The Mirror is reporting today that Mike Ashley is ready to make a return to watch games at St James’ Park.
Mike Ashley – in happier times at St. James’ Park
The report, which is hardly surprising, suggests that Mike is ready to end his Tyneside exile after calling a temporary halt on his bid to sell the famous Tyneside club to potential American buyers.
The Mirror is reporting that he would like to attend the Premier League home game with West Ham on January 10th, as a means of seeing how he will be accepted by the Newcastle fans.
Ashley has installed Joe Kinnear as manager through the end of this season, and that has given just a little bit of stability on Tyneside. And there is news today that Dennis Wise may be leaving Newcastle, which will probably be well accepted by the Newcastle faithful, even though Dennis has brought some excellent players to the club this year, to be fair.
But independent of that is that Mike now agrees that manager Joe Kinnear has to have all the say on who comes and goes at the club, and we think Joe has talked to Mike and explained why that has to be the way things work.
Joe seems a straight shooter and seems to have talked some sense into the Newcastle Board, and he is also keen to see more harmony on Tyneside. Poor Joe has had to do his work with the players in this political whirlwind that has existed since Kevin Keegan walked out on the club in early September.
But the atmosphere that ha surrounded our club since early September can hardly be conducive to good performances, let’s be honest about that.
We are less than happy this morning with our draw yesterday, than we were immediately after the game, and we just have to start winning games, after 3 draws in a row. A win is 3 times as good as a draw as far as points go!
Joe Kinnear talked about the state of affairs at the Newcastle club:
“I think he will come back to games and I’d like to think he’d get a good reception from supporters and that everyone will just concentrate on the football.”
“A lot of it in my opinion could have been sorted out a lot more amicably. But I’d like to think that if we have a good FA Cup run and get ourselves in the top 10, then I think he’d be accepted.”
“In my discussions with him he’s suggested he might be able to come back to games in future and I said to him ‘why not come up here?’.”
“He’s definitely keeping the club as it is now until the end of the season. I said to him I’m sure once you’ve invested and we’re up and running and you’ve sorted out all your problems around the club, it’s probably your time to get a pat on the back.”
“I said ‘if I was you I’d still come up and bring your kids up’. He said once we get it up and running and everything dies down and we’re running it as a club without any aggravation, he probably will do.”
The other good news coming out over the last couple of days, is that Mike will dig into his pockets to bring more players into the club in January. That means Newcastle will not just rely on money generated by Kinnear selling current players in the squad. But that came from Kinnear and nobody from the Board has confirmed that.
There are some things Mike should look at doing to make the club better in its operations:
- Make sure Dennis Wise is not at the club, or if he is staying, that he fully accepts that only Joe is in charge of players coming and going
- Make it plain that Joe Kinnear is getting some transfer funds to bring in some players this January, to strengthen our squad, which is just too small for the Premier league, and we’ve proved that since September
- Replace Derek Llambias with somebody who is at least competent in running a football club.
It would be great to have Chris Mort back in the job, although Chris is a high flying lawyer, who put his career on hold to get Ashley off to a good start – and that’s what he did – but then Llambias came in and really messed things up.
We still think the blow-up with KK would never have happened if Chris was still at the club in August.
There are still fans who hate the very site of Mike Ashley, and there is still a call to boycott anything that Mike’s businesses sell.
But we never thought the Keegan affair was directly Mike’s fault, other than he failed to clean it up when he got back from America, and that surprised us, and was Mike’s big and crucial mistake.
But if we want our club to be successful again we need to support the lads and our current manager Joe Kinnear, that’s what fans are for, after all.
Even if Joe wasn’t our first choice as manager, or even if you dislike him, he’s our manager now – so let’s support him, because his heart is in the right place – and he’s doing the very best he can for the club, in very very difficult circumstances. Please give Joe a break.
Comments are very welcome – but please keep them civil but also let us know your point of view on all of this.
We know there are still strong feelings among many of Newcastle fans on all of this, and we’ll also start a vote as to whether Mike should come back to St. James’ Park to watch the home games. Please register your vote – many thanks.
Howay The Lads!!
43 comments so far
Sav
Nov 30, 2008 at 10:29 PM
Comment #41I think the only person to claim FatAsh and his children were threatened not to attend was FatAsh himself. Northumberland Police issued a denial that they had advised him to stay clear.
What he wants to avoid is supporters voicing their protest at the shabby way the club, players, manager and fans have been treated and are still being treated. That may be ‘a load of crap’ he’ll have to put up with until he sells up or builds some bridges. If it were only a small minority, it wouldn’t be a embarrassment for the owner of Sports Direct. But he knows it isn’t.
Paul:D
Nov 30, 2008 at 10:36 PM
Comment #42exactly sav, he can stay, but only if he faces the humilation of coming out and admitting he was wrong publicly, and undoing all that has been done
Auschas
Nov 30, 2008 at 11:45 PM
Comment #43Wise has got us some great players and I dont think Keegs had a problem with it. What he did not like was selling MIlner and then failing to bring in the players to fill positions