Actually, Ashley has put in considerably more...the debt incurred has been his justification all along for being unwilling to spend more heavily. That said, Newcastle did spend 70m this summer with minimal sales, because his investment was being threatened by relegation. Too bad they spent it badly.
But that investment has been on short term things. this season's players and their wages. We are different clubs on different models. They are a big club that could possibly push up into the top 6. We are a much smaller club that has developed a model of sustainability that should maintain us as a middling Prem club and enable a base to possibly push on from. They already have that base but have not utilised that base appropriately to move up. Us being the 'new Newcastle' is pretty silly really. We are doing pretty well for what we are and where we have been, that is a smallish club compared to the big boys of the Prem that recently was down as far as the 3rd tier. It is only the continual brainwashing we have had from the club that we will be this massively achieving club against the odds that we are a little disappointed when we come back down to earth and are unhappy with being a mid table club. I for one would love the club to come out with some honest statements saying we are what we are and hope to move upward with realistic aims and targets. Not a negative stay as we are thing. Just that we have a battle to move up any places because we are fighting similar sized clubs who all want the same thing. Hitting the heights early has put a huge amount of expectation and sense of entitlement into the club's fans and some seem to have very short term memories almost as if we have always been banging on the door of the top 6. I think if anything the whole new era has been built on huge statements of ambition that somehow we got lucky with and people believed the hype. Not L1 a club of our size and budge should be getting promoted from that division and that is why Pardew was sacked. However getting promoted first time from the championship was incredibly lucky. Lucky that a striker we bought to get us out of L1 was actually good enough to progress through the divisions. Lucky that a CB that we bought to get us there was equally good enough to progress through the divisions. Lucky that a DM that was a youngster from the dutch leagues turned into one of europe'e best DMs. Lucky that a midfielder that we had on our books was good enough to dazzle the crowds and the opposition defenders through the leagues. Lucky that when we were in the Prem a young LB we had to throw in early was international class. Doing what could have taken a decade (getting back to the Prem) took us 3 seasons. What could have taken another 5-10 seasons (Getting away from the relegation zone in the Prem) took us 1 year. So when the board say we will be Europe or CL in (x) years we all believed it. I have no idea why we believed it, maybe we just wanted to. Thats the way of football though. If Leciester finish 7th or 8th what will happen next season if they slip down to the middle or lower middle places? Swansea at the moment? Everton? For sure teams have ups and downs and disappointment should really be measure against expectation and expectation should really be measure against reality. Reality for us is that mid table (8-12th) is about our level if not slightly above. Swansea's reality is probably lower than us. Leicester's is even lower. That is why we are down, why Swansea are down and Leicester's fans are high as kites. Because even though we are still preforming at that realistic expectation level we seem to have got it into our heads that we are a 7th-8th club and any lower is bad. It isn't bad, just lower than last season...or the season before. Even Nigel wouldn't be able to cheer most of us up at the moment.
They just aren't that much bigger than us in terms of resources anymore. Their revenues were 22% higher than ours in '13-'14, when only 24 clubs in the world made more than we did, and that gap was likely smaller last year. It will be even smaller next year. How many fans one gets through the gates is no longer that big of a factor, either in financial resources or in one's ability to recruit. It's a TV league, and that applies to prospective players as well. I don't think anyone disagrees that we have been lucky; the progress happened far faster than expected. The question is whether the ultimate aim of our owner and board matches their public statements. If they're comfortable hanging around in midtable and making a buck, that differs significantly from what has been proffered previously. Here's where I depart. Things are far, far too fluid to talk about "our level" anymore, and that applies to every team below the elite (actually, looking at the struggles of Man U, Liverpool and Chelsea in recent years, it applies to them, too). The gap is too small between those teams to simply expect that we can settle in to a position in the second tier...the only way to have a good chance to maintain position is to keep fighting for an even higher standing. That's where Ashley went wrong; after they finished fifth, he seemed to grow overconfident that they could hang around in midtable and pay down his debt before eventually selling. It nearly cost them their spot in the PL last year (and with it a tonne of Ashley's money), and with the squad riddled with holes even a big spend had downsides, because they needed improvement at just about every position and failed to pull off the rather remarkable feat we did a year ago, when almost every signing worked. This year, it hasn't followed the same script.
If Newcastle finished top 6 for 2 years in a row they would immediately be earning way more than we would if we did the same. They have a much larger fanbase global and UK than we do. It isn't a TV league. For the likes of us maybe but the big boys are earning way more from merchandising than they are TV money. We are comparing a period when we have just finished 8th and then 7th in the Prem with a feel good factor having just been promoted with in the same period for them 2 years of struggling, looking close to relegation form, a campaign to sack their manager and get their chairman out.....yet they still earnt 22% more than us. If they were being more succesful and on a high like us they would have had even higher revenues. I seem to remember Saints' revenues being hit severely at one point under RL's tenure. They have many times more customers that will spend money (on merchandise not just tickets) and more of them will buy in succesful times than how they are at the moment. Not arguing with your analysis of Mike Ashley, just that they are much much bigger than us and have a pretty good platform to build from whereas we are at the beginnings of even trying to build a platform like that. I don't think our board are 'comfrotable hanging around midtable and making a buck' at all. That is more coincidence because we got good money for players and the replacements were cheaper. Not many £25m players are going to come to us. I just think this board is a bit confused. We have Les still warbling on about champions League like he was under Cortese while Ralph and others seem to be making less ambitious and more realistic statements. I think the club would do well to try and keep things more realistic if anything to slightly lower expectations. Not to settle for midtable but stop coming out with the over ambitious stuff. The struggles of Man U who finished 7th in their worst year? Liverpool who have been in decline yet still finish top 6? Chelsea who are having their first bad season for years? I am not talking about 'settling in' to the second tier. I am talking about managing expectations against ambition. Maybe we can become a CL side. Not going to happen for a long long time though. It will take a generation to build a fanbase to support our ability to maintain a CL squad year on year. I pretty much agree with you on Ashley and it is pretty much what I said. Newcastle are a big big club and with their fanbase they could have built something there but they didn't. He thought he had got there and the next season and seasons after would be more of the same. I am not questioning that you have to aim higher, just that as a club or business you have to manage your ambition against expectation. For example at the moment we are not going to be top 7 this season (or at least is unlikely) The homegrown conveyor belt line that we like to brandish and media love to as well is a bit defunct. JWP and Targett are the only ones close to getting game time and neither are first choice. Just a more realistic output from the club would be good. Maybe Raplh is trying to do that and Les has got the wrong script?
Only the biggest of the big boys, which was the point. For all but five teams, the TV money comprised the majority of revenues in 2013-14. For all but six, it was more than 60%. That share is going to go up for everyone next season. The playing field for teams 7 through 13 isn't wholly level, no, but it's pretty damned close. And the gap between the top clubs and the second tier has shrunk, because the second tier can now outspend all but a few clubs in Europe. Absolutely, but again: the merch and the gates and the shirt sponsorships are, for all but a few clubs, each comprise a small fraction of what they take in. The difference between Villa, with the seventh-highest commercial revenue in 2013-14, and us with the seventeenth-highest, was 15m. Let me never say that 15m is insignificant, but it's not the difference between big and small in terms of clout or expected on-pitch performance, either. I think you've hit on it, though. The playing side staff have those ambitions. The business side people may not. Hence why Les talks about pushing on, Ralph says "well...", and Koeman seems frustrated. The problem is that the overambitious stuff got us very good managers. It allowed us to sign good players. Now, money will always allow one to sign good players, but only if we're bidding. Yes, those constitute struggles. The gap has closed enough that an off season for Man U or the like means they finish 7th, not 4th. It means that Liverpool starts regularly finishing outside the European places when they don't build properly. And it means that, for the first time ever, the champions of a year previous are earning a point of game with December having begun, and just got deservedly beaten at home by a club that was in League 2 not that long ago. Because everyone can now beat everyone; everyone can recruit good players, particularly from abroad, and a bad night at the office for the big clubs is a thrashing, rather than a draw. The fanbase just doesn't matter that much anymore, unless you're talking about the true giants. If Bournemouth remains in the league next year, they will be one of the 50 richest clubs in the world by annual revenue. Possibly higher, depending on the details of the TV deals...there's an outside possibility that 20 of the top 35 in the world will be the PL clubs. A team playing in a Tesco's car park in front of an audience of squirrels, sponsored by a child's piggy bank will make as much or more money in 2016-17 than Lazio with their 73000 seat stadium and worldwide fanbase, thanks to the PL share. Bigness matters more to fans than to balance sheets, these days.
I get what you are saying but I just think Newcastle are a similar size to Spurs in terms of fanbase. In fact I see more Newcastle shirts around than Spurs although this has become less and less over the last decade. They do have a massive fanbase. Maybe they are as bad as us commercially? I don't know but if they could match Spurs or get anywhere near them that is a massive amount from non TV money. Take Newcastle away from it and look at the other teams we are fighting like Stoke, Swansea, West Ham and I can agree with you. Not a cigarette paper between them in terms of revenue Newcastle & Everton are 1 player's transfer or 3 player's wages for a season ahead of us
Now, we absolutely agree there. They have an advantage...perhaps one (non-massive) transfer a year, roughly. But that's well within the margin of error. It's well within our power and that of the other clubs to be just that extra bit more canny in their dealings in most years.
