This part of the site is a brief look at the finances of Newcastle United up to June 2007, when Mike Ashley took over from the Shepherds and Halls.

This really needs to be read in conjunction with the main site, but on its own shows what Mike Ashley bought, and the position Freddie Shepherd left the club.

The main thing to notice is that things that were previously bad were getting rapidly worse and that there was a real threat that the club would go into financial meltdown in a Leeds United sort of way.

In summary what Shepherd left was a club that was losing over £30m a year, had debts of £70m, had no assets they could borrow more money against, and had a set of players on long, lucrative contracts. Ashley can get rid of the debt but the £30m annual losses with over paid players will take longer to sort out.