peasepud

Theyre now walking round the estate with car keys looking for his other cars.

Theyve just taken his Lambo away on the back of a truck

Somethings going on at his place, couple of copper cars been there for the last few hours and theres both CID and normal rozzers wandering in and out with blue gloves on.

The odds on gettting to the final and not meeting at least one of Man U, Chelsea and Arsenal along the way are remote. If nothing else you'll get one in the final. As much as I hark for a Wembley trip I want to minimise the chances of getting stuffed there. Id rather therefore get knocked out now by Arsenal than at Wembley. If we do that then I want Man U at home in the next round. Then I'll really believe its ours. Considering the manner in which we beat Chelsea at their place then this has to be seen as winnable. We the fans need to be in top form though, out singing their fans and harrassing their players at every touch.

That would be class.........

Finally someones come out of the woodwork I can pop my head up now. I quite enjoy his show on Absolute radio on a Sunday morning

If youve got Luque as -1 then surely we need Xisco also -1

This is where everything starts to get messed up though, the same criticisms can be levelled at Ashley/Llambias. The Lee Bowyer summer - not sure how any of that could be levelled at the chairman, just as if we had the same now, I wouldnt be blaming Ashley. Nicky Butt instead of Carrick - again, how does that reflect on the chairman? the manager buys the players. Under the same logic, you could argue Alan Smith instead of a footballer. Appointing of Souness/undermining of Robson - I'll give you that one as its one of the most bizarre combinations of decisions Ive ever witnessed, yes we needed discipline but not by installing the Premierships shittest manager. Im fairly sure though that LM would concede that one. However I see your Souness and raise you a Joe Kinnear. Roeder has earned the job bollocks - Again, Id agree a shite decision but it only differs from Hughton with the benefit of hindsight. Almost identical statements were made by both Shepherd and Llambias about "top managers knocking on their doors wanting the job". Difference between Roeder and Houghton though was that Roeder had already managed other clubs, Hughton had only done it with us the previous season and tbf hadnt done well. As Ive said before, I disliked Shepherd immensely, I thought he'd taken the club as far as he could and it was going dowhill like a car with the handbrake half on. Trouble is that handbrake was then released by Ashley. I agree there was a need to sort the finances out, my disagreement all along is that I dont see what Ashley has done so far as having anything other than a negative impact on the debt. Yes hes reduced costs, especially players wages but at the same time hes reduced imcome even more so theres no gain. Yes our loans are now interest free but at the same time theyre way higher than they were. For the debt to be repaid and Ashley get his money back then any potential purchaser would now need well in excess of £300m. It will be a long time before this club is worth that kind of money to an investor. The test of Ashley will come in 24 games time. If we buy Ben Arfa then I'll think hes realised.

Varies. Last time I was down for two and a half weeks that was mid-late May early June time, before that I was only down twice that year. I've got to go down twice the rest of this year next week, and mid december. It's usually when there's a free piss up, I've won and award or there's an issue. Usually 6 to 8 times a year so am down there anything up to two months, and I always hate every minute apart from Christmas party. Im getting the words "Jewish colleague"

Tell you what this planning committee is doing well so far, first the signs at SJP and now this....

I was sure it was this fella, Brian F O'Byrne from Brotherhood and Heroes. Spit of him!

Fuck PMs for a download, get it posted on here

Fuck me

What are you on about? Where have I tried to make out anything about the stadium debt other than to point out that it wasn't down to Ashley. Also, have you got any links to quotes that Ashley was whinning like fuck? The only time I have seen him mention the extra debt was when he said that he would have still bought the club if he had known about it. That would be the begging phone call he made to Deloittes the day after he bought the club, shouting at them to "ring the Chinese and see if theyre still interested".

It was 5.9m and not payable until 6 months later. Good business that like considering we were dealing with the worlds richest club who were desperate to get Given

Im guessing its way higher than that, I assume you're working on the assumption of income being the same which as HF says is well down and I think its way more than we realise. We have little in the way of sponsorship, our main sponsor paid a fraction of what they did previously. Corporate is well down, Spurts Direct advertising boards around the ground are now in the majority so theres a major loss in income there. Merchandising, season ticket sales, pies n pints are all way below what they used to be when wages were 70%. My argument all along is that theres a more sensible way to reduce the percentage of wages to turnover and thats to increase the turnover. The option taken was the shopkeeper method, ie sack staff, close shops and make savings there. This isnt a chain of charver clothes shops its a football club which only makes real money when its competing. We also have to remember that any loss made by Shepherd included the 5m or so p/a that was paid in interest charges on the £70m debt, Ashely doesnt have that cost so there should have instantly been a £5m improvement, yet the opposite appears to have happened.

Maybe it should be made clear by local businesses etc that any company taking on the work of erecting these signs will be boycotted.

I dont believe I am. The 2006/07 season would have ran from Aug 2006 to May 2007. Ashley bought Halls shares in May 2007 and Shepherds in the June so he came into the club at the end of the 2006/07 season ie directly after the end of the season being talked about by Deloittes. If the article means to report a profit in 2006/07 then thats badly worded to say the least but again I would imagine thats not the case seeing as how it wasnt written about until May 2008.

You would have thought your granny would have at least warned you Kev, bad crack that like.

tbf I was calling you thick because you would actually believe the club!

Then you clearly have sealed your place as a WUM. Deloittes are the football analysts, they have access to the books, therefore it was the club saying the profit was made you thick fuck. Deloittes dont randomly guess, they analyse the accounts of the clubs, they research every aspect and they're data is used by sensible people when buying a football club...oh and its also used by daft fucks when buying a club rather than do due diligence. Ashley employed Deloittes while purchasing us, he also made a call to them two days later begging them to sell it on for him, trouble was they told him where to go because he refused to take their advice (ie do due diligence) when buying it.

Firstly, the club had £69m debt at the end of the 06/07 season, more importantly though they were one of only 8 Premiership clubs to make a profit (£6.8m) so Im a little lost as to where this "club in the shit before Ashley" line ever comes from. Ashley reckoned that he lent the club £111m on taking over to "pay some of the debt off, not all of it but some". How is that when the season before we had £69m? where did the other £42m magically appear from? So anyway in 07/08 we were £111m and near the start of the 08/09 season we were told that MA was covering the losses of half a million per week so that equates to £26m putting us £137m in debt however there was also a £30m overdraft on top of the Ashley debt so by my reckoning we were £167m in debt at the end of 08/09 we then lost £30m through relegation putting us almost £200m in debt. We clearly lost money last season but then got promoted and a statement was made that we'd cleared £25m of debt through that so I reckon conservatively we're £180m+ in debt at this point in time. SO..back to my question, how can we say that we were in the shit when we were only one of 8 clubs to make a profit?

Yup, expect him to be dropped on 24 games