peasepud

Cheers for that As Trophy says and Ive posted elsewhere, the importance and scale of this cannot be underestimated. This is something huge in British football, if it happens then we will be the first club of any real size to be owned by the fans, in fact theres only one in the Football League, the mighty Exeter City. Its going to be a long hard struggle, Im not going to be an Acca and say we'll piss getting the money because we wont. Im not going to do a Stevie and say that this is only open to Geordies because its not, its open to any Newcastle fan, anywhere. We are all in this together and we need to ensure that we all pull together. Im, as much as anyone aware of the current financial position of many of you (myself included), I dont expect that everyone will run out and sell their first born to raise the minimum stake (which we've listened to early comments and reduced to £1500). What I would hope every single member of this message board will do is read the stuff fully, if you've got questions then ask them on here, lets have this one thread though and not bring it into every other thread. Read the information with an open mind, forget any preconceived views you have on the NUST/NUSC because I can assure you everything that is and has been done in the past has been with the best intentions. This is being done with one intention only, to bring the football club out of its current dire situation and start something incredible within our football club. Read the info, ask your questions and if you are in a position to invest then take financial advice, there will be a city centre shop opening for people to walk in and discuss with Financial experts, use them or use one of your own. If you're not in a position to invest yourself then you could look to set up a group of people, get ten of you with £150 each, 20 with £75 or even 1500 together at a quid apiece. What the hell, lets have a toontastic share! You can even just donate any amount into the Trust who will then group those donations into tranches of £1500 and buy additional shares for the trust. If you've read it, agreed it but cant donate or invest then please pass the word around your mates, sit in the pub and ensure everyone you know understands what its about. Ive said it once, I'll say it again, this is the best chance that our football club has to go forward, another season under Ashley is unthinkable. The future under fans ownership could be the best thing to happen to this football club.

I said we were launching this week (tbf I may have incorrectly said Monday but I think it was decided to hold until Tuesday to see what went on at the weekend, protests etc), its tomorrow the official launch and even then though I wouldnt expect to see a nice big list of names and amounts, its not really something you should do, publish details of who has given what. Anyone pledging cash though has to pay 10% of it to the holding solicitors as "Proof of Funds", this way we remove those that are talking crap and have no intention/ no funds.

And why the fuck would you? Do you want us to start listing the people who've pledged? we havent even launched yet. Those that want their names known will no doubt come out and say.

These arent random pledges from nameless people on the internet, these are genuine, big name individuals or businesses, the sort of people that have that money as spare cash and more importantly wont really just deny making the agreement.

With a pessimistic head on you could worry that we are playing above our level while they are below theirs, we need to hope that we dont drop to form whilethe rest up their game.

where do I say it is cos we are not there? where do I say it is cos it has smaller clubs in it? What I'm saying is it looks shit this year. If you do not agree ok. I'm also asking would we have fared ok if we had stayed up, we would not have had a clear out. And, how would we fare with the team we have now playing the standard they are now. By the way I'm pleased it fucks you off cos thats where should be Fucked off I agree it appears shit from a look at the table. How shit would we feel if we were sitting bottom of that lot though? It somehow seems better that we're top of a shit league while teams we know are inferior are sitting in the one above. I still think a lot of those up there would rip our current team apart (many will do come January anyway, those clubs will be looking to buy their way out of that position and be eyeing up our lot).

I understand everything you say and I have to say that I dont have all of the answers here, plus even the best laid plans can go to shit but I'll attempt to give some overview, all of the full info will be available tomorrow at the launch. Basically, the ideal scenario is to raise a total of £300m, that sounds fanciful but as I said in a previous post elsewhere, that is only 12,000 investors world wide who stick their £25,000 pension investment in. That to me seems a realistic number of people who dont ever actually pull any money out, its not taking food from kids plates and its not meaning people take out loans or sell their cars to fund it. In its simplest form (I make it sound easy but obviously theres more to it) its a case of saying I want £25,000 of my current pension fund to be moved to this other one. Thats not taking into account the actual cash investments from fans, businesses, workplaces etc, a lot of these are the £2,500 minimum some could be £500k, £1m £10m etc (and there are already pledges in the hundreds of thousands upwards). So lets say we do get the full £300m, thats £80m to buy the club and £220m to run it. Each year we would be paying out a total of £6m in interest to everyone on their investments, compare that to the fact we were paying £4.8m on an overdraft of £40m (12%) and you can see straight away a financial benefit. An extra £1.2m outlay on what we were paying but an additional £220m to run the club, a large chunk of which would obviously be available for players. Year on year theres nothing to stop new investors joining, every 40 of which would mean an additional £1m income however obviously theres a break point, each one of those 40 people would be getting £500 per year paid out, somewhere down the line you need to weigh up just how much is coming in and going out. Otherwise we could hit a point in 10 or 15 years time when we're paying out pensions and interest which exceeds our income. Thats where the financial and pension experts that are working on this come in, they know whats what and how to run it. As we all know though, a successful, well run team will reap the benefits through the turnstiles and in merchandising. Link that team to the community and you could maximise the benefits to the club, the fans, the community and the city as a whole. Theres always a risk nobody would deny that, theres a risk that this fails miserably and people dont invest, theres a risk that we buy the club, dont receive a great amount more and have to run it on a shoestring (but would that be any worse than Ashley? I doubt it!). At the same time theres the risk that the person currently running your pension fund does a Maxwell or even just cocks up totally and loses it all. At least this way we have some say over what happens. Theres no better time to do this, in fact Id go so far as to say theres never going to be another chance like it. What I do know though is that theres no knight on a white horse rushing in, no Sheik with billions to spare going to pull us out of the shit. Its ourselves or Ashley, stark reality. What I can say is that the world of football (and finance) is watching with baited breath to see what happens here.

Hes class personified is Mikey.

80m is too much for a championship club, however 80m for our championship club if it is no strings attached is a necessary evil. fyp I dont see £80m as a bargain at all because this club isnt what it was two years ago. Its a shell of its former self but it can be big again and it can be worth a lot more than that however thats the price and its down to us to i) raise the purchase price, ii) raise additional funds to get it back on its feet, and iii) ensure it never again gets into this kind of mess.

Is that true though? No add-ons, contingencies, repayments of Ashley's loans? Allegedly yes, I only have this on what we're told but like I say, its from people well connected and involved. All along Ive been the one shouting that its not 100m once you add on the loans etc, now it appears that hes got to the point where he just wants out and I was wrong.

Its not though, this isnt the official line, its the line thats put about in the background, the line that is being told by the bankers, by the advisors and by those involved with Ashley. Anyone enquiring about the club is told "hand us £80m and its yours, lock stock and barrel". You say, "like many" however up until this bid (should we raise the capital) none have been serious actual bids.

Just sign up and he'll be gone by January

What a load of shit. Only Enrique and S Taylor are Premier League quality. Can you not remember how utterly awful these players were last season? Sunderland spent over 80m when they came up and just survived. It would take a similar level of investment for us. This

Can you really see this making him think one morning "oh these dont like me i think i'll sell"?? NO He will when and only when we get promoted and someone pays him well over 100mil for the club. Until then we can only make it as uncomfortable and embarrassing for him as possible. Not exactly true, he will sell as soon as someone offers him what he is looking for, which at this moment in time is £80million. dont think he will unfortunatley. he'll hang on and try and get promotion to sell "the product" at a better price. Fat lad will only sell us for that if we dont get promoted. but of course nobody will buy us for that whilst we are in the CCC. catch 22 i'm afraid!! No he will sell, trust me, we know how much we need and what the terms are, its simply a case of raising the cash. The man is desperate to sell.

And then what though? you keep saying this, that we should protest, protest, protest until he sells. The problem is that nobody (until now) has realistically attempted to buy the club, as much as I hate the fat twat I dont expect him to hand the keys over and say "there you go lads sorry about relegation and all that like" So the only way to get him to sell is to find him a buyer. Something you're slagging us off for.

Can you really see this making him think one morning "oh these dont like me i think i'll sell"?? NO He will when and only when we get promoted and someone pays him well over 100mil for the club. Until then we can only make it as uncomfortable and embarrassing for him as possible. Not exactly true, he will sell as soon as someone offers him what he is looking for, which at this moment in time is £80million.

Some Acca quotes..... Also on the same day.... Before the Palace game.... or the classic Well done on predicting Harewood however you couldnt have been further from the truth with the drop in quality statement. At the end of the day, many see us as capable of going up however nobody other than you believes we will piss the league, as proven by dropping points already at home.

Were you at the game Acca?

So we should play snooker to remember our fallen heroes?

Taylor back, Harewood to start !!

What the fuck you doing holidaying at Gatwick?

She would rip your balls off and use them as earrings (admittedly very small earrings)

Isnt that a little bit wasted seeing as the whole threads about when we buy the club and you're installed as President.

This, fair enough missing it if the bloody NUST had organised a mass boycott instead of trying to remove the club from his greasy fingers through means that actually stand a chance of getting rid. As they havent arsed themselves I say go to the game. North East corners the place to be Useless feckers!