Mike Ashley - 3 years at the helm.Between the vast swathes of speculation in these last few weeks, I nearly managed to forget that a certain anniversary is about to be upon us.
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. (more…)
Muppet!Dennis Wise is not remembered with great affection around Newcastle after his part in the fiasco which brought the club to it’s knees, and ultimately cost us a Premier League place.
And it looks like the smooth negotiator has dropped another clanger that will see the club miss out on any extra income from any potential transfer of James Milner to Manchester City.
Why only yesterday I thought that the club must surely have entered some form of sell-on clause in the deal that took the then 22-year old player to Aston Villa. It’s what anyone would do right?
Surely a player of such a young age will move on again at some point in his career? Well that does now indeed look like it could be a possibility, but Newcastle willl not benefit from it as Dennis Wise didn’t insert a sell-on clause into the deal whilst in negotiations with Aston Villa. It appears that Villa wanted to pay £8 million for Milner, and Wise wanted £12 million. Villa said fine to that but took any sell-on clause out of the deal, which Wise accepted. Superb negotiation skills from Wise, and it makes you wonder how he was qualified to be put in such an important position within the club, despite the controversy it ended up causing. (more…)
Howay the New Year!This time ten years ago, we were staring into a brand new millenium and the late great Sir Bobby Robson was halfway through the first season of his popular reign as manager at Newcastle United. The slightly uninspiring capture of Diego Gavilan was the only January transfer that Robson made and the little Paraguayan never made the impact he would have hoped for at St James’. Sir Bobby, conversely, went on to create one of the most exciting sides of a Toon generation.
Despite falling short as Keegan had done back in the ’90s, with his wealth of experience, Robson played a brand of football that the supporters could once again get behind. And the football wasn’t just good to watch but effective as we flirted with European and domestic success. But of course, the end of his reign was somewhat soured by it’s nature as many fans welcomed the decision feeling he’d lost the dressing room, and he was unceremoniously dumped by Freddy Shepherd.
2000 actually saw Robson get rid of one of our most infamous and old-fashioned bad-boys, Duncan Ferguson, but the new millenium brought the advent of a new type of bad-boy. The ‘noughties’ became the decade of the ‘naughties’ as Robson built his side around ‘bling boys’, such as the likes of Keiron Dyer, Jermaine Jenas, Titus Bramble and Craig Bellamy. (more…)
Modest Dave.Well after Worky posting that wonderful photo of one of my all time favourite players, I felt we couldn’t leave it at that. So, being a little indulgent, I wanted to share with you my reminiscences of a great Newcastle United footballer (and gorgeous guy), one of the best exports to make it out of France: David Ginola.
David joined Newcastle in 1995 in a £2.5 million move from Paris St Germain. He had been voted the French Player of the Year, and the French Players, Player of the year in 1994 (probably before they were booted out of the World Cup). By all accounts, he must have been happy to arrive in old Angleterre after being made a scapegoat for the French team missing out on a place in that year’s World Cup Finals. With France carefully playing out a 1-1 draw against Bulgaria, knowing they only needed a point to take them to the finals, they brought on Daveed as a late substitute, and yes, you guessed it, he tried an overly flamboyant pass to Cantona, which was intercepted, Bulgaria scored, and Les Bleus were going no where. National outrage followed and David decided in the circumstances he would scarper overseas. (more…)
'The Adidas Arena'?Alan Oliver is running an article in The People claiming that all the money from the stadium naming rights will go straight to Chris Hughton to spend on the Newcastle United squad.
Ashley has apparently insisted the naming rights won’t go cheap and he’s looking for £6m a season before he’ll sell off our heritage.
A Toon source (that lad again) said:
“But all he is asking is for the fans to sit back and take a realistic look at the situation.
“It is costing him £3m a month out of his own pocket to run Newcastle and he is trying to look at other ways of raising revenue – the St James’ Park name is one of his few valuable assets.
“But he is not going to flog the name of the stadium to the first bidder.
“He is looking for a significant figure for the stadium naming rights and if he gets it, all the money will go to help Chris Hughton strengthen the team.” (more…)
