NUFC lose Challenge

This has just made selling the club 10x harder. The investigation will rumble on for 12-18 months and in that time nobody will touch you without knowing the outcome and Ashley will be reluctant to spend because he'll be expecting a hefty fine as punishment, on top of paying his unpaid taxes back.

 

Interesting point about Ashley challenging the authorities. He does have previous. It could be of course that the authorities seize on this with great delight as a chance to take him down. Not that they are vindictive in any way shape or form.

As you say though, yet again it`s the fans who put up with the result of something they have no control over.

 

May well be true. Still hard to muster up any major emotions about it really, it's like having Harry Redknapp as your manager and then having to feign surprise when he gets called out for being a dodgy dealer. Ashley is a bully and a crook in most measureable ways, he has managed to be allowed to continue so far without getting done but it feels like it's only a matter of time. If it happens to be with NUFC rather than other businesses then so be it. The fall-out affects the club i support but I'm really not learning anything that surprises me. As for Ashley selling or becoming reluctant to spend, he's been paying lip service to selling since we got relegated 8 years ago and has been reluctant to spend ever since - no change there.

 

How’s the championship lads?
Easy isn’t it?
p.s. aren't I a ****?

 

How do you know you could have afforded to do everything above board? It seems to me that any previously supposedly legit evidence of you running in the black is now, to use the legal term, dubious as ****.

I'm sure there are loads of teams that could have afforded to spend if they'd fiddled half a billion pounds.

 

Half a billion pounds?

The monies which have been mentioned so far have been agents few in the region of a few million pounds. Even if it's a few million pounds per deal that is still sub-£20m, well under our operating profit for that period (I recall a protest one year of fans leaving on the 41st minute as the account showed for the previous year we had £41 million just sat in cash accounts). You'd have to double those sorts of figures (which I suspect are already at the top end) before we'd have started operating at a loss. Overall the amount of money going into the club was much larger than the amount of money going out - if it turns out they were fiddling all over the place to drain money out of the club without showing it then it is a case of "if it wasn't for people criminally defrauding the club we could have afforded them" - a cursory glance at any of our finances over the period says we could have afforded to do it above board provided someone isn't secretly taking money out.

Most of the entries on the accounts aren't things you can fiddle without getting caught immediately, it's only when you are dealing with other parties who are willing to risk illegality to turn a pound (like some agents) and I can't see most legitimate companies and clubs getting involved in it. Us and West Ham are the obvious choices!

 

Dodgy club.
Dodgy players.
Dodgy fans.

 

Couldn't agree more, this is all the fans fault.

 

Fair enough it's half a billions worth of transfers being investigated not a missing half a billion, didn't check before I posted.

If Charnley etc being at the club coincided with a period of you running in profit though then I would be very dubious about your figures being accurate. It seems apparent that you have been run far from above board.

 

Ah right, I wasn't sure where the number came from. Surely not all to do with us, we've only spend a fraction of that sort of money.

Charnley is just a stooge and may end up carrying the can. He's a tea-boy who Ashley instated to do his bidding, been talked about for years but wasn't known until now what his bidding really was. My view is just that most things you can't easily fiddle - match day revenue, amount of money from the Premiership, TV rights, sponsorship, etc - as they are known and easily checkable amounts. The things you can try and fiddle are agreements with undisclosed bonuses, like payments to agents, players or clubs so that is what they've tried to do and get away with. It's hard to imagine they'd under-declare the money from the Premiership to avoid tax or anything as people do actually have to audit the accounts. Everything declared will probably be correct, it's just what has been left undeclared and i think there's limits on what that could be. If they were going to fiddle it from the tax-man it makes sense to declare as little as possible profit, which would suggest that if anything it may show money was being taken out of the club. Just my view though, Ashley may well prove me wrong and it all goes tits up - really no point in me worrying about it as it's out of my hands, interesting though!

 

I must have fell asleep after you replied mate. I've literally got the mother of all hangovers today

Didn't Ashley spend about 80 million in the last season you were relegated?

 

Apart from avoiding tax and NI. Newcastle are also accused of claiming millions of pounds back in VAT. Money that apparently you weren't entitled too.

 

He certainly did but it was a couple of windows of spending more than we generated. Over the past decade our yearly spending on transfers has looked like this: (info taken from transfermarkt which is an reliable/iffy as anywhere else but a basic guide. They include loan fees and add-ons)

+6m, +19m, +25m (carroll), -9m, -15m, +20m (cabaye), -19m, -90m, +33m

Overall a 33 million loss over 9 years, so an average spend on £3.6m per year, by the standards of the last decade it's almost nothing - our gate receipts alone must be in the £20m mark I'd think. I strongly suspect most Premier League clubs over that period will have an average spend of well over that.

If it somehow turns out we should have been in the red then I'm at a genuine loss as to where the money has been going, it hasn't been on players! Even Charnley only has an official salary of £150,000 (compared to the millions most in his position have, like Byrne who was getting a reported £1.2m) - though the figures he pays to those around him are highly dubious, I expect them to be false.

 

I don't doubt it and if they can prove it then obviously money needs to be paid back AND there needs to be financial and footballing penalties.

Lets just clarify it wasn't me though! It feels a bit like after a decade of me (and some other Newcastle fans) complaining about having a dodgy and untrustworthy businessman running our club and being repeatedly told how lucky we were it is finally being exposed that he is indeed a dodgy and untrustworthy businessman and it's somehow my fault and me who is benefiting. I can guarantee you one thing, when this has all come out into the open every single decision Ashley will have made will be to his own benefit and not the clubs, he will have sought and and utilized every single possibility of maximizing profit with the aim of then moving it out of the club and into his pockets.

 

Hope you're feeling better mate, I'm off work today as my 6 year old came in during the night (about 1am) and only got halfway through telling me he didn't feel well before throwing up onto me, the duvet and the pillow. He's been sat watching tv so far today and seems to have perked up right until the point I mentioned he'll be good enough to go in tomorrow...

 

"Euuurggghhh but Daddy, I still feel poorly" My son is still the same and he's 13!!

 

I hope your little lad is alright mate. We've all been there doing what he's doing, if indeed he is now playing the joker. School is no match for a day in front of the TV watching power rangers.

 

Marcus, I've just had a message from some bloke from that rough pub in Sacriston asking if I'm still signing for their football team. I can't even remember talking about football to them haha. Are they any good?

 

I thought we had one in place already!