peasepud

FYP

Cheers for that guv, the makers of the programme sent me the clip but I cant be arsed to upload to youtube, anyone feel free to.... http://www.toontastic.net/peasepud/keegan_steps.avi

Hopes Ashley realises that you cant run a football club as a you do a shop and that it needs football people running it not greasy casino managers. Realising his maistakes in the treatment of past heroes he pulls together Keegan and Shearer to oversee all things football related. Expectations Ashley promotes Llambias to "grand chief of all he surveys" while bringing in the editor of "A Love Supreme" as chief executive and making the board up of 3 kids in hoodies from Walthamstow, his pet dog and one of the blokes from the background of East 17, you know one of the two that nobody can name who just danced around looking daft. In our first game, away to Wigan, Geoff Keegan decides that its not fair leaving out the girls and insists on playing Spuggie and Jill Halfpenny up front while banning Ant n Dec from the tuck shop. Meanwhile Harry Shearer spends more time entertaining the youth team with his Bart Simpson voice than actually training them. We lose 6 nil and its all downhill from there.

Alan fucking Smith? Extended contract?

I think we tinkered with the idea a good while ago (probably when they opened theirs) of setting up our own but having t-shirts specific to this site rather than toon related. Sayings and quotes from specific members or threads..... "Thats quite a range" springs to mind as one.

Well that questions now answered. RIP Corey kidda

Nope. I wish you were too

Yep, its a confusing one that, its clearly taken from the University, the Trent is at the top of the curve of houses nearest the camera with the road to the East stand heading straight up what throws you is the building in the fore at the right of the image, it looks just like the old Metreological office which was behind the Gallowgate and which must be just out of shot on the pic.

This is the trouble with these threads and maybe its us as people, our comprehension of good and bad chairmen, owners and directors is based on what we remember personally. Like Leazes I remember the really bad days, back when we were 2nd division, a crumbling stadium and owners who really really didnt give a shit as long as they got to take their pound of flesh out of this club. My recollection is hazier than LMs though because Im younger Reading the history books will tell you who owned us, who scored what goal in whichever glorious 2nd division game. It wont however invoke the feeling of desperation and belief that "this is it", this is our lot, destined to be 2nd division nothings, push for promotion and lose out or maybe get it but have a shit season (or 2 if we're lucky) in the top flight before bombing back down. If you remember those days then you'll see Shepherd and Hall in a better light. Those on here however that are under the age of about 25 will not have any real memory of that (its not your fault its just how it is), all you know is Shepherd/Hall and then Ashley. Even if you're 20 now though, the real good stuff will have passed you before you could appreciate it. The euphoric promotion season, the charge on the Premiership, the resulting games among Europes (and arguably the Worlds) greatest teams plus two FA Cup finals are all now distant memories. For those of you born 1990 onwards you were 10 when it was all over, you missed it. What you got was the constant drip of mediocre managers and the ill treatment (not just by the board but by some fans also) of what could have been our greatest ever manager. What you saw was us dropping down the table and losing ground all the time. None of that however should take the focus away from what Ashley has done to our club, we cant permanently go on measuring things he does against some bits of what Shepherd did, we cant selectively look at the two regimes and say "well ok you give me Champions League football but I give you an allegedly tidy balance sheet" Its not Top Trumps, not a game of "who did what for/to NUFC". This is the here and now, this is the present and what we have is an owner who by his own admission has cocked up, we have a chairman who has not the slightest clue on football or any care about the club hes in charge of. Yes he wants to see us win but he doesnt give a shit for any other reason than its better for the sales and the profit margin. To contrast that against the previous regime and argue that the purchase of players back then was the wrong thing to do then you obviously werent old enough to remember the times, it was that very same purchase of big name, expensive players that got us those good times and made this club into one of the 20 richest in the world. Without those purchases we wouldnt have had Shearer, no Local Hero, no testimonial, Englands number 1 would have always been someone elses not ours. It wouldnt really have mattered though because we wouldnt have had half the team to go with him, no Ginola, no Ferdinand, no Asprilla, none of those names that we recount when giving those glowing testimonials of amazing games past. This isnt a Shepherd arse lick post, at the end I was as sick of him as the rest of you, I cant stand here and say (as Leazes rightly can...and does regularly ) "I told you so" because he did and I told him to fuck off, that "anything has to be better than what we have". I was wrong, anything is clearly not better than the past as has being proven time and time again throughout the last couple of years. Its time to stop comparing Shepherd to Ashley in the financial world because frankly we havent seen just how badly this club is in the shit and I suspect we never will do until its too late. Its amazing though that some people can even contemplate arguing about how we're financially secure under Ashley when the club themselves regularly put out "oh fuck we're dying on our arses financially" statements. Compare the two where it matters however, out there on the pitch and the past regime become absolute fucking saints compared to this lot and that is where it matters as far as Im concerned.

When the works done then hopefully we'll have a fully searchable database of all the data any of us can tap into. You're quite handy with Excel though arent you?

Fuck me these are good! Trouble is theyre going to take a bit of work to get them into a useable format as its not straight forward comma seperated data. A bit of work but not impossible, top work Rob man!

In 98 we were one victory against a Chelsea team playing in plimmas because of a cup final away from going down. I think it was 3 or 4 points in the end but without that victory we would have gone into the last day with at least the possibility of going down. This was due to the Ferdinand sale combined with the Shearer injury - the former being Ashley-esque in its stupidity. Wasnt that because we were a Plc though and the "shareholders" demanded the sale before the end of the financial year? At the same time, it was Hall and Co who ultimately put us in that position so swings n roundabouts like. Either way though, yes Shepherd was in charge at times when we nearly went down but the magic word is nearly, Ashley managed it fairly damn quickly

Was hoping to find it on Youtube but nowt

ESPN are looking for the bloke who was arguing with Keegan when he came out to defend the sale of Cole. Does anyone have any idea of who he is or have a copy it on video anywhere?

Shearer would have been a much bigger draw to potential new players whereas its more likely to be Chris Who? Saying that, what am I thinking? new players? needing a big name manager to attract the cream of European talent???? I dont think Hughton can handle the pressure of the Prem, who knows if Shearer could have done but my guess is with his background then he'd have a much better chance.

ok so I hadnt paid the bill

How can it be more secure? one man can go bust, one gambling man at that. All it takes is another massive loss on the stock market and he could call in the debts. Plus its not just him, its the banks as well.

The only way that statement is meant to be read is that Ashley is pulling 500k per week out of his pocket to cover losses (eg £700k outgoings, 200k incomings = net loss of £500k), theres nothing stupid therefore about multiplying 52 by 500k. if what you're saying is that Llambias is lying to make us look in a worse position than we are then I wouldnt dispute that happening as we know just how little we can trust from them. To use it however as a reasoning why we are in a better position under Ashley than Shepherd would be madness. There are other considerations to take into account as well. This is the season when we renegotiated our Sponsorship and kit deals, do you think we would manage anything like the deals we did last time? A club in the Championship commands far far less in these deals than one doing well in the Prem. How therefore does that make us better off than under Shepherd? £15m from NR last time and what was it this time? 6? As for Adidas/ Puma, I dread to imagine the difference there. Corporate sponsorship down (you'd be lucky if half those boxes are being used), ticket sales down, merchandising down, the list goes on and on and on..... Our overdraft is upto the hilt and, although I havent got the details yet I see that there are 2 more mentions of loans from a Bank when you view Companies House, that doesnt sound like a good position to me. I have yet to see any proof that this football club is financially better off than it was pre-Ashley other than random contradictory statements from the owners lackey.

Daft thing is, change the words KMart to Greggs and it would be a perfectly true story for the makem one.

Does this mean you have nothing to backup your statement!? Lets see now, we could take Llambias's statement from a week ago....... My basic maths make that a £26m per annum loss just on the money Ashley is "putting in", however the first bit is interesting, "If Mike and the banks...." so that would mean they are also hodling some debt and ongoing losses. Add in the amount made from the transfer window with the sale of the likes of Bassong etc and we must be looking at an overall deficit of say, £50m in this one year? Add that to the original debt that was there when he bought the club (the debt racked up in building us a 52k seater stadium and purchasing players) and I get it to say £120m+, thats not taking into account the debt accrued in the period between Ashley purchasing the club and this season. So yes, Id say I have a fair bit to back it up, how about you?

HF has the figures and has talked about them here before but even by the clubs own admittance we're in the crap. Im sure Llambias has talked glowingly about how Sir Mike has pumped in something like £120-130m in loans to the club. When he took over there was something in the region of £70-£80m in debts (including the stadium mortgage).

One for the Old Skool.........

£200 + a years supply of Coke, in seriousness though its a piddling amount compared to the real prize of getting up there with the "big lads"

On the pitch? Bollocks. Off the pitch its bollocks too. No matter how many times HF has pointed it out some people still refuse to acknowledge the fact that we're far deeper in debt now than we ever were under the past regime. How that makes us stronger is beyond me.