Rayvin

I think the size of the club will start to be significant in League One. They're a bigger club than Blackburn and Wigan, and will require far less spending to win L1 than they would have to stay up in the Championship. But sure, they could fail. I hope they do. But I'm not counting on it.

Right but, that sounds like a medium to long term strategy. I do get that they would make more money if they were to do the same sorts of things, but that has to be at least a 3-5 year pay off. They're in financial peril way before anything like that comes in to save them. I honestly think they'd need to be back in the PL in order to be financially sustainable enough to make that strategy feasible. And again, how much money would that take? If Short doesn't think they're going back to the PL any time soon, I don't think League One or the Championship makes any difference to him. Especially when you consider that they probably will be promoted from L1 at first time of asking, and that they will be less burdened by their PL era wages. And like I said, Short might well be a billionaire, but it's unlikely he has spare tens of millions kicking around in bank accounts. It'll all be tied up in businesses. Those businesses might be performing well - why pull out of successful ventures to free up funding for Sunderland?

Which players could the mackems sell for large profits, exactly? Have you considered as well that Short simply might not have the liquid assets to do this? Same as Ashley. He will have made the best decision possible with the information at his disposal.

He's selling the club for nothing though. All he's asking is that someone takes on the debt. And I don't see that the club is hugely less attractive being in League 1 with £150m of debt than it is in the Championship with £180m of debt. At the end of the day, the man isn't an idiot - he's a successful businessman who made his money in asset stripping iirc. I'm tempted to think he knows what he's doing, and is surrounded by some very savvy financial people. The idea that they looked at January and just blithely dismissed the likelihood of being relegated for the sake of saving a few million because they didn't/couldn't appreciate that falling into League One will make the club harder to sell, without some pretty solid reasoning, is bizarre.

Is he trying to accumulate? He's trying to get out as far as I can see. I think he's putting the minimum amount of money in that he can in order to sell as soon as possible. The more money he 'loans' the club, the more potential buyers have to pay for it, and the less likely he is to get his sale.

He must be looking at them and thinking administration is very possible. If that's true, why increase his level of exposure? It'd be fucking mental to do so. The club isn't sustainable, he can't keep throwing his own money at it and papering over the cracks, it needs significant, structural change.

I'd argue that the man has to stop throwing money in at some point, and given that the club already owes him about £100m and he has no real affinity for it, that the time has come. They stood no chance of promotion next season even with parachute payments, primarily because the parachute payments, along with Short's money, are being used to keep the place afloat. The matter has moved out of the arena of football, and is now just financial. We know this is correct because you're basically saying that you think the man has gambled incorrectly due to incompetence, despite having spent plenty of his own money in the past - and I'm saying that he's looked at the cold facts of the matter and concluded that spending more money now will only see him lose more in the long run. He's backed the 'football' decisions before, and they've landed him in this mess. It's a business decision, and it was the right one. He might even be able to ship out a few high contract players as a result of the drop to League One. They already have reduced attendances, reduced player sale revenues need to be stood against reduced transfer fees, and I don't think commercial revenue will change that significantly since the championship makes a fraction of what the PL does in this respect anyway.

How much is relegation from the Championship to League One actually going to cost him? I bet it won't be as much as £30m.

Not just the Corbynistas, also the Daily Mail comment sections and most right thinking people

Leaving the NUFC stuff to the side for now, since it'll inevitably come up later, I totally get Short's position on this. At some point you have to cut your losses - he's thrown fucking loads of money at Sunderland over the years and they just keep sinking. He has a high interest loan of what, £80m or something, falling due in 2019... it sounds like he's propping them up to the tune of £500k/week anyway... They are fucked. He isn't going to save them. He'd be fucking mad to do so.

The case appears to be that we can't confirm that it came from Russia. Not yet at least. All I'm saying is that maybe we should have approached this with a considered, and evidence supported assessment. And potentially have said what the truth is. That it is highly likely that Russia was behind it, but that we don't actually fucking know. What we said instead, was:

I had to search for it on the Daily Mail, but at least their comment sections are ripping Johnson a new one.

I don't watch RT at all. And I do think it is probably Russia, even though I still don't see what they stand to gain really given how this has gone. But it's interesting that had we followed Corbyn's example, we'd look a lot less fucking stupid now.

My £40m includes those two. So for me it's those two plus a striker will be enough to ensure we're not in a relegation fight. Don't buy this idea that every club always needs to spend crazy money to stay up. Burnley's net spend last year was -£15m. Only 5 teams spent more than £40m last season and they're all top ten teams. We have a young team being developed by a world class manager - we need to spend enough that this manager stays, IMO. And my view is that Ashley will see this, and will recognise that failing to do so will see us lose said manager, and risk relegation. I think we would be fine against relegation next season with if all three loanees were signed permanently (assuming Slimani is actually any good). I think £40m+ net is required to achieve this. I think the teams you mentioned will be net spending about what they did last season. Nowhere near net £60m. Villa and Wolves won't net spend £60m either. But again, different situation to Sunderland. All those clubs get £100m a year from the PL. Sunderland would get what, £10m? For Short's £30m? Throwing good money after bad. It's just a bad decision.

Um, no. The criticism I got over my feelings on this were predominantly based around the notion that Ashley 'gambled' by not spending in Jan '17, which could have cost us promotion, that he did so again in Summer '17 at the risk of relegation, and that he did so again Jan '18 at the risk of relegation. This summer, if we don't spend, it's at the risk of relegation. Not at the expense of ambition. I'm fairly sure that's most people's position on this. Even if it is expressed through the prism of 'Rafa will leave if he doesn't 'show ambition', and we will get relegated'. So I would say they're both looking at the same thing, albeit the mackems have a more horrific relegation than the one we would have faced. He did spend money on the McClaren scenario true, that's a decent counter point. Although he would have made that back if we stayed up. Short, had he kept Sunderland up, would not have made the £30m back. If anything, he would have had to keep spending.

I don't think she can even do anything here. If she sacks him it's going to look like UK acknowledgment that Russia might not be behind it, and then all the world leaders who rallied to our cause are going to be pretty pissed. If only we'd followed the fucking conventions and standard procedure before flying off the handle for a quick PR win

Worth pointing out that CT wasn't the only one who bought this hook, line and sinker

Yeah I know that's the prevailing opinion. I stand by my thinking on it. But all I'm saying here is that NUFC spending £40m from money it actually has is not the same as Ashley putting in £40m himself, which is what Short would have had to do in January.

I think we'll spend because the club actually has the money to do so, not because I expect Ashley is going to dig deep for £40m.

^ This.

@Christmas Tree Thoughts?

On BoJo: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/04/boris-johnson-liability-porton-down-russia With the standout paragraph for me being: A functional British press would have investigated whether our foreign secretary may have lied to the world about the activities of another country, but alas the media’s leading lights were too busy implying Jeremy Corbyn’s attempts at urging caution were evidence of some kind of fervent lack of patriotism. Here we have two responses to foreign policy: one is based on the careful examination of the evidence and employing diplomacy, the other involves rushing headlong into a conflict with a heavily armed superpower.

I hope you're right tbh, but they have to stop falling at some point.

Depends how long Short is prepared to keep them afloat. They could turn it around if they can offload the chancers and essentially become a 'small club'.

Based on the fact that two of the teams who fell out of the Championship last year are both incompetent (Blackburn, Wigan) and are currently 1st and 3rd respectively.