Bedsheets and broomsticks.
Posted on October 31st, 2009 | 58 Comments |
Undoubtedly there are many fans who would like to celebrate Halloween by tying Mike Ashley to a stake and setting fire to him, not least because of his crackers plan to sell the naming rights to St James’ Park.
It’s the sort of plan that will probably have people thinking about demonstrations of one kind or another, often involving bedsheets and references to the “Cockney Mafia” and strange words like ‘boycoutt’. Others suggest that the best way to get the message through to Ashley is to ‘hit him in the pocket’, as demonstrated by this letter to the Chronicle:
ASHLEY must go now. Yes, I know he has the money, he cannot be that daft, you say – let’s face it, he got lucky on the stock market and has dragged us down to gutter level and this is the final insult.
Q. How do you get him out?
A. Get the Geordies to stop going to the ground, all 40,000 of them – no income equals no soul, equals the landlord throws in his hand; 40,000 supporters to see Doncaster Rovers – it beggars belief – that is more than Chelsea get most home games!
There is however a problem with that plan. It’s fair enough asking Ashley to ‘get out of this town’ but where is he going to go? He has just tried to sell the club and failed, so his options are limited. He’s not going to give the club away and, whatever his sins, no reasonable person would expect him to do so.
Ashley knows that buying Newcastle was a mistake but he’s stuck with it in the same way we’re stuck with him. Asking him to clear off is pointless unless someone can tempt him with £100m ready to deposit in his bank account immediately, and the last 5 months have proved that isn’t going to happen.
Staying away from games will certainly hit the club in the pocket but it will also risk damaging our promotion prospects. I think we have to look at it pragmatically. I don’t believe Ashley plans to stay at Newcastle forever, I just think he’s realised that his best option for selling the club is to wait a year or two until the world economy improves and try to get Newcastle promoted in the interim, thus making it a more attractive proposition for buyers.
And, lo and behold, we want to see the club promoted too. Our aims coincide with Ashley’s so my suggestion is that we grit our teeth and bear it, get behind the team and help them push hard for promotion.
Let’s say 20,000 stay away from St James’ Park to try and ‘hit Ashley in the pocket’ – what do you think he’ll do? Up sticks and take up yak farming instead? Sack Hughton and appoint Shearer with a £40m transfer budget? Unlikely – what he’ll probably do is tighten the purse strings even more. He’s a gambler and he’ll risk our chances of promotion, whereas I’d rather we didn’t take any unnecessary risks with promotion at all.
To be honest, I think one of the best things that could happen is for the football decision-making to be taken out of Ashley’s hands and passed on to a chairman who knows what he’s doing. Llambias, as managing director, is fairly useless in this respect, which is probably to be expected of a man who needlessly starts his name with two L’s.
Ashley has actually taken the first step in admitting he’s not very good at running a football club – and admitting failures is often difficult for entrepreneurs – but it’s all a bit pointless if he doesn’t do anything about it. Maybe there’s a ‘Crap Football Club Owners Anonymous’ somewhere: “Hello, I’m Mike Ashley and I’m a crap football club owner. I bought Newcastle back in 2007 and I’ve made these mistakes …. er, how long have you got?”
At the moment though, as fans, our choices are limited. I don’t think there’s much we can do that will have and practical, positive benefit in terms of relieving Ashley of the club other than supporting the team in their push for promotion, so I plan to back Hughton and the team and keep my bedsheets intact.
If anyone has a workable plan that doesn’t involve damaging our chances at promotion I’m all ears though.
NUFCBlog Author: Hugh de Payen
I'm a baby-boomer of the punk rock persuasion, currently exiled in Somerset for crimes committed in a previous life where locals keep trying to poison me with something called 'scrumpy'. Hates sprouts, coat-hangers, Cilla Black, ornaments, Steven Seagull movies and 50 Cent (he's not worth 10).
Hugh de Payen has written 634 articles on this blog.
It’s like ‘Nightmare on Barrack Road’ and one, two Freddie S is coming for you. Digging in the claws.
To be honest, I’m not sure either way about a protest, it all seems so futile but does that make us as culpable because we’ve done nothing about it? I’m not so sure. He knows we don’t want him here. Hitting him in the pocket probably isn’t likely to help matters, and will likely make matters worse.
I’m away to walk the dog and have a think.