Ashley at the Old Bailey.
Posted on June 25th, 2009 | 34 Comments |
It’s therefore quite ironic that the last vestiges of what many people believe to be a treacherous reign by Mike Ashley is likely to be carried out in this location. For many Mike Ashley should be facing the same punishment for bringing our club into disrepute. But before he is finally cast as a complete and unadulterated villain hell bent on destroying the club and the embodiement of all things evil, lets take a quick look back at some of the Newcastle times of Mike Ashley.
A known recluse who enjoyed watching football, he was well known as someone who almost never talked to the media although this fact would be forgotten during his time on Tyneside. We thought we were getting a nice benefactor, after all he was a billionaire, a quiet and unassuming guy we would never hear from who we pictured sitting in his mansion Howard Hughes style all alone with his cat for company. What we didn’t expect was to see him bedecked in his black and white shirt drinking in the Bigg Market and splashing the cash on drinks all round for the locals – no shortage of drinking mates then. While he enjoyed the happy days of travelling with the fans and being one of the lads, the fans were happy that we had an owner who was close to them who appeared to listen to what they wanted. ‘We want Keegan’ many of them said so Keegan was duly acquired fresh from his circus in Glasgow. Were we about to relive those heady days again, the days of the entertainers? Well it didn’t take us long to find the answer to that conundrum when all hell broke lose after Dennis Wise was appointed and the inevitable falling out and walking out of Kevin Keegan happened. If you could pick one defining moment of when it went all so horribly wrong it was that one. Dennis Wise the agitator, the workeyticket (sorry), the one who trouble always followed.
The catalogue of disasters too numerous to mention cascaded down from there. Poor appointments with lack of relevant experience or worse complete unsuitability for the job, poor decision making, little communication with the paying customer, wooliness, ineptitude, lack of decisiveness, poor PR, pigheadedness, not appearing to care and so the list goes on. Despite much of the disaster of his reign I think he started off with the right intentions. He was poorly advised and made several bad appointments and the consequence of those actions were plain for all to see. However what we must remember is if he hadn’t of come along when he did when we really were on our uppers after the mess left by Freddie Shepherd and ploughed a minimum of £150m of his own money into the club that he will never see again the likelihood is that we would have gone bust.
So, while Mike Ashley’s tenure with the club draws to an inevitable close, and we berate all he has done to bring great grief to our club, we also must acknowledge that his actions weren’t deliberate and I’m sure in quiet moments he regrets a lot of the stupid decisions, poor appointments and bad advice that has led to him selling the club. He will leave NUFC a division lower, a club in turmoil with it’s reputation in tatters. I’m sure that’s not how it was supposed to be.
NUFCBlog Author: geordie deb
geordie deb has written 38 articles on this blog.
“we also must acknowledge that his actions weren’t deliberate”
What makes you so sure? RIP Michael Jackson.