Happy Face

Unless i've misunderstood, would the swiss rambler table not give you that? I mean for a comparison with other clubs. He doesn't necessarily include those years' revenues in every write up he does for different clubs.

Aye. Was gonna say, the changeable exchange rate renders my year by year growth comparison entirely redundant. Unfortunately, I dunno where to find a similar amount of data in £'s on one page.

I'm guessing nothing note worthy was said? He said Nile Ranger will never play for him again. He's gonna get together with Tiote, Shola and Sammy and drive-by the mo-fo.

So they are, so they are. Ta.

Turnover from the Ramble.... Compared to Delloites "income"... 2005 - 128m 2006 - 124m 2007 - 129m 2008 - 125m 2009 - 101m http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deloitte_Football_Money_League Why the discrepancy? What do these numbers represent?

You seem to forget why I posted those stats originally, the question I was replying to was "how much should we be able to increase turnover to?" Logically to answer that you need to use comparable data, the fact we were in the Top 20 for previous years told you that there are comparable English teams in terms of size and Turnover ie those that were also up there. If they managed to sustain growth then there's no reason why we shouldn't have done also. Using Stoke, Portsmouth, Mackems or anyone else wouldn't have given a fair comparison because as seen by Stoke, you can have huge jumps for comparatively small differences in fortunes. But none of the teams you chose is really comparable data in my opinion. Man U and Liverpool are the 2 most succesful clubs in English history, they have a worldwide support unmatched by anyone else going back decades. Arsenal aren't far behind in terms of long term success. Chelsea and Man City have the wealthiest individual owners in the world too. If you're being realistic and want to compare like for like, as a club without any of the advantages of those listed above, as a club who have only temporarily made a dent on the top 30 without any sustained success, and without unlimited funds from our owners, we're more comparable to Tottenham, Villa, Everton, Fulham and West Ham. Of those, only Tottenham have (so far) been able to sustain their position at the top end of the money league. If Id taken Villa, Everton, West Ham or any other club that wasnt in a comparable position pre-Ashley then you could simply change the argument around. Man U have the biggest potential for dropping turnover, you could argue that at some stage they'll reach a plateau, that theres no more to be got and the only way is down yet they still continue to increase. I took the highest earning clubs, those that frankly would find it harder to increase turnover, the smaller you are, the bigger the potential is for increase. The teams I selected werent random they were those nearest to us in European turnover rankings. Interested to see what you would project what our income could have realistically been had Ashley not screwed it up. Feel free to use Stoke (who we class as a comparable team on the pitch these days) who as we've seen have increased turnover 6 fold in the same time or Blackpool that more than doubled theirs. You could use them but you know fine well that it wouldnt be realistic. If we were comparing how much more I could have been earning if Id changed jobs then I wouldnt use Branson, Ashley, Sugar and Gates as my yardstick, in the same way as I wouldnt take 6 random tramps from Benwell. Frankly, I haven't got a clue what we're even talking about here. If we're interested in looking at a specific club, then Chez has had it spot on for 3 posts running. Man U increased turnover over the last 5 years from extra tv money, extra prize money, expanding foreign markets and 10,000 extra seats on their stadium. How much of that could NUFC have realistically pursued without Ashley? In all liklihood, just the TV money, which required no effort beyond survival. Without getting specific, the chart I posted shows on average top clubs could hope for a 20% increase on revenue over 5 years if they managed to retain their position. We are not likely to have been able to match that given we didn't have the streams available as Chez explains. For the first 3 years of the comparison our income is pretty much static. That's prior to the relegation season and disaster. Think that's indicative of us hitting our own plateau at the 125-130m Euro mark.

Chez just threw a piece of chalk at us in the back row talking amongst ourselves.

You seem to forget why I posted those stats originally, the question I was replying to was "how much should we be able to increase turnover to?" Logically to answer that you need to use comparable data, the fact we were in the Top 20 for previous years told you that there are comparable English teams in terms of size and Turnover ie those that were also up there. If they managed to sustain growth then there's no reason why we shouldn't have done also. Using Stoke, Portsmouth, Mackems or anyone else wouldn't have given a fair comparison because as seen by Stoke, you can have huge jumps for comparatively small differences in fortunes. But none of the teams you chose is really comparable data in my opinion. Man U and Liverpool are the 2 most succesful clubs in English history, they have a worldwide support unmatched by anyone else going back decades. Arsenal aren't far behind in terms of long term success. Chelsea and Man City have the wealthiest individual owners in the world too. If you're being realistic and want to compare like for like, as a club without any of the advantages of those listed above, as a club who have only temporarily made a dent on the top 30 without any sustained success and without unlimited funds from our owners, we're more comparable to Tottenham, Villa, Everton, Fulham and West Ham. Of those, only Tottenham have (so far) been able to sustain their position at the top end of the money league.

To get around how fiddly it is to choose which teams to include/omit over the years, if you want to see how much similar clubs have pushed on from where we were when we were amongst it, you could just compare the Delloite top 20 list year on year... But despite it being accurate, what does it tell you? That there's more money in the game? We all know that. EDIT: NUFC highlighted

I havent cherry picked though, Ive taken the English teams who were close to us in terms of Earnings ie those in the top 20 Rich List. Its better to compare the fortunes of those like teams than others because you can argue they all had the same chances ie had excellent income therefore its how its used that matters. We could take Stoke, Blackpool, West Brom, Birmingham if you want...... Blackpool: Increased from £3.92m to £9m (129.59%) West Brom: 35.54m to 47m (32.24%) Birmingham: 40.11m increased to 56.4m (40.61%) Stoke...........seriously, are you ready for this...........£7.59m to £53.5m (604.87%) So using those 4 as the yardstick instead then the average is 201.82% increase... meaning we should be on £259.26m I havent done it yet but Id be willing to bet that across the whole PL we're in the bottom 3 for turnover increase over that time period. You're still cherry picking. What about other Champions League qualifiers Leeds Utd and Blackburn Rovers, or European contenders in the Premier league years, like Norwich City and Nottingham Forest? You've included Manchester City, they were never n the top 20 with us. I don't know what the average would be so I'm not suggesting we've done well in terms of growth comparably...but it's "zombie stats" (painting the picture you want to see rather than the truth) which gives statistics a bad name. "You can prove anything with statistics" they say, well no, you can't, if you do it properly and include ALL the members of a group or a suitably randomised selection, then you'll get the truth to pretty accurate percentage of certainty. Sorry, but it's a bugbear of mine.

Is Coloccini getting all the votes because of a last minute winner in our last game? Having conceded 3 in that game and having been entirely to blame for the goal conceded at Villa he's not exactly consistent. [/devils advocate]

He's on Talksport right now. Empty platitudes so far. Can't see him saying owt interesting.

To be fair it's not really statistically honest to cherry pick the top 6 teams in the league currently and show how their fortunes have fared. What you need to do is go back to 2007 and look at ALL the Premier League teams from then. We finished below Boro, Portsmouth and Reading in 06/07, the season before Ashley picked up the reins. Comparitively, I'd imagine our revenue looks much healthier.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_gr...dman/index.html

We've got CT to thank for it IYAM. He left and the discussion flourished.

The first question is demonstrably true and unarguable. The second I think I answered in my post. It is forgiveable to be relegated and (although patently done with only self-interest in mind) commendable to stick at it and secure a quick return. Though I guess these are just rhetorical questions leading up to your main point. IF it shows the risk of a high wage bill though, then it seems strange for Llambias to be shouting about a 7% increase in wages as a proportion of tunover. Hardly a lesson learned if the current decision-making they suggest is to increase the wage bill to 65%. Another lesson to learn could have been that you either keep your best players or fill positions where you're lacking in any quality so as NOT to get relegated in the first place, but the lack of investment in a striker seems to suggest THAT lesson hasn't been learned either. The fact i don't believe his claims about wages, or that the plan has changed according to lessons learned since we sold Given and N'zogbia is what's unforgiveable. No argument here. It's the point that Alex was making to TP earlier though. When do we choose to seperate Ashley from 'the club' and vice versa? The club doesn't have the money, but Ashley does. His decision entirely as to how much of his wealth he puts on the line. But the claim is that we'll start reinvesting in the squad properly once the club is supporting itself. With £140m+ of debt to be paid off that will be a long long way off. Yep. Again this shows up the ambition of climbing the table as a club that pays it's own way though. If even the smaller clubs like Fulham have an owner willing to give interest free loans up to £180m, then we're going to struggle to challenge them and pay off the debt and accrue no further debts....like Llambias says we will.

Yep. Is it unrealistic to expect better than relegation/12th place for £280m of investment? Or even for £70m if you take into account that £140m went to the previous owners and £70m to the banks on day 1. No it's not. But expectation and actual achievement are often at irreconcilable (in a volatile environment - as football is). £X in, does not = Y league position. Should we have gone down, no, but we did. Not sure what your point is tbh. I don't disagree with anything in your earlier post BTW Just a response to you and Chez who are suggesting hatred of Ashley clouds the view of financial reality. Think I was pretty clear that I understand the financial reality if he wants to stop spending money now. What I hate is statements saying we'll "make sure that Newcastle United is self-financing, which in turn will allow us to invest in the squad, our youth development system and our facilities, without having to rely on additional financial support from the owner. There aren’t many clubs in England who can hope to achieve that." There are many clubs where the owners don't put money in...they either have a lot of other debt or thy're not investing in the squad, youth and/or facilities. They're selling a pipe dream.

Think Tiote will get back to his best At least until January 31st

Yep. Is it unrealistic to expect better than relegation/12th place for £280m of investment? Or even for £70m if you take into account that £140m went to the previous owners and £70m to the banks on day 1.

The £20m a year comment was made a few years back, I doubt now whether he's prepared to put any more money into the club at all. Whatever his approach was or is, it shows that he knows as well as any of us that it needs investment to succeed. The arguments for being tight and having a mediocre team are legitimate, and the arguments for pushing the boat out and trying to compete are too. Which is why it's an argument that's gone on here for years and years. The only question is what sort of owner you have and what he can afford. It's our great misfortune to have a bloke who's spent enough to be making a challenge....but he's spent it reactively on losses rather than pro-actively on building revenue, without ever coming close to success. That sort of incompetence would be forgiveable. The suggestion that we're now going to climb the table and prove a great success, without any investment, is a contradiction of what we all know and what he said himself.

Not sure why the "break even" cheerleaders even see it as an issue. Most of us understand a club needs investment. For all his protestations about running a break even operation, Mike Ashley understands that he's required to put his own money into the club. He said himself he was willing to do so, to the tune of £20m a season. Having bought the club for £140m, now in his fifth year (5 x £20m = £100m), he's only spent about 10% more than he had gone into it expecting to. The problem is he's spent too much of it covering losses that were to a large extent down to him and entirely avoidable, rather than spending it on the squad.

A lot of what TP says is spot on. A lot of what you say is spot on.

You often post links, without saying what I'm looking at. Saying Shepherd was struggling to pay the mortgage isn't the same as saying he shouldn't have taken out the mortgage...if that's what you're getting at.

http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2010/12/ne...-black-and.html So having expanded the stadium at a cost of £42m, the outstanding mortgage 8 years later was £45m. Unbelievable tbh. It doesn't include the £25m of other loans Ashley had to repay upon arrival or the £41m of working capital that had to follow it soon after. In that time Shepherd/Hall took a combined total of £150m OUT of the club into their own pockets.

http://www.nufc-finances.org.uk/ Can anyone see it?