peasepud

His wife gave me permission to take over the stuff and carry it on, trouble was she didnt have the passwords which, at the time would have meant everything was basically to be copied over by hand. I have to admit since then I forgot about it. If people on here are willing to help out with it though then I'll dig it back out and take a look at screen-scraping the whole site into some form of database.

He certainly does and yes the players got us relegated. Even upping one of their piss poor performances would have kept us up. However in the fullness of time we may be viewed as lucky to have gone down. (as long as we get back up) Are you bi-polar?

You put those names up giving the impression they were home grown talent, costing peanuts yet they were virtually £40m for the two!

I think people seem to believe that Ashley bought the club and on day 2 was told "oh theres another £150m debt you didnt know about". Thats not the case, he knew exactly what the debt position was, he merely didnt know that some of it had to be paid back immediately.

Despair when I see these arguments tbh, Pud. A chairman's job isn't to blindly do what the fans want or to try and be popular, they're in a completely different position to the supporter. Supporters are entitled to be complete mongs and can call for every short-term extortionate trophy signing they want as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't provide a chairman with a defence to allegations of incompetence if they adopt the same strategy for success, even if it is popular at the time. "Will this £20 million signing please the fans?" Just stop and imagine a top Premiership club being run along those lines. Doesn't happen. The fact that this is acceptable ex post facto rationalisation for us speaks volumes tbh. What I was getting at is the fact people come on now moaning that Shepherd spent too much money yet if back then the Makems had been spending that kind of dosh while we were frugal then the likes of this place would have imploded and been screaming for him to spend the cash. I also dont think that a chairman/ owner should buy players because it looks good or will placate the fans, purchases should be the managers decision and based on how they'll enhance the squad. Hindsight is a wonderful thing regarding players purchased though. Owen, Smith etc all looked to be good players before they came to us. LMs argument that Shepherd backed his managers is valid, he spent the money chasing the dream of success rather than thinking "5 years down the line we could be skint and buying Leon friggin Best". Give me that any day.

That in itself is enough for me.

That was the only shock to him, he knew how much the debt was, he merely wasnt told that some of it was payable following any sale of the club. He then decided to pay off the bank loan(s) as well. imo merely to make the club more attractive to potential buyers.

I think what he's saying is though that recession etc. has severely cut the amount of spare cash Ashley has hanging around. That said, the thing that really restricted this more than anything was tying up so much capital unnecessarily in clearing the debts with one fell swoop. Absolutely no need to do this and it compounded our problems last January, when we needed a quality player or two coming in and it also meant the impact of relegation was that bit greater imo. I think i recall reading debt had to be paid off because the mortgage on the ground expansion was non-transferable. That wasnt all of it though, Im sure it was only about £60m??? the rest he decided to pay off without any actual urgent need. Plus people seem to often ignore the fact that he paid off debts in the form of loans then increased the overdraft which came at a much higher % rate.

I think what he's saying is though that recession etc. has severely cut the amount of spare cash Ashley has hanging around. That said, the thing that really restricted this more than anything was tying up so much capital unnecessarily in clearing the debts with one fell swoop. Absolutely no need to do this and it compounded our problems last January, when we needed a quality player or two coming in and it also meant the impact of relegation was that bit greater imo. By his own admission though, Ashley only ever intended to invest £20m per year in the club, using that on top of any profit made to fund purchases etc. Nobody can tell me that a man worth £800m following the impact of the recession could see that as a problem.

If theres oil there then yeah, the Yanks will storm in.

I still think the recession is a handy little get out for the fat man. The recession isnt whats stopping us filling our ground, its the opposition. The recession isnt wholly to blame for the lack of corporate boxes sold, yes it has impacted but again, companies dont want to fork out £30k to take customers to see Preston North End. Its not exactly a deal maker. Its relegation not recession thats cut our income and the recession was not responsible for us being relegated.

There is no disputing the fact that Shepherd put us into debt, its also though imho no dispute that he did so for the right reasons, he chased the "holy grail" as Ewerk said but frankly I commend him for that. If we'd been told that we werent going to push for Europe in order to consolidate and save money then there would have been hell on. Theres no disupting however that Shepherd (and even more so) the Halls made a vast amount of money out of our club. Personally however Id still rather see us in the CL and our chairman pay himself £20m dividends per season that the position we're in now. The whole concept of football being a business is based on success, no football club can be a money maker if its continually losing games and not competing. Success on the pitch means additional gate receipts, more shirt sales, more exposure on SKY/MoTD etc which in itself means even more merchandise sales on top. Back then we were everyones 2nd team, many a kid got two shirts for Christmas, their own clubs and ours. The only way to get that success is to invest in the team, yes some teams hit lucky and manage that through careful, good quality buys while others go out and buy up the best there is. We tried that and it was merely those world class players not performing fully that didnt win us something major. Yes, Shepherd made some terrible decisions at times and made his gob go at others but at the end of the day (Roeder aside) he never put in a manager because they were cheap or a Yes man. He did it because he (wrongly) thought they were good for the job. If the roles had been reversed and we'd sat and watched Sunderland buy the players we were at the time we'd have had Shepherds head on a stick.

Congrats.

I have to say that I love the argument of "we'd be financially worse off under Shepherd", since when did Shepherd have to find £25m just to keep us alive for another few months? He didnt have to because he knew that out of everything that happens at the club, competing at the top level had to come first otherwise your balance sheets would be fooked. Shepherd never had to beg corporate box owners to renew, Shepherd never had to worry about getting the next sponsorship deal, More importantly Shepherd never ever had to find something to make up for Sky's payments.

its a $10000 itunes giftcard, no thanks...can't even buy a macbook with it Why the fuck would anyone spend 10k on iTunes?

Hughton is the man that needs replacing once we go up and you will see a difference. Only Carroll and Routledge havent had REGULAR PL or top league experience out of our 1st team tbh. Routledge played a full season for crystal palace in the prem in 2005 i believe. was really good aswell for them as i recall. I thought that but wasnt sure, that and how much he played for spurs. Only backs my point that our 1st team by majority has the basis for a good PL team. Of course we neeed quality additions though. By good i mean lower mid-table. Top 4 = Brilliant 5-8 = Very good 9-12 = Good 13-16 = Decent 17-20 = Poor Just my opinion...that team + GOOD manager + Financial backing = Good team Just my opinion agree with all of your sentiments but tbf Routledge broke his foot(?) in his 1st pre season for spurs and that set him back big time. added to that you had the emergence of Aaron Lennon who was on fire that season. not saying he's a brilliant player (Routledge) but i reckon he's a low to mid prem level player easily which is pretty much the best we can hope for atm. I really don't like bursting the bubble of those who have accepted lower standards but you are quite right. Leazes mate i dont think ANYONE has accepted "lower standards" as you put it. This thread proves people have.

And we only have to think back one season to remember what we've got in store in a fourth bottom season. Were it not for a horrendous cock-up by a vastly over-rated referee in the penultimate game last year we'd have finished exactly there. Season of Dross here we come! Fixed it for you In all seriousness though, promotion is the only thing to worry about. It's not like the trophy would be paraded through the streets should we win it (at least I hope it wouldn't). You can however guarantee that the regime will be spouting off like we've won the Champions League "Im sure you'll all join me in agreement at the great things Mike has done for this club, its 18 years since we last won promotion and Mike should be hailed for bringing this chance to the club. Its no surprise that in the preceeding 15 years the previous owners never managed that feat. Mike however has done it in 3. We should never forget that and to celebrate we're renaming the ground the "Sir Michael Ashley is a God stadium".

You've pretty much summed up my feelings already. It would top it off if we finished Champions and "pissed the league" ©Accadacca I wouldnt however give a shit if we ended up 2nd, the celebrations and general relief would be just as great.

I dont care if we finish 10th and then go up because its been found that the top 9 teams were all taking turns to gang-bang Ian Watmores pet dog, as long as we go up.

And then we could sell them without suitable replacements.........

No shit sherlock

You know what? the logic behind buying young players who arent on high wages is a sound one but it wont work in the Prem, to be able to get a 25 year old whos cheap to buy and will accept less than 15k a week will get you the quality of signings we already have. Not a chance of building a mid table Premiership club like that, you need experience in there, you need a couple of older heads with years of PL playing experience. To top it all though, as soon as a player is seen to be "quite good" then he'll be sold on to our rivals and we'll start again. Worse than all of that however is the fact that these rules mean a manager cant effectively build his own team. We are now officially a selling club, a staging post if you will for the bigger clubs such as Wigan, Bolton and the Makems.

Key to the door kidda! Have a good un What was it again??????

havent you being trotting this line out since the season began ? 30 games in to the season and still to be 'undone' ??? give yer heed a shake man. our last away win was 8 games ago, that's not champions material. We're only still top because Forest hit their damp patch at the same time