United Fans Love Mike Ashley – Or Do They?
Posted on May 19th, 2012 | 101 Comments |
If you believe the Chronicle’s PR machine, the man has been forgiven, is a saint, walks on water and is now the most popular man on Tyneside. Well, not in those words but it seems to be the thrust of the message.
Quote from the Chronicle:
“Now Mike Ashley has won the backing of the Tyneside faithful after fans cast their verdicts on his finest year at the helm of Newcastle United.”
“Five years after he seized control at St James’ Park, our exclusive on-line survey has revealed the tide is turning on the billionaire sports tycoon.”
“More than 2,000 people logged on to take part in our end of season poll and voice their views on Newcastle’s season.”
“And – in a sneak preview of our full survey results – the Chronicle can reveal more than 65% of supporters who took part in the poll said their opinion of the Sports Direct owner had gone up.”
Impressive claims indeed – until you actually scratch below the surface of course – lets do that shall we? Lets just look a little closer at what the Chronicle people are saying and their supporting evidence.
They conducted a survey to which 2,000 people responded. 65% of the 2000 people said their opinion of the United owner had gone up – that’s 1,300 people. 65% or 1,300 people is hardly “the backing of Tyneside” as claimed, is it?
Moreover, United’s average home crowd this season, the third best in the country by the way, was 47,718. Even allowing for away fans, those 1,300 therefore represent less than 3% of the “Tyneside Faithful” who attend games and that the Chronicle is claiming Ashley has “won the backing of”. And as we know, there are a lot of United fans out there who don’t, can’t or won’t regularly attend the match, throw them into the pot and the 3% shrinks even further.
Now, there’s no doubt that a lot of people have indeed changed their opinion of Ashley to some extent, not least because of the successful season that the team has just had. Myself included – No question of that. You have to acknowledge the way he’s turned the club around whether that was by luck or good management. But to attempt to dress this poll result up as some sort of total and absolute forgiveness by “the Tyneside Faithful” for the crass decisions, mismanagement and ill-treatment of United legends in the recent past, and the appointment of fans’ favourite Dennis Wise of course, is at the very least stretching it a bit.
And who exactly were these 1300 people anyway? There is no proof they were even United fans as the Chronicle don’t have any way of knowing. For all we know, they might have mostly been employees of T-Shirt Direct! Personally, I have no faith whatsoever in newspaper polls or the resultant claims they make based on shaky results to a shaky question. Does anyone else remember when the Sunderland Echo ran a poll asking if Agent Bruce should keep his job, and were left scratching their heads when such a high percentage of respondents voted a resounding YES!
Anybody care to guess just where those voters came from? I rest my case!
really, the anti-Ashley sentiment is getting tiresome, anyone with any sense can see we are very well run and look to have a lot of very sound foundations in place. complaining about someone whose better than most is making us look really daft tbh.