PurpleCanary

[quote user="Monty13"]Feathers, the baker is the capitalist, he bakes to make money out of his customers because they all want bread. Given the choice none of us would work at all. What on earth would we all do? Sit around while someone else heats, clothes, waters and feeds us? What will their motivation for doing that be? The motivation of capitalism isn''t fear of destitution, it is the generation of wealth. I don''t go to work because I''m scared of the consequences of not working, I go to work to live in comfort, buy nice things, go on holiday (watch football?) and basically enjoy myself when I''m not working. Economics is the structure in which we live, it doesn''t rule us. Since the time man started bartering, economics has existed. Until someone finds a better way of measuring are individual worth other than the wealth we hold, this will always exist. Interesting line in that video "In any civilised society the government must intervene to prevent division of labour" an understanding that it is Governments role as our representatives to uphold our rights. And as the people being represented if we are unhappy we have the fundamental responsibility to change the way things are. Unfortunately as I have said the vast majority of us are apathetic, comfortable paying for someone else to provide us power, water, electricity, shelter, food etc etc. in return for the money we earn. We live in a society where the principles we are talking about, Capitalism, Democracy and Socialism are all intertwined and all effect are lives without one dominating it. It''s a world in which I can buy a big ass TV from any of the competing manufacturers, while getting free healthcare and voting green party if I really fancy it. [/quote]   Interesting, Monty. I didn''t realise you lived in some back-to-nature hippy commune[:D] on one of the remoter islands of the Outer Hebrides[ip][st] which is about the only place in Britain you might find those three elements intertwined without one being dominant. Seriously, you cannot believe socialism is not dominated by capitalism in Britain, surely? It is true that a strong element of socalist thought has influenced public policy in Britain. Particularly Attlee''s reforming post-war government. But that doesn''t make Britain a semi-socialist society. And you are going to have to explain how voting Green is in some way a balancing act against democracy. I don''t understand that. And I even less understand how it has the slightest effect on the range of goods[co] available at your local Comet superstore.

[quote user="BWs Cat...again"]Welcome back city1st. In your absence Wiz has been having a real rout on here, especially during December. I''ve just tried to adopt this maxim. "Trying to use logic against those who have abandoned reason is like applying medicine to the dead" [/quote]   That excellent maxim seems spookily familiar. I''m sure I''ve seen it on this message-board very recently. I can''t remember where. Still, as they say to aspiring writers, if you''re going to steal, steal from the best.

[quote user="nutty nigel"] How does the championship fit the PL parachute payments into their FFP rules? Surely clubs being financed by a completely different league isn''t fair?     [/quote]   nutty, I THINK the answer is that the parachute payments count as genuinely earned income, and so are allowable in the Championship, just as TV income in the PL is allowable. The basic point of FFP is to eliminate unearned income - ie subsidies from rich owners. I suspect also that what has been discovered is that relegated clubs have to use a great of their parachute money to pay off debts and pay off high-earning players, so the playing field may be less uneven that might have been imagined. The clubs relegated last season are currently 8th, 17th and 21st!

[quote user="Monty13"]Something more constructive, But isn''t every club which is now promoted from the Championship forced to abide by their FFP rules forever more? I am sure I read that when the championship one was being detailed online. If so wont this: A) Make it a lot harder for promoted clubs forced to adhere to these rules when clubs that have not come up aren''t. B) Mean that theoretically the amount of clubs not affected by the Europe FFP and not constrained by Championship FFP will slowly dwindle? but for the lucky few that avoid relegation and have zero European ambition.[/quote]   I don''t believe so, Monty. I don''t see how that could possibly be enforced while a club was in the PL. What you may have read is that if a club breaks Championship FFP rules in a season it gets promoted to the Premier League then it can get sanctioned (ie fined) in retrospect as a one-off measure by the Championship authorities. But that seems to be all.

[quote user="Louis Cyphre"]Cue endless pages of Delia worshippers and Cullumites reigniting pages of arguments from years back. What is the point of digging up the past again when there is little prospect of any change in ownership at the club until the death of our majority shareholders? [/quote]   If you think my post is about the past and not the present and the future that can only be because you haven''t read beyond the first two paragraphs. I don''t blame you; some don''t get that even far with my posts.

Looking for something else I came across a fascinating thread from 2007, entitled No local investors - yes their are - but they are being blocked The title pretty much says it all, but nice to encounter some old faces seemingly no longer with us - canary cherub, with her conspiracy theories that were light on facts but thankfully that didn''t stop her; Good News Gordon, whose "news" was rather questionable; Salahuddin, of the emails from Peter Cullum. This may be wrong but I seem to remember one in which Cullum derided NCFC shares as worthless. If so, boy did he get that wrong. But then the thread offers a fair number of "facts" and opinions-as-facts that turned out to be well wide of the mark. Moving on, the above bit of fun is by way of pointing up how attitudes have changed over the last few years from that thread, and many others of that era, which not only saw Smith and Jones as obstacles that had to be removed but which regarded investment - any investment, from anywhere - as A Good Thing. Not far short of a 180-degree shift now, with many posters either not regarding investment (I am using the word in the football sense, which includes putting money in without expecting a return) as necessary and/or being wary of the motives of investors, and particularly overseas investors. Added to which there is a belief among some that the ideals brought by Smith and Jones to the club are so important that some kind of trust structure as opposed to a powerful new owner would be the ideal way to replace them when the time comes. How justified is this change of opinion? Firstly, is all investment bad? Take homegrown. Swansea was saved by such. No-one regards Whelan as having been anything but a force for good at Wigan. Ditto Jack Walker at Blackburn. Ashley has had his ups and downs at Newcastle, but more through bad judgment than bad intentions. WBA seems sanely run. And overseas investment? To be sure there are several horror stories, with the new people at Nottingham Forest apparently bent on succeeding the Venkys as laughing stocks of the football world. The jury has hardly left the room on Henry at Liverpool and the Cardiff lot, but Berylson at Millwall, Lerner at Villa and Fayed (a Michael Jackson staute apart) at Fulham appear to know what they''re doing. As does the uber-ruthless Cortese on behalf of a trust at Southampton. And the answer to the question, what good has Lerner''s £200m done for Villa, or Fayed''s £200m at Fulham, is simple; that money has kept those clubs in the Premier League. But that was then. With Financial Fair Play do clubs need investment any more. Is it not ony irrelevant but effectively outlawed? The answer to the question I posed in June 2012: The wild card here is the Financial fair Play rules, and whether they will work. In other words will it still be an advantage to have a mega-rich owner? As if life wasn''t complicated enough there are three kinds of FFP. Uefa''s version, which essentially says clubs can only spend what they earn, and applies to those wanting to play in Europe, the Championship version, which is as I understand it is roughly the same, and now the Premier League''s version (PLFFP for short), which applies to top-fight clubs who don''t care about Europe. Break even? Not exactly. Clubs can without penalty make a combined loss of £105m over a three-year rolling cycle. In other words clubs with rich owners can lose £35m a year and be fine. How so? Because the political (footballing politics and political politics) impetus behind PLFFP was never to reduce, let alone eliminate, the existing financial inequalities throughout the league. No, no, no. It was to curb the spending power of Chelsea and Man City. Hence the strange-bedfellows alliance of Man Utd, Liverpool, Spurs and Arsenal. Since our owners'' wealth at its highest was put at only two-thirds of £35m it''s a fair assumption they could not possibly make up annual losses of anything like that. You can argue that breaking even is the sensible way to go, as would WBA. But it is still an unfair fight when it comes to competing against the likes of Fulham, who are our real rivals. Frankly it doesn''t matter to us how much Chelsea or Man City spend, but the amount available to Martin Jol or Pochettino at Southampton, is highly relevant. There is also a non-playing argument for wealth, as expressed in the second part of my post from June 2012: There is one obvious way in which it still will be [useful], and that is infrastructure. which is not covered [by any kind of FFP]. A billionaire owner could write a cheque for £20m and that would be the expansion to a 35,000-seat stadium paid for without going back into debt. The short history of stadium expansion is as follows. A bit over two years ago Bowkett and McNally said that wthout a rich owner we would need a 35,000-seat stadium (which they plainly envisaged would be full or close to full for most games) to break even. They were confident there were 8,000 extra fans out there. A very few of us were dubious from the outset, but that bullish public attitude continued until last September, when a close reading of an online Q&A answer by McNally showed a significant lessening of optimism. That was backed up by later comments by Bowkett. The project has been kicked into the long grass. Why? This is supposition but I doubt that the directors are intrinsically less keen in the longer run. Even if there are not 8,000 extra fans there are a few thousand who could be accommodated. But the UEA socio-economic survey may well, despite what McNally said about it publicly, have not been so helpful, given the economic outlook. In addition the Red Queen reality of the Premier League has probably loomed larger: "In our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you''d generally get to somewhere else - if you run very fast for a long time, as we''ve been doing." "A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" Fulham, where Fayed feels able to convert £212m of loans into shares because he is worth around £800m, can pay for a new 4,300-seat tier to take Craven Cottage to 30,000. But it is hard to see when there would ever come a time when our directors could justify putting aside a few millions as a down-payment on a new stand. No matter where we are in the PL the logic will always be to plough every last penny into the playing side. So that settles that. All we need to find is a billionaire with the business sense of Richard Branson, the ruthlessness of Genghis Khan and the morals of the Dalai Lama and who knows Julian of Norwich was a woman and regards Normal for Norfolk as a compliment.

[quote user="nutty nigel"] I''d be interested to see where McNally said he would never have built the hotel. I''m not doubting anyone''s word but I honestly don''t remember him saying it.     [/quote]   I don''t remember this either, but then I don''t attend AGMs. But in any event there is a difference between passively not building the hotel and actively filling the gap with seats. As I understand it one of the reasons why the old regime didn''t construct a corner infill is that they are - per seat - much more expensive than straight-line stands, and you wouldn''t have got that many seats anyway, because of the need for emergency access. And at the time doubling the South Stand to around 8,000 seats gave us easily all the capacity we needed. Now we could do with extra seats, but given the high cost it is a moot point as to whether the current regime would go ahead and fill in there if the space had been left vacant. The extra 1,500 or so seats would not be enough to fill the demand of an extra 8,000 that Bowkett and McNally have said is there.

[quote user="Parma Hams gone mouldy"]We are 6 points clear of the relegation zone after 26 games. What were your expectations at the start of the season and would you have accepted the current one? The clear mission for Manager and Board this season was to stay up. Finance is an unavoidable issue and remaining in the Premier is the central mission this year and likely many to come. We get 27k fans every week and do not have a wealthy benefactor. We are a stable, well run club facing a majority of opponents who are stronger than us financially and with better players on paper. The gung ho approach of recent years was wonderful, at the level of football we played. The first, excited, no fear, nothing to lose, no expectations first season in the premier is not a sustainable coaching model for Hughton, any more than it would have been for Lambert. We now regularly keep clean sheets, which - as a coach - looked extremely unlikely last season. Becoming harder to beat was an absolute necessity to have any chance of maintaining a Premier place. To be a good chess player, you must be able to play your opponents pieces as well as your own. Many of the comments on here refert to a theoretical game where the opposition don''t exist. Hughton is a thoughtful and realistic coach, who I suspect will be in place for many years. He is not a deluded Messiah, making promises to fans and players alike based on an artificial assessment of players abilities and the reach of Norwich as a Club. This Evangelism is a short term drug, not a long term strategy. The truth is that Coaches and Managers are an important part of football, but they are by no means the light switch difference between success and failure. The Club as a whole is on the brink of making the huge trasnsition from excited, wide-eyed, carefree new boys to a respected club where Fulham, Spurs et sl are happy to claim a hard-earned point. This is a sustainable coaching model and one that is repeatable and can be gently improved upon. [/quote]   Parma, I like the chess analogy; it looks relevant to Hughton''s way of doing things. But sometimes in chess the best move is not necessarily the theoretically best move, ie the one you like best, but it is the move your opponent will like least. The two are not always the same, and the impression I get from a distance with Hughton is that he shies away from making the move the opposition will like least. In crude terms, he won''t gamble by over-attacking.

If we don''t get promotion back to the Premier League next season then Hughton ought to be sacked. Not before then.

[quote user="morty"]As much as I think of McNally I am afraid airing his dirty laundry in public like this is unprofessional. The classier way would have been to sort it out in a more private medium. [/quote]   FACT!!!!!!!!!! No-one forced McNally to close down the message-board on the official site. FACT!!!!!!!!!! No-one forced McNally to start using twitter. FACT*!!!!!!!! McNally enjoys using twitter to play up his hard-man image. --- *Opinion dressed up as fact.

[quote user="kick it off"]Im most concerned about Hughton addressing Martin Jol in German when he''s clearly Dutch. Needs to do his bloody homework next time or we''ll be losing a few games due to his inability to recognise the nationality of opposition managers if Bor''s fears are accurate.[/quote]   But most educated Dutchmen can speak German. There was a time when they had to, or at least understand what was being shouted at them. And Hughton is more likely to know some German than he is Dutch.[:D] But the real question is, given that Everton are up next, is can he speak Glaswegian the way Lambert could?[:P]

[quote user="nutty nigel"] [quote user="can u sit down please"]Personally im feeling negative as Fulham is a game we all targetted 3 points from. We were very poor today. Add last week, Newcstle, Liverpool, West Ham and West Brom and its grim. We are lucky that the PL is home to many poor teams this year. [/quote]   This puzzles me CUSDP. Earlier in the season I was told that the premier league was far stronger this season which would make it extremey difficult for us to stay up. Now I''m told it contains loads of poor sides which is why we remain out of the bottom three. Serious question if anyone would like to have a guess. Is it stronger or weaker than last season? On balance I think it''s stronger.         [/quote]   Last season there were two sides - Wolves and Blackburn - that were plainly on the slide, and likely relegation candidates. Plus it turned out that Bolton didn''t replace their two goalscorers (Elmander and Sturridge) and lost Holden for the season. And those were the three that went down. In any other season QPR probably would have fallen back down. This season there was only Villa as a club obviously in decline, and even there getting in a bright young and ambitious manager looked as if it might be the answer, and might still be. There are some weak sides down towards the bottom, including us, but only QPR look as terminally fated as those three last season. In other words there is a difference between weakness per se and a weak side in decline.

[quote user="ron obvious"]I would completely disagree with that, PC. I suspect democracy arose because those in power realised they could become materially better off by creating wealth rather than plundering it. If you think about it, it''s basically a by-product of technology. The industrial revolution meant you could produce a vast amount of goods, & previously unobtainable goods, which you could only profit from if you had a market. It was no longer a zero-sum game. The natural consequence of this was emancipation. The ruling class were obviously not keen on this, but the chance to get rich was too good to turn down. The rich will, inevitably do everything they can to enjoy their privileges. It is up to all of us to ensure such privileges are earned & do not unjustly press upon those less fortunate. The true enemy is apathy.[/quote]   Well, there was an element of cheek (as Monty said) in my post! I am not sure, in Britain at least, whether your explanation of the ruling class''s acceptance of democracy is specifically right, but there is no doubt that the reason why Britain avoided a true revolution was because the ruling elite gradually - and very cleverly - gave ground. It was sheer self-interest in that sense. But I would entirely stick to the broader point - that pretty much every change for the better in social policy worldwide over the millennia has been sparked by utopian idealism and often by the imposition of those ideals over what seemed the "natural order". Democracy - given votes to people who didn''t own property, for heaven''s sake - is one example. The abolition of slavery perhaps an even better case.

[quote user="Monty13"]Oh purple you cheeky devil. Only if you met the eligibility to vote, and as it took till 1893 for those plucky Kiwis to give woman the vote, while I don''t think anyone can argue that the ideal of democracy has always been virtuous, the implementation has historically been somewhat lacking.[/quote]   And look where that led us, eh! Talk about Ron Obvious''s heroine, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, we had Lady Macbeth of Grantham.

[quote user="ron obvious"]FFS, where did I say ''capitalism'' works either? You are all confusing it with various idealistic systems (of which communism is one), which seek to impose a theoretical system on a population by making invalid assumptions & simplistic about how people behave. Nobody woke up one day & invented the ''capitalist system'', it has been evolving since mankind evolved. I am only too well aware it is deeply flawed, but, as someone (Churchill?) said about democracy, it is the least worst option. So would you please all stop trying to put words into my mouth.[/quote]   Hold on, Ron! How come democracy came about? That was the imposition of a theoretical, idealistic and highly utopian system.

[quote user="Trent Canary"]Good point. I will run with PC''s pick of Olimpic Xatavia [/quote]   Running seems to have been beyond Olimpic, Trent, let alone scoring goals! I did rather warn you...[:(][:@][:^)]

[quote user="ron obvious"]So Mr Stig, can you point to me a country where communism has been successful? One where there is no ruling elite, no privileged few, & everyone gets along famously, all happy to serve the common good, no matter how there compatriots behave? I can''t think of one. It''s hard enough to find one perfectly ''good'' human being, let alone a nation full. It''s another religion, another Utopian dream, always to be undone by the realities of a physical existence & the necessity of survival. I''m sure your heart is in the right place. But The World doesn''t care, & your head is the only thing that will save you.[/quote]   Your criteria are absurd, in that for them to make sense you would have to apply them to capitalist countries as well. Do you seriously think there are not rulng elites in capitalist countries? That there are no underclasses? The point is that a communist regime (and no, I''m not a communist) doesn''t have to achieve that kind of utopian perfection you demand. It just has to be better than the alternative. Without a doubt Cuba under communism is a better place than it was under capitalism. Replacing the corruption and gross inequality of the Batista regime with the highly flawed Castro regime was an improvement. You can even argue that the Stalinist Soviet Union, whatever its horrors, was better for most people than the moribund, class-ridden and poverty-stricken society that was tsarist Russia.

[quote user="the1englishman"]How long do we continue with Hughton ? Many mention that he needs ti e to bring his own players in. Well, i may be wrong, but whats he brought in so far ? 7 players ? I refuse to except all our players from last season are so poor he needs to change the whole squad. I just dont know, i HATE the style we play now, yet the happy clappers say its all about staying up, at what cost ? The fulham game was awfull to watch, it really was, so its another pojnt towards safety. So what ? Even if we do stay up, i would rather see someone else come in before the start of next season. Love or hate Lambert, we had a much more exciting season last year, and we all thought every game that we were always in with a chance of a win, even if we were loosing. Thats football, and as to Hughtons build from the back policy ? Dont make me laugh. We look terrible at the back most games, amd the feeling we all get should we go behind in games this season is the same for us all. How the hell do we get back into a game when we cant score for toffee !! Do i want to stay in the prem ? Of course i do, but i want to at least see something to make me smile. And with Hughton and his team, there is little to smile about as a FAN.[/quote]   It''s eleven: Bunn, Camp, Bassong, Turner, Garrido, Whittaker, Tettey, Butterfield, Snodgrass, Kamara and Becchio.

[quote user="CambridgeCanary"]40+ with another 3wins and 3draws. But 36 will be enough. QPR will be lucky to get 30 and two out of Villa, Reading and Wigan will not reach 35[/quote]   Not sure that is true. I agree that QPR won''t get at best much above 30, and probably Villa also IF they don''t win today. But having looked at Wigan''s fixtures (including a home game against us) they could easily get to 35 or 36. Later than this time last season they seemed doomed and then went on a run to save themselves. I would put a survival figure at more like 38 or 39 points, given our goal difference and the likelihood of it worsening.

[quote user="can u sit down please"][quote user="Grant Holts 3 year contract"]McNally OUT. We should have risked our future by spending money that we dont have! It''s not like we''re 8 clear and 14th.. oh.. [/quote] Great constructive post. Did i say we needed to spend more? We have actually spent a fair bit. The post has nothing to do with money! [/quote]   Of course that is an idiotic post from GH3YC but I would argue our problems are money-related. The point is not that we didn''t spend in January money we didn''t have; we didn''t spend any of the money (probably close to £10m) we did have. We seemed to put all our eggs in the Hooper basket and realised too late that was not going to happen. If we had given ourselves time to go to Plan B we could have targeted that kind of tough buty skilful midfielder we so much need.

[quote user="nutty nigel"] If football remains as it is now we will fall behind without a change of ownership. Bowkett and McNally recognised this when they came on board. In fact I believe they said that in order for us to become an established premier league team we would have to have outside investment.   However there is a wind of change. We have survived one premier season and maybe two without this investment. If there truly is going to be a change towards club''s being self sufficient then the way our club is run could be a blue print for that.  I have no doubt that what some take for granted is actually our club massively over achieving to what we should expect from our budget. Much of the criticism from those who expect better is ill-founded. Our current position says that McNally, Lambert and now Hughton have performed miracles. Now is this because they are brilliant or has the wind of change already begun to bite?     [/quote]   nutty, they may have said that, but the quote I remember is that without a rich investor we would need a 35,000-seat stadium to be self-sufficient in the PL, which is not the same thing. But that was just over two years, and, as we know, stadium expansion has been kicked into the long grass. You are right that we have been self-sufficient anyway, but whether there is a wind of change towards clubs following our (enforced) model break-even model I am not sure. Certainly the Premier League proposals are not a serious step towards that, when rich owners can make good losses of £35m a season. In the Championship, where , as I understand it, the fair play rules are closer to the Uefa idea of breaking even, possibly the wind is blowing a little stronger.

[quote user="lake district canary"][quote user="PurpleCanary"] [quote user="andyc24_uk"]I think it''s something of a knee-jerk reaction to blame this on ''Foreign'' owners specifically - it''s more a problem of incompetent businessmen. There are no shortage of examples of British directors screwing up clubs - Peter Ridsdale and Ken Bates at Leeds being the obvious example, as well as the ongoing circus at Portman Road. There are also examples of foreign owners doing a good job with UK teams - Mohamed Al-Fayed at Fulham has stuck by them and turned them from league 2 nobodies to well-respected solid top-flight european contenders without breaking the bank, and the Italian guys in charge at Watford now seem to be doing a good job and have an excellent track record with Udinese. I have no problem whatsoever with foreigners owning the club - AS LONG AS they meet the criteria of genuinely caring about the club, running it properly and putting it first, and not making these mistakes to turn us into another Portsmouth. The fact is, Delia is eventually going to sell up - that''s inevitable, every club changes hands sooner or later and she''s been in charge for a long time now. As long as the new owner fits the bill and does the right thing by the club, I don''t care whether they''re originally from Norwich or London or Moscow or Dubai or wherever.[/quote]   Absolutely. I would add Lerner at Villa to the list and probably Berylson at Millwalll. The uber-ruthless executive chairman at Southampton makes McNally look like some cuddly camp councillor but foreign ownership there seems in general to have worked out fine, and the same could end up being true at Liverpool. And we will sooner or later have to have new ownership. [/quote] The caring about the club is the main issue for me.   We have been incredibly lucky to have had Delia at the club - with all the ups and downs that inevitably occur - but to find someone of similar ilk will be very difficult.   However, while things are going well, why would she think of leaving?  She''s not that old - early seventies is not that old these days.    If the club takes a downward turn again I could understand why she might think - time to let another person take over - but currently the club is in great shape and moving forwards - on course and financially stable.   Why rock the boat?  [/quote]   No-one has mentioned rocking the boat. But it is a fact that eventually we will have new owners, and the kind of owner we might want is a perfectly sensible topic for discussion. Why have you dreamt up an element of conflict that simply wasn''t in the thread?

[quote user="andyc24_uk"]I think it''s something of a knee-jerk reaction to blame this on ''Foreign'' owners specifically - it''s more a problem of incompetent businessmen. There are no shortage of examples of British directors screwing up clubs - Peter Ridsdale and Ken Bates at Leeds being the obvious example, as well as the ongoing circus at Portman Road. There are also examples of foreign owners doing a good job with UK teams - Mohamed Al-Fayed at Fulham has stuck by them and turned them from league 2 nobodies to well-respected solid top-flight european contenders without breaking the bank, and the Italian guys in charge at Watford now seem to be doing a good job and have an excellent track record with Udinese. I have no problem whatsoever with foreigners owning the club - AS LONG AS they meet the criteria of genuinely caring about the club, running it properly and putting it first, and not making these mistakes to turn us into another Portsmouth. The fact is, Delia is eventually going to sell up - that''s inevitable, every club changes hands sooner or later and she''s been in charge for a long time now. As long as the new owner fits the bill and does the right thing by the club, I don''t care whether they''re originally from Norwich or London or Moscow or Dubai or wherever.[/quote]   Absolutely. I would add Lerner at Villa to the list and probably Berylson at Millwalll. The uber-ruthless executive chairman at Southampton makes McNally look like some cuddly camp councillor but foreign ownership there seems in general to have worked out fine, and the same could end up being true at Liverpool. And we will sooner or later have to have new ownership.

Good idea! My selection is the book Grant Holt has plainly been eating up: The Life of Pie.    

[quote user="Bethnal Yellow and Green"] The AGM is always well covered in the EDP and Pink''Un with several pieces before and after - generally they are pretty boring affairs though and only ultra-fans are particulary interested. Details of McNally''s wage or club finances aren''t hidden away, again the EDP and Pink''Un do an assesment of them in the papers but again most people are only interested in the headlines.     [/quote]   Bethnal, the EDP/Pink ''Un coverage of the AGMs may be OK but not of the accounts, and that is the much more important bit. The supposedly "in-depth analysis" of the 2011 accounts failed to spot the single most crucial fact in the whole document, that promotion to the Premier League meant our debt repayment deadline had shot forward by several years. It took some nerd[8-|] of a poster here to point that out. And the coverage of the 2012 accounts was also totally superficial; there was nothing beyond the headline figures and  as far as I can see nothing, for example, on McNally''s massive bonus, which was what set the OP off.