Kitman

This is a seriously piss poor result. Didn't see the game but when you lose to lower league opposition it's usually because you don't match them for effort and commitment. Reading the match report on the beeb it wasn't bad luck on our part, they outplayed us.

What a day! Watched a lot of the match during the day and just watched the highlights. Great stuff, couldn't have gone better. Let's hope we really stick it to 'em on Day 2.

Santa comes to New Zealand first The hangover's already kicked in and kids have opened their prezzies..... Ho ho ho! Merry xmas to one and all! Hope you have a good 'un!

I think he'd be too old and expensive and has too much baggage

washed up perma-crock

If we must sell him (and I don't want them to), do it in the summer. Selling in Jan would be madness imo. We saw how much weaker the team was when he was suspended.

Happy birthday

giving Pardew £500k a year rather than giving hughton what he's worth (£1m+ a year at least) will save Ashley a minimum of £2.5m over the length of his contract. Minimising wages is the only lesson Ashley has learned. I think people are fitting the facts around a sale they're hoping for, rather than looking at it for what it is. Love your avatar by the way, pissed myself when i saw that sign at the match. Oh well, it was just a theory

Just suppose Ashley has these Qataris lined up and it's nailed on they will buy the club for a ridiculous price. As with Man City, it's highly likely they'd want their own high profile manager in when they take over. As money isn't a problem, Pardew would be due a big pay off i.e 5 x annual salary. But this wouldn't deter the new owners from buying the club or paying him off. Against this backdrop, the length of Pardew's contract makes perfect sense. He'd only be a caretaker manager pending the sale, but they'd have taken the opportunity to put a big lump of cash into his pocket at the arabs' expense for doing very little, basically because he's a mate. In the meantime if he does a good job it boosts his reputation and if he doesn't, it's not his fault. I may be being unduly cynical......

Unfortunately, that doesnt make any sense. You cant expect the club not to go bust and be in debt. Aren't all the other PL clubs in debt though (and loss making too)? They aren't about to go bust unless their benefactors put them under, are they? It's totally obvious Ashley is subsidising the club and without his support it would go under, I get that. But so what? There can't be many clubs that make profits and the situation must have been obvious when he bought the club. I know the Shepherd and the Halls left a financial mess when he bought the club, again he should have known this. My frustration is that he seems to be applying financial strictures to the club that no-one else is adopting. That might be prudent business, we might be ahead of the curve and other clubs may have to fall into line, or whatever. However I can see that with more investment, we would do significantly better. I want more ambition - I say that as a fan, not their financial director. Chez, I understand the economics don't make sense, but in my view, if he couldn't afford to put the money in, he shouldn't have bought the club in the first place. My view isn't driven by business logic or analysis, I'm just a fan who wants the club to do well. I really haven't bothered to go into the detail of the finances, so I'm talking from the heart not the head. There are some clubs who have spent loads and have either gone bust or are now seriously reigning in the spend and there are a raft of clubs who are about to. Bolton being a good example of what is coming, we arent much different to anyone else in terms of spending power. When you add in our spend in January and the summer and set it against other clubs in the prem we arent the 3rd bottom spenders any more. I doubt many will spend in January but i reckon we will do another £5m, which would take us to about £15m in 12 months. My view is that apart from lacking investment (no more than £10m would be realistic) in 08/09 he hasnt done much wrong financially. Its not this which is the problem with Ashley. The year he took over our revenue was £99m but our spend was £107m, to balance that year out, spend has to be £91m the following year if revenue stays the same. As revenue dropped £13m he had to find £21m in savings to sort out the problem. We sold £23m worth of players. The debt/loss thing is just like the debt/deficit issue for countries. Debt is not the problem, its the deficit (loss) that affects your ability to raise finance. If you have a huge loss, no-one will lend as you are a risk. If you have a huge debt but break even, people will lend to you. Our finances were about as bad as it can get when he took over as we were at the end of our credit line. Whether a plan was in place to re-finance in June 2007 or not is irrelevant because by 2008 the world of 'finance' had changed forever. Me knowing what happened next makes me think that we would have been fucked. Shepherd cant be held to blame for not fore-seeing the crisis either, i want to be clear on that. Anyway, my point is one of optimism (where i came in on this) because once the rules change, we have to break even or limit losses anyway. My hope is that we are getting the financial side sorted out in preparation for this. Being 8th when no-one dared to hope for more than 17th whilst doing this, lets me see the glass half full. I'm not trying to defend him, the facts are the club was not healthy financially when he came in, £45m of debt had to be paid off there and then, the banks would not lend NUFC a penny more with him as the new owner and the club was stuffed with overpaid, poor footballer taking up more wages than was viable. It got worse from there because of his idiocy but it could have been a lot worse as finance basically disappeared. Good post. I think the problem is that many fans, myself included, expected a rich man coming in to finance the club from his own pocket. Ashley encouraged this image, saying he just wanted to have a bit of fun and the appointment of Keegan etc did nothing to dispel that myth. Then all of a sudden the shutters came down, to the extent that when only a limited amount of investment in Jan 2008 would likely have kept us up, he spent nothing. If there'd been more transparency on the finance, perhaps he'd have had an easier ride. My own take is that with some limited investment he could have saved himself a lot of money, and perhaps some of his reputation with the fans, and I don't think that's a hindsight thing, it was obvious at the time. That's where his footballing inexperience and bloody mindedness, plus lack of good advisers around him, really cocked it up. imo. Maybe he intends to slowly put that right (the CT view), although the Hughton debacle suggests he's been slow to learn his lesson.

Unfortunately, that doesnt make any sense. You cant expect the club not to go bust and be in debt. Aren't all the other PL clubs in debt though (and loss making too)? They aren't about to go bust unless their benefactors put them under, are they? It's totally obvious Ashley is subsidising the club and without his support it would go under, I get that. But so what? There can't be many clubs that make profits and the situation must have been obvious when he bought the club. I know the Shepherd and the Halls left a financial mess when he bought the club, again he should have known this. My frustration is that he seems to be applying financial strictures to the club that no-one else is adopting. That might be prudent business, we might be ahead of the curve and other clubs may have to fall into line, or whatever. However I can see that with more investment, we would do significantly better. I want more ambition - I say that as a fan, not their financial director. Chez, I understand the economics don't make sense, but in my view, if he couldn't afford to put the money in, he shouldn't have bought the club in the first place. My view isn't driven by business logic or analysis, I'm just a fan who wants the club to do well. I really haven't bothered to go into the detail of the finances, so I'm talking from the heart not the head.

I find it difficult now to imagine us winning without Carroll in the side

Happy birthday

I think most people don't care about the finances as long as the club isn't going to go bust. I don't see any satisfaction in running at break even or better, I'd rather we were in debt, buying players and competing for trophies. It's not up to me to decide what is financially prudent, I don't give a toss about it frankly. What Ashley's done at our club baffles me and I don't trust him one iota with its future.

I keep getting the image of the ball bouncing off the back of his head and Kuyt scoring in the Liverpool game. No idea where the ball was.

I wouldn't trust Ashley to reinvest it in the team. We'd sell Carroll and sign Harewood, with Ashley pocketing the difference imo.

I'm very happy. Nothing against Blackburn but I hate Allardyce, because he's so utterly full of shit. No doubt his mates in the media will complain how unfair this is.

It wasn't bloody Shola, that's for sure

Or maybe Ashley's just pushed out a really big beer fart, and the bloke behind him is reacting....

The old bloke behind him looks like someone just pissed down his leg

We've obviously tapped him up. The minute Pardew joins, Tevez hands in a transfer request. You can't tell me those two events aren't connected. He'd be OK as an impact sub when Shola gets a bit tired.

I don't think it was that canny......I think Shola was injured

I can't see it going any further. He'll deny it anyway and say he was just adjusting his meat and 2 veg. But really it's too trivial to bother with and "vulgar" gestures are pretty commonplace in football. It's almost as if Liverpool are bitter or something.....

A pale imitation of the real Action Man with eagle eyes, a scar and some proper fucking Nazi gear with the Schmeiser machine gun and stick grenade chucked in! Absolutely, that was just the first picture off google images. As I recall, mine had Eagle Eyes and Hands that Grip!

Thats the thing, we've not had to tempt some highly paid, world class manager away from Barca or owt. Fuck me, he would have come here for 50k a year and a crack at Nolans missus. Maybe they're worried about him getting poached by Inter when we qualify for the CL this season