The support Mike Ashley retains

When I’m writing these blogs sometimes I think “am I just repeating myself?”. There’s so much to say about the last 25 years though, there’s so much to say about the last 5 years never mind 25 years.

We were all young once, I still think of myself as young even though I’ve got 8 grey hairs, and I know for a fact many of our young support are tremendous. Since the Darlington incident in 2012, the club obviously made it more difficult for non-members/non-season ticket holders to get tickets. Yet still we can take 2,500 to North London on a Sunday afternoon with the game live on telly, two generations of fans old and young who haven’t seen one trophy of note. In general I couldn’t be more proud of our support. What the latest generation of kids, not just at Newcastle, but around the UK has brought though is an element of fans who have to take an alternative view. They have to. They believe having an alternative view to the norm, makes them appear more studious, more interesting and more cultured, that’s how I see it.

I never hated Freddy Shepherd like many did, but he did some utterly stupid things. No one can argue that he should have had no complaints that a majority of the support wanted him to leave. Up till 2004 though Newcastle weren’t losing vasts amount of money. In 2003 the club made more money than we did in 2012 which is remarkable when you think some of the bigger clubs have trebled their turnover in that period. In terms of income Shepherd had it right, certainly at that point. His treatment of Robson was poor, but people need to face facts about that. He was 73 years of age, he died five years later tragically. A lovely bloke who brought Newcastle back to the level where we should always be, but I don’t remember too many people up in arms about Shepherd’s desire to move on after 2 points from 4 games at the start of the 2004/2005 season. http://www.nufc.com in particular almost campaigned for Robson’s replacement, and it was never going to be easy because there was such a bond and love between support and manager, one thing is for certain though it did have to change at some point. How Shepherd did it was terrible, but the hypocrite toon fans who look back at that time as an abhorration on FFS time here have short memories. Very few people were vehemently vilifying Shepherd for searching for a new manager after that 4-2 defeat at Villa. Where Shepherd got it wrong were his further decisions over the next three years. I think when you look at how much Souness wasted, how he ripped apart a talented side and replaced it largely speaking with shite at a huge cost, that as much as anything put the club on a downward trajectory. People who support Ashley don’t want that seen, all they want people to hear is Shepherd would have led us to bankruptcy. Well. Bollocks.

The majority of the debt Ashley was left with was the mortgage on the stadium which would’ve been paid by 2016. Ashley decided to wipe all the debt which was over £100m. Fine. What sort of businessman spends £134m on a new toy without going through the clubs debts with a fine tooth comb then blames the previous leaders of the club on debts which weren’t clear? The sort of businessman who can do anything wrong yet will still have a minority of followers striving to be interesting and claiming to understand and respect his methods that’s who.

At the end of the day you can argue till the cows come home about Shepherd and Ashley, I can even understand the point of view that from 2004 to 2007 was a complete disaster, but one thing I will never accept is idiots who come out with statements like “the club would’ve went bankrupt”, it’s complete bollocks. THAT is the core argument that “Mike’s” supporters have.

In the grand scheme of things though it’s irrelevant to my point and to this post. The fact of the matter is Newcastle United have a very large fanbase, we have support all over the country, and in many places right around the world, but………in Britain there’s certainly not one club of our size where almost the entire heritage and meaning of the club is defined by the very city and local community in which it residex. Maybe I’m biased but I love geordies, having worked in other places, and known hundreds of people from other places, many other great people, I honestly wouldn’t swap geordies for the world. We are a hard working decent people who have historically stood up for ourselves when we’ve had to fight. We have stood united against regional bias and the callous denigration of our area many times, in my life time most notably about Margaret Thatcher’s decimation of many of our local towns like Consett, the end of industry largely speaking on Tyneside and Wearside. We have always collectively stood together, fought together as one against arsehole repression. The generation of Thatcher has produced people who work in offices, many people who basically are fannies, I should know I am one, it has produced an area which produces fuck all really. People are becoming more robotic every ten years, and it’ll get worse it’s the way society is evolving. As I said at the start this process is producing kids who strive for an alternative view as they have nothing funny or interesting to say. That may seem like an extreme view, but it certainly explains the fact that Mike Ashley retains support.

The nature of my piece here was basically brought about by this:

NUFCfans ‏@nufcfans 13h
Sports Direct continues to do well. £143m profit announced, up 14% on last year. Well done to Mike Ashley. #NUFC

Now for me you probably shouldn’t look at people as being “gods”. Kevin Keegan to me though is the very definition of everything that is good about the North East of England. His heritage is here, one of his relations died in one of the pits a century ago, very few people have understood our people and area better than him. Keegan took Newcastle from absolutely nothing and I mean nothing to being one of the most talked about clubs in the world. He wasn’t amazing tactically, he made the odd bad signing, he was very single minded and could be huffy, what he was though was everything I want Tyneside to stand for. He was bubbly, chirpy, cheeky, passionate, caring, positive, honest, driven THE ABSOLUTE EPITOME of Newcastle historically, culturally, absolutely everything.

He was given the job the second time, the night we played Stoke. It was a freezing night, we’d sold 20,000 tickets by 2pm that day, at 330pm he was appointed manager, by 8pm there was 40,000 people in the stadium. No other person in this country in my view could inspire a walk up of 20,000 people in four hours. It was brilliant. We’d been playing shite, yet an hour later we were 4-0 up. Keegan took a while to steady the boat, but by April we were rocking, we beat Tottenham 4-1 at WHL and there was a lot to be proud of.

That summer Keegan was treat like scum. He was given nothing he was promised, and an INDEPENDENT ARBITRATION PANEL granted him £2m compensation for constructive dismissal. Now for me that should be the end of any support Ashley ever gets, however since then he’s went from horrifically bad to worse. Where we are today is where we should be at the very least. I couldn’t care less if we won the Champions League though, I go back to what this area stands for, we might as well support Man Utd or Arsenal than give praise to a disgrace of a human being who has divided everything we’ve ever stood for. Keegan said recently he’ll always love Newcastle, but he can’t support a regime which stand for none of the values we do in the N.E. of England.

Mentioning his treatment of Keegan should be bad enough for anyone to stomach who truly understands this club, but there’s also:

• The failure of the present owner to conduct due diligence before purchasing the club
• The appointment of Dennis Wise as executive director (football)
• The treatment of figures such as Kevin Keegan and Alan Shearer
• The appointment of Joe Kinnear as manager
• Relegation of a club who were Europe’s 10th richest 7 seasons prior
• The dismissal of Chris Hughton
• The renaming of St James’ Park
• The appointment of Joe Kinnear as director of football
• The sponsorship agreement with Wonga, the payday lenders
• The banning of three local newspapers

These are only scratching the surface as well, many of these decisions done as a wind up. There can be absolutely no other explanation for some of the decisions. Joe Kinnear. You don’t even need to expand on those two words. So anyway I may not be making myself perfectly clear that I don’t like Mike Ashley, but I honestly dont.

My main point is this. We should never live in a society where people all hold the same views. Life would be boring. Anyone who has the tinyest degree of respect for Mike Ashley, is a cunt. That is my point. If you’re not from the North East, I can understand to a degree that you don’t really grasp what he did to Keegan (what KK did for this area/what he means to this area) and all of his other faux pas and how bad they are, but for someone on twitter who with 41,000 followers and a degree of influence to come out with the following:

NUFCfans ‏@nufcfans 14h
Sports Direct continues to do well. £143m profit announced, up 14% on last year. Well done to Mike Ashley. #NUFC

Absolutely incredible. Just fuck off. Umar Farooq who is the twitter equivalent of Mike Ashley, a businessman without a clue about Newcastle United, without a clue about Tyneside, without a clue about the values geordies hold dear to them. Disgusting some of the support we have in 2013.