I, for one, am delighted to see that the Newcastle United soap opera is still going strong. Firstly let me just clarify that I don’t enjoy watching other clubs suffer, unless they play in blue and are owned by Russian oligarchs, so these are really just my thoughts on the boundless entertainment offered by this increasingly troubled outfit. Today, the Toon’s much-maligned owner, Mike Ashley, announced to the football community that he would be selling the rights to name the club’s stadium, St. James’ Park. By all media accounts the club badly needs a cash injection, and Ashley is reportedly dipping into his own pockets to the tune of £20m, and selling the aforementioned naming rights to supplement this. There is nothing too outrageous in there given the current economic and footballing environment, right?
Wrong, according to the ‘long suffering’, and self professed ‘Best Fans in the World’ belonging to the Toon Army. This announcement has been met with much wailing and gnashing of proverbial teeth, with fresh calls for the owner to be railroaded out of Newcastle for good. It is certainly worth giving a bit of background information here. Ashley has twice put the club up for sale on the vocal advice given to him by the fifty-or-so thousand fans that turn up to the games. Today, as a preface to the plans detailed above, the chairman also announced that he would be taking Newcastle Utd off the market for the second time in as many years, having failed to find a buyer. This is unsurprising – the asking price Ashley sought (reportedly around the £100m mark) was ludicrous given they were relegated to the Championship at the end of last season. The best offer was supposedly around £70m; a loss of about £60m on his initial outlay, it it was deemed unacceptable – again, that is not surprising. Ashley has already pumped millions of his hard-earned Pounds into this money pit and, whilst I hate using the term ‘current economic climate’, it best explains why Ashley is now looking to protect his investment in this way.
Football has always been run as a business, but this has come to the fore in recent years following the high-profile takeovers of Manchester United and Liverpool. Both of these buyouts by American investors have saddled their respective clubs with debt, suddenly changing the priorities from winning at all costs to servicing debt. Banks are increasingly questioning the levels of credit that football clubs should be afforded – and rightly so; just look at Portsmouth. They are in dire straits after a few years of ill advised spending. True, they have an FA Cup to show for it, but have now had a transfer embargo slapped upon them due to non-payment of transfer fees and have flirted with bankruptcy in a very public manner. Newcastle Utd should be no different. Mike Ashley is a businessman, and Newcastle Utd is his investment. He has every right to run it as he sees fit, and if new funds are required then he has to look at all of the viable options available.
It seems that poor Mike Ashley can do no right in the Geordie fans’ eyes, although I fail to see how he is to blame for the club’s woes. It is not him who put together the squad that saw the team relegated, and this frankly is the main reason for the bleak outlook they face now. In the long, drawn out world of a Championship season there is little to be had by way of television money – a far cry from the Premiership. Championship status further enforces the need for frugality and good business sense; ignore these two and risk becoming Leeds Utd or Queens Park Rangers Mark II (ok, admittedly QPR qualify alongside Chelsea on my schadenfreude scale). I was browsing the comments on the BBC website to test public opinion, and was both shocked yet, sadly, unsurprised by what I saw. All quotes I use are exactly as published… I mention this purely so I don’t have to type ‘sic’ every other word.
Ashley is, of course, being roundly slated by the club’s loyal and unwavering fans, mostly for, “selling the naming right when a great newcastle hero died this year…” This comment made me laugh somewhat; an amnesia epidemic must have struck Newcastle given that said hero, Sir Bobby Robson, was sacked by former Newcastle chairman Freddy Shepherd at the behest of the same fickle fans in 2004. Shepherd did not receive the same level of abuse as Ashley, even though he did not invest the same amounts of cash, and the reason I can think of is that he was better at the PR side of club ownership. He signed Patrick Kluivert (disaster), but fans loved him for it because Kluivert was a big name signing. In fact, the sacking of Sir Bobby actually made Shepherd more popular with the fans because they were the ones calling for his head! You could barely make it up… “The Sir Bobby Robson Stadium was what most of the fand had in mind, of course tradition and sentiment have no place in the Fat Mans heart. If he has one.” What has one man done to deserve such vitriol? Newcastle are currently top of the Championship and surely favourites to be crowned champions this year, thereby instantly regaining their much-needed Premiership status.
In fact, I’d hoped that at least a season in a lower league might recalibrate the Newcastle faithful’s expectations, preferably so they more closely resembled reality. This hasn’t happened. The actual result of the club’s relegation has been for the fans to turn fire on the unfortunate soul at the top of the tree, claiming he hasn’t lived up to expectations! Please ignore the fact that the club hasn’t won anything for years... The fans demand ever more cash for players and the ensuing sickening wage bill, yet they complain when the owner takes realistic steps to make this happen. Who, given this backdrop, will ever want to buy Ashley out? The other problem is that the fans are now threatening to stay away from games in protest at Ashley’s pantomime reign of terror, but this will only serve to hurt the club further. The team will suffer, gate receipts will suffer, and interest from sponsors will therefore suffer. The Toon Army’s blind hatred of Mike Ashley could, ironically, be the downfall of what used to be a great club – not Ashley himself. It’s a classic case of pointless martyrdom. To illustrate the absurd level of expectation on Tyneside, Frank Gilmore (former chairman of the Independent Newcastle Supporters’ Association) waded into the row by criticising Ashley’s decision to give Chris Hughton a full time contract as manager of the team. “I can't see Chris Hughton attracting the type of player we need to get us back to where we should be, and that's the top half of the Premier League.” Why, then, should they be in the top half of the Premier League? They were one of the three worst teams in the league last year, and are now paying the price. It is hard to be sympathetic when such blind arrogance is the order of the day.
When all is said and done, who is the front-runner to win the naming rights over St. James’ Park? Another comment from the BBC website suggests, “Well there could only be one sponsor and that would have to be Newcastle brown ale. Then opposing fans could say they are going up the Brown and home supporters could say they are going doon the broon!” It wouldn’t surprise me if this happened; nothing surprises me with this club anymore.
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