Baggio
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Posts posted by Baggio
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Confirmed on their official site.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Worth a punt on them getting relegated IMO.
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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?
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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.
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That's my thing. Ask Chez.
You're supposed to frame your own argument against the point being made though, not focus in on the side issue of how precise my working has been.
Milner and Nzogbia weren't particularly high earners either. Not sure what Given was on, but it could be argued that Ashley did very little to really lower the wage bill until we'd been relegated.
In signing Smith, Coloccini, Geremi, and Nolan(?) (and perhaps sanctioning Barton and Viduka who arrived after he bought out Sir John but before the take over was complete) he was guilty of lumbering the club with some of the most expensive contracts in recent history.
Everyone on the books for the last 3 years was signed by Ashley.
To argue that Ashley's spent 5 years correcting the mistakes of his predecessor on that score is misleading....and a line Llambias often likes to spin.
He deserves massive credit on restructuring the policy since since relegation, to suit a second tier club. The question is whether he can restructure it again to make us first tier, which we should be primed to do now.
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.
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You're changing how the discussion is framed, from 'we've been turned around' to 'we'd be much worse off without him'. I'll take that as agreement that he's not quite turned us round yet. Which was my only point
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.
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Should I have provided the exact number of days. Don't avoid the overall point to concentrate on the minutiae of an approximation.
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.
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The average attendance that corresponds to our most recent financial results was 47718.
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.
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Can't see us signing Mbiwa. Been linked with a lot of bigger clubs.
He was making noises about wanting to come here a few months back but the chairman wouldn't sell mid season.
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I'm comparing the latest accounts with EVERY season going back over a decade. If a club has more cup games, it's because they get past clubs like Brighton or (relegated) Blackburn in the early stages. To attribute poor matchday revenues ONLY to that is to completely let them off the hook. Attendances are down 4k - 5k. That impacts matchday revenue and is down to Ashley.
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.
The previous owners would have cut loose the catering if it was costing them money, they weren't subsidising pies for fans. The fact Ashley did it is more indicative of how fans aren't happy to give him their money.
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.
Up to the week we sold Milner he'd spent £27m,that was a year and a half, Keegan had started the season reasonably too. Drawing at old Trafford and beating Bolton at home. Then we sold Milner, Zoggy and Given to pull in £22m and go on a downward spiral. He spent beyond the clubs means...and then he undercut the confidence that can build by gutting the team despite the manager. the worst of both worlds.
So he didn't spend £15 million over 2 seasons then? I take it those stats suited that agenda on the previous page?
I'm asking without someone to shoulder the losses/debt, if NUFC were required to stand on it's own two feet financially, was it better placed to do so in 2007 or now?
The banks wouldn't lend us another £40m or whatever to cover the losses then so we were in the shit really bad, but would any financial institution lend us the £150m Ashley has built it up to while alienating most of his customers/sponsors....on the back of the same turnover we had then and losses back to what they were in 2005.
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?
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I don't think you explained it, you gave your view, but in my view playing less games isn't a root cause, it's a symptom of the root cause which is Ashley's poor handling of the club. Matchday revenue is the lowest since 2000, we've not got into Europe several times before since then, we've had poor cup runs too. Attributing the lower income to less games is accounts talk that ignores the failings of the owner to ensure both we have more games, and that people want to come to what games there are.
Similarly with commercial income, the reduced income follows club performance, not the other way around. As you would have it, whoever owns the club is helpless in the face of the whims of sponsors. While market forces are at play in a broad sense, I've showed previously that our commercial performance goes against the trend for other similarly sized clubs.
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.
In my opinion no, for all of the reasons I've set out here.
Our debt is better structured, absolutely, but it is much, much bigger. Anything the club is responsible for maximising is down, only TV money is up.
Wages as a percentage of turnover is improved so credit is deserved for that. That's the easiest thing in the world to control though, the slash and burn approach to it is what saw us get relegated, however, the excellent way the squad has been rebuilt on a budget negates that very disappointing initial approach.
The saving grace is Ashley is so rich.
Can I ask you, if Shepherd was in charge now with the finances exactly as they are, would you be happier than you were in 2007?
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.
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Let's say you're right, (though I fail to see a £10m net spend in his first year - £15m in his first 2 years - before wages, as break even and rectifying the issue) What has Ashly done to turn it around? Considering the fact that commercial and matchday incomes are way down. Any re-balancing of the books is predominantly down to improved media income. There's been some improvement in wages, but not a significant amount. The wage bill has gone from £59m when he bought us to £53m now. Basically the cost of Xisco saved. Woop woop.
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.
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Over those 2 seasons Ashley broke our transfer record for a defender, brought in a cripple on £60k a week and spent just shy of £6m on a shambles of a young striker who played about 2 and a half games for us.
If you're turning something around I fail to see how it's moot to look at the situation in the decade that leads to the changeover. The 2 years at the end was defined by one particularly stupid decision, investing almost £40m in Owen, when he was as good as finished.
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.
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is that right ? I knew he was running "tighter financial ship" etc etc blah blah but that is seriously not good. How can you make progress if income is down as much as that, and how is the income down by so much
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.
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I'd question whether we made "substantial losses every year". In 5 out of ten years prior to Ashleys arrival, losses were lower than they were in the most recent set of accounts, the accounts being lauded as a great vindicator. Only once in that time did losses exceed those in ANY previous year under Ashley.
He's turned around his own failings, still a way to go by most other measures.
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.
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In terms of turnover, wages, wages as a percentage of turnover & profit NUFC are currently where they were in 2005.
The debt is currently 4 times as high, commercial income is £10m lower and matchday income is £10m lower than it was back then.
It's a similar story comparing to 2007 except the debt has only doubled since then
What do you see as the areas he's turned around?
He's turned us around to being close to break even rather than making substantial losses every year.
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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.
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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.
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which means what exactly ? I've never said having a DOF to choose the signing of players is a good idea. Baggio has though.
Link?
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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.
TV money to grow 70% in 2013
in Newcastle Forum
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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.