How do Newcastle plan to go forward?

Mike Ashley's five-year 'break even' plan for Newcastle United is pretty well known now.

Some will argue that it makes business sense, other will say that it's football and that he should be prepared to lose of a bit of cash on a season by season basis.

That particular argument has been done a million times, and I have no doubt that it will be done a million times more. I actually agree with having a financially solvent club to support, but my worry is that there is no plan to move us forward.

Last week a group called 'United For Newcastle' managed to break down the Iron Curtain and actually communicate with the club. You can read what the outcome was by clicking this link, but it's this next statement which has been stuck in my mind ever since:

"The club now breaks even every month, and isn’t taking loans out. They want to be in good shape for the UEFA rules on finances for when they do get back into Europe."

Of course there is nothing official to back this up and the only way that we will be able to tell is when the accounts for this current season are available, which will be in around 16 months time! It does kind of match my rough calculations though.

That leaves us with a problem in my book. If we are breaking even now, then how can we improve further? How can we expand the wage bill to accommodate better players? The only real ways to do that are to either increase our income, or decrease our expenditure.

Now there are many ways to increase income, and it should rise next year anyway due to increased TV money from the Premier League. Growing sponsorship revenue and corporate income is another way of increasing what is coming into the club, and that should happen next year anyway as the team will be able to attract more interest having, hopefully, lost their 'newly promoted' tag.

Obviously finishing higher up the league will give us more cash (roughly £750,000 per position) but when you consider that a player on £50,000 a week will pick up £2.6 million for the year it kind of puts it into perspective a little. Qualifying for Europe would help all of the above, but the real money is in the Champions League and not the Europa League unfortunately.

One other way to address the situation and allow some room for growth is to cut current expenditure. On this front I am looking solely at high wage earners that don't offer value for money, like Alan Smith or Xisco for example.

Those two players are on a combined salary of roughly £115,000 a week, which is fine really as our structure will allow that currently. However, I would bet that you could strengthen the squad with three or four players who offer more to the team than they could for the same outlay in wages. The problem is not high earners, not when they are earning it anyway. It's the high earners who aren't earning the dollar that are the issue.

It's just given me some food for thought to be honest. Breaking even is a good thing when it comes to football, but it's also important that their is a credible plan for growth in place.

But is there a plan in place? That is the question....