and all players will be reminded of their responsibilities to you, but it also means focusing resources on our Academy structure.

 

For far too long, this region has allowed its better players to leave and we have to put a stop to that drain of talent. We tip our hats to the work done by our neighbours Middlesbrough and Sunderland in this regard and we want to do the same. And we mean it this time. We’re going to let the experts get on with the job of building scouting networks and providing opportunities and, with a bit of luck, in a few years’ time, you’ll be cheering on a team peppered with skilful Geordies. How good would that be?

 

We should also say a few words about the media and our relationship with them. It hasn’t always been easy. We happen to think that this club and their supporters has not always been well served by newspapers, television and radio and that we’re sometimes subjected to crude stereotyping, but we also accept that because of decisions taken by this regime and its predecessors, we’ve made ourselves easy targets. In retrospect, there was probably an opportunity to reshape the debate when Mr Ashley bought the club, but he was never very comfortable about assuming a public role and that moment has sadly dissipated.

 

We have to hold our hands up, too. When we have spoken out, we haven’t consistently managed to get our message across in the way we wanted to, so we’ve taken the decision to let our football and our football people do the talking for us. If you see anything in the papers from now on where Newcastle “sources” or “insiders” are quoted, rest assured that it hasn’t come from us. We don’t want to get in the way of Chris’s work because he’s got a tough enough job without any unnecessary interference from us.

 

Hope this clears things up.

 

Thanks again and Howay the Lads,

 

[TRon]

Can anyone else see HBA sticking 2 fingers up to Marseille and saying fuck you, your not profiting from me, i want to go to Newcastle, nowhere else?

 

 

This is what I meant earlier when I said the only reason this deal had a chance of going through was HBA was desperate to come here, it had nothing to do with us pulling out the stops to get him in. We dithered, we lost...again.

 

 

[oldtype]

I'd just like to move on and leave this abomination of a thread behind.

[Guest MrBrown]

All a little hysterical considering that this is being reported by a middle of the road French football website. Why not just wait and see what happens? The only club mentioned by the player and agent is Newcastle. It makes sense that Bremen would look to replace Ozil, which gives credence to the idea, which makes their possible fiction seem more likely.

[Parky]

I think we were right to hold our position, they wanted an outright purchase, we didn't, and with good reason. He's a fantastic talent no doubt about that I'd love to have him here, but he has undeniable attitude problems, there's nothing stopping him pulling this with us when a bigger club comes in. If come September 1st , we have no one of similar potential or in that position, then I will openly criticise the club for not having contingency plans should this deal collapse.

 

If a bigger club came in for him, do you genuinely believe we'd get less than we paid for him? He would have to have had a good season for them to even be interested. It's false economy.

 

What I just said on TT.

[Teasy]

I'm just glad that despite how easy this transfer was to complete I always kept the idea in the back of my mind that it would be fucked up (which isn't easy because I'm quite positive in general).  Otherwise I'd be absolutely fucking gutted right now

[Guest neesy111]

the club will make a turnover of over 80M, and we can't spend at most 5M on one player to make a difference, then quite frankly the club is totally screwed

[jdckelly]

I have to say, I'm not at all convinced by the France Football article. Some things just don't add up with it (the supposed time of our last offer compared to the timing of the quotes from Dassier earlier).

 

Still think that there could be a twist to this yet.

sounds like straw clutching

[TRon]

I'd just like to move on and leave this abomination of a thread behind.

 

I am not interested in moving on, I have no interest in signing some 2nd rate back up player who will turn out to be another Leon Best or Kevin Nolan. Just fuck off Ashley and stick your cash up your arse.

[Colos Short and Curlies]

No idea why people think that Ashley is not simply going to take money out of the Club and not invest in it. His statement at the end of the season was pretty clear. He's put in a lot and now it's payback time. The Sky cash, season ticket and corporate deals are in his bank account.

 

It's going to be a long season and at the end Ashley will either get a canny pay day if we survive and a decent parachute payment if not. We'll then have a squad to possibly come back up and the yoyo continues.

 

Apathy reigns and people will accept it. Only the drop of season ticket sales, corporate deals and match day tickets will make a little difference and maybe get him to sell up at a reasonable price. Can't see it though.

 

I'm not an Ashley supporter and I'm pretty peeved that we're simply refusing to spend money, but this ridiculous myth that Ashley is pocketing the TV money etc. just has to stop. He's not allowed to take money out of the club willy nilly, it's not how it works .

 

 

Its his business, he owns all shares and can do and take exactly what he likes. His investments are all loans and he's using the cash coming in to fill his own pocket.

 

Sorry but thats all bollocks.

 

Its a limited company, any money that flows from the club to Ashley has to be properly accounted for - I'm pretty sure that he would have had to give written guarantees that he would not be reclaiming any money from his loans/cash injections this year in order to get the accounts signed off (the club would be insolvent if not if memory serves...)

 

If he went back on this and took the cash out he is leaving himsefl open to all sorts of legal action from creditors, companies house and the auditors.

 

He might be using the TV money to ensure that he has to put less in, but this isn't the same as taking the money out

[David28]

I'd just like to move on and leave this abomination of a thread behind.

 

I am not interested in moving on, I have no interest in signing some 2nd rate back up player who will turn out to be another Leon Best or Kevin Nolan. Just fuck off Ashley and stick your cash up your arse.

 

Nolan was actually first choice signing at that time, wasn't he?

[tmonkey]

This reminds me a lot of the Owen transfer this time we are Liverpool and Werder are us

 

Better analogy would be when we missed out on Carrick because our chairman thought he could hold West Ham to ransom and get the player for half a million, when West Ham were only asking for two. Spurs then came in late and snapped him up, and the rest, as they say, is history...

[madras]

No idea why people think that Ashley is not simply going to take money out of the Club and not invest in it. His statement at the end of the season was pretty clear. He's put in a lot and now it's payback time. The Sky cash, season ticket and corporate deals are in his bank account.

 

It's going to be a long season and at the end Ashley will either get a canny pay day if we survive and a decent parachute payment if not. We'll then have a squad to possibly come back up and the yoyo continues.

 

Apathy reigns and people will accept it. Only the drop of season ticket sales, corporate deals and match day tickets will make a little difference and maybe get him to sell up at a reasonable price. Can't see it though.

 

I'm not an Ashley supporter and I'm pretty peeved that we're simply refusing to spend money, but this ridiculous myth that Ashley is pocketing the TV money etc. just has to stop. He's not allowed to take money out of the club willy nilly, it's not how it works .

 

 

Its his business, he owns all shares and can do and take exactly what he likes. His investments are all loans and he's using the cash coming in to fill his own pocket.

 

Sorry but thats all bollocks.

 

Its a limited company, any money that flows from the club to Ashley has to be properly accounted for - I'm pretty sure that he would have had to give written guarantees that he would not be reclaiming any money from his loans/cash injections this year in order to get the accounts signed off (the club would be insolvent if not if memory serves...)

 

If he went back on this and took the cash out he is leaving himsefl open to all sorts of legal action from creditors, companies house and the auditors.

 

He might be using the TV money to ensure that he has to put less in, but this isn't the same as taking the money out

but thats not what people WANT to believe.

[ponsaelius]

Why the fuck would a reliable (seems that way throughout this saga) paper make up such an intricate story.

 

Fair enough if it was just a little paragraph or something then yeah, but not the main headline and not with that much depth.

[Guest neesy111]

I'd just like to move on and leave this abomination of a thread behind.

 

I am not interested in moving on, I have no interest in signing some 2nd rate back up player who will turn out to be another Leon Best or Kevin Nolan. Just fuck off Ashley and stick your cash up your arse.

 

Nolan was actually first choice signing at that time, wasn't he?

 

he was panic buy, after barton got injured v city

[Doctor Zaius]

No idea why people think that Ashley is not simply going to take money out of the Club and not invest in it. His statement at the end of the season was pretty clear. He's put in a lot and now it's payback time. The Sky cash, season ticket and corporate deals are in his bank account.

 

It's going to be a long season and at the end Ashley will either get a canny pay day if we survive and a decent parachute payment if not. We'll then have a squad to possibly come back up and the yoyo continues.

 

Apathy reigns and people will accept it. Only the drop of season ticket sales, corporate deals and match day tickets will make a little difference and maybe get him to sell up at a reasonable price. Can't see it though.

 

I'm not an Ashley supporter and I'm pretty peeved that we're simply refusing to spend money, but this ridiculous myth that Ashley is pocketing the TV money etc. just has to stop. He's not allowed to take money out of the club willy nilly, it's not how it works .

 

So where's it gone?

[Colos Short and Curlies]

the club will make a turnover of over 80M, and we can't spend at most 5M on one player to make a difference, then quite frankly the club is totally screwed

 

We are!

 

look at the 'turnover' of the UK, and 'we' have has to pull the plug on a loan that would have put a Sheffield company at the front of its field, not to mention the fact that we now can't 'afford' luxories like a public sector