Llambias Blaming EVERYBODY Barring Ashley!

Last Updated : 26-Feb-2009 by
Derek Llambias says NUFC is facing imminent pay-outs as they look to settle the signing of Jonas Gutierrez and the fall-out with Kevin Keegan.

Hang on a minute here! Wasn't Gutierrez a signing by Dennis Wise, and wasn't the 'fall out' with Keegan of Ashley's own doing?

But obviously Llambias will put the blame on Sir John Hall or Freddy Shepherd or why not Stan Seymour ... although I doubt very much if Llambias or Ashley will have done their history on NUFC.

After all, Ashley has only been a supporter for a year.

Llambias revealed Newcastle are currently making no profit due to the terms of Michael Owen's £17 million transfer to the club, which was funded by all the money made from commercial deals with Northern Rock and Adidas.

Under-fire owner Mike Ashley, who had no part in that Owen deal, is (according to Llambias) being forced to stump up £15 million of his own money to fund this season's deals and the club will have to sell before they can buy during the summer.

Llambias: "Mike has had to put £10 million of his own money into the club this week to facilitate the running of the club - that includes £4.5m for Kevin Nolan, as fees for Shay Given and Charles N'Zogbia will not be received until the summer."

BUT ... Ashley sanctioned those two signings so it's his own fault the money was not paid upfront!

Llambias: "And he will continue to put his own money in. He is willing to put £10-15 million of his own money in every year, but the rest of the money, for transfers and so on, has to be generated by the club's own business activity.

"We don't have any commercial income at the moment because that was spent to pay for Michael Owen. It was all spent in advance, that's the money from Northern Rock and Adidas. That is crazy for any football club because we need that income.

"We are hoping to reach two important settlements in the next week or so which potentially could cost the club a lot of money.

"One of those is the settlement with Kevin Keegan and the other is the fee for Jonas Gutiérrez. We are talking about millions of pounds here and, if we have to pay out a vast sum of money, that will hit our revenue elsewhere."