Mike Ashley – 3 years and counting…
Posted on June 8th, 2010 | 273 Comments |
That is an anniversary to mark Mike Ashley having owned Newcastle United for three years! Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun eh?
Technically, Ashley completed the sale three years ago this coming Sunday, but with me being faced with the very real possibilty of having a stinking hangover from Saturday night, and the fact the nearly all of us will be wrapped up in the World Cup by then, I thought it would be best to, errr, ‘celebrate’ this milestone prematurely and get it out of the way. To say Mike Ashley’s reign on Tyneside has been a turbulent one would be a wee bit of an understatement. His tenure includes having had five different managers in three years, two failed attempts at a sale, and one very big falling out with Kevin Keegan, and that is the one thing Ashley will probably find the hardest to come back from, plus countless others that I have probably either forgotten or haven’t got enough time to write about.
Conroversy has never been far away since Ashley came to Newcastle as he seemingly bumbles from one mistake to the next, with optimists hoping that the previous mistake will be his last, and pessimists waiting for the next in a long line of errors to come along. I sit somewhere in the middle of them two, mindful of what comedy scenario is going to arise next, but also willing to give praise when it has been due.
I know what you’re thinking, in fact you’re probably wondering where the praise has been due. Well for one, we don’t owe any money, aside form a working overdraft, to a bank, which is good. I will also give him credit for putting the cash in to get us back up, regardless of whether he was rectifying his own mistakes, or getting the club promoted to protect his own investment, either way it is something that helped us all out. Sacking Sam Allardyce is another thing I will give him credit for, aswell as his pointless yet tough stance with the media.
So he has made some decent decisions then, but by god they are far outweighed by his poor ones. Appointing Kevin Keegan again was one of them in my opinion. Don’t get your knickers in a twist about it, but a motto of mine is ‘never go back’, and whilst it was a popular decision at the time, the ending was never going to be ideal. The circumstances and what happened next are well documented, and most of you will know what what went on. Which leads me onto to one of his next big mistakes, Dennis Wise.
Not so much Dennis Wise himself, more the power that Ashley seemed to give Wise, who in all fairness was probably not the best or most qualified candidate for a job that never existed in the first place. Still, it was Wise who was behind the scenes undermining the other guy who shouldn’t have been here, Keegan, which again led to those well documented circumstances that I wont go into.
Next up for me is the ridiculous decision to try to rename St James’ Park, by putting his Sports Direct brand name in front of it and making it look a bit like an e-mail address. I think it was SportsDirect.com@StJames’Park that the name ended up being showcased as, although despite the initial furore, it appears that it never really cottoned on and very rarely got mentioned to by it’s ‘proper’ name, with the media and TV commentators sticking with the more traditional version of the ground name.
There will be loads more beside what I have mentioned, so I shall leave it up to you guys to mull over.
Three years eh?
Well that’s what is being a Newcastle united football supporter.
Up and down 3 years.
One thing for sure we were on the slide for a few years under shepherd but one thing for sure, We would not have been relegated under freddie.
But we would have needed Gordon brown to fund us like he did with Northern Rock to stop us going into extinction