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April Fools is 2 days early as NUFC profits announced

9 years ago
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Like all other Newcastle fans I was intrigued to find out what Mike Ashley would do with the anticipated £50m NUFC profits from last season.

Everybody knew that there would be an extra £30m or so TV money to be added with the new deal that kicked in starting with the 2013/14 season.

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Then with no players bought and only Luuk de Jong and Loic Remy brought in on loan, the sale of Yohan Cabaye looked set to deliver another near £20m to the pot.

The only question appearing to be whether Mike Ashley would pay off a signifcant chunk of the club’s ‘debt’ to him, or belatedly allow some significant transfer market activity with the profits.

The actual reality revealed this morning by the club is a bit confusing.

The near £30m (£28.3m to be exact) extra from TV and a rise of £8.5m in commercial revenue (small drop of £1.9m in matchday money) has instead only ended up in a relatively small operating profit of £4.7m.

Then when the player trading has been taken into account, this has added another £14m, to bring a final profit of £18.7m.

Not quite the £50m or so most of us were anticipating….

The club have only given out the information they want to so far but when the full accounts are filed at Companies House shortly, a lot more should hopefully be revealed.

Newcastle United haven’t said why operating costs have gone up a massive £28.5m compared to the year before (In 2011/12 they were £98.4m, in 2012/13 £96.5m and now for 2013/14 £125.0m!).

Of course, if you added this unexplained rise in costs then you would get close (£18.7m profits plus £28.5m rise in operating costs = £47.2m) to that expected £50m profit figure.

Like many of you I envisaged a shopping list of at least a decent striker, two centre-backs, a winger/midfielder who can score goals and cross a ball….

Instead it is hard to see just where major squad strengthening will come from if we are purely relying on players being bought with thsi £18.7m surplus.

I’m left guessing where the extra £28.5m has been spent; diamond decorated new specs for Lee Charnley, a new gold throne for Mike Ashley to sit on as he looks around at the riff-raff inside St. James’ Park, or maybe some bionic replacements for the wonky body parts that keep sending most of our squad into the treatment room?

Anybody else with any better ideas?

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