Various: Mike Ashley in talks with Sheikh Khaled bin Zayed Al Nehayan

[Mattoon]

So Sky have a news report on newsnow that says Newcastle United transfer window "shambolic" but when you try and view it it's no longer there, anyone get a view of it?

 

https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11678/11616401/newcastle-will-lose-rafael-benitez-fears-actor-and-magpies-fan-steve-wraith

 

I wouldn't worry.

 

dodged a bullet there then!

[Stifler]

I wouldn't take any notice, it's par for the course with The Chronicle comments section. Those people don't know anything about anything but will happily comment on everything, it's not limited to the football section.

Aye. A couple of weeks ago there were plans announced for a new building on the former Bank of England site on Pilgrim street.

There people saying the council shouldn’t spend the money on that and build a big fuck off building for the homeless. People don’t seem to understand that it’s not the council proposing the building of funding or who own the land, but a private company.

 

Aye ok a football club may technically be a business, but they forget that if it wasn’t for politics getting involved with business then they would end up in a situation where Tesco owned every shop for 50 miles and would price bread £5 a loaf

[AyeDubbleYoo]

Didn’t realise we’re still the 19th highest earning club in the world. Brought in over £200m.

 

Cheers Mike.

[Parkerz]

A LB at a normal price who we won't buy after a loan would be our record signing even after all these years 

[Guest neesy111]

Brought in over £200m.

 

Cheers Mike.

 

No we didn't.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

Brought in over £200m.

 

Cheers Mike.

 

No we didn't.

 

 

£201.5m revenue according to Deloitte Money League.

[Guest neesy111]

Brought in over £200m.

 

Cheers Mike.

 

No we didn't.

 

 

£201.5m revenue according to Deloitte Money League.

 

That's Euros. :lol:

[AyeDubbleYoo]

Brought in over £200m.

 

Cheers Mike.

 

No we didn't.

 

 

£201.5m revenue according to Deloitte Money League.

 

That's Euros. :lol:

 

Oh yeah

 

Still nearly £200m these days.

[Guest neesy111]

Brought in over £200m.

 

Cheers Mike.

 

No we didn't.

 

 

£201.5m revenue according to Deloitte Money League.

 

That's Euros. :lol:

 

Oh yeah

 

Still nearly £200m these days.

 

True.

[Chris_R]

Wait until our glorious no-deal brexit. It'll be about £250m.

[Teasy]

Euro would drop as well on a no deal like.  Dollar will be king all of a sudden, except Trump exists so maybe not.

[Chris_R]

Euro would drop as well on a no deal like.  Dollar will be king all of a sudden, except Trump exists so maybe not.

 

The Euro may or may not drop, but the pound will drop in relation to the Euro, there's no doubt about that.

[Teasy]

The pound will be effected more than the Euro, especially early on.  But no deal isn't good for either side, so I've got no doubt they'd both drop in relation to other currencies.

[Jackie Broon]

No deal isn't good for either side, so I've got no doubt they'd both drop in relation to other currency.

 

The Euro - US Dollar rate didn't really change immediately after the referendum result. The Pound plummeted.

 

History suggest that there is quite a lot of doubt that the Euro will be equally affected.

[Tribesman]

From The Times.

 

In 11 years Newcastle have managed to increase their annual commercial revenue by a mere £600,000. Everton's is £30.1m from £6.7m, Spurs' £103m from £38m

To put it politely, they have bucked the trend, writes @OliverKayTimes of Mike Ashley's failed regime.

 

https://t.co/F6IJbMBv5J

 

But remember he's an amazing businessman and great with numbers.

[henke]

From The Times.

 

In 11 years Newcastle have managed to increase their annual commercial revenue by a mere £600,000. Everton's is £30.1m from £6.7m, Spurs' £103m from £38m

To put it politely, they have bucked the trend, writes @OliverKayTimes of Mike Ashley's failed regime.

 

https://t.co/F6IJbMBv5J

 

But remember he's an amazing businessman and great with numbers.

 

Our effective loss is Sports Directs gain, that's Ashley the business man.

[Pons Alias]

So a reasonable estimate is that he’s taken about £30m a year out of the club over 12 seasons.

 

So let’s round that down to £350m

[TBG]

From The Times.

 

In 11 years Newcastle have managed to increase their annual commercial revenue by a mere £600,000. Everton's is £30.1m from £6.7m, Spurs' £103m from £38m

To put it politely, they have bucked the trend, writes @OliverKayTimes of Mike Ashley's failed regime.

 

https://t.co/F6IJbMBv5J

 

But remember he's an amazing businessman and great with numbers.

 

Anybody got the full article?

 

Even now, the bare facts of Mike Ashley’s ownership of Newcastle United are best digested with a glass of water. Two relegations, a solitary finish above tenth place in the Premier League, a solitary appearance in the last 16 of either FA Cup or League Cup and, just in case you imagined that this highly successful businessman has transformed Newcastle’s fortunes away from the pitch, a mere £600,000 increase in annual commercial revenue over 11 years in which other clubs have been laughing all the way to the bank.

 

That £600,000 figure probably bears spelling out. Newcastle made £27.6 million in commercial revenue in 2006-07, the final season under the ownership of the Hall family and Freddy Shepherd. Last season, according to figures released this week by Deloitte, they made £28.2 million. Over the same period, Manchester United’s commercial revenue has risen from £58.1 million (roughly double Newcastle’s) to £280 million (roughly ten times Newcastle’s); Arsenal’s from £42.7 million to £106.9 million; Liverpool’s from £43.1 million to £151.3 million; Tottenham Hotspur’s from £38.5 million to £103.2 million; Inter Milan’s from £25 million to £130.9 million; FC Schalke’s from £35.7 million to £93.7 million; Everton’s from a measly £6.7 million to £30.1 million — to say nothing of those clubs, such as Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, whose brand value has been inflated so dramatically as to arouse the suspicion of Uefa’s financial compliance department. To put it politely, Newcastle have bucked the trend.

 

All of this would be galling enough for Newcastle’s supporters even if their beloved St James’ Park, one of the great cathedrals of English football, were not splattered with billboards advertising Ashley’s high-street sports retail chain. It is doubtful whether any stadium in the Premier League — not even those bearing the name of a Middle Eastern airline, a credit card company, a health insurance provider or a brewery — screams “rampant commercialism” like St James’ Park does, or for such little benefit. At least Lee Charnley, Newcastle’s managing director, was able to reassure supporters at a fan forum event in October that “there is now an agreement in place whereby Sports Direct pays for all advertising in the stadium”. “Now”? Well, that’s good of them.

 

When Ashley arrived in 2007, Newcastle had the sixth-biggest turnover in the Premier League and the fifth-highest wage bill. Full accounts for 2017-18, after promotion back to the top flight, are not yet available, but when they were relegated in 2016, their turnover was the ninth-highest (overtaken not just by Manchester City but by Tottenham, West Ham United and Leicester City) and their £75 million wage bill was only the 16th highest in the Premier League (lower than Crystal Palace, Leicester City, Southampton, Stoke City, Sunderland and Swansea City, among others).

 

The fact that Stoke, Sunderland and Swansea have since followed Newcastle down to the Sky Bet Championship — and have shown altogether less gumption in trying to get back — is no justification for the parsimony on Tyneside. None of those clubs had anything like the platform that Ashley has had the opportunity to build on at Newcastle. Yes he inherited a £76 million debt and an underperforming squad, but this was a club that had great potential to move onwards and upwards with the right kind of investment — “one of the jewels, one of the diamonds of the Premier League,” as he put it in 2008. He talked back then of setting the club’s sights high. To have opted for a smaller club, he said, would have been “like settling for the high jump when you really want to do the pole vault. You want more excitement, so you go higher.”

 

Ashley wants excitement? Seriously? Because looking from the outside, it has seemed that his sole ambition for Newcastle has been a seat on the Premier League gravy train, which would see the business grow with every new broadcast deal. The only time there has been any notable surge of ambition is when underinvestment has led to relegation, which has led to a more aggressive approach in search of promotion. When Newcastle were promoted under Kevin Keegan in 1993, their ambitions soared. When they were promoted under Rafael Benítez in 2017, it was as if, once again, a place in the Premier League was all that Ashley required.

 

There has been some investment over the past three transfer windows, but a total outlay of £70 million on Jacob Murphy, Florian Lejeune, Yoshinori Muto, Christian Atsu, Mikel Merino, Federico Fernández, Fabian Schär, Martin Dubravka, Joselu, Javier Manquillo and Ki Sung-yueng, plus various loans, smacked of a bargain-basement approach in trying to bring a Championship squad up to scratch. That outlay has largely been subsidised by sales in any case. That Newcastle’s three biggest acquisitions (Michael Owen, Alan Shearer, Albert Luque) and indeed seven of their 12 biggest came more than a decade ago, pre-Ashley, is remarkable in an era of transfer-market inflation.

 

So too is the lack of investment in the club’s infrastructure. Whereas clubs such as Everton, Tottenham and Brighton have moved to highly impressive new training grounds over the past decade or so, and others such as Burnley and Wolverhampton Wanderers have revamped theirs at considerable expense, Newcastle’s plans for a new complex at Darsley Park, announced in late 2013 and initially scheduled for completion in early 2016, have not progressed. Newcastle’s accounts suggest that capital expenditure across the first decade of Ashley’s ownership was just £10 million. He said last year that “our training facilities have improved significantly during my tenure” and are “fit for purpose”, but Benítez is as almost exasperated by this issue as by the constraints he has faced in the transfer market.

 

In 2015, in the grip of another relegation battle, Michael Martin, editor of the True Faith fanzine, wearily described Newcastle as “a zombie club, half-alive, half-dead, going nowhere.” A year later they dropped down to the Championship. It briefly seemed that there might be a realignment after that, a willingness to learn from past mistakes and to capitalise on the optimism generated by Benítez and a promotion campaign, but no, it remains a club in limbo. No buyer has been found to meet the owner’s £300 million-plus asking price for a club that, having stood still for so long (even pre-Ashley), needs serious investment.

 

Whereas managers usually live in fear of a takeover, Benítez has been dismayed to see one potential buyer after another come and go. He is in the final months of his contract and is understood to be highly unlikely to sign a new deal unless something significant changes. No Newcastle fan will blame Benítez if he departs at the end of the season. Many of them are amazed he has stayed this long. They share his sense of disillusionment. That attendances remain so healthy — upwards of 49,000 for every league match this season — is testimony to the fans’ loyalty, which only accentuates the feeling of potential unfilled.

 

There is still a perception in some quarters that Newcastle’s supporters, still giddy from the Keegan years, are asking for too much. They really aren’t. A sense of adventure, of hope, would be nice. Victory over Watford, to reach the FA Cup fifth round for the first time since 2006, almost feels like too much to ask in these straitened times. A banner unveiled at St James’ Park a few years ago read: “We don’t demand a team that wins. We demand a club that tries.” Is that really too much to ask?

[LoveItIfWeBeatU]

This transcript of the members of parliament discussing NUFC and football just goes to show what a load of clowns most of them are.

 

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2019-01-24/debates/5942D7A8-4D98-46F8-877A-3CDC5FDB19C2/NewcastleUnitedFootballClubRegulation

[ToonArmy1892]

Ashley got to be one of the luckiest motherfuckers in life, doesn't stop you being a knob head though.

 

He is clearly a wanker (i don't care about these "he seemed alright in person" stories), Hitler probably did aswell.

 

I used to get excited every Friday night before the toon game, he has literally killed everything NUFC related for me now.

 

Fuck off you cunt.

[Teasy]

No deal isn't good for either side, so I've got no doubt they'd both drop in relation to other currency.

 

The Euro - US Dollar rate didn't really change immediately after the referendum result. The Pound plummeted.

 

History suggest that there is quite a lot of doubt that the Euro will be equally affected.

 

Please read my post, I said both would drop in relation to other currency's, not that they'd be equally affected.  Also perception isn't the same as reality, nothing actually changed in reality after the referendum, only perception.  A no deal exit would make actual real world changes on both sides.  For instance a 19% drop in the EU's budget, finances speak louder than mere opinion/perception.

[geordiedean]

wants every HMV store to give him 6 months rent free in event of a takeover. This fucker is just such a despicable wanker he's like Colonel Gaddafi of the high street

[Wallsendmag]

Whether the club generates £200m a year or £400m a year, for us as fans It's a largely irrelevant figure when the person who owns the club believes that money belongs to him (which I suppose it does although football isn't like any other business) and he will use it to invest in other business interests on the High Street. He stays as long as we are profitable to him which makes it imperative that we get relegated and stay relegated for a number of years. This is going on for a long time yet.

[geordiedean]

Whether the club generates £200m a year or £400m a year, for us as fans It's a largely irrelevant figure when the person who owns the club believes that money belongs to him (which I suppose it does although football isn't like any other business) and he will use it to invest in other business interests on the High Street. He stays as long as we are profitable to him which makes it imperative that we get relegated and stay relegated for a number of years. This is going on for a long time yet.

 

To me we need to drop to league 1 or even league 2 for him to leave. The club needs to be worthless which if we drop that far it will become, we will be worth the same as the mackems around 7m this will make him drop it like a hot potato. Unfortunately by then the stadium and all facilities will be an antiquated crumbling husk that in all likelihood will probably just need knocked down and rebuilding

[xLiaaamx]

Howay man, St James' might look a bit tatty but it's hardly fucking caving in at the walls.