Doth We Protest Too Much?
Posted on August 4th, 2011 | 63 Comments |
It is very difficult to avoid this Joey Barton situation at the moment. A good 90%+ of the Newcastle United coverage for the last few days had been about him and his infernal Twitter machine, which has depressed me and made me wonder if it was worth chewing through the leather straps to get on here and post this morning.
Ironic, then, that I’m going to post about it too.
Joey seems to have induced an air of protest amongst many Toon fans, such as that suggested by my esteemed fellow writer. But I must say I have my reservations and since we don’t have such things as editorial policies on this ‘blog, I’ll bore you with my views on the subject.
I think any protest needs to be designed as an effective step towards some clear end result or it merely serves as a disjointed expression of anger. Some people might feel better from the emotional release it affords but it may not achieve anything towards the actual goal.
Personally, I think the way Ashley would react to a Poznan protest is to shrug and simply say “yeah, but they paid their money“. Ashley certainly used to care what the fans thought and I think it’s fair to say that the bedsheets and whatnot after Keegan debacle convinced him to try and sell the club. His lengthy club announcement from the time where he threw his toys out of the pram demonstrated genuine upset in my opinion.
But I think a harder, more business-like Ashley sits at the helm of the club today. One who is well aware that he’s unpopular with a lot of fans, but also one who doesn’t give a crap about his fan popularity anymore. I think the only way Ashley will leave this club is if he either gets back all the money he has invested in it or it becomes such a poor business proposition that it’s better for him to write it off as a loss.
If you’re trying to persuade him to sell via the first situation, it means helping to make the club profitable – maybe even suffering mediocrity on the pitch while transfer dealings continue to move into the black – and hoping that the club becomes attractive enough for some buyer to consider paying Ashley off and taking over.
To try and persuade him by the second situation you need to stop paying for tickets, pies, pints, shirts and anything that might get back to Ashley’s piggy bank. But you also need to persuade a fair chunk of the 50,000 regulars at St James’ Park to do the same thing. That would take many seasons too: most people already have their season tickets for the coming season, so that’s money in the bank for Ashley already. You’d have to start now by persuading people not to do likewise next season.
And then you’d have to think of the damage that such action would inflict upon the club in the long run. Our club remember. Making it a business write-off for Ashley is kind of like cutting off our noses to spite our faces because somebody then has to come in and make it work again, which will lead to stingy spending policies and how long would it be before we’re calling for the heads of whoever took over?
Which leads to the question about who takes over anyway. It’s always possible that we could end up with an owner who’s worse than Ashley, unlikely as that may sound to some people. In my opinion, one of the things Ashley has got right is his policy of trying to get the club on a firm financial base and I’m all for the general principle of replacing older, high wager earners with younger, cheaper players, but there are also such things as ‘transition’ and ‘balance’ and it is in this area that I think Ashley’s lack of footballing acumen becomes apparent.
I have long argued that a lot of Ashley’s ‘mistakes’ would have been avoided if he’d appointed a football-savvy Chairman instead of an escaped owl. It would mean Ashley having to listen to him in the first place of course, rather than simply hand out ‘orders’ as he seems to do with Llambias and Pardew, but I think it could have made a difference.
As to protest, I’m certainly not against it but I have to feel it has a chance of helping to achieve some sort of long-term advantage. At the moment I haven’t seen any realistic suggestions that would do that.
Good article.
Personally I think we just need to get behind the club and the players.
We are ruining it for ourselves if we protest and show dislike to the club.
Its not Ash and Co that need to ‘grow a pair’ – its us, the fans.
:-)