Baggio

I read somewhere yesterday that relegated clubs will be picking up around the same as what Man City made for winning the league this year, insane jump.

Confirmed on their official site.

Thinking about it I'd like to see Moyes get the job, I don't see him getting them playing as well as Redknapp has and it would cause Everton problems who are our biggest rivals for a top 7 place.

I can only think that they blame Redknapp wanting the England job was to blame for their slump in the second half of the season because other than that I think he's done a great job there, the brand of fast counter attacking football he has them playing is excellent to watch. If he does go I think they will go for Rafa, not completely sold on Moyes even though he's done a steady job ofmaking Everton the best of the rest over the past decade, I think he might struggle with the egos if working with a group of better players.

Talksport and the Mail seem to think we're going to sign Anita from Ajax. The Mail say the club had a meeting today and have picked him as one of our top targets.

To he fair to Kalou the fact he's prepared to walk out on the European champions for more first team football tells me he's got drive about him to do well somewhere else. You could get over the wage difference by giving him a decent signing on fee too.

Worth a punt on them getting relegated IMO.

I thought he had 4 years already left on his previous contract? Either way its a good news, I prefer having a scouting network set up by the club that works with the manager rather than being the managers own scouts, reduces the chances of the situation we had when Roeder took the job full time and had hardly any backroom staff as they went with Souness, leaving him to scout Kuyt who had already said he was joining Liverpool I wonder if Llambias will ask his recommendations if Pardew ever leaves?

I've accepted he's off and not too bothered about it either. We play better as a 4-3-3 and he doesn't fit so makes sense to bring someone better suited to the position, which I think we will.

I've never said he's spent 5 years putting right all of the wrongs as he's had his fair share of mistakes along the way, however unlike some owners he does appear to learn from his mistakes for the most part, although this seems to be going off topic from the original point of whether he has turned us around or not from when he bought us. *Close to break even from a £33 million loss (not including Carroll money) *5th place league finish up from 13th *far superior squad with players attracting interest from champions league clubs *Reduced the wage bill by £9 million Your points about him not turning it around are... *Debt increased in getting to this point *Matchday revenue down *Commercial revenue down All fair points, what we do know is that he contracted out the catering contract worth £7.6 million a year as it wasn't profitable however if you include that back in for arguments sake it brings us back somewhere near, on top of that we have a new shirt sponsorship to hopefully boost income in that area. Match day is down but will be boosted this term by an average of 2,000 more fans through the gate, next season we also have European football so more home games equals more money in the coffers. Anything else you can think of to get more people through the gates? I'm not sure what his options are with cutting the debt, out of interest if he were to sell players and pay himself the money to reduce the clubs debt would you see that as profess to turning the club around? Since you didn't debate the point about the losses in his first 2 seasons being down to over spending by the previous board catching up with us in the form of amortisation hitting the books I presume you don't disagree with it.

I disagree, I'd say he's turned us around to get us on the right path but there is still plenty of room for improvement, which we should see with the new sponsorship deal and getting us back into Europe. The financial outlook you're going off is for the previous season to the one just gone, which I think it's fair to say when we have pushed on.

Not exactly, most people count the year by season, or the football financial year if you're talking finances. So when you say 2 years and you really mean 15 months or less than 3 full transfer windows then yes I'd say you're showing stats to suit your agenda. Xisco came in after Milner left btw.

So less than 3k despite our first season back from relegation and over 2k have come back this season. Looks like we're going in the right direction after all.

He was making noises about wanting to come here a few months back but the chairman wouldn't sell mid season.

Our average season attendance for last season was 49,935, in 2007 it was 50,686 so down a whopping 750k from the attendances I'm looking at. Whether they would of or not is opinion, what we do know is they make more money outsourcing the catering than they did when it was in house, if memory serves correct it operated at break even up until then so they outsourced it rather than waste man power on running it. So he didn't spend £15 million over 2 seasons then? I take it those stats suited that agenda on the previous page? Of course we are worse off and we would have been fucked by 2008 if he wasn't shouldering the debt, as I've said that was down to the previous board buying players that we couldn't afford in instalments that were hitting the accounts for the following few years. Unless you can think of something Ashley could have done different in his first 2 seasons that would have meant we wouldn't have accumulated so much? Sell more players? Surely that would have been him making even more cuts that supposedly caused relegation? Lets say the old lot had stayed and were not prepared to sell to anyone, where do you think we would be now?

Of less games is the cause, how can you compare a season when we've played 10 games in the cup at home to when we've played 1 and say it isn't the cause that matchday revenue has dropped? That's ridiculous. You can say it's Ashley's fault we haven't had European football under him now but he took over a club that were 13th in the league, the Intertoto had been scrapped which was a backdoor way into European we attempted a few times and as the graph you put up a few weeks ago showed that it is more difficult to crack the top 4 that previous years. As for the commercial side of things, if the club scrap the catering as it's costing us money then surely that''s a good thing to everyone apart from the people who like to argue that a higher turnover shows how much bigger a club we are. If you add that back in (roughly £7.5 million a year) it's back to roughly where it was in 2004/05, as I've already pointed out that isn't including the new shirt sponsorship they've got. It's much bigger mainly due to Amortisation costs from the previous owners, as I said we made a £50+ million loss in Shepherd's last season and Ashley's first, was there any way that Ashley could have avoided that loss happening? He takes a share of the blame for losses due to relegation but luckily for him it worked out well for him in the end. You say the slash and burn approach is what got us relegated but then say he spent £15 million net in those 2 seasons, so which is it? If Shepherd was in charge with the finances exactly the way they are with him shouldering all of the losses then of course I would be happier now than 2007 even if he would have been to blame completely for the debt, the problem was he wasn't in a position to do that or could he guarantee to cover our losses to get the books signed off. I was more than happy with things how they were going up until 2004, even if I didn't trust him when it came to appointing managers.

He's turned it around by covering the losses of the previous board to get us close to a break even position while building a better squad at the same time. Pretty sure the wage bill was £62 million back in 2007 btw so bought us Tiote and Cabaye. Woop woop. I've explaind why everything else has dropped in a previous post, without European football our revenue has dropped due to the lack of games at SJP, back in 2005 when you said it was £10 million more we played 9 more cup games so of course that's going to have an effect on matchday income. Other things like a larger family section meaning cheaper tickets for kids but the big loss is to less games. The commercial side is down mainly to contracting out the catering to Sodexo which was worth £38 million over 5 years instead of doing it in house, so while it's a loss on the income sheet it apparently saves us money. Again there are other things like taking a reduced sponsorship with NR while we were in the Championship but that is over now anyway. The obvious questions to ask yourself is are we in a better position financially than when he bought the club in 2007? I'd say yes, we have more debt as we accumulated losses but we're in a position where we are close to break even, compared to posting a loss of £33 million. All of our debt is interest free now rather than being to banks in the form of mortgages against the training ground and future season ticket sales. Do we have a better squad of players now than when he bought the club in 2007? Absolutely IMO, in fact there wouldn't be many players from that squad I would pick in the current starting 11.

Spending very little as in net spend. So if we were running close to break even in terms of transfers in that time then how did we accumulate further losses of £50 million in the following 2 Premiership seasons? The past 10 years have nothing at all to do with it because we were a well ran club financially then, it's the fuck up with Souness and Roeder that cost us massively and that's what Ashley had to turn around.

Income is down on matchday because we haven't played many home games, standard league fixtures and one cup game compared to the 10 cup games at SJP in 2005. Commercial is down because we don't do the catering anymore and have contracted it out instead, which even though it brought in a predicted £7 million a year we are still financially better off without it.

What happened in 5 of the 10 years prior to Ashley in terms of losses is a completely moot point as nobody has said the club was in a mess financially for that period of time, the losses were while Ashley was here but they were the result of what happened in the final few years of the previous boards era due to player amortisation hitting the accounts and players bought over a period of years needed paying for. I seem to remember that after Ashley's first season the Ernst & Young only signed the club off as a going concern if he agreed to cover all of the losses the club were predicted to make, this despite spending very little in the transfer market. So it wasn't only his own failings at all, you could say relegation was his fault for not spending more money we didn't have but the club still lost over £50 million in the 2 seasons prior to that.

He's turned us around to being close to break even rather than making substantial losses every year.

Is absolutely buzzing still from last night! Went to Nottingham last night to watch Froch vs Bute and the main event was fantastic! Got to shake Sugar Ray Leonard's hand too so was well chuffed with that.

I can remember when Allardyce done an interview saying Dyer was off to West Ham (before it got delayed) and that his replacement would be signing tomorrow, even though I knew it was going to be Smith I still had hope that it wouldn't be. Told me everything what to expect from Fat Sam as manager.

Link?

Just to point out that there isn't £33 million sat in a club bank account that Ashley can dip in to whenever he feels like. In fact I would be interested in knowing how much is left in available cash they can dip in to.