Happy Face

In 2006 the club had £16.7M of net assets (land + players etc. minus debts), that was down from £56.1M in 1998... http://www.nufc-finances.org.uk/ I think the only land would be the stadium and academy, but I'm happy to be set right. Don't we lease the ground the stadium is on from the city council? That's what I thought, but the thing about owning the supporters club land threw me.

.com offer more....

In 2006 the club had £16.7M of net assets (land + players etc. minus debts), that was down from £56.1M in 1998... http://www.nufc-finances.org.uk/ I think the only land would be the stadium and academy, but I'm happy to be set right. This is from the Newcastle United PLC annual report 2005. Not sure what has happend with this since then but the casino bit sounds right up Ashleys street. Joint Venture with MGMMIRAGE. Newcastle United Plc has a joint venture with MGMMIRAGE to develop the area above St.James' metro station subject to certain matters. Newcastle upon Tyne must be designated as the appropriate place for a regional casino; the joint venture project must be selected as the appropriate site,and all applicable planing and licensing consents must be obtained.The proposed project would comprise a major mixed-use development including the regional casino. That fell through.

Click "hotels" on the link I provided and it confirms... "the site of the old Magpie Supporters Club, land acquired by Newcastle United some time ago"

In 2006 the club had £16.7M of net assets (land + players etc. minus debts), that was down from £56.1M in 1998... http://www.nufc-finances.org.uk/ I think the only land would be the stadium and academy, but I'm happy to be set right.

He likes to chase success on the cheap. Have you been to one of his shops? Fucking tat. Soon as he bought the club there were plain fruit of the loom T-shirts going for a fiver with shitty screen printed graphics on them in club shop. Proper harry ramp. It's more logical than thinking he bought us to detroy us like some kind of Dr Evil Spurs fan unphased by the personal cost of having us relegated. We're not even making an attempt to do things on the cheap, we're trying to do things without spending anything. Ashley was only shortly in credit with his transfrs for a moment after he first arrived...

He likes to chase success on the cheap. Have you been to one of his shops? Fucking tat. Soon as he bought the club there were plain fruit of the loom T-shirts going for a fiver in the club shop with shitty screen printed graphics on them. Proper harry ramp. It's more logical than thinking he bought us to detroy us like some kind of Dr Evil Spurs fan unphased by the personal cost of having us relegated.

Have you tried turning it off, waiting 5 minutes and turning it on again? My mother always thinks I'm a genius when I do that for her.

Carl Carlson

I think his was always a short term appointment for the transition period. Like getting Theo Paphitis in for a transition and once he's gone replacing him with David Brent.

Rather than having once worked for one of the chairman's old mate's?

Why should it just be the players deserting the sinking ship? Owen, Harper, Cacapa, Butt and Edgar's contracts are running down, but we're only trying to retain the services of Kinnear.

.com

I bloody hope so. It's a pain in the arse going to games.

To be fair, looking at that first quote, we've got an English speaking manager that wanted the job and is giving the kids a chance. He's not playing it on the carpet, but 3 out of 4 ain't bad.

The national press think we're going down too btw.... http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/20...e-middlesbrough

Quality, but this bit in particular resonates.

I think he's paid off whatever debt he has, because it'll cost him/the club money to finance the debt. I guess whatever debt is outstanding is future payments on players, which aren't accruing interest but have set installments. The 'fun' of owning the club probably lost whatever appeal it might have once held back in Septemper. Ironic really, Keegan is probably unique as a manager that COULD have taken THIS club forward on a limited budget.....if he was left to allocate that budget himself. Anyway, gone over it time and time again. Basically Ashley doesn't know how to run a club, whether for profit or trophies.

Aye I'm sure you can't in a more general corporate way, but NUFC does (or did) have pretty decent financial roots, and has always done ok even when saddled with large amounts of debt to service (without the success and world wide sales the likes of Man U have to rely on). So you think that's what we're running at and the Milner money is balancing that? As a PLC we ran at a total loss of £62M (just under £30M when you take out the dividends), so I don't think Ashley is raking it in at all. I think he's genuine in his commitment to running the club with a balanced sheet and reinvesting what profits there are, because he believes a frugal approach is in the best long term interests of the club, and his own investment. Not being a football man, he's not yet understood that unlike producing tracksuits, the cheapest labour isn't actually a plus point towards success.

The money was there to be spent (allegedly), it was a very different (if maybe not shocking now) proposition indeed if Milner was sold just to pay off "debt" instead. Irrespective of total spend, although Ashley could be making his overall balance even "better" this window. Surely if NUFC was operating at a loss Ashley would have mentioned it in some of his propaganda bits by now. It's bettter for him to run at a loss so he doesn't have to pay any tax, also he doesn't have to take out any loans to cover the loss because he's minted (unlike the last owners who borrowed away rather than cover it themselves). The smallest loss possible is best of course.

Not sure about this notion that Ashley has a £12M profit burning a hole in his pocket from the Milner sale. Taking the profit from that sale into account, he's still currently £9M down on transfers, before laying out on anyone in this window. An average spend of just £2.25M per window for a Premier league club is paltry enough without any exagerration.

Aye. Since neither of them have hardly played a game since their respective moves, I'd say they cancel each other out. Smith played more than 30 games last season IIRC. He might have been on the pitch, but he wasn't 'playing'.

If Kinnear had done his homework he'd know that the previous managers were fully aware of that fact but got bugger all backing to correct it As a couple of us have said, if you read between the lines, that's probably what he's getting at without actually criticising anyone at the club by saying "my chairman's incompetent and has a history of incompetence spanning several managers, not just me".

Or one of Kaka's little toes. At least he's began to consider his options....two thirds of the way through the transfer window.

There's some people who sit near me at the match who've been going longer than I've been alive and they're clueless as well. I think that while he is not to blame for the situation at the club he is quite clearly nowhere near the quality of manager we should be trying to attract and now he's been offered a new deal. That's where the anger comes from. His four years out of the game speaks volumes (something else he's felt the need to lie about btw). I agree, and everyone saying its a knee jerk reaction who should we get in etc, the longer he stays here the deeper in the doo doo we will be come the end of the season. Lest we not forget he was brought in on a month by month contract to steady the ship, on that score he has done exactly as he was asked. In the interim i was lead to believe that a manager was being lined up to start rebuilding the team from the bottom up (again) and then kinnear could then disappear back into management obscurity. I am no expert but am i sure that there are plenty of more talented and upto date managers available, who would be a step up from the ashley best mates jobs for the boys club He was brought in month by month while they pushed for a sale, the thinking being that new owners could bring in their own man. It's only a couple of weeks since the club was taken off the market, so I'd have expected us to be scouring the globe for the best we can find from that point. Instead the people running the club have thought, "fuck it, Kinnear's cheap as chips and he's no bother whatsoever". Unless they actually believe he's "better than Capello."