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


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Guest reefatoon

George Graham?

 

Isn't he like in a care home now?

 

So was Joe Kinnear, it's where Mike likes to shop.

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I think our recent run and league position might be influencing a few opinions on what the club's worth, like. The increase in valuation is more conservative than I expected, but that doesn't mean that the original asking price wasn't too much. I can't see anyone paying £400m for a club that needs a good deal of further investment to even have a chance of success.

 

This and it's because of years of underinvestment across the club not just on the pitch.

 

The way an investor has to or should look at it is if they bought the club for 400m, it’s alwas going to be worth that if they run it well and worth more if they succeed. Ashley bought the club knowing he would never be out of pocket or rather never make a loss. Yes it’s a lot of money, but you are buying something that can become one of the top clubs in Europe. A club that is already one of the top clubs when it comes to stadia, gates, fan base, and yes revenue. Albeit that is somewhat skewered due to the huge TV deal here in the PL.

 

Its worth 400m if this is to be a long term thing and it doesn’t need huge huge amounts of money thrown at it. 10m would fix the facilities issue. Good scouts and coaching is what fixes the development of the academy/reserves/development. Rafa can fix that alone by being ale to bring in his own people. The first team of course is where the biggest injection of money is needed. But if year one of takeover is about stability and consolidation, just getting Kennedy, the ‘keeper and Slimani in should see to that with Rafa as manager.

 

Look at what has been spent at City, what a billion pounds or more in total? Do that here including purchase of club and we would be top 4 and winning silverware.

 

Howay man HTT, you know full well the club hasn't been "run well" for over a decade. Commercial and matchday income has gone down, debt has doubled, there has been precious little investment in its facilities and the stature of the club as a whole has gone down from being regular European contenders to regular relegation fodder. Then there is the question of what would happen to the 129m debt after any takeover and whether it would be included in these valuations, but presumably the new owners would have to cough up or refinance it as well. Saying the club is worth what Ashley asks if run well is like someone putting their depricated house on the market for what it could be worth after renovation.

 

As others have said, if the club is worth that much where are the buyers? Of course Ashley sets his price as he is entitled to do, but by setting a price nobody sees as near to the club's true value it makes it abundantly clear that he's not a willing seller at all.

 

We've been here before, sadly.

 

It's pretty obvious that's not what he said. Just read the bit you bolded.

 

 

But that doesn't make sense, if we won the Premier league every year we'd be worth a billion but obviously no ones ever gonna buy us for that

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Guest chopey

Someone is buying Wembley's skin for £800 million £400 for Newcastle United Football Club seems like a good deal to me now

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  • 2 weeks later...

Fat man’s helicopter is at the training ground.

 

 

Flew in to tell Rafa he can have what he needs.

 

 

Then meeting Charnley to emphasis 'TRY' to give Rafa what he needs.

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Fat man’s helicopter is at the training ground.

 

 

Flew in to tell Rafa he can have what he needs.

 

 

Then meeting Charnley to emphasis 'TRY' to give Rafa what he needs.

 

......... and throws a wink at Justin Barnes, who slyly chuckles and returns the gesture with a playful elbow nudge.

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Someone is buying Wembley's skin for £800 million £400 for Newcastle United Football Club seems like a good deal to me now

 

I'm no financial expect but I would have thought paying £400m for a business that will soon have an annual turnover of not far short of £200m (obviously I'm aware that costs are high) would be a pretty good buy and that's before you take into account the Worldwide exposure you get from owning a Premier League Football club.

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Think maybe we should use the Chelsea game to make a statement to Ashley. Not saying protests or anything but maybe a full game of Rafa chants and Ashley out chants. Maybe some flyers with back Rafa or we leave. Need him to realise sell or back Rafa.

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Think maybe we should use the Chelsea game to make a statement to Ashley. Not saying protests or anything but maybe a full game of Rafa chants and Ashley out chants. Maybe some flyers with back Rafa or we leave. Need him to realise sell or back Rafa.

 

He’s more interested in House Of Fraser at the moment.

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Guest The Little Waster

Think maybe we should use the Chelsea game to make a statement to Ashley. Not saying protests or anything but maybe a full game of Rafa chants and Ashley out chants. Maybe some flyers with back Rafa or we leave. Need him to realise sell or back Rafa.

 

Howzabout a rendition of

 

https://youtu.be/74BA7CUrGYw

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Another example of Ashley being "penny wise, pound foolish" when it comes to NUFC.

 

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/mike-ashley-run-newcastle-cheap-14626284

 

Mike Ashley has run Newcastle on the cheap: Now is the time to back Rafa and build, not destroy

Newcastle United are one of the only clubs in the Premier League who have not spent on infrastructure recently

 

By Mark Douglas

 

It looks like a garden shed and sits in the middle of the training ground car park.

 

Newcastle United’s scouting hub – built last year to give the recruitment team a permanent base at the Magpies’ training ground – might represent progress of sorts but it’s also a little bit sad when you see it.

 

OK, it’s about the ideas expressed and information shared in that room rather than having plush fixtures and fittings. The odd picture of his family, dogs and an Apple Mac filled with player clips aside, Rafa Benitez’s office is fairly sparse and you get the impression he likes it that way. But the ‘scouting shed’ really is a shed – and it still represents something rather jarring when you see how the rest of the Premier League is investing the riches banked during this era of unprecedented TV cash.

 

To recount, these are the Premier League clubs currently upgrading their facilities at a cost of millions and millions of pounds: Spurs (new stadium, cost £1billion), Chelsea (new ground - again priced at £1billion), Wolves (training ground upgrades, stadium development on the agenda), Bournemouth (multi-million pound training ground upgrade), Everton (new stadium at the Docks), Leicester City (an £80million training facilitiy at Seagrave) and Crystal Palace (£100million stadium regeneration announced).

 

Of the other in the top flight, investment is not pressing because it’s recently been made.

 

Manchester City spent £100million on the Etihad Campus in 2014 and have plans to expand it. Last year Burnley spent £10.6million on their Barnfield training ground – which will act as a community hub as well as a “state of the art” facility. Even West Ham – managing a calamitous stadium move of their own – moved their training base to Rush Green in 2016.

 

Newcastle, by contrast, said at the last fan’s forum that developing the stadium makes “no commercial sense”. The training ground move first mooted when Joe Kinnear was director of football six years ago has not progressed despite planning permission being granted. It was not mentioned in the Fans Forum notes this time and Newcastle have never really explained why Kinnear’s vision has been dropped.

 

“Top players and top teams need top training and medical facilities,” he was quoted when the plans were first announced.

 

“The current training ground has served the club very well but the new complex will give the club all of the ingredients that it needs to continue maintaining and enhancing the performance of elite footballers.

 

“It will also be an added attraction when it is looking to recruit players.”

 

It was pressing, then, in 2013. Five years on, Newcastle really need to start thinking about the bigger picture if they are to remain relevant in a Premier League which is moving forward quickly while Ashley is happy for United to keep treading water.

 

The owner may have ploughed plenty of his own money into what he claims is stabilising Newcastle financially (and supplying money to resurrect them after two relegations) but there has been precious little in the way of funds for infrastructure development. It is an approach that sells Newcastle short when other clubs are prepared to think that bit bigger – and will reap the rewards in the future.

 

Benitez recognises this. When he spoke to the BBC about Newcastle’s “massive potential” – a point he is happy to repeat in every press conference – it is about trying to push United forward, on and off-the-field. Because he understands that players, staff and coaches need to see the club growing with them if they are to strive for better.

 

Benitez managed to negotiate extra funds for a fresh lick of paint and some new facilities at the training ground in the season that followed relegation. But it was surface level stuff, not the profound changes that are required to the Academy, training ground and scouting set-up to bring them up to the speed with rivals who are happy to invest.

 

Ashley doesn’t understand any of this because – as Alan Pardew said in a rare moment of clarity - he doesn’t understand football. But he has someone in charge who does and needs to realise that he has struck lucky that Benitez is prepared to overlook the deficiencies that have been created by under-investment on his watch because he is a rare top level manager who loves a project and buys into the emotion and passion of Newcastle’s dormant potential.

 

When the Spaniard sits down with Lee Charnley to talk about what he needs to commit to the club, these are the kinds of things that are exercising him. And what is frustrating him is that he suspects Ashley is the man who really needs to green light these things.

 

Quite what it is that Ashley wants Newcastle to be these days is not clear. The owner once spoke of winning silverware – or qualifying for the Champions League – but four years on it looks from the outside as if he’s happy for it to just exist and if they can stay in the Premier League with investment decided by their income then all the better.

 

But if he thinks that is possible he will be rudely awakened. Aside from being left behind by the infrastructure spending he won’t sanction or find the money for, he will lose Benitez – whose frustration is clearly growing.

 

And that would be the biggest crisis the club would confront in his ill-starred decade. The prospect of fan protests, losing the dressing room and tumbling down the leagues feel very real, as does the prospect of finding it difficult to persuade any credible candidate to follow Benitez – a man whose popularity is unprecedented. Good luck with selling the club if any of that happens. Just ask Ellis Short how much he made from Sunderland after they fell into the abyss.

 

That doomsday scenario could be easily averted by Ashley handing Benitez assurances that seem reasonable. Benitez is a man who can build a club, to project his vision and actually achieve. Quite what is stopping Ashley from really backing him – aside from bloody-minded cheapness and a reticence to embrace a man who wants Newcastle to be something special – is unclear.

 

We hear that he does not have money to put into the club but he advanced loans after relegation. It is not unthinkable that he could do so again to fund either infrastructure or team building projects.

 

And if he really can’t do that, there are suitors for the club who would invest if Ashley would adjust his price and finally sell up. He is the man, after all, who said he would not stand in the way of someone with deep pockets who could transform Newcastle.

 

After a season of progress Newcastle feel poised for a sustainable move forward under Benitez. If Ashley or his underlings sabotage that, it will be their gravest mistake yet. It is time to build, not destroy.

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It’s got the point where I hate it when people write stuff like that, just seems to make it more likely he’ll fuck things up just to spite them :lol:

probably will, contrarian fuck that he is. i'd admire it if i didn't negatively impact me so
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It’s got the point where I hate it when people write stuff like that, just seems to make it more likely he’ll fuck things up just to spite them :lol:

More so the fact that the Chronicle have spent years licking his hoop. They are only doing this because they know he’s on his way out.
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Is it a good thing that there’s been no takeover talk? Generally when something has actually happened with this club it’s reported after the matter.

 

Speculation has rarely ever been accurate.

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It’s got the point where I hate it when people write stuff like that, just seems to make it more likely he’ll fuck things up just to spite them :lol:

More so the fact that the Chronicle have spent years licking his hoop. They are only doing this because they know he’s on his way out.

I really hope your right

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It’s got the point where I hate it when people write stuff like that, just seems to make it more likely he’ll f*** things up just to spite them :lol:

More so the fact that the Chronicle have spent years licking his hoop. They are only doing this because they know he’s on his way out.

They've been anti Ashley for years man.

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It’s got the point where I hate it when people write stuff like that, just seems to make it more likely he’ll f*** things up just to spite them :lol:

More so the fact that the Chronicle have spent years licking his hoop. They are only doing this because they know he’s on his way out.

They've been anti Ashley for years man.

No they haven’t. They only started speaking out when it was evident that he wanted to sell up.
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It’s got the point where I hate it when people write stuff like that, just seems to make it more likely he’ll f*** things up just to spite them :lol:

More so the fact that the Chronicle have spent years licking his hoop. They are only doing this because they know he’s on his way out.

They've been anti Ashley for years man.

No they haven’t. They only started speaking out when it was evident that he wanted to sell up.

Wrong.

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