You have to laugh (part 2)

Sport
41

Just got an email from Mike Ashley:

I have enjoyed sport since I was a boy. I love football. I have followed England in every tournament since Mexico '86. I was there to see Maradona and his hand of God. I know what it means to love football and to love a club. I know how important it is to other people because football is so important to me.

My life has been tied up with sport. It was the passion that I felt for sport that helped me to be successful with my business. That success allowed me to mix my passion and my business.

I bought Newcastle United in May 2007. Newcastle attracted me because everyone in England knows that it has the best fans in football. When the fans are behind the club at St James’ Park it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It is magic. Newcastle’s best asset has been, is and always will be the fans.

But like any business with assets the club has debts. I paid 134 million out of my own pocket for the club. I then poured another 110 million into the club not to pay off the debt but just to reduce it. The club is still in debt. Even worse than that, the club still owes millions of pounds in transfer fees. I shall be paying out many more millions over the coming year to pay for players bought by the club before I arrived.

But there was a double whammy. Commercial deals such as sponsorships and advertising had been front loaded. The money had been paid upfront and spent. I was left with a club that owed millions and part of whose future had been mortgaged. Unless I had come into the club then it might not have survived. It could have shared the fate of other clubs who have borrowed too heavily against their future. Before I had spent a penny on wages or buying players Newcastle United had cost me more than a quarter of a billion pounds.

Don’t get me wrong. I did not buy Newcastle to make money. I bought Newcastle because I love football. Newcastle does not generate the income of a Manchester United or a Real Madrid. I am Mike Ashley, not Mike Ashley a multi-billionaire with unlimited resources. Newcastle United and I can’t do what other clubs can. We can’t afford it.

I knew that the club would cost me money every year after I had bought it. I have backed the club with money. You can see that from the fact that Newcastle has the fifth highest wage bill in the Premier League. I was always prepared to bank roll Newcastle up to the tune of 20 million per year but no more. That was my bargain. I would make the club solvent. I would make it a going concern. I would pour up to 20 million a year into the club and not expect anything back. It has to be realised that if I put 100 million into the club year in year out then it would not be too long before I was cleaned out and a debt ridden Newcastle United would find itself in the position that faced Leeds United.

That is the nightmare for every fan. To love a club that overextends itself, that tries to spend what it can’t afford.

That will never happen to Newcastle when I am in charge. The truth is that Newcastle could not sustain buying the Shevchenko’s, Robinho’s or the Berbatov’s. These are recognised European footballers. They have played in the European leagues and everyone knows about them. They can be brilliant signings. But everybody knows that they are brilliant and so they, and players like them, cost more than 30 million to buy before you even take into account agent commissions and the multi-million pound wage deals.

My plan and my strategy for Newcastle is different. It has to be. Arsenal is the shining example in England of a sustainable business model. It takes time. It can’t be done overnight. Newcastle has therefore set up an extensive scouting system. We look for young players, for players in foreign leagues who everyone does not know about. We try and stay ahead of the competition. We search high and low looking for value, for potential that we can bring on and for players who will allow Newcastle to compete at the very highest level but who don’t cost the earth.

I am prepared to back large signings for millions of pounds but for a player who is young and has their career in front of them and not for established players at the other end of their careers. There is no other workable way forward for Newcastle. It is in this regard that Dennis and his team have done a first class job in scouting for talent to secure the future of the club.

You only need to look at some of our signings to see that it is working, slowly working. Look at Jonas Guttierrez and Fabricio Collocini. These are world class players. The plan is showing dividends with the signing of exceptional young talent such as Sebastien Bassong, Danny Guthrie and Xisco.

My investment in the club has extended to time, effort and yet again, money being poured into the Academy. I want Newcastle to be able to create its own legends of the future to rival those of the past. This is a long term plan. A long term plan for the future of the club so that it can flourish.

One person alone can’t manage a Premiership football club and scout the world looking for world class players and stars of the future. It needs a structure and it needs people who are dedicated to that task. It needs all members of the management team to share that vision for it to work.

Also one of the reasons that the club was so in debt when I took over was due to transfer dealings caused by managers moving in and out of the club. Every time there was a change in manager millions would be spent on new players and millions would be lost as players were sold. It can’t keep on working like that. It is just madness.

I have put Newcastle on a sound financial footing. It is reducing its debt. It is spending within itself. It is recruiting exciting new players and bringing in players for the future.

The fans want this process to happen more quickly and they want huge amounts spent in the transfer market so that the club can compete at the top table of European football now. I am not stupid and have listened to the fans. I have really loved taking my kids to the games, being next to them and all the fans. But I am now a dad who can’t take his kids to a football game on a Saturday because I am advised that we would be assaulted. Therefore, I am no longer prepared to subsidise Newcastle United.

I am putting the club up for sale. I hope that the fans get what they want and that the next owner is someone who can lavish the amount of money on the club that the fans want.

This will not be a fire sale. Newcastle is now in a much stronger position than it was in 2007. It is planning for the future and it is sustainable.

I am still a fan of Newcastle United. We, my kids and I, have loved standing on the terraces with the fans, we have loved travelling with the away fans and we have met so many fans whose company we have enjoyed. We have absolutely loved it but it is not safe anymore for us as a family.

I am very conscious of the responsibility that I bear in owning Newcastle United. Tough decisions have to be made in business and I will not shy away from doing what I consider to be in the best interests of the club. This is not fantasy football.

I don’t want anyone to read my words and think that any of this is an attack on Kevin Keegan. It is not. Kevin and I always got on. Everyone at the club, and I mean everyone, thinks that he has few equals in getting the best out of the players. He is a legend at the club and rightly so. Clearly there are disagreements between Kevin and the Board and we have both put that in the hands of our lawyers.

I hope that all the fans get to read this statement so that they understand what I am about. I would not expect all of the fans to agree with me. But I have set out, clearly, my plan. If I can’t sell the club to someone who will give the fans what they want then I shall continue to ensure that Newcastle is run on a business and football model that is sustainable. I care too much about the club merely to abandon it.

I have the interests of Newcastle United at heart. I have listened to you. You want me out. That is what I am now trying to do but it won’t happen overnight and it may not happen at all if a buyer does not come in.

You don’t need to demonstrate against me again because I have got the message. Any further action will only have an adverse effect on the team. As fans of Newcastle United you need to spend your energy getting behind, not me, but the players who need your support.

I am determined that Newcastle United is not only here today, but that it is also there tomorrow for your children who stand beside you at St James’ Park.

Mike Ashley.

42

Not a bad effort at justifying himself but if I was a Newcastle fan I’d be more angry about the Wise situation than the lack of transfer fees. And I’d be seriously wondering if they were getting value for money from the fifth highest wages in the Premier League - that’s an astonishing fact if it’s true. Could they really be paying more in salaries than Spurs, particularly given the fact that Spurs have to pay London money.

Anyway I’ve no doubt that he put decent cash into the club but the problem was that he didn’t turn them around financially and he doesn’t seem to have gotten value for money. The club is still the same joke it ever was.

43

It is indeed a decent effort by Ashley but there’s no point in him whining about their front loaded sponsorship situation or the fact he’s still paying off transfer instalments for players purchased before he took over the club. These are all things he should have known and investigated before buying the club and if the rumours about him not doing due diligence on the deal are true then he’s a clown. Equally, Newcastle supporters need a good dose of cop on. What makes them think it’s anyway possible for them to splash out millions like a Chelsea, Manchester United or Liverpool? They win fook all and they have no Champions League revenue so why do they believe they have unlimited hundreds of millions of pounds to throw at the club? They need a reality check and should realise that a top half finish and the odd cup run is good for a club like them.

44

Ashley is a cunt

Dennis Wise is an utter utter definition of a cunt

Keegan is a weiner

Newcastle is a joke

Bring back Sir Bob

45

Bad to worse for Newcastle, horror tackle…

Leg-breaking horror tackle may earn extra suspension for Newcastle’s Danny Guthrie

Newcastle midfielder Danny Guthrie is facing an unprecedented lengthy ban in addition to a three-match suspension after breaking the leg of Hull City’s Craig Fagan in a horror challenge on Saturday.

Guthrie, sent off near the end of Hull’s 2-1 win at St James’ Park, has already been hit with a three-match ban for violent conduct.

Although the FA have increased suspensions in the past, they have never added extra matches because of the seriousness of an offence.

But an FA spokesman said: ‘We are looking at the incident and have the right to alter the suspension if necessary.’

Walk of shame: Guthrie exits St James’ Park with his head hung low
Guthrie, a 2.5million summer signing from Liverpool, lost his cool as Newcastle slipped to a humiliating defeat on a day fans vented their anger over owner Mike Ashley’s running of the club.

Guthrie had already tried to trip Fagan with a rash challenge before taking him down with a full-blooded swipe in the corner.

Fagan managed to play on for the final seven minutes and joined his team-mates as they celebrated their first Barclays Premier League away win in front of 3,000 travelling fans.

But he left St James’ on crutches and X-rays on Monday confirmed Fagan has suffered a broken right tibia and will be out for at least three months.

Guthrie issued an apology yesterday and was trying to contact Fagan to say sorry personally but that was being blocked by Hull staff.

He said: 'I was very upset to hear the news concerning Craig. The club have been in touch with Hull on my behalf because I want to speak to Craig in person to apologise and wish him a speedy recovery. I hope to do that as soon as possible.

‘It was a challenge that came purely out of frustration and anybody who knows me will accept it was out of character on my part.’

But Hull manager Phil Brown indicated Guthrie would be wasting his time trying to offer an apology to Fagan, who joined Hull in a 750,000 deal from Derby last season.

Brown said: 'It cannot be tolerated. When you see that the end product is him putting a fellow pro in a cast, it’s just not right. That’s the horrible side of the game.

Furious: Hull boss Brown was appalled by Guthrie’s tackle - and his attempts at an apology

‘It took the shine off the victory in my mind. If I go back to the incident, my players were killing time in the corner, something that every club do. In the process, someone has decided to take the matter into his own hands and lashed out at Craig Fagan.’

Brown has pleaded not guilty to an FA misconduct charge after it was alleged he kicked a water bottle at the fourth official during his side’s 5-0 defeat at home to Wigan

46

The Times sticks the boot into Newcastle and I pretty much agree with all of it.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/newcastle/article4761813.ece

Newcastle United fans are the club’s biggest problem

Matthew Syed

Here is a message for the whining, whingeing, self-pitying, self-indulgent and deluded fans on Tyneside, otherwise known as the Toon Army: Kevin Keegan is not the Messiah; Alan Shearer is not an aspect of the trinity; Mike Ashley is not the Devil; Tony Jimenez is not on the secret payroll of Sunderland; and Dennis Wise is not an evil dwarf.

Newcastle United are not a “massive” club and do not have a divine right to remain in the Premier League; St James’ Park is not the world’s greatest stadium; and, in case you were wondering, your team will not break into the top four any time soon, with or without Ashley, Keegan, Wise or any of the other men who are heroes, villains and sometimes both in the febrile imaginations of the world’s most whimsical supporters.

Oh, and you are not the most loyal, valiant and wonderfully dependable fans on the planet. Check out the attendances when Newcastle were languishing in the second division at the start of the 1990s and you will get the measure of the myth that has clung to the black-and-white-shirted men and women for far too long. That’s right, they were often much fewer than 20,000 and with the Gallowgate end partially deserted. Is that what you call loyalty?

The banners castigating Ashley for being a southerner during Saturday’s comically self-important protest were the final straw for many of us who have long endured the tedious soap opera on Tyneside. That and the ill-informed, conspiracy-laden and melodramatic messages posted on the dozens of message boards that these fans seem to spend their lives reading.

Where is the gallows humour, the sense of irony, the satirical edge? Where is the old-fashioned self-mockery that characterises most other groups of English football fans when their team are having a bad time of it?

The only way that Newcastle fans are ever going to be truly happy is when they have formed a collective to buy the club and have made a pig’s ear, as they inevitably would, of a kind that would make Freddy Shepherd’s last remaining strands stand on end. When they have rehired Keegan to manage the team, Shearer to be his assistant and the ghost of Jackie Milburn to do the scouting. When they have got control of the club and discovered that their own volatility makes it practically ungovernable.

Sure, passion and commitment are great things and we all know that in a big city with only one football club, there is bound to be a siege mentality and more than a little self-absorption. But many Newcastle fans have turned navel-gazing into an art form. They need to get out more and discover that their beloved club, who have not won a trophy for decades, are virtually unknown beyond these shores. They need a little perspective, not least in terms that passion does not equate to knowledge, nor does enthusiasm equate to expertise on how to run a football club.

This is a group of fans who agitated for the sacking of Sam Allardyce after only six months because the football was not pretty enough, even though he had put in place a much-needed science support structure and cleared out the dead wood from the Shepherd era. These are fans who want nothing to do with Ashley because he is from “down South” and because he insisted on a continental scouting system to support a manger who, by his own admission, had not attended a live match for three years and so was the last person who could have done the scouting job.

Sure, mistakes were made by Ashley, not least in the appointment of Keegan - something that was bound to end in tears - and in spheres of responsibility not being properly spelt out to the main protagonists. But let’s get real. The fundamental problem with Newcastle is no longer the corporate management, but those who used to be described as the club’s greatest assets: the fans - or at least those who are making all the noise at present.

47

Ashley reportedly looking for $850m for Newcastle. Good luck to you fat boy!

He obviously expects to find somebody dumber as well as richer than himself.

48

[quote=“Bandage”]The Times sticks the boot into Newcastle and I pretty much agree with all of it.

[/quote]

except the part about dennis wise not being an evil dwarf

49

Fooking disgraceful that Guthrie didn’t get a longer ban for that tackle. If ever there was a case of serious foul play, one would think deliberating hacking somebody down resulting in a broken leg would be it.

50

You know your club is in shit when Venables turns down the chance to make a few quid.

51

Too right, Jack Charlton must be the obvious candidate left standing.

52

Has David O’Leary not got the nod yet?

53

DOL looks like a shoo in as the last man standing. Saying that, he usually turns up in the press when he’s sniffing around a job, no sign of him yet?

54

surprised that brian kerr hasn’t thrown his hat in the ring…harry redknapp would be a good fit up there…

55

Big 'arry’s missus didn’t want to move up there last time. Cost me alot of money…

56

Joe Kinnear just appointed!

57

It’s on a short term basis but still, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

He hasn’t managed sinced '04

58

Good time to leave Pompey though, they must still be on the beer since the cup win

59

heh?

60

Kinnear? Surely it’s a wind-up. What an hilarious excuse for a football club.