Chris Gray on NUFC under Ashley

[LoveItIfWeBeatU]

I personally think his financial vision for the club ties in with making us a more attractive proposition for potential buyers.

That's a win win situation then isn't it? A lot of people hate Ashley and want him to leave. That will never happen unless someone else actually wants to buy NUFC. The more attractive NUFC is to buy the more likely Mike Ashley will be able to sell it.

[TRon]

Since when is flogging tat 'entrepreneurial flair'?

 

 

 

when it makes you a millionaire.

[madras]

I personally think his financial vision for the club ties in with making us a more attractive proposition for potential buyers.

That's a win win situation then isn't it? A lot of people hate Ashley and want him to leave. That will never happen unless someone else actually wants to buy NUFC. The more attractive NUFC is to buy the more likely Mike Ashley will be able to sell it.

then if we are that attractive to buy (ie doing well on and off the pitch) would we want him to sell up ?

[Cajun]

Since when is flogging tat 'entrepreneurial flair'?

 

 

 

when it makes you a millionaire.

 

Billionaire.

[Dave]

Who is this clown anyway?

[Cronky]

A decent article spoiled by the penultimate paragraph, which is a diversion from the main point.

 

With virtually any club, you'll find a large proportion of supporters demanding that the owner/chairman 'splashes the cash', 'invests', 'gets out the cheque book' as the way forward, coupled with the accusation that they are using the club to line their own pockets, however much the facts state otherwise. I don't think NUFC fans are different from others in that respect.

 

There may be a question of degree though, because the level of support is large, the club plays an important part in the life and identity of the city, and it's been a long time since there's been any success. The feeling of having been let down, and the pressure on the owner to deliver, may be that bit greater at our club.

 

What Ashley has shown over the last year - not before time - is an ability and willingness to resist that pressure.

[Sifu]

Who is this clown anyway?

[Ryan_Taylor]

Gone are the days when we become the laughing-stock of everyone else by paying crazy money (transfer fees and wages) for dreadful players. The successful clubs in the future will be those who are sensible, prudent and build gradually. (OK, freak situations like Man City might threaten that – but we still await their real success, and will it last?) Fact (in my opinion).

 

What? Is this guy Rafa Benitez ind disguise?

[EthiGeordie]

 

Reading the various blogs linked to the local papers (this one included) might make you think that Newcastle had had a bad season and face a horrendous future. All we hear from supporters - who, if their comments are anything to go by, are a pretty brainless lot – is that Ashley is the devil incarnate and is to blame for everything. I am no Ashley apologist, but this will just not do – not least because it only serves to undermine and damage the club we all supposedly love.

 

Look at the facts, you blind, knee-jerking idiots (sorry, nothing personal intended).

 

Newcastle United have just finished in a better premiership position than when Ashley took over. Fact.

True, we’ve been down and come up again but I’m with those who claim that was a good thing (although it didn’t feel like it at the time).

 

The finances at Newcastle are immeasurably better than they were then. Football clubs have to get their financial house in order first – then they might have a chance of moving forward on a firm footing. Fact.

 

Ashley now has his own man in the job – like him or loathe him, Pardew is Ashley’s choice and there is a chance he will get funds to spend. The predecessors were either inherited (Allardyce), short-term (Kinnear and, initially, Hughton) or foisted on him (Keegan, Shearer). For the first time, he has his own man in post. Fact.

 

Some (not all) of Wise’s young recruits are now coming through. We Newcastle supporters have never been prepared to be patient – we want it all now – but it will be worth waiting for the likes of Vuckic, Kadar etc (I exclude Ranger, although I expect he’ll do very well wherever he goes). Fact (more or less).

 

Gone are the days when we become the laughing-stock of everyone else by paying crazy money (transfer fees and wages) for dreadful players. The successful clubs in the future will be those who are sensible, prudent and build gradually. (OK, freak situations like Man City might threaten that – but we still await their real success, and will it last?) Fact (in my opinion).

 

And – I’m not sure quite how the Ashley-haters deal with this one – Mike Ashley has pumped over £100 million of his own money into the club. It may be a loan, but without it no-one seems quite sure where we’d have been. Fact.

 

And finally, whether we like it or not, Mr Ashley has bought us. It’s a free country, governed largely by property and ownership and money – and Ashley owns the whole thing from Jose Enrique down to the light switch in the gents toilet. Fact.

 

Now for the controversial bit. I was born in Elswick and Albert Bennett, Gordon Marshall and Dave Elliott were playing in the first game I ever saw. I was at Hillsborough, Wembley etc and was even one of the 7,000 at the Norwich game at the end of the pre-Keegan relegation season. I am black and white, North East through and through. But … the trouble with us is that we don’t live in the real world. Our culture up here is one of dependency – it’s someone else’s fault. I know it’s not pc to say it, but we are the antithesis of entrepreneurial flair. Ask anyone who tries to stir up business activity in this region. They won’t say it publicly but they’ll admit it in private. We know nothing, or so it seems, of economic reality. Football clubs cannot just throw away huge contracts – it makes absolute sense to do what we’ve done with Barton and – allegedly – Nolan. Footballers get far too much money and the game can’t afford them. Ashley isn’t being greedy by seeing that – he’s being a good businessman. That’s what Newcastle United have needed since the days of Stan Seymour, Lord Westwood, Gordon McKeag. Arsenal have been unlucky not to have won a trophy in the last few years but they’ve won plenty over the years under Wenger. Arsenal are the soundest club in the country – the only club in the top four who are virtually certain to be still there in ten years time. Wenger and his board will not spend unless they absolutely have to – they have spent a lot less than Newcastle since Wenger took over but have developed from within and bought young, hungry players at prices often well below £1m. (Vieira, for example, at £350k). When from time to time they’ve bought big, the player has almost always been a great success.

 

That’s the model to follow. All you Ashley-bashers really haven’t a clue.

 

A bit OTT for me but he does raise a couple of worthwhile talking points. Could it be Llambias under a pseudonym?

 

Great one expect he says Keegan is not Ashley choice.... he was his choice he is the one who picked him....

[Guest TheSummerOf69]

Great one expect he says Keegan is not Ashley choice.... he was his choice he is the one who picked him....

 

Yeah - 6 managers in and apparently Ashley only picked one of them, poor bloke.

[alexthegreat]

Nolan moving on left met thinking about what Ashley's intentions are. I basically think hes working very hard to sweat every penny from the club, thinking of player's resale values in particular. The older players in the squad are in the following situations:

 

Smith we know is for sale.

 

Ameobi we tried to sell a while back but he failed the medical, and he cannot manage 3 game in a row, so we are probably stuck with him.

 

Harper will have little value and neither would Lovenkrands, who will probably see out his final year and leave.

 

Coloccini is 29 but on enormous wages that make him difficult to shift.

 

Then theres Barton and Jonas at the age of 28. Barton has 1 year left on his deal, Jonas has 2.

 

At first I was surprised to see Jonas on Joey Barton's tagline but viewed from the point of view of his age it might just about make sense. Ashley would rather sell players before they hit 29/ 30 so they still retain some value when they leave.

 

On the other hand, players in their early 20s like Danny Simpson are being tied up on 5 year deals – ensuring that even three years down the line the club will still be in a strong position to negotiate a high fee for a player still in his mid 20s - and probably still not far from the maximum value he’ll attain in his career.

 

Of course our better players such as Enrique could still be preyed on by the top 4 at any time, but this is true of any club.

 

The success of this strategy is obviously largely dependent on the players brought in to replace those outgoing. Its clear that one of the owner’s successes has been his work on the scouting network. As long as any new players are of the same pedigree of Ben Arfa, Tiote, and Cabaye then I cannot see us getting dragged into the mess created in Ashley’s second year. The academy is also showing signs of producing.

 

Its not a model without risks – we could suffer from a lack of experience in the squad and I think Ashley’s desire not to waste money will mean we could always find ourselves 1 or 2 players short of a full squad size. 

 

But on the whole it could actually be a viable model for running a football club that doesn’t have unlimited resources, even if it does maybe seem a little overly cynical to appeal to a football fan. Llambias said the vision is to finish ‘in the top 10 every year’ and I think this is the model to do it as efficiently as possible, as uninspiring as that vision may be.

 

[Mr Logic]

I might be barking mad but I think Ashley has a different gameplan now, don't know what changed his mind but I think he'd like to see us get into Europe. Top 6 is his aim, if not this coming season then the next. Wether he can succeed is a different matter, one only has to look at Man City to realise buying all the best players still doesn't mean you have a team; then there's the manager.. I think Pardew's strength may be knitting a team together, more so than tactical acumen anyway. Fingers crossed there's plenty to look forward to for a change.

[Bad Mongo]

I might be barking mad but I think Ashley has a different gameplan now, don't know what changed his mind but I think he'd like to see us get into Europe. Top 6 is his aim.

Barking mad seems accurate enough.

[Guest Wally_McFool]

The predecessors were either inherited (Allardyce), short-term (Kinnear and, initially, Hughton) or foisted on him (Keegan, Shearer). For the first time, he has his own man in post. Fact.

 

Foisted on him indeedy. What a load of fuckin' drivel 

 

[Dinho lad]

Chris Gray is gay.

[alexf]

Who is Chris Gray? he just a random who wrote a article? so if we all do one can we just have thread after thread of "John Smith's take on Barton's new hair" etc

[Dave]

Who is Chris Gray? he just a random who wrote a article? so if we all do one can we just have thread after thread of "John Smith's take on Barton's new hair" etc

 

It's not even an article, just a comment pulled from one of Lee Ryder's blog posts. Laughable stuff.

[Interpolic]

Fact (in my opinion).

 

 

The guy's a fucking cretin.

[Guest Chubby Jason]

Opinion facts are the most pertinent of facts, especially when put out there by a heavyweight like Chris Gray.

[Doug]

Good of Chris to educate us on the virtues of ownership, property and money in our 'free country'. Particularly impressive stereotyping of the people of the North east being not worthy of fitting into his 'free' model.

The 'real world' of which he opines has just spunked trillions of pounds of taxpayers money into the bankers pockets while our jobs wages and pensions shrivel.

He is entitled to his opinion, but thats all it is and thats a fact.

[buzza]

If Ashley's model is the following then I love it:

Buy young promising players aged 20-26, who may have a year or two playing in established leagues.

Buy established players (<30) on Frees or using buy out clause.

We have to be a step up for them.

Sell on at 29+, this is when we will get most money for them and when their value will start to diminish.

Buy new replacement.

REPEAT AND MAKE WEDGE

 

**If this model is carried out successfully we WILL become the new Arsenal i.e. Up there at the top competing, but with a slight disadvantage.

[Guest TheSummerOf69]

If Ashley's model is the following then I love it:

Buy young promising players aged 20-26, who may have a year or two playing in established leagues.

Buy established players (<30) on Frees or using buy out clause.

We have to be a step up for them.

Sell on at 29+, this is when we will get most money for them and when their value will start to diminish.

Buy new replacement.

REPEAT AND MAKE WEDGE

 

**If this model is carried out successfully we WILL become the new Arsenal i.e. Up there at the top competing, but with a slight disadvantage.

 

Don't Milner, N'Zogbia, Bassong & Carrol point to the plan being sell them for more than you got, even if they're young and still developing, and bingo! (If you can make it look like it was their choice to leave then all the better.)

 

Then there's the likes of Nolan and Barton who are being sold at their prime.

 

Basically in the long run the danger in selling all your best players is that you end up only with the ones no-one wants, then if you hit a relegation battle you have to choose between wasting all that cash on panic buys or losing as much from going down.

 

The "buy low, sell high" mantra may work in clothing, but football teams are organic. They need nurturing, growing, developing; they need team spirit and an understanding of how their team mates work - as players and as people; it's very different from the stack-em-high-sell-them-by-the-barreload and gamble-your-winnings-at-the-casino approach of the wide boys in the boadroom.