Before we go overboard about the impact Ashley has made on the club’s business, it is worth making a comparison to the situation before he arrived. On first glance, this looks like an amazing transformation, as he has converted the 2007 loss of £34.2 million to a thumping great profit of £32.6 million, delivering an improvement of around £67 million.

Not bad at all, but this is mainly due to two factors: (a) profit on player sales is £39 million higher; (b) he has cut costs by £27 million after reducing operating expenses by £12 million, player amortisation (including impairment) by £9 million and interest payable by £6 million.

Despite his occasional crass behaviour, there is no doubt that Mike Ashley has put his hand in his pocket to keep the club going, as its cash flow has been consistently negative before his financing. There is still much distrust of the owner, leading Llambias to emphasise in the results statement, “Once again, Mike has not taken any money out of the club.” In fact, he has invested £273 million in total, made up of £133 million to acquire Newcastle plus £140 million of loans.

Lex wrote:eh

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:Read this while i was at work, was going to post it but thought no one would give a shit :lol!:

I have to give Ashley credit for all the financial work he has done for putting the club in this situation.

He's still a dick for all the bad and immature PR fails he has done but i have to respect him on the finance side.

We still have a long way to go and relying heavily on TV money atm but its a good start.