Attendances and a tipping point?

So if attendances continue to drop and we end up getting Mackem esque crowds of 30,000 plus... will this be enough for fatty to get the message?

Is there a tipping point where he will look to get out at any price?

even he should see that despite his ‘biggest ever’ investment in players, smashing our record 3 times in a year.. we are dropping like a stone.

personally if I were him I’d already have been on to the Arabs saying I’d take their last offer....

 

no he will stay! he doesn't care about the fans not going he has already accounted for it .

 

anything, is worth a try

 

something is better than nothing but we need at least another 20 k to grow a pair

 

Personally I really don't get why people still want to go.
We are playing to try and get 17th place each and every seaosn without any form of progression.
If you are going to go then why boo the players and Bruce?

 

spot on bud, prob a day on the piss , prob involved lol

 

absolutely this

nobody is misleading the fans into false intentions , so either go and accept it or don't

 

Don't buy shirts, never intend to visit the ground, haven't even glanced at the store in years in fact.

It won't change though, we make too much TV money just sitting in the league.

 

I heard the fans contribute 13% of the money that comes in, however 13% of that kind of money is enough to be noticed especially when you are dealing with a man that would notice if the office left a lightbulb on overnight

 

I'm pretty sure Mike's been advised to sell by next Summer. Makes some sense and certain aspects tie into that, such as changing some of the ways we do business to be more 'normal'. The under-spend yet again indicates that more cash could well have gone back to fatty, reducing the overall loan and potentially bringing the asking price under £300m. I think he is well aware that, if he really wants to, he could sell for £250m pretty quickly. More importantly, he will know when the value of owning the club is about to diminish, which I think will be soon.

My problem isn't just with that, though. It's football in general. I'm probably just getting old, but it seems a lot more boring these days. It doesn't help that my own club is comfortably the worst to support in the top flight, but things like this VAR delay bollocks is really dull. NUFC fans are a symptom of a wider problem; it's getting easier and easier to be apathetic towards it. Kids these days are used to insta-tainment, yet going to s football match, without the loud music, flashy replays, camera angles and stuff can be dreadfully boring. Especially at SJP. Kids aren't going to keep going to watch this crap, and that applies to most teams. There's video games to play/buy, VR is now 'a thing', there's movies to watch and all of those things are cheaper than a single day at 'the match'. It's propped up by tradition. For how long, though?

 

Half empty stadium's won't financially cripple the club when there's £120m + coming in through tv.
Doesn't look good though, so should be having an effect.

 

Have a look at most prem grounds, empty seats everywhere every weekend.
The game has gone to ****.

 

prob , because it is unfair now. with all this money knocking about .

 

The stadium could be empty every week and we'd still make a tidy profit mate. He knows this and therefore is going nowhere in my opinion. TV money and the odd big money player sale (Longstaff probably next) is enough to keep things ticking over for him to not want to sell.

If he doesn't need to sell he wont. He will only sell when the deal suits him of that there is no doubt.

Basically we're stuck with him.

 

The only thing is Ashley cannot be 100% thick as mince. It's not possible to be worth a billion quid and be just plain stupid.

Some of what he does, at SD in particular, LOOKS extremely stupid; giving his son-in-law a huge position and massive salary appears - to investors - to be incredibly stupid, for example. Where's the experienced exec? Where'a the board-heavy structure? But is it really stupid, or is it just a middle finger up to the system he's flounced for over 30 years? Many of these jobs are far more menial than they seem. Inexperience doesn't mean inability. And if he can give some cash to his daughters husband-to-be, why not? It's not like a board of experience saves Thomas Cook, or Debenhams for that matter. So I understand why he does what he does, and his bank balance - more than paper headlines - tell you whether it works or not.

The problem with Ashley is that he does things based on trust, likes squeezing value and doesn't believe in execs. These things seriously harm the football club, unfortunately, because it's a world he freely admits he doesn't understand. By trusting a lapdog like Charnley we're stuck with a dreadful process in player and manager recruitment. By squeezing value we have had pathetic commercial revenue, thanks to his stranglehold. By not having execs we have Shola running loans, nobody running recruitment properly and aren't getting any kind of value from the player side. How/why he STILL doesn't get it is, I admit, beyond me, but this is his club and the reality. He doesn't care, of course, which doesn't help. NUFC is an asset on which he's unlikely to lose much money, whatever happens.

Will anyone offer the kind of cash he's after? Not at £350m, not unless streaming content increases the TV deal value. Is he getting what he needs from the ongoing promotion of his tat shop? Not sure he is now, there's a consistent decline in SD revenue/profit. So is NUFC necessary anymore? I'm not sure it is. The tax bill needs covering, his High Street obsession isn't going anywhere and his empire covers ever-more businesses not relatable to football. I have a feeling he'll sell this side of Xmas for about £300m, which will include his loan repayment.

 

why are people saying 13% of the clubs income wont matter to a man that is addicted to money?? n business can afford to just pass off a few million ffs

 

We all have to be absolutely clear that Mike Ashley is not in this game to take day to day money directly from the club. It's a subtle difference, and basically is just a way of making his comments slightly less of a lie. But he's making money from NUFC.

SD is and always has been locked into the club. Advertising, shirt deals, club shop. So it's clear he trousers, via SD, a fair amount of commercial income and benefits from the lowest advertising rates in the PL and a bonkers commercial arrangement. And this is where we have to be very clear - he says "i don't take any money out of the club." The word missing from that sentence is "directly". Whilst he doesn't draw money down - apart from the ludicrous loan situation - he has been thieving vast amounts from NUFC since he bought it. He owns it, of course, so he's entitled to do this if he so wants. But our problem is that the club then has to pay its' bills without support from our shirt sales, from advertising, and so on - this we achieve by not spending money on players, recycling TV money into bill paying instead of player investment. What this leads to, of course, is relegation.

So anything that goes into the club - ticket sales, buying stuff on matchday - is used for the life of the club, we pay for Ashley's greed. The fans are picking up the tab, because Mike Ashley & Sports Direct refuses to do so. If that revenue continues to drop - and diminished crowds, insipid performances and Steve Bruce will help - then Ashley is once again faced with picking up the bill. But he'll be picking up the bill via a loan - effectively meaning NUFC and its' fans are indebted to him one way or another, simply because he refuses to pay what he owes.

Is there a way out? I can't see it clearly. If we drop two divisions it might help, because the shirt, ticket and TV revenue will be gone.

 

Think Ashley is actually forcing himself out accidentally - get relegated again and we are in big trouble and we probably will with Bruce at the helm, he bank roll's us to come back up but you need a good manager for the Championship. Which manager with a shred of self worth would touch it after watching Rafa toil for 3 years going down and back up again to get no where. We'll be lucky to get someone like Kinear or Carver in.

Relegation and a year or two in the Fizzy pop leagues is the only way to get rid. I do think fans should stay away even if it's just to make the point, it seems as though a few pundits here and there are picking up on it now as well. I've always said if you go to the matches/buy the merch etc you can't really complain - you pay for your cake and eat it as far as I'm concerned.

 

Yeah, when tv money dries up after relegation, we'll suddenly find out that he wants us in the ground again.

Some will go. Most of my friends have stopped. I doubt they'll start going again to watch us play clubs the size of Fleetwood Town (no offence intended).

 

They say 43,000 attended on Saturday but looking at all those wide open spaces says different. Ashley has got to get used to crowds dwindling even futher when we drop into bottom 3 and as most games are now being televised it will not look good to foreign viewers for his Sp..ts Di...t ( Can't bring myself to say it ) brand.