Matt

He's a £50m player, he should have been able to finish that with his bell-end.

We aren't good enough as a team to only expect strikers to finish a move off. We have to defend from the front and again today our ball retention on the quick counter was not great.

Yet to complete 90 mins in the PL apparently. He's usually fucked after about an hour.

Double entry, one in each eye.

Toontastic N-O BBC News Ft.com Welcome to Sparta Not allowed facebook and the like.

Everything he does will always be in the context of what has gone before and as such the club will not be able to maintain any notable level success under his stewardship. When you have been proven to have lead your customers up the garden path then such a reaction is entirely understandable.

I disagree we need a sugar daddy. We are not helped by the economic malaise coupled with our comparative attractiveness on the pitch driving down sales of corporate boxes and seats, which in the early 2000s represented nearly half of all matchday receipts- but I'm still confident that if an owner (the current bridges are burned beyond recovery) established an understanding with the supporter base then NUFC are more than capable of competing in the top half of the Premier League.

All while TP ignores the fact that Sports Direct is a listed company with 22% of the business held by others, whereas NUFC is a 100% owned private entity. The reason people get het up about this is because of phrases like 'he doesn't take a penny out of the club' and 'we need to be self-sufficient' when he does in kind by providing free advertising to his other companies. There is a clear benefit to him of doing this. This line about not charging interest on the loans is totally irrelevant. This is not really debt at all, as it was required in order to preserve the original equity purchase. He could charge 1% or 1000%, as Ashley himself would have to pick up any shortfall. There is no net benefit to him either way.

Emergency loans have only ever been granted for keepers.

£52m being dividends rec'd to date?

Who would have thought we could have found just the man to keep it going!

Quite, poor choice of words from me. For their shares, I mean. Rather than the best part of £130m that they somehow walked away with.

It would make no difference to the club.

Well, then they couldn't use the line 'Mike hasn't taken a penny out of this club", which clearly he is but in kind rather than in cash. So yes, I'd rather he did. Of course he could also convert his tax-efficient loans into cumbersome equity. It wouldn't help him financially, but it would stop daft discussions like this.

If Everton's loan is due to Bear Stearns then it's fair to say it's been there a while. Would we have re-financed the stadium loan? In 2007 yes I think we probably could have done. And of course it would not have become due has the previous owners stayed put. The club was quickly running out of cash, so the most likely answer to the 'what if' question (bearing in mind how many clubs have changed hands since) would be that the former directors would have been left with little to show from their investment and a new owner would have undertaken what Ashley did- a considerable working capital injection.

Possibly. Although the 'debt' would just be the additional shareholder loan to pay off the fee if there wasn't enough cash in the club for it to do so on its own. His method of paying up front but receiving in stages is the reverse of what most businesses would normally try to do- preferring to hold on to their cash as long as possible. However, Ashley is cash-rich and may instead to get a better discount for paying up front, or premium for staggering receipts which will overall save him more than if he kept the extra cash in a bank account earning bugger all interest.

Why would he alter the home kit? If you're putting your logo on a shirt then you have thousands of walking adverts. But you pretty much negate that if you modify the kit such that no-one would buy it. I disagree that this has been one huge marketing ploy. It was meant to be a lark for the newly super-coined Ashley, didn't work out, and this is the next best option. But you're bang on that he will flog the past reputation of the brand while slashing costs, it's his modus operandi. Of course, the brand can be destroyed if the ground is empty. Don't renew.

Looks like it's all about to kick off with Greece finally defaulting. Bad new for France, their main banks wrote bucketloads of CDS on Greece, which is why they were so keen that any restructure of the bail-out package could not be interpreted as a 'default event' otherwise they would have to pay out on the CDS and leave the French system looking very sick. Going to be an entertaining few weeks.

Obertan is in the category of 'Players who make me want to order another pint at ten to three and see how I feel after that'.

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF

Personally, I thought that represented excellent value for money.

IIRC all the players touted left the club within a few months.

I'm pretty convinced this is my last year like. You can still get a ticket for any game you want.

The problems in the US and Eurozone have made us a safe haven for bond investors. We should be filling our boots, 2.54% for 10-year money. In general the UK always gets too wrapped up in symbolism over pragmatism. Whatever the rights and wrongs over the 50p tax it doesn't raise that much in effect and we should be more concerned about creeping VAT rises, which while not as headline-grabbing as 'rich spivs get paid shitloads' will be far more damaging to lower earners in the long-run.

Not keen on paying tax on it, either.