Boggles my mind that people can have so few principles.
"This rich cunt is destroying something I care about deeply. But I hear he has another income stream and may still be rich if I stop paying him. With that in mind, I might as well continue to pay him large sums indefinitely while he laughs in my face."
My money would be an irrelevance to Mike Ashley but to me it's not. So why the fuck would I give someone I hate as much as anyone on Earth huge chunks of it?
How much a consistently empty St James' Park would affect him is up for debate - my view is that if you think it wouldn't bother him, then you've not been paying anywhere near enough attention to the man. But on a personal level, have some fucking self respect ffs. He's knocking seven shades of shit out of you every night but you're still putting his tea on the table.
Quite an irony in asking the players to show fight against adversity when there's absolutely zero in the stands.