A year in the life of Newcastle United, and NUFC Blog IV.

Posted on June 4th, 2010 | 34 Comments |

Part four of our Toon trip down memory lane.
Part four of our Toon trip down memory lane.
Part Four.

<< Part Three

Kicking off the latest chapter in our one year retrospective of all things Newcastle United and NUFC Blog, we move on where we left off, with an Ashley rant from Hugh de Payen. This one is from November 4th of last year and is called “Random gripe about the random Toon“. The “random” in the second instance referring to Ashley’s seemingly random approach to planning and investment in building up the squad. It also contains a great line about Kevin Keegan (well I thought so anyway) “although it’s quite ironic that Keegan was constructively dismissed for not wanting to spend money on a player”.

Coming next, I am including a trio of stories about the NUST’s “Yes We Can” campaign for fans to buy the club from Mike Ashley, though in the end it a resoundingly a case of “No We Can’t”. The first story, written by Hugh de Payen once again and called “Are you the next Mike Ashley?“, covers the launch of the ill fated campaign and was published on November 11th. It also includes a paragraph I particularly liked about ‘fan owned’ Barcelona’s outgoing President, Joan Laporta:

“However viable fan ownership is, it’s no utopia. Laporta inherited a club in financial difficulties and one that operates with a debt that oscillates between £200m and £500m. Laporta has survived attempted coups, a walk-out by 20 members of his board, was caught using private detectives to spy on his board and – one I particularly like – courted controversy by mooning at airport police in an objection against the airport’s security checks.”

Next comes a small piece from myself, “NUST claim Mike Ashley is making £7million a month from Newcastle United“, from when I saw an introduction to the NUST’s poll of members views, where they attempted to blatently skew the result by printing a blatant falsehood about how Mike Ashley was supposedly making £7 million profit out of Newcastle United. Having a history in business endeavours, and also being a rather sad man who sends of dutifully for Newcastle United accounts when they are published annually at Companies House, I knew for certain that this was completely and utterly false, and felt compelled to expose this lie from an organisation who wanted us to believe they could be trusted with huge amounts of hard earned savings and pension funds of Newcastle United supporters in the region and beyond. The most offensive part casually attempted to seduce us with the lines:

“One final thought for you to consider before you fill in the survey – sources have told us that Mr Ashley is making up to £7m profit out of our club every month and whilst that’s not confirmed – do the maths – wages halved, no expenditure on transfers, crowds up, new advertising revenue before the end of the season and the assets of SJP Holdings.

“Make no mistake – Mr Ashley is not going to lose on his investment in Newcastle but it’s now time to think about the club, city and community not himself.”

Truth his that whether through his own misguided decisionmaking or not, or being completely shafted by the Hall / Shepherd Geordie mafia, it is impossible to deny that Mike Ashley has lost massively on his investment and continues to do so.

I will conclude this chapter in our little retrospective with a counterpoint to my own rather one sided piece. It is from NUST believer, Bowburnmag, who described how he was convinced by them in a pub every regular St James’s Park visitor will know, The Strawberry, which stands just opposite the stadium on Strawberry Place. In his piece called “In NUST, we must Trust?” he gives an account of the meeting, including an encounter with the man responsible for the £7 million a month gambit, Tony Stephenson. After a lengthy seduction by Tony, Bowburn took a swipe at ‘sceptics’ like myself, saying:

“Sceptics may have seen it as tub-thumping (though I think the sceptics and cynics didn’t bother to turn up, and instead are happy to take 2nd/3rd/4th hand knowledge and pillory their efforts from their online comfort)…” going on to conclude:

“The most I hoped for was to come away thinking it wasn’t a load of cock and while there is clearly still a lot of work to do and a long road ahead, it’s not a load of cock in my opinion. This campaign may never get off the ground, it may get part way off the ground and still fall back to earth with a bump, some bruised pride and a lot of disappointment. In the meantime, I hope they keep up the good work. They have my respect and support for what they’re trying to achieve. And I plan to help them as much as I can to make something happen.”

On that, I will close this episode in the story. More to come soon.

<< Part Three

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34 Responses

  1. I don’t think its boring. I think its good to look back on what has been an eventful year in the life of NUFC.

    Amidst all the winning games, battling displays and the eventual trophy, it can be easy to forget some of the shit that surrounded us at times.

  2. So even Wigan are spending more on one player than we will spend all season!

  3. Who gives a fcuk who spending money? Let’s get 8mil and waste it on a player like boumsong shall we? Spending isn’t a key to success, Stuart you are a total knob.

  4. There’s nowt we can do about what other teams spending.We have what we have teams spending money now either have a)Are well run and have been in the past and so have little or no debt.b)Have debt but have large incomes and so can manage to service that debt.c)Have owners who are prepared to take the risk/invest and just go for it(ours isn’t) sometimes regardless of the consequences.Ask Pompey fans if they’re glad thet did that,if the FA cup was worth it.

  5. 4 and 5 are great posts, we should be thankful we still have a club and that any future success will be earned and not bought….
    I personally blame Redknapp and Storey for Portsmouth’s demise, Harry jumped ship like a slimey rat as soon as he saw what was coming and then promptly blamed everyone but himself for their plight when the shit hit the fan.

  6. aye hammy……..Pompey-administration,Southampton-administration,West Ham-almost administraion,all have one thing in common…..dodgy ‘Arry Redknapp!

  7. Anyone throwing money on the world cup? Fancy Holland myself @ 10’s myself

  8. Thanks for that piece of constructive criticsm, jj.

    Can we really take you serious now when you
    don’t think money helps you win things? Look at the top 6 mate. Their the biggest spenders in the league – Coincidence?

  9. Personally i think we will someday see the days when we can have a decent transfer budget again but unfortunately not for a while and if we don’t stay up then that long period will unfortunately be even longer.

  10. jay jay says:
    June 5, 2010 at 9:41 am
    Spend money when you have money shit for brains.

    We have a billionaire benefactor! Oh wait, he’s not really interested in making us successful – He just wants to spend as less as he can and sell.

  11. mega rich owner pleading poverty..priceless..
    im all for ashley getting his money back the sooner the better he does the quicker he will go,but what he shouldnt have done is start now,he should give hughton money to bring in players,get us settled in the prem,THEN start trying to get his money back,dont do it now,the squad isnt big enough or good enough,its going to be a long hard season with more heartache at the end of it..

  12. hitman says:
    June 5, 2010 at 10:06 am

    Don’t start talking sense! It’s frowned upon here…

  13. Unfortunately tho lads how rich the owner is,is completely irrelevant if he isn’t going to spend it on NUFC.

  14. Hasn’t he also said that he isn’t taking any money out of the club, in one of them official statement things…

  15. Has there be any offical statement to say we wont be spending money this summer?

  16. Johno – There has been that “no new plans for capital outlay” statement.

    So all in all it depends on how people interpret that.

  17. I don’t know Toonsy,I’ve almost stopped taking any notice of those as they’re usually never clear and are they telling the truth anyway?…I think he said he wasn’t taking his loan back but I bekieve that meant not in 1 go and immediately in response to newspaper stories but obviously he’ll take his money back and some stage I’d have thought.

  18. toonsy this 5 year plan to break even,will ashley not need his loan back so the club can break even and be debt free

  19. Aaargh Toonsy,divnt open that one up again ;-)
    I’m a youtube star like you,found mesel on a clip from Boro singin ‘We’ll meet again’……looks like I suddenly remembered the word halfway thru the singin…or maybe I just spotted someone videoing me :-)

  20. hitman says:
    June 5, 2010 at 10:54 am
    toonsy this 5 year plan to break even,will ashley not need his loan back so the club can break even and be debt free

    I dont it does hitman , my interpatation of the statement was that year to year the club will break even so we wont be losing 30 million odd a year like the last 2 years

  21. Breaking news on .com
    Newcastle Still Evaluating Free Transfer And Loan Targets.

  22. Ed only deals in Facts :)
    I have it on great authority that Chris is in a reflective frame of mind and is looking at his little list of loans,kids and coaches and evaluating the situation as we speak.

  23. DJG says:
    June 5, 2010 at 12:35 am

    “Im glad its only a week till the World Cup, coz this is getting boring.”

    I’m sorry DJG, but I don’t write for half wits with low attention spans.

  24. Our billionaire owner has made unbelievable decisions, we can only hope that he might learn from his mistakes. £150m debt and still haemorraging cash means we’re not gonna see much spending anytime soon and ‘no capital outlay’ likely means just what it says on the tin (for once!).

    Let’s hope that Chris can deliver a window like Jan and bring in good, damn cheap or free players, hopefully out of the blue that haven’t been in the press so we’ve more options than the following:

    Potential frees: Albin, Petrov, MG Pederson, Belletti, Govou, Boyd

    Almighty Long-shot frees: Henry, Van Nistelrooy, Altintop, Gallas, Kallstrom

    Potential loans: Cleverly, Wilshere, Wellbeck

    Let’s hope we can get something from the above. With no cash it seems Chris is being forced to wait and see how things develop.

  25. Ah, sorry, VN still another year at Hamburg… West Ham going for Henry though, perhaps the London factor would give them an edge over us, this age policy might rule us out anyway…

    Did you all see Thommo’s cracking quotes on Ryder’s blog?

    …he wouldnt let any young player get ahead of themselves once famously yelling: “Don’t go big time on me” to Nile Ranger and reminding him he was at a football club and “not a boy band”.

    He also slammed his reserve team after they took a hiding at Leeds last pre-season, saying: “Just because you come into training in a BMW, you haven’t made it yet.”

    Hope Nile can sort that attitude…

  26. Wor Nile is banned from driving at the minute, so I would hope he isn’t ‘rolling in the beemer’ ;)