Newcastle sign four year shirt deal with ''Wonga''

[Park Life 71]

Btw charging 1% interest a day is prisonable in France and Germany.

 

I honestly think most people on here realise this is a shit brand with a torrid reputation but feel that the way football has gone and the financial implications of the short term cash injection they will let it slide.

Edited October 9, 2012 by Park Life

[Christmas Tree 4729]

They'd use illegal loan sharks.

 

Exactly.

[Guest Your Name Here]

Btw charging 1% interest a day is prisonable in France and Germany.

And payday companies are illegal in 13 US states.

The bottom line is if we lived in a society where the gap between the haves and the have nots wasn't so vast there would be no need for payday companies. Preaching about individual responsibility and not giving a shit about our collective responsibilities is a dubious position to take.

[Toonpack 9478]

Is it ever any other way? MA is playing games with the club and it's supporters. It's been one controversy after another for five years. I for one am sick of it.

 

Only to those who look for them.

[Craig 6682]

Say you earn £1500 a month you're a single parent mum, you have £20 a month disposable income and that goes on more comfortable fanny pads, your heating is f*cked, the bairn is cold you need a quick fix so need to borrow £500. You get the job done, and end up paying someone £100 more than you initially borrowed over a 2 week loan, when you're already skint. These are situations that happen every single day, this company are no better than legalised cockney loan sharks.

 

My ex is earning way less than than that and has less disposable income than you state. She'd never, ever consider going anywhere near one of these places.

 

But you're right - people do. It's a 'supply and demand' business but then all business is!!

[ChezGiven 0]

Btw charging 1% interest a day is prisonable in France and Germany.

They hate jews and hence money-lending though, neither are good examples.

 

I'll give you the hypocrisy angle and the last example was shit too.

[Craig 6682]

Btw charging 1% interest a day is prisonable in France and Germany.

 

But this isn't France, nor Germany so your point is invalid....

[Toonpack 9478]

I'm not talking shite at all, this was the information we were supplied with from her when I worked at Doxford Park with all those cunts making my ears bleed on a daily basis. I couldn't give a fuck about someone I respect so little questioning my integrity anyway.

 

The problem with you is you strive for an alternative view to make yourself look more interesting, when it just makes you look a mug. A very very good friend of mine suffers from exactly the same affliction. These types are everywhere on here. Wonga are wonguns end of story, regardless how you dress it up.

 

But the point is Stevie so are just about every other succesfull money making enterprise. Sweatshops, Prisons to payday loans Nike, Emirates to Wonga.

[Park Life 71]

But this isn't France, nor Germany so your point is invalid....

 

Is that a put down?

[Park Life 71]

Anyway I've made my feelings known and I'll leave it there.

[Kid Dynamite 7034]

I'm not talking shite at all, this was the information we were supplied with from her when I worked at Doxford Park with all those cunts making my ears bleed on a daily basis. I couldn't give a fuck about someone I respect so little questioning my integrity anyway.

 

The problem with you is you strive for an alternative view to make yourself look more interesting, when it just makes you look a mug. A very very good friend of mine suffers from exactly the same affliction. These types are everywhere on here. Wonga are wonguns end of story, regardless how you dress it up.

 

You change your mind with the wind man . You hate Wonga yet you used to work for a similar company? Bit like how you hate racists but used to vote Bnp? Or hate touts, except when you want to buy a ticket off one?

 

 

[Craig 6682]

Is that a put down?

 

No. Why, is that what you were looking for?

 

You're suggesting we shouldn't enter into business with a company that is fully complient with British law and quoting foreign law as mitigation. Quite ridiculous really.

[Craig 6682]

You change your mind with the wind man . You hate Wonga yet you used to work for a similar company? Bit like how you hate racists but used to vote Bnp? Or hate touts, except when you want to buy a ticket off one?

 

TBF, you're not one to speak about changing your mind.

[McFaul 35]

You change your mind with the wind man . You hate Wonga yet you used to work for a similar company? Bit like how you hate racists but used to vote Bnp? Or hate touts, except when you want to buy a ticket off one?

I was young and daft when I worked there, as for touts so fuck. Well done on ignoring my assertions about your alternative view policy, if the popular view was shite smell awful, you'd find a way of giving support for it's odor.

[Christmas Tree 4729]

Caulkin

 

It’s business; just business.

 

It’s just business that has seen Newcastle United enter a shirt sponsorship deal with Wonga, the short-term loan company (representative APR 4,214 per cent), which has been described as a “legal loan shark” by MPs. Just business that, as is their right, they have walked away from a contract with Virgin Money because they could find more cash elsewhere.

 

It was just business when the naming rights to St James’ Park, one of the most iconic landmarks in a city whose mood is still, to a large extent, influenced by the club that are perched in its centre, were put up for sale. It was the market which dictated that no worthy bidder came forward (Sports Direct, Mike Ashley’s company, has done rather nicely out of "showcasing" the name for no fee; after today's announcement, the name is reverting back).

 

It was just business that meant Newcastle finally declined to sign a couple of defenders this summer, abandoning - for the time being - moves for Mathieu Debuchy, the France international, and Douglas of Twente, either because the fees kept changing or they found themselves dealing with unwilling negotiators. Their model for transfers has value at its core.

 

It was just business when they sold Andy Carroll to Liverpool for £35 million because .... well, that one doesn’t need spelling out. And to a certain degree, it was just business when they dispensed with Chris Hughton, because although their former manager had secured their position in the Barclays Premier League and was popular, they believed that Alan Pardew would bring them greater success, a touch of Hollywood and more television revenue.

 

It was just business when they turned off the escalator in the main reception at the ground, when they attached motion-sensors to their lighting and renegotiated their energy bills, saving more than £200,000 over the last three years. The £56,000 they spent on a 580ft-deep borehole for irrigating their training ground this summer is just business, too, because it could save them as much as £500,000 in the next decade.

 

It’s just business that they have been working so assiduously to achieve Category One status for their Academy, even after initially being assessed below that grade earlier this year. Extra expenditure now will, in time, result in Newcastle being able to sign and develop talented young players from across the country; cheaper, in the long-run, than buying them later.

 

Equally, it was just business when Newcastle announced price freezes for ten-year season tickets and greatly extended their family section, because the North East is not a wealthy place. But get to them young, so the argument goes, and you’ve got them for life and a full stadium brings guarantees of income, looks better for the telly, intimidates the opposition, wins matches, attracts players and earns more prize money.

 

It’s just business. It’s not personal. Five years after he bought the club for £134 million, allegedly without completing due diligence and clearly with no sense of what he was letting himself in for, this phrase is at the heart of Ashley’s Newcastle. Not business as in taking money out, but business as in employing any means necessary in the cause of self-sufficiency.

 

When it was first mooted - in October 2009, when Newcastle were in the npower Championship and at the same time as Ashley removed the club from the market and gave Hughton a permanent contract - the issue of stadium naming rights felt like an insult. After relegation, Joe Kinnear, the treatment of Kevin Keegan and Alan Shearer and so many other embarrassments, it was lashing out, gratuitous, hurtful.

 

It was never those things, of course. It was just business. While the hierarchy at Newcastle acknowledge that their decisions can be contentious - or “off the wall”, as Derek Llambias put it recently - their argument has always been that they are taken for long-term gain. That they have to compete with the big boys somehow and if Wonga or St James’ brings them a new player or investment, then so be it. Changing the name back is just business too, if only because it softens the Wonga deal.

 

Three years ago, when naming rights was announced, I wrote an editorial sort of article calling for Ashley to go even as he said he was staying. I stand by those words because it was a piece of its time; while Hughton’s team were doing brilliantly, it felt as though it was in spite of the people above them and that the essence of Newcastle was being corroded. It was a howl of rage about how a proud institution was being degraded, about what football was becoming.

 

Down the line, it helps that the club have found a cogent plan and are explaining things more (encouraged by a tireless PR department). I’ve got to know Llambias a little better - part of the job is to make contacts, to get to the heart of what’s happening - and for all that I still hate what happened during the early part of the Ashley era (the relegation season was the closest I’ve ever come to not enjoying my job), I actually like him.

 

I like the financial blueprint they are sticking to. I haven’t forgotten the Newcastle that Ashley walked into - horribly indebted, instalments of money still to be paid on bloated, big-name players who had already left, arrogant (at the top), with a team of individuals - and I like the fact that the signings now being sought should be young and hungry. I like the notion of self-sufficiency, too, particularly in the present environment. I like the long-term contracts and I like stability.

 

I like the fact that, from now on, I'll be able to write the words 'St James' Park' in this newspaper without worrying that they'll be altered, but I don’t like the idea of Wonga very much. I find it uncomfortable that there will be an association between a pay-day lender and a football club in a region suffering from high unemployment and the effects of recession and I’m not sure how much that association will benefit Newcastle’s "brand image" (even writing that phrase makes me feel nauseous). These are my own personal political beliefs.

 

And I feel empathy for someone like Michael Martin, the editor of the respected True Faith fanzine, when he says that “this is close to breaking point for me, the one that breaks the camel’s back” because - and I’m probably putting words in his mouth here - he thinks his football club should be a beacon, should stand for something. And when a local politician and season ticket-holder says he will not return to the ground while Wonga is involved with Newcastle, I think that's both relevant and important.

 

It’s just business. Whatever the concerns of MPs and campaigners, Wonga also sponsors Blackpool and Hearts and does the same for a primetime television show on ITV; should Newcastle be judged any differently? And, really, aren’t most clubs complicit in some way? Aren’t they happy to take money from bookmakers and banks and investment companies? What about the cosy relationship with McDonalds, Nike and others? Isn’t this all shades of the same colour? (Newcastle used to be sponsored by Northern Rock).

 

Barclays, for instance, sponsors the Premier League. Its community involvement in football has been lauded and its money has been welcome. Yet the World Development Movement recently said that the bank’s Capital arm “risks fueling a speculative bubble and contributing to hunger and poverty for millions of the world's poorest people”. The Libor scandal, anybody? (declaration of interest/hypocrisy: I bank at Barclays. I work for News International. I wear Nike running stuff. I vote Labour).

 

My concern with the Ashley/Llambias model is where and if the business side collides with football. The sale of Carroll, the sacking of Hughton, prompted emotional responses that threatened stability inside the dressing room and in the stands. Things calmed - and history looks back kindly on both decisions - but does there come a moment when that risk is too, er, risky?

 

I wonder the same about this summer’s transfer activity. Refusing to compromise (the club deny this, pointing to the Papiss Cisse deal as an instance where they have bitten the bullet on a fee) on the price of players has left them without cover in defence, a policy which has been exposed by injuries to Fabricio Coloccini and Steven Taylor. Just as Liverpool compromised with their £35 million, sometimes it has to be done.

 

St James’ (as we can now officially refer to it again) and Wonga form part of the same theme, although there is a slight contradiction here, too. To me, it feels like dents in the club’s soul and, in the case of the latter, a poor example to set. There are emotive costs that come with it and, depending on your viewpoint, costs in status and pride, yet, having put £200 million of his own money into the club, Ashley is not prepared to spend any more. It has to come from somewhere.

 

If you want to improve and grow, it has to come from somewhere. If you want to buy new players - and occasionally compromise on fees - it has to come from somewhere. If you aren’t subsidised by a state or a willing sugar-daddy, then it has come come from somewhere. If you want to hold your nose and say that this isn’t for you any more, then I wouldn’t blame you. But it’s not personal. It’s business; business as usual. I don’t like it very much, but I get it.

 

More from George Caulkin:

 

[wykikitoon 20234]

I CBA rading that, someone summerise

[JawD 99]

Wut

[@yourservice 67]

[JawD 99]

 

Not a lot different to Northern Rock offering 150% mortgages etc

 

I can see both sides tbf. I'd rather pay 150% than 4000

 

Then again, I remember Nufc using child labour thai factories to make our shirts.

[Kid Dynamite 7034]

 

I was young and daft when I worked there, as for touts so fuck. Well done on ignoring my assertions about your alternative view policy, if the popular view was shite smell awful, you'd find a way of giving support for it's odor.

 

Every board needs a devils advocate doesnt mean the alternative view is the wrong one though

[Craig 6682]

Caulkin has absolutely nailed it.

[Brock Manson 0]

I CBA rading that, someone summerise

 

It's just business.

[sniffer 0]

We didn't sell any players in the summer. Somebody has to pay the piper.

[Kid Dynamite 7034]

Basically he can think of sponsors he would prefer but, in the grand scheme of things, the club is in an infinitely better position than it was 5 years ago. If that means we take cash of wonga in the best interests of the club then so be it.

[Guest Your Name Here]

No. Why, is that what you were looking for?

 

You're suggesting we shouldn't enter into business with a company that is fully complient with British law and quoting foreign law as mitigation. Quite ridiculous really.

I don't think that's the issue. Arms trading is legal, I doubt that makes any difference to the families of innocent civilians killed by western munitions.

Correctly or not, payday loan companies are widely perceived as immoral vultures. Associating ourselves so closely with one of these 'toxic brands' does nothing for the club's reputation. That we couldn't attract anybody with a better image says everything about how things have been going at NUFC over the last few years.