BigWalrus

His best spell since Shearer got injured and he found himself playing alongside Bellamy.

PEK is lovely. Guilty pleasure is a PEK sandwich.

Garth Crooks' Team of the Week. He picks strikers who scored, midfielders who scored, defenders who scored and goalkeepers who made some saves. I'd be surprised if he even watched any games. One can only assume the BBC have care in the community obligations and he is helping to fill the quota.

Aye, a large chunk, but not all of it.

In Tiote's case, it depends whether he's slide-tackling the window or aiming a 40 yard volley at it.

Dying as soon as you want is surely a good thing!

Ok. Marginally profitable rather than unprofitable. Generating a big chunk of revenue but pennies in profit is not worth the effort. It's still not a pretty picture, as there is no way the catering revenue was enough to explain the level of decline.

Catering and bar work was outsourced during that period, which explains a large chunk of the decline. Ashley isn't keen on unprofitable non-core activities.

Pardew (and possibly even Carr) have both said This has been done to death, but which players have been signed for a small initial outlay and sold for substantial profits? There really aren't any more than your average club, aside from the ridiculous £35m deal for Carroll which nobody in their right mind would refuse.

It's also about signing players that fit into the culture of the squad and the style of playing. QPR fan clearly believes that scouting is just a case of watching a match, seeing someone have a decent game then recommending him. It's all academic though, as he was so obviously fishing for bites.

All sensible points, but would that really get us into the Champions League? Regardless of who we have as manager and DoF, without spending £30-40m more a season, every season, I don't see how we could possibly sustainably qualify for the CL. The gap is just too big.

http://www.themag.co.uk/tyne-talk/exclusive-the-truth-about-the-yohan-cabaye-transfer-interview/ This is worth reading.

But, in answer to the question, what would you do differently to make us compete with Chelsea, Man City, Man Utd, Arsenal, Spurs and Liverpool for the CL spots? The analysis of yearly spend on wages and transfers suggests we would need to spend £30-40m a year extra to get anywhere close, which is money we simply don't have.

How should we be run to enable CL qualification?

Still think Man Utd will be fine this season. Don't think they'll win the league, but I see them in the top 4 without a doubt.

Tiote.

Reminded me of playing FIFA with my brother about 12 years ago. Comical.

Just making the point that it's a fine margin between "PARDEW OUT!" and everything being acceptable. Despite all that, we are in a decent place in the league. I'm well aware that we'll win games we should lose and vice versa.

If we had held on to our lead against Hull and beaten the mackems, we would now be clear second behind Arsenal. Small margins.

"Foreign player in twilight years of career wishes to end his playing days back at home" shock. As long as he acts professionally while wearing black and white, and doesn't go awol again, I'm not concerned. San Lorenzo can't afford him.

Looks anything but a straight line to me. Almost exponential growth in spending needed to get to the top.

Cheers for that. That paints a picture that I expected. There's the top 6 who are spending a lot more than the rest. Then there's the next group below, around the £60-70m mark. Sunderland and Villa are the two surprising cases, who have gained nowt from spending more. What it says to me is that to make any significant move into the upper echelons of the league, we'd need to be spending in line with the top 5 in that table. That would equate to pretty much doubling our yearly outlay, which is clearly not feasible with our level of turnover.

The wages aren't constants though, they vary massively from £30m right up to £260m.

Yes, I read all of them thanks. Regardless of the conclusions we come to, we should still be taking wages into account. How can you talk about net spend if you miss the biggest number out from the very beginning?

It means we'd be looking at the full picture, rather than just a portion of it. The club has an annual cash budget which will include wages as well as transfer fees. If they underspend on transfer fees one year, this can translate into higher wages or a renewed contract. Take the Carroll sale for instance. We sold one player (earning around £40k a week) but brought in 4 or 5 with the transfer fee, who will probably be earning somewhere in the region of £150-200k per week combined. Assuming 5 year deals, that equates to a £10m saving over 5 years for Carroll, but an additional cost of between 40-50m in wages. Wages are a huge, huge part of the discussion as it's the biggest component of net spend.