Leon

It. Could. Happen. (Please don't take away my last glimmer of hope)

I'm still holding onto the hope that the takeover will go through and they announce Benitez as their first recruitment. It could happen.

They only have the parachute payments as long as Short receives his payments otherwise they default to him if I recall correctly.

Debenhams will either make him invest as a reliable revenue source to ensure we remain a premiership team or sell us as soon as he can so he can cash out and invest in his high street empire. It has to be better than the limbo he has us in.

Promotion? They're going to win the Checkatrade trophy which will have us seething so much we'll all be throwing ourselves from the Tyne Bridge.

While I'd delight in them having another season in League One I don't think it'll happen, unfortunately. They'll miss out on the automatic promotion and then get lucky in the playoffs which will send RTG into overdrive of how much better it is that way and they wouldn't have wanted to finish in the top two because that would have been predicable.

Have they found a striker yet?

That 40,000 target included a huge push of free tickets to the local schools.

Is he still injured? After their goal he started limping in the box but I was sure if that was to cover his mistake or if he's not yet fit.

You owe me a new keyboard. This one is now covered in a tea / spit cocktail!

Hey, I just provided the keyboard shortcut to your solution; your solution being the right one!

If you're changing an existing formula, click on the cell reference in the formula bar and press F4. This will add the "$" for you.

Maybe but... Forget it's Newcastle for one moment.. Any new super league would need to be generating at least the £150m TV monies which is what the Premiership winner received last season for the lowest positioned team in that new competition otherwise any of the current top six clubs could stay and potentially dominate the Premiership with lower costs in a similar way Celtic has in the Scottish leagues; they become the big fish in a smaller pond. If you could invest to get into that league as one of the 16 with a no relation clause, which is what the proposal is, you could make a push for that membership then sit back with minimal investment from that point forward since it doesn't matter if you come bottom as you can't be kicked out. In theory if he stuck 150m* into the club he would see a bigger return in three seasons than what he has today with much less risk. That isn't investing in a football club, it's solely a business opportunity. Ashley has a history of doing this; investing large sums for a long term windfall (HoF, Debenhams, Evans etc.) - this wouldn't be any different and I really do think he'll have looked at it the moment it was mentioned in the press. (*That isn't what I think we need, just an example number for the purpose of the return on investment.) For this January he'll invest only enough to avoid relegation because he doesn't want to lose money in the Championship. What I think he'll do is bring in a big name just to say "we now have X playing for the club, I've listened and look at how I've brought in for us." This is the same power tactic he's done before when he brought in Shearer and Benítez as we struggled with relegation in the vain hope he'd be seen as a the hero.

I agree which is why I think he'll have looked at it when it was announced. If the expected minimum return for a team in that league is greater than what he expects to receive in the Premiership then I could see him spending enough to get into the league and given they've said those first eleven teams would be automatically excluded from any relegation, he'd see it as profit since he'd have a team which was always there regardless of how little he then invested.

I think he see's it as a cup run with the potential of a poor return (about 4.3 million I believe) if you don't do well on top of the investment to get a Champion League position. He doesn't give a crap about the clubs success and looks at the ROI before anything else taking a steady 100m for 17th with little or no investment rather than gambling x millions for a higher position with the risk of not making it back. Would a £20m striker got us the extra 30 points we would have needed to get to a Champions League spot? If we failed then the TV money wouldn't have covered that investment. He only cares about the money he can take out of the club and he doesn't get that spending it.