da bwin： The relationship between Mike Ashley and Newcastle supporters has always been cordial at best, and insufferable at worst, but following yet another summer of false promises, the St. James’s faithful are set to launch a new wave of protests against the rule of the Magpies owner with a march before their Premier League clash with Liverpool tomorrow afternoon, headed by a group named ‘Time for Change’.
da premier bet： We’ve been here before with Mike Ashley; iconic images of the ‘Cockney Mafia out’ banner draped across the stands at St. James’s Park live long in the memory, and the club and the fans almost reached the point of civil war when former manager Kevin Keegan resigned 2008.
Now however, the fans seem more serious than ever in trying to force the Sports Direct mogul out of the club, playing on the fact their home fixture with Liverpool will be aired live and therefore their mass protest will receive nationwide coverage, whilst a more militant sub group of disgruntled fans have even suggested a boycott of Newcastle’s Capital One Cup tie with Leeds.
Few supporters would actively turn their backs on their club at the worst of times, so for the idea to circulate enough to be mentioned in the Newcastle Chronicle, there must be a strong section of the Newcastle fanbase that are reaching the point of no return.
And with that in mind, we ask, is it finally time for Mike Ashley to sell Newcastle United, as it appears pre-existing wounds cannot be re-healed.
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Newcastle have always held a naturally comedic place in the structure of English football; Alan Shearer, Paul Gascoigne and Kevin Keegan are but a few of the inadvertent humorous personalities that have plied their trade on Tyneside.
But there’s now a feeling that Ashley has turned the club into a ‘laughing stock’, to paraphrase Shearer himself, and the joke has gone too far following the re-appointment of Joe Kinnear as Director of Football at the start of the summer.
Admittedly, interactions with the press aren’t everybody’s strong point, and even during his days at Wimbledon the former Ireland international wasn’t one for pleasantries. But there isn’t much of a greater public relations faux pas than Kinnear’s ad hoc interview with TalkSport earlier in the summer that pre-dated his official appointment, in which he referred to Newcastle’s French midfielder as ‘Yohan Kebab’ and the Magpies’ former Managing Director Derek Llambias, the man Kinnear was essential replacing, as ‘Derek Lambeze’.
That was embarrassing enough for Magpies fans, considering Kinnear already had an incredibly negative track-record with the supporters from his controversial tenure as Newcastle boss back in 2008, but he then continued by making audacious claims about his ability to attract any player he wanted to Newcastle via his illustrious list of contacts, that included Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson.
The proof would be in the pudding this summer, and Kinnear has failed to deliver by epic proportions. Alan Pardew, who remains an almost as unpopular figure as Kinner and Ashley amongst certain sections of Magpies fans, promised new signings in the transfer window working alongside his new Director of Football, but three months’ worth of graft in the transfer market over the summer only saw two signings on Tyneside – 16-year-old Olivier Kemen and Loic Remy on a season-long loan from QPR.
In total, that’s no permanent senior additions to a Newcastle squad that showed it’s intrinsic flaws on more than one occasion last term as they recorded 19 Premier League defeats and finished just five points clear of relegation in 16th place. Rather than admitting defeat however, Kinnear argued in an interview with The Mirror; ” Alan Pardew has signed 16 players costing £60m in the last two years, Newcastle United’s wage bill is now comfortably in the top 10 in the country”, which a Newcastle fan later informed me was untrue.
But to suggest Kinnear’s appointment and actions since are the be-all-and-end-all of the anger Newcastle fans have shown towards Ashley would be incorrect. Their disdain for the running of the club is centred around a combination of issues, including the fact the Magpies owner has continually sold Newcastle’s best players for profit without putting a paralelled level of finance back into the club for new signings. Steve Harper commented after his testimonial that Newcastle require heavy investment if they are to ever get back into the Premier League’s top half, and the fear on Tyneside is that Ashley is now pushing the club to the edge of an incredibly slippery slope that could lead to another shock relegation.
At the same time, Alan Pardew has been a source of intense frustration for the fans. What he actually contributes positively to the first team remains unclear; his tactics are outdated and ineffective, the right to buy and sell players has been taken away from him by Kinnear’s appointment as Director of Football, and his post-match analyses often verge on deluded. It seems the vast majority of what Pardew offers is his ability to produce Tony-Blair-esque sound bites during press conferences. Under Ashley, the Newcastle boss has always appeared little more than a comedic stooge.
Overall, there isn’t much positive to say about Ashley’s leadership in recent years. A team that finished in 5th place two seasons ago is now a shadow of its former self, and for the sake of profit there seems to be little the Magpies owner is willing to do about it. At the same time, the sponsorship deal with Wonga, leading to a fall-out with striker Papiss Cisse, illustrated how little Ashley has considered Newcastle’s reputation and their uniquely vital standing in the local community.
But the problem emerges in imagining life without Ashley. In 2008, the Sports Direct founder put Newcastle up for sale after widespread criticism from the Newcastle faithful following Keegan’s resignation, but a year later he took the Tyneside club off the market after failing to find any potential suitors. A Kuwaiti consortium was linked last summer, but no official contact was ever made.
And history could well repeat itself if Ashley is once again forced to try and sell, with little offers for Newcastle football club on the horizon, despite the outfit’s obvious potential; few Premier League sides can claim a regular maxed out attendance of 52,000, or carry the prestigious history of the Magpies in the English game.
I share the opinion of the vast majority of Newcastle supporters that it’s time for Ashley to move on. The problems between the owner and the fans seem intrinsic and irreparable, and apart from the occasional strong performance from the first team, there’s been little for the St. James’s faithful to be proud about over the last few years. It’s created a toxic environment on Tyneside, that can only be detrimental to the players’ efforts on the pitch, and thus Newcastle’s future.
But before Ashley can sell, he needs a buyer; one of the main aims of the march ahead of tomorrow’s game is to attract a potential suitor, and if the Newcastle fans can find one, I believe their despised owner would be convinced to part company. At this point, too many bridges have been burned to produce a positive outcome whilst Ashley is still around.
Should Mike Ashley sell Newcastle United?
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