Abuse must stop or Ashley won’t invest

Posted on September 11th, 2011 | 20 Comments |

Mike Ashley wants no more abuse.
Don't call me fatty
Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley appears to be fed up with the abuse he gets from some of the fans. So fed up in fact that he implies the abuse must stop or he will not do the right thing by the club.

No doubt you’ve all seen the questions The Chronicle put to the NUFC board and the answers they received from them? If not, you can see them here.

Most of the answers are along the lines we would have expected, so there aren’t really any surprises. An interesting point though was the suggestion that we have to stop abusing Mike Ashley if we want him to continue funding the club. It came as part of the answer to the question: Is Mike Ashley considering putting the club up for sale?

Apparently he’s not unless an incredible offer comes along, although quite what classes as ‘incredible’ is anybody’s guess. But the answer is followed by this:

I’d like to make a further point here. This club can’t support itself without the financial backing of Mike Ashley; we still rely heavily on the owner. To date Mike has invested over £280m into the club, including £140m in interest-free loans. For him to continue to support the club, he has to be interested and enthused to do so.

He deserves credit for his financial support but a section of supporters don’t make him feel welcome at St James’ Park, or when he attends away games. Criticism is part and parcel of the job, abuse is not. This makes life uncomfortable and certainly doesn’t make Mike feel more inclined to put his hand once again in his pocket. That’s not stubbornness, it’s human nature. I think most of us would feel exactly the same.

The implication is clear. Either we stop abusing him or no new funds will be invested in Newcastle United by Mike Ashley.

I can see the broad point like – nobody is going to be too impressed by receiving abuse – but Newcastle United Limited is a business entity and Mike Ashley has a duty to do right by it regardless of what fans may do. It just sounds to me like a ready-made excuse to avoid investing in the club. I somehow doubt that all the fans are going to stop abusing him if, even if some did, and I’m pretty sure Mike Ashley knows that too.

The implication is that the fans must assume responsibility for part of Newcastle’s financial future but I’m afraid that’s just not on. I think Mike Ashley bought this club hoping for some sort of buddy-buddy Utopia where he could sit with the fans and in the ground and sink a few pints with them afterwards. But that idea rapidly faded because on the back of some poor decisions by Ashley some of the fans turned against him.

Well I’m sorry but that’s extremely naive. Newcastle United is a responsibility and I’m afraid Mike Ashley should be following through with whatever financial plans he has for it regardless of the actions of some of the fans. If he is not prepared to do the best thing for Newcastle based on the level of abuse he receives then I’d question his fitness to run the club in the first place.

I’m not saying that he should invest certain amounts in the company every year but that what he does invest should not be based on the level of abuse he gets from fans. It is in fact the duty of a director to act in the best interests of a company regardless of whether or not that’s in their own personal best interests.

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.

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20 Responses

  1. This statement sums up the ‘man’. This is emotional blackmail and it doesn’t suprise me in the least that he would resort to this. GET OUT OF OUR CLUB.

  2. Perhaps he should stop abusing supporters by consistently undermining us, apparently encouraging his staff to put out false messages, hording cash from player sales and getting rid of managers who earned our respect, not to mention displacing supporters who have followed the club for a lifetime compared to his 5 minutes.

  3. couldnt agree more hugh, in essence, if all the fans sang “stay in our club, stay in our cluuuuuub, you athletic business meistro, stay in our club!”…..

    then he’d buy Tevez?

    and even if he did, what then? he would have turned the toon fans into sing-for-your-dinner, ten penny harlots, who receive gifts for their ‘tricks’ like good subbordinate citizens of Big Brother, or like the rag tag kids of Fagan, nickin’ off all day to swipe gold watches, and then piling it all together in a back room of SJP, where ashley then reinvests it in the club!

    …oh..you’ve got to pick a pocket or 2, boy….

  4. How dare he say the abuse he gets has stopped FCB putting his hand in his pocket?,has he forgotten he’s made this club a laughing stock for 4 yrs?,what does he expect?.The answers were a joke,so much so that Llambias used the “buying a house” analogy that Wenger used in a press conference 2wks ago in response to Owen Coyle’s claims that their offer for Gary Cahill was insulting.Couldn’t even think of something original to say

  5. i’m not one for giving him abuse and i think the fans should stop the abuse, but at the end of the day maybe if he invested into the squid and show us some ambition, then i’m sure alot of fans will stop.

  6. Cashley appears to see himself as a benevolent dictator, a superior ruler dispensing his blessings upon the common people – and he appears suprised that we are ungrateful and offended by his arrogant rule.

    Now he is witholding his blessings and issuing dark threats – we must love him and his great works or he will pack up his tent and abandon us.

    Cashley – beware of a Geordie Spring!
    We are the club – not you.
    Owners come and owners go – to be forgoten.
    NUFC is forever.

    HWTL

    QPR 0 NUFC 2

  7. no one should back down to threats issued by these a**eholes,f**k them abuse away.if he doesn’t want to invest,then leave quickly.

  8. i see pardew has had his “twopennithworth”,on the subject.
    “the chairman’s relationship with the fans,makes it hard for me”,this is why i have never liked this bloke,he was the same at west ham.he would use situations and things that were said,to extricate himself from situations.
    on the back of dracula’s q and a,he has used this to try and give it,the feel sorry for me.
    you cannot have respect for a tit like pardew,i wish the lot of them would f**k right off,they are so wrong for this club.

  9. There is probably a strong element of truth in his statements re. being something of a saviour for the the club. His demeanour and antics are not going to win him any kudos from many of the fans however. He would probably benefit from getting himself a decent PR person, the market trader, I is being wronged approach cuts no ice I’m afraid.

    Man up Mr Ashley, the fans won’t love you till we see some silverware of a higher status in the cupboard. By the way you aint the only club owner getting stick from fans, goes with the job I’m afraid.

  10. Typical of the Fat Parasite. Even Pardew does not want to work for him now. If he didn`t f*** us about, take the piss, sell best players, no investment etc then he would not get abuse. JUST F*** OFF YOU FAT PRICK!

  11. Time to crank up the abuse I feel. They’ve got a cheek asking for our support. I think the FCB is currently hoarding money in the club to make it more sellable. Just hurry up and sell on you fat twat!

  12. they want more fans in the stadium,all their latest guff is going to do,is turn more people away.
    all they are doing is “shaking the hornets nest”,they will never get the people up here.

  13. Deana says:
    September 11, 2011 at 2:05 pm

    “I think the FCB is currently hoarding money in the club to make it more sellable. Just hurry up and sell on you fat twat!”

    I don’t think he intends to sell the club anytime time soon Deana. As this is Newcastle United though, anything could happen in the future.

  14. People need to get real. I don’t like the situation any more than every other Newcastle fan. But, nobody wants to buy the club FULL STOP!!
    We would have been well and truly in the sh*te if he hadn’t turned us into a self sufficient business or near enough. Shepherd really bled the club dry.
    Quite simply if nobody will buy us, I think it’s time to stop the abuse and accept that we’re not a top 4 team and never will be when the likes of Man City are taking the pi55 and buying everybody.
    I’m not saying chant his name, but drawing a line over it and stopping the abuse so his family can go to games etc without worry means he might actually start feeling some affinity to the club and maybe, just maybe reinvest some cash or try to sell the club.
    RANT OVER!

  15. Beadleshand says:
    September 11, 2011 at 4:06 pm

    “I think it’s time to stop the abuse”

    It isn’t going to stop Beadleshand, but a big hand for trying! :-)

  16. Note that he never guarantees the converse that he implies: that Ashley WILL invest if abuse stops. Given his lawyer talk about not promising to spend the AC money this summer (as if anyone demanded 35M be spent; Shane Long at 4.5-6M would do fine and no, you didn’t promise it this summer, you just said you’d replace AC and that you only didn’t do so in January because you didn’t have time…or is that just what your employee/lackey[?] AP says and you hung him out to dry?) and about not being trusted (whatever the truth of the AC money saga, what about that tribunal that found you to have lied and mislead KK and by extension, us?), I can see delboy breaking out just that kind of excuse for not spending, even if everyone were meek as lambs…

  17. tunyc says:
    September 11, 2011 at 8:06 pm

    “Note that he never guarantees the converse that he implies: that Ashley WILL invest if abuse stops.”

    Aye, that’s an interesting point tunyc.