Happy Face

With the net assets of the club being worth less than £20M I think you have to assume that Ashley's £200M investment is based on future tv/internet earnings which dwarf ticket/merchandise.....especially once you drop out of the top flight. Asset stripping just isn't viable for a Premier league club where all the value rests upon your position in the table. Is it? I think conspiracy theorising credits Ashley with something other than incompetence, which i think is a stretch. incompetence or asset stipping either way we are fucked.As i said tho, i can't see how anyone who can make the money he has can be that incompetent.The whole footballing world knows the shit were and what needs to be done about it.So why does he just sit there doing nothing?That can't be incompetence,i don't know what the fuck it is but its not just incompetence.I don't believe he is just burying his head in the sand either,so i'm at a loss as to second guess what the fucker is up to. How does Boris Johnson end up in charge of London? How does Gordon Brown end up in charge of the UK? How does George Bush end up in charge of the US? I'm being faceatious, he's clearly an intelligent and talented businessman, but he's made some tragic mistakes at the club. Mainly appointing Llambias and backing Wise over Keegan. I honestly believe he'd be willing to spend the money, he's not sat in a swimming pool of money rubbing his hands together, he HAS spent canny sums in previous windows but I don't think he'll pay over the odds for anyone. The club has sunk so low, there's not a manager or player that would want to come close, even if we offered full whack....and I thought we'd reached our lowest ebb on that score after Allardyce went.

With the net assets of the club being worth less than £20M I think you have to assume that Ashley's £200M investment is based on future tv/internet earnings which dwarf ticket/merchandise.....especially once you drop out of the top flight. Asset stripping just isn't viable for a Premier league club where all the value rests upon your position in the table. Is it? I think conspiracy theorising credits Ashley with something other than incompetence, which i think is a stretch.

In 2006 the club had £16.7M of net assets (land + players etc. minus debts), that was down from £56.1M in 1998... http://www.nufc-finances.org.uk/ I think the only land would be the stadium and academy, but I'm happy to be set right. Don't we lease the ground the stadium is on from the city council? That's what I thought, but the thing about owning the supporters club land threw me.

.com offer more....

In 2006 the club had £16.7M of net assets (land + players etc. minus debts), that was down from £56.1M in 1998... http://www.nufc-finances.org.uk/ I think the only land would be the stadium and academy, but I'm happy to be set right. This is from the Newcastle United PLC annual report 2005. Not sure what has happend with this since then but the casino bit sounds right up Ashleys street. Joint Venture with MGMMIRAGE. Newcastle United Plc has a joint venture with MGMMIRAGE to develop the area above St.James' metro station subject to certain matters. Newcastle upon Tyne must be designated as the appropriate place for a regional casino; the joint venture project must be selected as the appropriate site,and all applicable planing and licensing consents must be obtained.The proposed project would comprise a major mixed-use development including the regional casino. That fell through.

Click "hotels" on the link I provided and it confirms... "the site of the old Magpie Supporters Club, land acquired by Newcastle United some time ago"

In 2006 the club had £16.7M of net assets (land + players etc. minus debts), that was down from £56.1M in 1998... http://www.nufc-finances.org.uk/ I think the only land would be the stadium and academy, but I'm happy to be set right.

He likes to chase success on the cheap. Have you been to one of his shops? Fucking tat. Soon as he bought the club there were plain fruit of the loom T-shirts going for a fiver with shitty screen printed graphics on them in club shop. Proper harry ramp. It's more logical than thinking he bought us to detroy us like some kind of Dr Evil Spurs fan unphased by the personal cost of having us relegated. We're not even making an attempt to do things on the cheap, we're trying to do things without spending anything. Ashley was only shortly in credit with his transfrs for a moment after he first arrived...

He likes to chase success on the cheap. Have you been to one of his shops? Fucking tat. Soon as he bought the club there were plain fruit of the loom T-shirts going for a fiver in the club shop with shitty screen printed graphics on them. Proper harry ramp. It's more logical than thinking he bought us to detroy us like some kind of Dr Evil Spurs fan unphased by the personal cost of having us relegated.

Have you tried turning it off, waiting 5 minutes and turning it on again? My mother always thinks I'm a genius when I do that for her.

Carl Carlson

I think his was always a short term appointment for the transition period. Like getting Theo Paphitis in for a transition and once he's gone replacing him with David Brent.

Rather than having once worked for one of the chairman's old mate's?

Why should it just be the players deserting the sinking ship? Owen, Harper, Cacapa, Butt and Edgar's contracts are running down, but we're only trying to retain the services of Kinnear.

.com

I bloody hope so. It's a pain in the arse going to games.

To be fair, looking at that first quote, we've got an English speaking manager that wanted the job and is giving the kids a chance. He's not playing it on the carpet, but 3 out of 4 ain't bad.

The national press think we're going down too btw.... http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/20...e-middlesbrough

Quality, but this bit in particular resonates.

I think he's paid off whatever debt he has, because it'll cost him/the club money to finance the debt. I guess whatever debt is outstanding is future payments on players, which aren't accruing interest but have set installments. The 'fun' of owning the club probably lost whatever appeal it might have once held back in Septemper. Ironic really, Keegan is probably unique as a manager that COULD have taken THIS club forward on a limited budget.....if he was left to allocate that budget himself. Anyway, gone over it time and time again. Basically Ashley doesn't know how to run a club, whether for profit or trophies.

Aye I'm sure you can't in a more general corporate way, but NUFC does (or did) have pretty decent financial roots, and has always done ok even when saddled with large amounts of debt to service (without the success and world wide sales the likes of Man U have to rely on). So you think that's what we're running at and the Milner money is balancing that? As a PLC we ran at a total loss of £62M (just under £30M when you take out the dividends), so I don't think Ashley is raking it in at all. I think he's genuine in his commitment to running the club with a balanced sheet and reinvesting what profits there are, because he believes a frugal approach is in the best long term interests of the club, and his own investment. Not being a football man, he's not yet understood that unlike producing tracksuits, the cheapest labour isn't actually a plus point towards success.

The money was there to be spent (allegedly), it was a very different (if maybe not shocking now) proposition indeed if Milner was sold just to pay off "debt" instead. Irrespective of total spend, although Ashley could be making his overall balance even "better" this window. Surely if NUFC was operating at a loss Ashley would have mentioned it in some of his propaganda bits by now. It's bettter for him to run at a loss so he doesn't have to pay any tax, also he doesn't have to take out any loans to cover the loss because he's minted (unlike the last owners who borrowed away rather than cover it themselves). The smallest loss possible is best of course.

Not sure about this notion that Ashley has a £12M profit burning a hole in his pocket from the Milner sale. Taking the profit from that sale into account, he's still currently £9M down on transfers, before laying out on anyone in this window. An average spend of just £2.25M per window for a Premier league club is paltry enough without any exagerration.

Aye. Since neither of them have hardly played a game since their respective moves, I'd say they cancel each other out. Smith played more than 30 games last season IIRC. He might have been on the pitch, but he wasn't 'playing'.

If Kinnear had done his homework he'd know that the previous managers were fully aware of that fact but got bugger all backing to correct it As a couple of us have said, if you read between the lines, that's probably what he's getting at without actually criticising anyone at the club by saying "my chairman's incompetent and has a history of incompetence spanning several managers, not just me".