my answer is you speculate to accumulate. Nobody in football "saves the money up to buy footballers or only spends their profits on new signings". Is this what you mean ? This is not the "real" footballing world. EVery club has debts. Having debts in football is the way it is, its a shit industry and completely different to the "normal" financial rules and scenarios.
People like you can preach on about your idealistic views, which is a successful club that spends its profits on footballers, and the profits are large enough to constantly buy the best footballers, but in football, it doesn't work like that.
Debt is the name of the game I'm afraid.
The alternative is selling your best clubs to others who are smaller than you but recognise how success is achieved, rather than sitting in an ivory tower and putting the football world to rights and claiming the higher ground. The basic starting point is supporters, sponsors, advertisers, TV, the best footballers etc etc are not attracted to a club which makes a profit, they are attracted to a team which is winning on the pitch and competing at the top levels.
Illogical and different it may be, but that is the name of the game and how it is. There is no point in people like you pointing at the idealistic dream, football is the way it is, its a loss making "industry", accept it and deal with it.
If you disagree, name me clubs that succeed by only spending profits, and name me any NUFC team you like of any period who has challenged the top teams by only spending profits and nothing else.
The other major point also is this. These message boards, and in real life, produce plenty of people who are quite happy to say "if Ashley wasn't here we would have gone bust and out of existence". Apart from that being absolute shit, the fact also is they wanted rid of the last owners because they thought "anyone would do better than Fred" [with the revenues] but were too stupid to realise it was the Halls and Shepherd and the policies they adopted who built up these revenues. Now we have an owner who is not speculating, so the revenues have changed, leading to a "more efficient business", and people are latching onto this because it is the opposite of what the old owners did, who they "hate", so they want to justify it. So stop moving the goalposts. Not one single person who is now harping on about the finance, said at the time, using some sort of miraculous foresight, that this is why we needed a new owner to compete with Man City because they were going to be taken over by a bunch of Arabs. Not one.
This scouting around for cheaper players to replace the quality ones you sell is just an idealistic dream too, it just doesn't work, it won't work. Sell your best players and you go downwards, in the vast majority of cases. That's the way it is.
I don't know what "mistakes in the past" you are referring to [another cliche which always makes me smile] but from where I'm sitting, taking a club from one foot in the 3rd division, with a cow shed of a stadium, into one of the biggest clubs in europe, with one of the best grounds, filling it every week, qualifying for europe regularly, attracting top footballers including a world record transfer, doesn't suggest to me that they made too many "mistakes". Some maybe, of course, but not many.
I just know that you won't take this on board, but give me flak for posting the "same old nonsense" or however you want to label it, but unfortunately it is right and although at the moment you don't want to see it, in time you will realise the truth. The club is in decline, stand still, don't pay the going rate for wages, sell your best players, and you are in decline.
Take heed sunshine, because this is something you should take note of, before branding me "the sort of person that I am" or whatever you were trying to say. I've been there, done it, got the t-shirt, I'm not trying to "wind you up" or any other childish accusation, I'm saying what over 40 years of supporting this football club has shown me. Ignore it if you choose, but eventually, one day, you will realise that I am right.
Well GeeForce ? No reply ? Why not ? I answered you ? Are you going to reply sensibly and constructively, or show us "what sort of person you really are " ?
I am afraid you missed my points by so much i felt it pointless to bother with you anymore.
As for a loss making industry you seem reluctant to accept that whilst this may be the norm, the amount of borrowings that can be made by anyone club is not infinite. You think that a loss making industry can continue to run building up more and more debt, living off borrowings and increasing interest payments on these borrowings year on year. What do you think happens when the clubs have no more equity left to remortgage, the season ticket sales are mortgaged for future years to come and borrowings can not be further increased? How do you then think that rising interest payments are to be met? Outside investment I hear you say, not when Ashley has already poured his own money in. You say that Ashley will not let the club go under because of this investment he has made and you think it is right that rather than him attempt to make it a financially viable business he just ploughs it full of money until he has zero personal wealth, he folds and so does the club. If it was your business, and it was telephones for example, would you do that to keep your staff in jobs and customers happy, of course not, so why is it acceptable for you to expect that from him.
Or are you living in hope that during the above period someone will come in and make Ashley a ridiculous offer for a club which is ridled with debt and full of over paid, under worked players?
Your argument, whether the norm or not, has no logic whatsoever. You speculate to accumulate which I do agree with to a point but you have to have the money to do that in the first place. The club was mortgaged to the hilt and you are whinging cos this is being paid off and we are effectively solvent, I just can't get my head round your way of thinking and that is why I did not reply and will not bother replying again. As far as I am concerned we should agree to disagree!
