Baggio

You can see it dropping year on year every year since he arrived. I've got no idea how that breaks down in terms of Shirt sponsor, match sponsors, shirt sales etc, but the shirt deal being a one off drop suggests it's something other than that. Well yes, it was dropping off by people refusing to buy food and drink in the ground to apparently hit Ashley in the pocket. Again that's not really a revelation.

Also as far as the gate receipts go, it's worth remembering that apart from the expected hit from the large family section, we only played one cup game at home all season and the same goes for this year too. European qualification and a decent run will boost this a fair bit.

Surely Villa's have gone up because of shirt sponsorship, where as the drop from ours since the season before is down to reduced deal we signed while in the championship. Seems a moot point anyway as we know we've got an improved deal already signed.

I think it was Fulham who announced they made something like £9 million from there run in Europe a few seasons ago, more so in gate receipts than prize money I would have thought.

Interesting points being the wage bill, they've done a fantastic hob of improving the squad while shaving so much off it. Also how they demand fees up front when selling and buy the same way, with the financial fair play rules kicking in I don't think many clubs will have that sort of cash to hand to purchase our best players while we will hopefully be in a position to pick up a few bargains from clubs desperate to get money in in one go.

So the accounts say Ashley had to pay off £36 million in owed transfers from before he bought the club. Are you going to add that to his spend on transfers, HF? Technically it is transfer spend...

According to the telegraph we are on course to make a £10 million profit for this season, which will be invested back in the club.

I go off the performances. I think they've rarely looked much improved on performances last season. We've been class at taking points off terrible bottom half teams that we threw away last season though, which is champion. They do say the sign of a good team is taking points off teams when you're not playing well, in fact I'd say the Wolves game and the first half of the Sunderland game our home form has been pretty good, even the games we lost to Chelsea and West Brom I don't think we played particularly bad in and on another day could have got something from both. Interestingly a quick look at last seasons stats show we've already got the same number of clean sheets this year

Btw Happy Face if league places make it that hard to judge then why not go off points?

Last seasons goal wise is a strange one to judge, I don't have the figures to hand bit I think we scored the same amount of goals in 6 games as we did in the other 32 Something bizarre like that. Same could be said of the reverse this season I suppose, 2 huge defeats against Fulham and Spurs have knocked our goals conceded column badly. Saying that I'm not sure a better way to judge it than maybe points on the board.

That's Spurs through to the quarter finals. Games to be played on the 17th and 18th of this month.

"utter shambles of a man" I think I'm going to follow mancmag and put Leazes on the ignore list, honestly I can feel my life slipping away getting pulled into the same debate with made up quotes that I've apparently said and his post generated responses.

but but but........I thought you said that the DOF system was the ONLY way to do it, and we would do the same under Wise and Keegan, even saying that Keegan should go and Wise should run the show to retain this DOF system ? The truth is Spurs are now run by football men, and we are not, whereas the reverse was true when they were run by Alan Sugar [Mike Ashley's role model ?] and we were run by football men. Have we or have we not made it easy for Spurs to climb above us, to borrow Chez's current cliche ? I don't remember saying that was the only way you could do it at all, in fact I'm sort of stuck in between being annoyed and feeling sorry for you that you have to make things up on the internet to try and back up your point, but that's not nearly as sorry as I feel for you that you've let being right on the internet become more important than being able to enjoy the club pushing for Europe.

It's impossible to compete with Man City, it's possible to compete with Spurs eventually but it will take time to build ourselves to that level of finances. I thought you were ignoring me after you didn't bother telling me which parts of the earlier post were rubbish. but it isn't so long ago that Spurs couldn't compete with us ? How has this turnaround happened ? Has it been easy for them to do that, to quote the current deluded rubbish being spouted by Chez ? The turnaround has happened due to how the club was ran after Robson left, we were living beyond our means (which you've admitted yourself) and then struggled to shift on the players we handed big contracts to, which meant we were running at huge losses that we couldn't afford. Spurs on the other hand bought good young players that they hoped would rise in value and sold some of them for big profits, they also worked on boosting the clubs income while keeping costs down, so they could use those profits to invest in more players.

Absolutely, for a club like ours falling outside of the top 10 has to be considered a poor season. Now we're here we shouldn't be dropping out.

Wait a minute it was you who was claiming that it was easy in 93 but now we're challenging Arsenal,Chelsea and Liverpool "18 months after being in division 2" its difficult? I happen to agree with what you're saying, but giving that as an example earlier in the thread isnt the best thing you couldve used to illustrate your point because what has happened since promotion contradicts what you're claiming. It has been relatively easy. and correct me if I'm wrong but the club also operated at a loss in 09 and 10? We've acheived a lot quickly, and a lot of people share the credit for that including Ashley. But it was similar the last time we were promoted too. Remember we slipped back from 2nd to 7th in our second season in 95. This season barring a abysmal collapse our league placing will go up by about half a dozen places. Or is this part of your "its more difficult now" argument? We dropped from 3rd to 6th because we sold our best striker without an adequate replacement comi.....wait a minute!!!

It's impossible to compete with Man City, it's possible to compete with Spurs eventually but it will take time to build ourselves to that level of finances. I thought you were ignoring me after you didn't bother telling me which parts of the earlier post were rubbish.

I'm happy to try Spurs approach but see 5 teams whose revenues/profits/cash are very hard to match. That's why imo challenging around 5th/6th/7th is about "right" sadly. Beyond that its about management/luck. Pretty much how I see it, Spurs have done well with how they've built themselves up but we are still closer to them in terms of points than they are to Man City, they've also never finished as high in the Premiership as Norwich did back in 1992 despite having a top quality team, which to me shows how much more difficult it is to compete now compared to back then.

rubbish. How is it rubbish? Did Norwich not not sit top of the league before coming 3rd? Did Doug Ellis' Villa not come second despite him being known for not spending? Did Joe Kinnear's Wimbledon finish 6th despite having no ground of their own? Did Liverpool spend over £100m and still haven't guaranteed 6th? Have Man City spent a fortune to have their first season where they look like winning the league? Which part is rubbish?

Of course it's changed since 1992, I can't believe anyone would argue that. The season before we came 3rd under Keegan Norwich were sat on the top of the table for the first half of the season and finished the season in 3rd place, behind Man Utd and Doug Ellis' Villa. Even the following season we came 3rd you had Joe Kinnear's Wimbledon finishing in 6th! A team that's stadium was so shit that they had to abandon it to ground share with Crystal Palace. Are people really trying to say it hasn't changed? At a time when Liverpool have spend £100m on new players and are still not guaranteed a top 6 finish?! Where Man City have thrown a ridiculous amount of money at it just to have their first real season of challenging for the title? It's miles apart

Yes we need 2 of Liverpool, Chelsea and Spurs to make the final, that way 7th place is opened up for European football. The way the draw has happened worked out well for us, we just need one of them to turn over the winner of Everton vs Sunderland in the semi final.

Great result for us with Chelsea winning tonight, now we need Spurs to beat Stevenage tomorrow to give us a quarter final of... Spurs vs Bolton Chelsea vs Leicester Liverpool vs Stoke Everton vs Sunderland

Tesco home delivery. I ordered 24 boxes of 12 cat food pouches as they were on offer the other day, I think it was £1.84 a box or something like that which was a great deal. Anyway I get home from work to find out that instead of sending me the boxes, they sent me an alternative which was 24 individual pouches and charged me over £9 for them as well as £6 delivery! Bastards

I didn't get Wolves, Wigan or QPR.

The whole Pardew out brigade seems to be a N-O thing anyway, basically they fall into 2 categories of wanting him out for not playing Ben Arfa every game or they never wanted him in the first place as they were firmly in the Hughton camp so are looking for any reason to have a go. HTT made the point that Pardew would have to come 6th to equal the achievements of Hughton, which just about sums the bloke up. Nobody is saying Pardew is the best manager out there but we're going in the right direction and the owner and more importantly the players like him, judging by them being happy to either sign or commit to longer contracts while he's in charge.