A year in the life of Newcastle United, and NUFC Blog IV.
Posted on June 4th, 2010 | 34 Comments |
Kicking off the latest chapter in our one year retrospective of all things Newcastle United and NUFC Blog, we move on where we left off, with an Ashley rant from Hugh de Payen. This one is from November 4th of last year and is called “Random gripe about the random Toon“. The “random” in the second instance referring to Ashley’s seemingly random approach to planning and investment in building up the squad. It also contains a great line about Kevin Keegan (well I thought so anyway) “although it’s quite ironic that Keegan was constructively dismissed for not wanting to spend money on a player”.
Coming next, I am including a trio of stories about the NUST’s “Yes We Can” campaign for fans to buy the club from Mike Ashley, though in the end it a resoundingly a case of “No We Can’t”. The first story, written by Hugh de Payen once again and called “Are you the next Mike Ashley?“, covers the launch of the ill fated campaign and was published on November 11th. It also includes a paragraph I particularly liked about ‘fan owned’ Barcelona’s outgoing President, Joan Laporta:
“However viable fan ownership is, it’s no utopia. Laporta inherited a club in financial difficulties and one that operates with a debt that oscillates between £200m and £500m. Laporta has survived attempted coups, a walk-out by 20 members of his board, was caught using private detectives to spy on his board and – one I particularly like – courted controversy by mooning at airport police in an objection against the airport’s security checks.”
Next comes a small piece from myself, “NUST claim Mike Ashley is making £7million a month from Newcastle United“, from when I saw an introduction to the NUST’s poll of members views, where they attempted to blatently skew the result by printing a blatant falsehood about how Mike Ashley was supposedly making £7 million profit out of Newcastle United. Having a history in business endeavours, and also being a rather sad man who sends of dutifully for Newcastle United accounts when they are published annually at Companies House, I knew for certain that this was completely and utterly false, and felt compelled to expose this lie from an organisation who wanted us to believe they could be trusted with huge amounts of hard earned savings and pension funds of Newcastle United supporters in the region and beyond. The most offensive part casually attempted to seduce us with the lines:
“One final thought for you to consider before you fill in the survey – sources have told us that Mr Ashley is making up to £7m profit out of our club every month and whilst that’s not confirmed – do the maths – wages halved, no expenditure on transfers, crowds up, new advertising revenue before the end of the season and the assets of SJP Holdings.
“Make no mistake – Mr Ashley is not going to lose on his investment in Newcastle but it’s now time to think about the club, city and community not himself.”
Truth his that whether through his own misguided decisionmaking or not, or being completely shafted by the Hall / Shepherd Geordie mafia, it is impossible to deny that Mike Ashley has lost massively on his investment and continues to do so.
I will conclude this chapter in our little retrospective with a counterpoint to my own rather one sided piece. It is from NUST believer, Bowburnmag, who described how he was convinced by them in a pub every regular St James’s Park visitor will know, The Strawberry, which stands just opposite the stadium on Strawberry Place. In his piece called “In NUST, we must Trust?” he gives an account of the meeting, including an encounter with the man responsible for the £7 million a month gambit, Tony Stephenson. After a lengthy seduction by Tony, Bowburn took a swipe at ‘sceptics’ like myself, saying:
“Sceptics may have seen it as tub-thumping (though I think the sceptics and cynics didn’t bother to turn up, and instead are happy to take 2nd/3rd/4th hand knowledge and pillory their efforts from their online comfort)…” going on to conclude:
“The most I hoped for was to come away thinking it wasn’t a load of cock and while there is clearly still a lot of work to do and a long road ahead, it’s not a load of cock in my opinion. This campaign may never get off the ground, it may get part way off the ground and still fall back to earth with a bump, some bruised pride and a lot of disappointment. In the meantime, I hope they keep up the good work. They have my respect and support for what they’re trying to achieve. And I plan to help them as much as I can to make something happen.”
On that, I will close this episode in the story. More to come soon.
NUFCBlog Author: workyticket
workyticket has written 1096 articles on this blog.
Im glad its only a week till the World Cup, coz this is getting boring.