OTF

Still has a fat head though. His greatest contribution to the NUFC cause were his efforts as a Spurs players in some classic Newcastle victories. But good luck to him. They're in fine form at the moment and I hope they continue to perform.

Lovenkrands making a late World Cup surge?

NEWCASTLE UNITED IN BIG STORYLINE COMING SHOCKER

If there is an element of truth in the statement then it's probably a case of around 7 million coming out in a particular month - that's entirely possible if it was over the offseason when a lot of our players were sold generating MUCH higher than usual income. There's a big difference between around 7 million a month, and around 7 million in a month.

That makes no sense at all. How could you be taking more out of the club each month than is being generated? The only way would be to be making loans against the value of the club, putting the club further into debt. Of course that would be an incredibly ridiculous thing to do because if you intend to sell the club it would make it nigh on impossible to do, or if you intend to keep the club the costs of servicing the loans will be greatly in excess of any profits a wonderful businessman like Mike Ashley could make off that sort of capital. If he is somehow managing to take out 7 million each month, despite the fact that the club does not bring in profits like that each quarter (let-alone-month) then it's flat out not a 'profit' in any way shape or form and the statement is blatantly wrong.

7 million a month! You've got to be kidding. When your 'source' tells you something like this it's time to get a new source. If it was true we'd never get rid of Ashley. Assuming the club was worth £100 mill that would be an 84% annual return!

Getting Chopra back would be a piss-poor option. He's custom made for the Championship. In the Premier League he'd be about as useful as Mido at a Weight Watchers meeting. Plus his price is ridiculously inflated.

He's clearly taking the piss with the bolded part. Nonetheless he's exactly right. Getting in some good players now will help to get us over the promotion line IMO. We've had a lot of last gasp wins in the first half of the season, if you take them away we could easily be only sitting in a playoff position now. If we only nab a playoff position it's like a lottery as to whether we'll get through. We need to take advantage of our position now, not simply rest on our laurels and hope for the best. We've had a good run with injuries in the first part of the season, if that doesn't continue in the second we'll be in trouble pretty quickly with our current squad.

Should be valued based upon ongoing revenue, as well as the value of all assets of the club (including players). In terms of revenue we should be an attractive proposition. £70-80m would still be realistic IMO given the sale of several players since the original 'valuation' of 100. Ashley will think that reentry into the premier league will allow him to increase the value - this is true because of the increased revenue from television rights, however the risk of an immediate relegation will be very real particularly if there is no investment into the team in the current transfer window and more pertinently if the 'sale' (or mock sale) at the end of the season prevents the required investment into the squad over the close of season.

If he doesn't sell it's because of one of two reasons: (i) The club isn't the money pit that they try to make out it is (ii) There's no serious buyers

Nah, the £50m relates to the Trust having already raised as per Ja's post in the Yes We can thread. Stuff will be coming out over the next few days though about Ashley. My source is a good un and I believe its going to be big stuff. <drumroll> Does it involves monkeys launching a bid?

Trying to look for a positive - this will act as a warning for the remainder of this tournament and also for the WC. Of course SA is nothing like Angola, but even still you have to prepare for the worst.

I hope we jut leave our offer on the table and say nought more. Leeds are desperate to sell him now before he goes for nothing, despite what they say. It's 1.5 million for less than 6 months of having the player.

What you do in your own time is of no interest to us on the boards.

And here we are, on the cusp of either gaining promotion or spectacularly failing to do so. We were at a similar junction last season in the January window except we were on the cusp of maintaining our premier league status. Ashley sold some of our better players and as a result we spectacularly were relegated. Surely the f'n retards cannot engineer another spectacular f'up. If they want to tight arse it along with no forward vision we may gain promotion this season, but we'll immediately be staring down the barrel of relegation.

Fair point well made. If Hughton has decided that Beckford is a player he wants and Ashley won't front up with an extra half mill to help bring him in that's piss-poor considering the amount that has been made on outgoing transfers in recent times. This is regardless of whether we think Beckford is worth that sort of money. I think thougj, that Hughton is looking at Beckford as an opportunity signing. Not someone he wants at all costs, but someone he'll take a chance on if the price is right. Holding true to our valuation of the player in this case is fair enough. We'd all love it if Ashley was to reinvest even half of the money made from the sales of Milner, N'Zogbia, Duff, Given and Martins. That'd be 6 (Milner) + 3 (N'Zogbia) + 1.5 (Duff) + 3 (Given) + 4.5 (Martins) = 18 million pounds. That amount isn;t even taking into account the money saved on wages over the 6 months that we've not had them. That'd be enough to flat out ensure that we gain promotion to the Premier League, and would give us a decent shot of having a squad that could finish midtable in the top tier, all whilst being on much lower wages that we were with a team that was relegated (albeit in extenuating circumstances).

No sense in paying more for a player than they're worth or than they're worth to us.

I've not seen a great deal of him, but he didn't seem to be express pace (perhaps similarly paced to Milner). Seemed best suited to a central role - one area where he might find it hard to crack a spot with the popularity of Smith and Nolan.

That's the challenge in it, nobody knows.

Should have retired a few season ago IMO, or at least been used in emergencies only. He was an everpresent in the side that was relegated last season, IMO badly to the detriment of our ability to create goals. He may prove to be valuable for the remainder of the season but we must at all costs ensure this is the last ever season that he laces up his boots for Newcastle United (unless it's just to sit in the dugout as a cheaply paid trainer).

Nolan was once a pretty decent PL player. O'Hara is a better shout than Beckford except that we'd be signing Beckford permanently and O'Hara would only be on loan. I wonder what sort of money it would take to get him on a permanent basis. Probably way too much.

From what I've heard Beckford is a player that needs chances to score goals. Chances do not come easily at Newcastle, even in the Championship. Once we're in the Premier League they'll be at a premium. What we need as you say is some midfielders who can create chances. Particularly we're lacking this down the right. If you look at the Newcastle teams on the 90s and early 2000s we had players in our midfield with pace who could create or score themselves. Strikers might score goals but there's few out there who create them. Beckford isn't a creator. We can fill our side with as many goal scoring forwards as we like, but if there's noone to create goals then they're not going to score. Ranger and Lovenkrands are both reasonably pacy, should force Beckford to have a showdown with them before we even consider buying him. From standstill running 20 yards, timing your run to meet a Jonas Gutierrez cross, and running with the ball for 30-40 yards. If he doesn't come out considerably ahead of Lovenkrands and Ranger then there's no point. The 1.5 million would be better spent on some pace and creativity in midfield so that I don't have to see Danny Guthrie miss-employed on the right side of midfield ever again.

I'd have to disagree with you there The Fish. I think he's a solid option for us, one that should be looked into. The one thing against us moving for him is that he just signed a new 4 year contract for Tottenham, so if we wanted to subsequently buy him it wouldn't be cheap. I'm not convinced that we'd be able to give him a lot of football here, or that we should give him a lot of football here given that he's likely to only be a short term loanee. Lets not forget that he's with Portsmouth at the minute and they're sitting dead last. They do have an option on him for the remainder of the season, however with their money problems they may not wish to pursue it (at this moment it seems it will be a miracle if they don't get relegated).

We just have to stick to our guns with Beckford, which I think is what Hughton intends to do. Not be swayed by recent media, or Leeds talk of him not being able to go on the cheap. We're in the position of power. Set a limit on what we're willing to offer and a limit on the wages he would earn. If Leeds keep him then good luck to them. If he doesn't sign a new contract with them, they've potentially missed out on a hefty sum of money for not having a players services for less than 6 months (and who knows he could get an injury and be missing for a large chunk of that).