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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.

The ECB shoots itself in the foot... again

Yesterday it was announced that the Home Office has put new rules into effect that will, effectively, signal the end of the ‘Kolpak’ player in English county cricket. Kolpak players are so called because of a legal case brought before the European Court of Justice (ECJ), where it was decided that players from outside of the European Union should be treated as though they were EU citizens, so long as their country of origin had signed associated trade agreements. EU citizens, under existing law, are permitted to seek employment anywhere they want within the EU – overt rules preventing this are inevitably struck down as restrictions of trade by the ECJ.

For cricketing purposes this meant that non-EU born players could play freely for English county sides without breaching rules on the number of overseas players allowed per squad (currently two, although it used to be one). The upshot of this development was to enable county sides to sign up as many ex-South African and West Indian test players in an effort to boost their bid for silverware – potentially a very useful source of income for the cash-starved county teams. This legal loophole has now been closed, however, with the ECB (England Cricket Board) citing the stifling of English-born talent as the main justification for the new rules. I’m not convinced this has been thought through properly.

First and foremost, the arrival of Kolpak players had unquestionably raised the standard of English county cricket. Notable additions include Dwayne Smith (Sussex), Jacques Rudolph (Yorkshire) and Martin van Jaarsveld (Kent). These are established, talented players who the crowds love to watch in action. Unfortunately country cricket has been suffering from supporter apathy in all corners, albeit slightly improved by the innovation of Twenty20 cricket (a shorter, sharper version of the game that you can attend after work). This newer form of the game means that crowd-pleasing players are at a premium – anything to increase gate receipts and raise the overall level of interest in the domestic game among potential punters is king in modern cricket. The other thing to consider is that no club would, in their right mind, hire a Kolpak player who didn’t improve the squad they have to work with. As the available talent pool increased, this theoretically allowed more teams to compete for the ‘lucrative’ trophies on offer. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the counties were resistant to calls from the governing body to self-regulate in the numbers of Kolpak players they employed.

So the ECB decided it would step in, firstly by offering significant financial benefits to the counties playing English-qualified players on a pro rata basis. This actually reduced the numbers of foreign ringers on the county circuit last season, but these new regulations will be in force as of next season - and they will eliminate the element of choice for the counties. The only exemptions from the rule will be if the player has played one Test match in the previous two years, or five in the past five; so a fair chunk of Kolpak players remaining in the country for last season will now be excluded in the coming one.

The ECB’s main argument for restrictions on Kolpak players lies in the development of future England stars. They believe that the foreign influx was choking the number of free slots in county 1st teams for up and coming youngsters, thus having a detrimental effect on the next generation of talent. However, it seems very short sighted to remove several of the best players in the country when the aim is to ensure the next England hopefuls step into the national side having learnt their trade at a decent level. Unfortunately it is well documented that England produces far too many average professional players, and it is idle to blame this on the lack of availability of First Class cricket to the best and brightest.

The main issue here seems to be that there is too much room for the journeymen. It cannot be argued that Kolpak players are keeping young English players out of county sides, and therefore the national side. Potential England players are identified very early in their development (plus they are in a tiny minority), and due to the inflated number of First Class teams there is no prospect of them being starved of opportunities to prove themselves at the top domestic level. These youngsters cost counties less than the Kolpaks - they are not yet established, so they command lower salaries. If a county has the choice between a young English player and an established Kolpak player of equal ability, they will choose the Englishman ten times out of ten.

To illustrate my point, take a look at Joe Denly of Kent. He is considered to be one of the more talented players of his generation to have risen through the ranks there, and this has been recognised with a string of England caps opening the batting. He had learnt his aggressive shot-playing style alongside Kolpak player Martin van Jaarsveld, who still regularly lights up the domestic forty and twenty overs-a-side games with the same swashbuckling power hitting. Similar domestic opportunities have been afforded to other youngsters in the Kent set up, but they have failed to impress in the same way as they do not time their shots as well as, or have as good an eye for the ball as Denly. As a Kent fan it’s disappointing that he hasn’t replicated his Kent form for the national side, but it supports my argument nonetheless. Assuming another lesser young English batsmen played week in week out for Kent in place of the likes of van Jaarsveld, who could say the England team would benefit from that when it has yet to reap tangible rewards from Kent’s brightest young talent breaking into the team? It is early days in Denly’s international career, and I still think he will show everybody what the fuss is about, but why force more young English players on the counties just for the sake of it? I feel the younger players will suffer from a relative lack of ex-world class role models to learn the innumerable mental or technical nuances of the game from. How will the England team improve if its next front-line bowlers are used to knocking over schoolboys in the County Championship 1st Division instead of ex-Test batsmen? It also cannot really be said that the England team was much better prior to the Kolpak ruling coming into effect in 2004. The Test team has, by most measures, improved since then, although the One Day team still suffers from crippling inconsistency. A sad fact of teams in all sports is that they tend to go in cycles; all it takes is for a couple more Kevin Pietersens to be born (actually in this country this time, preferably…), and then the ECB’s policies will mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.

The ECB seems to have a habit of scoring own goals, the most recent one of course being its laughable association with Allen Stanford. Relevant to this article it may not be, but if they genuinely wish to improve the England team’s fortunes (and Stanford really is as passionate about cricket as he says) maybe the ECB should have persuaded him to invest in grass roots coaching of the sport rather than vulgar multi-million Dollar showpieces in the middle of a recession. Alternatively they could take the badly needed move to cut down the number of First Class teams currently competing in the English domestic leagues. The dilution of talent in this country was at its most painfully evident during the recent Twenty20 Champions League, where Somerset and Sussex were savagely taken to pieces by their overseas counterparts. A cursory glance at nearly all other team sheets in this competition would reveal five or six current or recent ex-Internationals, with the ‘best of the rest’ backing them up. Frankly the Australian New South Wales side would give the current England team a very good run for their money, especially in the shorter formats of the game. Because fewer teams compete in the foreign leagues, only the very best players available actually get to ply their trade at a professional level. The collateral damage caused by a reduction in number of English domestic teams would be to cull vast swathes of the current livestock.... but life is unfair. In times of trouble, difficult decisions need to be made, and redundancies are virtually inevitable when mergers and restructuring take place. I cannot see this option being taken though; the ECB would need agreement from the counties first. Turkeys do not vote for Christmas, but now the quality of their individual teams has been so brutally compromised in this way, it is about time this decision was taken out of their hands.