FCUM

Then sit back and watch a mass exodus of the best players to Spain and Italy. In the overall scheme of things how much does that really matter? Plenty on here will remember the days before we did attract the best players. All that mattered was if your team was winning and where they were in the league. Has it changed that much now? If the same status quo remained the same without some of these top players would fans desert the game. Is it not still relative, does having the top stars matter that much? It would probably help Ingerlund (and Scotland etc) and a lot of the smaller clubs who got by developing players for the top clubs. If it brought back some sensibility, lower wages and ticket prices the average working man can really afford then I'd be all for it. Germany doesn't seem to be doing to bad on it.

You may be right, Renton. I wouldn't write them off whilst Fergie is still there though, debt or no debt. Rooney is replaceable just like every other player who's gone before him. I've just got a sneaky feeling that Fergie wants to do one more rebuilding job before he puts his slippers on. It will be a lot more difficult given the debt but I wouldn't put it past him.

To put it into context, that 23% of their total revenues for Rooney alone, they will be turning out a 5 a side team when the new regs kick in

I'm not convinced, Fergie doesn't like his off field antics and I think he'll go. Key though is ideally Man Utd need him to sign a new contract befoe offloading him, just as they did with Ronaldo. We tend not to see real big money moves in Jan as the players won't be eligible for the champions league. If it gets to the summer with only 12 months on a contract then his price will plummet! Gill & co have cocked up big time here, they never usually let star players get to even 2 years on their contract let alone 18 months!

The situation ain't quite as bad as that Stevie. Much as it pains me to say it, I can see the Glazers pulling this off thanks to the £500m bond issue which was oversubscribed. They have bought themselves breathing space until 2017. There is the £500m bond debt & £250m PIK debt due in 2017, which means (assuming they can maintain the PIK debt at £250m) they need to refinance in 2017 for £750m. The last accounts show £163m cash on the balance sheet and a revolving £75m credit facility for player capex. Experts reckon they need £45m of that cash for operating costs so there is around £120m surplus cash mainly thanks to the Ronaldo money and a big wedge up front from the sponsors. Key question is, will that cash surplus go on player acquisition or into the Glazers pockets as dividends? We probably won't know the answer to that until next summer. Glazer, Gill & Fergie all say that cash will be spent on players, they want to keep the wages steady but as high earners (VDS, Giggs, Scholes, Hargreaves, Neville) all leave the payroll then other high earners will be bought to replace them. Time will tell. If the Glazers have a plan, then it's to maintain the debts until 2017 whlst growing the value of the club, refinance £750m of debt, sell for between 1.2 & 2 billion and walk away with a big wedge. The only way they will pull that off is to keep the club succesful, so maybe the cash surplus will go on players with some in dividends to service the PIK debt. It's the only option that makes any sense. If the Glazers get to 2017 and can't refinance £750m worth of debt, they and Man Utd are fucked.

I think you're right about one of the Sunday league teams Steve but I'm buggered if I can remember which one I can remember him managing Willington in the Northern league after Boro but then I think he went out the middle east somewhere after that. Brilliant coach according to those who played for him but like Peter Taylor (with Cloughie) he needed a management foil which he only really got with Joe Mercer. Widely recognised as being the one who first created the famous Wist Am academy of the early 60s. A real character in his time, always sticks in my mind for the episode with Fiona Richmond in the bath at Citeh

That sounds like it could lead to even more fun & games down the line. Shirley the premier league can't stop anybody buying a club, all they could do would be to withdraw their rights to participate in the premier league

Sounds to me like Hicks is getting his ducks in a row to fuck over the other directors. If he loses the case for this injunction granted in Texas then he simply sells to Mill Financial who repay RBS before Friday, take over the club and get rid of the other 3.

Pacino Fan, As I'm sure you're aware, your mate Tom Hicks has a bit of 'history' on Tyneside after he got rid of hundreds of workers at Via Sytems South Shields & Longbenton sites and tried his damnest to wriggle out paying them any compensation or redundancy. I know people (both Newcastle & Sunderland supporters) who protested against this both on Tyneside and in Liverpool before matches against you. Both sets of supporters have told me that in every case the scousers laughed at them, took the piss and waved their stars & stripes flags in their faces. If you're looking for sympathy from the geordies & mackems then you'll have a fucking long wait I'm afraid.

This could get even more scarier than a lot of Man Utd supporters realise. If Man Utd go bust then everybody knows the FA will pretty much roll over as they have done with other clubs, it will be a 10-20 point deduction which would probably mean no European football for a season but then they come back completely debt free under new owners the following season. Result really!! However, from what I'm led to believe, if the Glazers go bust in the USA then the US government can basically seize all their worldwide assets, including Man Utd, and do as they want with them. They won't give a shit what the FA or anybody else wants, they could offload players in their own time at their own price and if Man Utd don't have new owners or enough players to start a new season or fulfil their fixtures then tough shit. Scary stuff indeed.

As a complete neutral, I'd take Carroll before Agbonlahor every time. Different type of player maybe but there are a few around that can do what Agbonlahor does but not many with the physical presence of Carroll. I'd certainly give him an early call up to the England squad. He offers something that nobody else offers with the possible exception of Crouch and I think he's better than Crouch even at this stage of his development.

Interesting. First time I've seen Ashley's Son

Hughton needs to have a word with Carroll sharpish! He can't go putting in performances like that in before the transfer window closes. Ashley is counting the cash as we speak Seriously, he looks a player. Always knew he was good in the air but last week his workrate impressed me and this week he showed he can play on the deck.

Freudian slip, I obviously meant Gosling Though if you do get Rodwell at some point I'm coming back to claim super duper ITK status

Match went pretty much as expected for me. Man Ud dominated without being really able to turn their superiority into goals. For you I think there were some positive signs. Carroll will be a handful for a lot of teams this year, I was particularly impressed with his workrate. His finishing will improve with experience but he could do with a bit more pace down the flanks pinging in the crosses. Your problems, for me, are identical to the problems you had 2 years ago. That midfield triumverate of Barton, Nolan & Smith are past their sell by date. No energy or passion. The pace of premiership football passes them by. You need rid of them all but they are not going anywhere because of the money, you're stuck with them until their contracts expire. The time Man Utd's midfield had on the ball was frightening. You need some younger blood in midfield harrying the opposition. As far as Man Utd go, they will be thereabouts again this season but they really need to offload Berbatov quickly, he's killing their game. He's a tidy footballer but he wants to slow everything down 'continental style'. Man Utd are at their best attacking with pace and it all grinds to a halt when Berbatov puts his foot on the ball. Good luck for the season. Guthrie and Rodwell later in the season might just give you the midfield energy you need provided Hughton has the balls to drop the has beens.

Alex, Well I agree with you to some extent, I don't think that was SJH's intention. Without wishing to say too much, I had a fairly 'priveliged' view of the original Magpie group via one of it's members. I think Hall's intentions were to ultimately put the club into the hands of the supporters. Barcelona was his model, he wanted NUFC ultimately run on similar lines. Unfortunately, I think things ran away from him a little, whilst he was rejuvinating NUFC the money started to fly into the game, clubs values increased massively. It rapidly reached the state where the club's value made it all but impossible to get 100% fan ownership. Yes, I agree he could have been a philanthropist and sold to the fans at well below market value but you have to bear in mind there was other people's cash invested too. I've a lot of time for Hall and met him a lot in the months leading up to the takeover and I do think his motives were genuine. There was some 'self aggrandisment' there, he did want to be seen and remembered as the 'Geordie Messiah' who pulled all of Newcastle sporting roots under one umbrella and then placed them into hands of the supporters ala Barcelona but the idea was good in principle. At the end of the day he was a businessman though and took his profit when he realised he couldn't hang with the real big money coming into the game.

it is why Peter Bonetti played in goal against West Germany. England were 2-0 up, Ramsey subbed Bobby Charlton for ? (can't remember who] and it changed the game. The Germans had man marked Charlton with Beckanbaur but after the change pushed Beckanbuar forward and he scored the first goal which went under Bonetti and they won 3-2. Seem to remember Bobby Charlton was still on when Beckenbaur scored that one under Bonetti, Leazes. I've this memory of him peeling off Charlton when he made his run forward. Think it was after that Colin Bell replaced him. Heat was intense in Mexico for that world cup and I seem to remember most games being played in temps over 100 deg. Charlton was mid 30's and baldie which didn't help I think Sir Alf blamed Charlton for losing Beckenbaur for that goal as he looked knackered so took him off. That my memory anyway but it was a long time ago now, so may well be wrong

Wouldn't argue with you that Man Utd started it, Stevie, but it was nowt to do with 'starting to get good'. The anti England thing started after Beckham got sent off at the world cup and became a national hate figure for the country. Beckham was getting stick at every ground in the country, the England fans started singing anti Man Utd songs and even our beloved super soaraway Sun printed a centre spread of a dartboard with Beckham's head in the centre. Club before country has always been the mantra for most football supporters in the country and Man Utd fans rallied round their own.

It going to take an awful lot of Fred Done's to raise £1.3 billion I'm not saying that Harris can't broker a deal for a group of big investors to buy the club from Glazer but how does that qualify as the supporters buying the club If Sheik Hamdan Al Turbanheed wants to buy it and claims to be a lifelong supporter, does that make it a supporter owned club

Then the man is a fucking imbecile. The opportunity for fan's to own a club like Man Utd are long gone. FFS, we couldn't even get the 10% foothold to stop Glazer de-listing. Glazer reportedly values the club at £1.3 billion. Even if you could get all 70,000 match going supporters to cough up it's a £20 grand a head The man is fucking doolaly

Whilst I agree there are a lot of social reasons for the decline of 'Home' support in particular, a lot of it is down to the club's themselves. The average supporter isn't as important to them now in the ongoing drive for the corporate support. Most clubs when they are successful are not the slightest bit interested in encouraging kids to go, it usually costs them revenue as they want cheaper tickets which the club would rather sell to the corporates. When clubs enjoy a degree of success (as you did relatively speaking) in Keegans first stint, kids are discouraged from going, the club's don't need them, they can sell out anyway. You end up with a whole generation of kids who grow up without getting into the habit of going every week, it's no good then lambasting them when they can't be arsed later on. Away support is better for most club's as you're puttting like minded together instead of spreading them round the ground. Shirley it can't be difficult for the clubs to do that for the home support with actively promoting season ticket swaps. They are not interested though, they couldn't give fuck unless you want to pay a premium for some tasteless chilli con carne at £20 a pop before the game.

Word is that although he's a very promising player, he has a bit of an 'attitude' problem. Braga allegedly sent him packing back to Manchester after he went AWOL several times.

Matt / Leazes, I agree with you that the wages are obscene and it needs controlling but how to do it? The usual scenario discussed is making players wages a percentage of turnover but that just protects the big clubs. As chezgiven rightly said earlier in this thread, clubs need to speculate to accumulate sometimes. In effect this denies them the opportunity to do that and build a club up, they can't start to improve the quality of playing staff until they increase turnover, it's the old chicken & egg syndrome. A couple of years ago, I was talking a senior exec of Nike on the train about the same thing. He told me that discussions had already taken place with certain clubs that if wage capping came in, they would reduce the amount paid directly to clubs for sponsorship and increase the sponsorship deals to the individual players to get round it. They will find ways around it.

Platini is a cock of the highest order (like most of UEFA) who constantly shows his arse with his anti English vitriol. I agree about Juventus and the noise is conspicuous by it's absence when the Spanish government repeatedly bail out their 'pet club'! We are going back 40 years to when football was a rich man's plaything, the only difference is that they are now shovelling money in rather than out (with the obvious exception of your lord & master) but that doesn't make it better in my view. I just want to see clubs 'sustainable' in their own right and not have the risk of thousands of supporters having the future of their club's dependant on the whim of an Abramovic, Ashley or Glazer. Sure the big clubs will always survive, when Glazer finally runs out of funding and can't borrow any more, there will always be a rich arab or such-like prepared to take it on but the same isn't true for all clubs. There has to be a 'line in the sand' somewhere. For me, that was breached when somebody was allowed to buy Wimbledon and move it to Milton Keynes. It's been downhill from there. It is sport and it is business and I appreciate that we need rules and regulations that encompass both, which is difficult I know.

Why is it daft though? Like it or not, professional sport is big business now and it should have to stand or fall along those lines. More general business is being slowly strangled by the dreaded pre-pack and phoenix companies and it won't be long before it's happening regularly in football. Why should club's be allowed to spend billions they don't have, bump the company and the debts and then carry on with a major advantage over other club's who have managed their finances properly? Ultimately, that's where it's leading.