Unreasonable amount to be bought out? It would have been the same as any buyer would consider the debts of the business deciding what to pay for it. Ashley is well within his rights to want his money back. It's up to him. Pay off the debt at some point: well he could have not released the £80m cash to the club and paid off a good chunk of the debt. If we want it paid off we will have even less each year for transfers. Less than the 18 months where we didn't sign an actual player? Okay you argue the money was spent on McLaren but, honestly, why does a club the size of NUFC actually have to stockpile money to spend? We weren't in a Leeds/Portsmouth scenario. Even Mike himself admitted it wasn't good enough before the 80m. Thing is I don't believe it because as soon as he thought we'd be relegated, the season before we were, he spunked cash all over the place that January. Then went and got Benitez the next season when we actually were relegated. Spends to get us back up, and then surprise surprise tightens the purse strings again when we're back in the prem and looking like a better team than when he first shat his pants and started spending 3 year ago. THIS is MA gambling and has little to do with debt IMO. So by this logic we'll be waiting for the next 5-6 years, with **** all money, before mike either spends a season or two splashing the cash (for another 5-6 years of penny pinching) Or pay his debt off? I know what I'd prefer considering we got relegated anyways! Maybe we could get more sponsors in and get a couple more million. Maybe. No maybe, can get an extra sponsor on the shirt easy, and its a couple more mill that can go into the wage budget. Considering we won't offer anything over 70k I think its vital to be getting everything we can. Literally makes **** all sense no matter how it's put forward. We have no money, but we have no interest in acquiring any more? What our fans seem to want is just someone to donate tens of millions of pounds every year to the club. It'd be great I agree but it's completely unrealistic and most other clubs do not have this either. I've been trying to defend that fat ****er all summer, saying we have a massive wage bill that isn't substantial in the long run. I've also acknowledge there's been money spent the last couple of years. What riles me is realising the club can't even be arsed to squeeze every last penny out of sponsorship. If you had benitez working, on this budget, wouldn't you? Or to flip it, how much would it piss you off if you were benitez and we can't afford an extra 10k wages on a player which could easily be attained through some bullshit sponsorship.
From Ashley's POV the "gamble" would be piling money into the club with no guarantee of success. Please see QPR, Villa, Palace, Hull, Sunderland, etc., etc., for more details! In fact it may be argued that Ashley's best chance at stabilising the club is to get a top class manager and put him in charge of everything. Which he did. He may well have lied, but in his little interview he said "Lee reports to Rafa. Let's get that crystal clear. Lee Charnley reports to Rafa." I think on that point he was being honest. I think we'll see Charnley leave before too long. His ineptitude is probably going to be reported back by Justin Barnes, should we fail to secure some decent deals by the end of the window. And if Rafa says "it's him or me", I'd bet Ashley would take Rafa. That's where I think we are. The thing with Ashley is there's no real hidden agenda - just a series of ignorant/arrogant decisions. If someone offered £500m, he'd be gone instantly. Maybe £400m. I don't know, but there's a number in his head which goes up every year, and if you haven't got that, he's not interested. He might take investment, but the %age would remain (i.e. 20% = £100m) so he's still asking for 3 or 4 times as much as Southampton did. He will happily overprice his stuff, then be the first to complain when the market's inflated everywhere else. Everything else is pretty obvious. The club doesn't need to make profit for Mike so can reinvest every penny. But he's not going to put a penny in. We're a little hamstrung because we need to - at worst - break even every year, which is why we have a bean counter as our MD. The sponsorship is done on SD.com because the club 'owes' him. And that's that. We're suffering this window because we didn't pocket much last year, will not borrow against future earnings, have a huge squad mostly on PL wages and there's nothing more to it. I think Charnley just isn't very good at what he does in terms of getting players in on good deals (at the best of times, let alone THIS Summer) which makes us suffer, so my one hope is that if we have - as expected - a damp squib of a window, then I hope Charnley follows Carr and we put a football person in place. Won't happen. A football MD would want success for the club with some risk. If anything, Ashley's whatever the opposite of a gambler is. PSG/Citeh/Chelski - that's gambling. And one day one of 'em's gonna lose.
Mate, he was trying to get away with not spending cash to take money out (I presume to pay off the debts). So we had money in the bank to spend back then. Now we don't. We lost I'm guessing at least £20m last year so that means that our bank account is empty as a starting point. Okay we got some new sponsorship money, £7m for winning the league, and some money from some player sales. I think we've more or less spent all that with spending about £35m? so far this summer. Mike Ashley never put any of that £80m in, it was generated by the club but over a couple of seasons or more. The club has a bank account just like you or me. Money goes in and money goes out for overheads, wages and capital expenditure/sales. The positive thing for me is that since the year before relegation he seems to have changed the policy in that he is not trying to save money to pay off the debts anymore - he is just saying be self sufficient - and I really don't think it's that bad a situation for fans to be in for an owner to say that. It is just a bit painful right now that our cash flow is **** - obvious byproduct of having being relegated and specifically relegated in the precise year that we were while a new massive TV deal was just coming in. If we get to next summer and money isn't made available for transfers - because it should be there assuming we stay up - then I think we will be back to where we were a few years ago under Pardew with an owner who is trying get money out of the club and I'll criticise him for it just I like I did back then. Of course we will get a sleeve sponsor. It just hasn't happened yet. Not ideal, but if half the other clubs haven't got it then we aren't lagging behind to the extent that we need to make an issue out of it. In fairness, we probably have had less time than other clubs having needed to wait and see if we were going to get promoted before being able to canvass for new sponsors. On the other hand, Lee Charnley might have not been good enough at his job (if it is his job to get sponsors in). I'm pretty sure it isn't down to us not bothering to have a sleeve sponsor.
Fair enough, I remain untrusting and suspicious of everything he does. Again its how you look at it, we may well have spent 35m but, by my count, we've made over 20m back on sales and the wages we've saved are ridiculous now. Especially if you consider buys like Murphy, lejuene, manquillo, atsu and joselu's wages barely touch what the collectives of Hanley, De Jong, Riviere, Thauvin, Anita, Gouff were on. I'll grit me teeth but next season, like you say, will be the true acid test. Same with the shirt sponsor, we shall see. I'm just amazed we wouldn't get things like this in sooner. If at least 9 clubs can, I'd have though we could have
What bloody good does it do to have someone else's name on a shirt. Is it any wonder I've not bought one in over thirty years?
Do we get to choose which one? Or, if everyone had no sponsorship on the shirts then perhaps, just perhaps, the players would have slightly lower wages and we'd still have the same players in every team but playing in better looking shirts and not advertising hoardings.
