Decky

Newcastle United: Club for sale, in need of repairs, big potential, £267m ono With Mike Ashley prepared to sell and St James' Park regularly sold out, it's a mystery why no billionaire is interested in the club Ajman, United Arab Emirates, November 2007. The hotel worker was Tanzanian and he wanted to know which UK airport I had flown from. The word "Newcastle" prefaced a broad smile. "My life's ambition is to go to St James' Park; they are my team," he said. And why not? Freddy Shepherd, Newcastle's former chairman once claimed he was in charge of the eighth most popular side in the world. Even if that is no longer quite true, earlier this year, Newcastle broke back into the global "top 20" revenue generating football clubs with the only puzzle being why potential buyers are not beating down Mike Ashley's door and persuading the current owner to sell up. Seemingly Ashley's answer would be yes were any would-be purchaser to come up with around £267m – thereby covering the £134m he paid for Newcastle in 2007 plus more than £150m in interest-free loans he injected to keep everything afloat during the early days of his tenure. Although the club's most recent accounts, released in March this year, showed that commercial revenue had fallen by £12.7m – perhaps reflecting Ashley's failure to exploit fully overseas markets – Newcastle's accounts were in the black. Unlike many Premier League counterparts they even posted a profit – £1.4m after player amortisation. Life is full of mysteries but one of the biggest, most enduring, revolves around why no one has stepped in to relieve Ashley of a most attractive toy he would surely be willing to discard. The billionaire sports retailer once reportedly told one of his former St James' Park managers he "had no idea" why he bought Newcastle in the first place but, now the international credit crunch has eased, the lack of interest in taking it off his hands appears astounding. Financial types will tell you that wealthy individuals are rarely willing to invest more than 10 per cent of their overall capital in a football club, preferring to borrow the rest. The credit crunch made that tough but now things should be a little less restrictive while the potential rewards of being handed the keys to St James' Park are immense. For a start the stadium – one of the biggest and best in England – regularly sells out to it's 52,000 capacity and, unusually, it enjoys a prime city centre location within walking distance from scores of restaurants, hotels and shops. If the fact you can be shopping in Fenwick or John Lewis minutes before attending a match may seem slightly irrelevant, the ground's peerless location boosts the club's value in the corporate function market appreciably. Derek Llambias, Newcastle's former managing director under Ashley, used to suggest that people on Tyneside did not have sufficient money to help maximise such revenue streams but his opinion was perhaps coloured by earlier decades spent working in the high rolling world of Mayfair casinos. Granted there are areas of deprivation in Newcastle – as in all cities. Yet judging by the amount of brand new expensive cars flying around the area, the invariably packed restaurants, busy shops and some eye-wateringly steep house prices in certain suburbs, Llambias did not grasp the whole picture in what remains a regional capital. Glenn Roeder, sacked as Newcastle's manager shortly before Ashley's arrival, used to say potential buyers dismissed it, ignorantly, as simply "too far north" and, even though that sounds absurd in such a small country as England, he may well have a point. After all, people who have never been to the north east do often have rather distorted ideas about the region. It seems Manchester City's current owners did discreetly arrive from Abu Dhabi to explore the possibility of buying Newcastle before heading south and west to Manchester but since then little substantive sales talk has gone on. Everton, a club Bill Kenwright has made clear is up for grabs, may represent a rival interest for anyone looking for a Premier League stake but to truly prosper Everton need to leave Goodison Park and finding a new home has proved an enormous problem. Newcastle then should be top of any self respecting billionaire's shopping list. But if someone really is serious about buying Ashley out the overwhelming likelihood is that – a la Manchester City – no media outlet would have an inkling of anything happening until the formal, bombshell, announcement. Clues will not be scattered and advance warnings should not be expected. Maybe that is what will happen at St James'. We will wake one morning to an early club statement and later discover that, unnoticed, a delegation representing the new owner flew into Newcastle airport on a private jet from Russia or the United States. Or perhaps on the daily Emirates service from Dubai, possibly having connected from elsewhere in the Middle, Far East or Indian sub-continent. There was a time, a few years ago when the club was very publicly for sale, that a group of Malaysian – or at least that's where they were supposed to be from – businessmen stepped out of Emirates business class and were whisked the few miles to St James' and then the training ground for a less than private tour. New owners? Of course not, just a bizarre publicity stunt or perhaps a little joke on Ashley's part. No one ever appeared quite sure. One day though it will happen for real. Sooner or later? No one knows ... but Newcastle United is a very big prize waiting to be claimed. http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/nov/21/newcastle-united-club-for-sale-mike-ashley

Same here. It's one of the better beers amongst the weaker/more popular brands.

Where's all the Sports Direct stuff?

All dem slick new buildings. I'd no idea that Shark Bar was up there until about 6 months ago, what's it like before a match? Also just dawned on me that I've never been to The Strawberry in my many travels over.

Is there a higher resolution for it? It'd make a good desktop background that.

I'm surprised people think Hatem would be great craic in the pub, dunno why. I'd go for Krul, or possibly Elliot.

I don't doubt for a second that the players get on with Pardew and have faith in him. It still doesn't make him a good manager.

Had two free transfers so I got rid of Terry and Lukaku for Distin and Giroud. http://s24.postimg.org/p1exmsjj9/fantasy.jpg

52. I'll take anything above average.

Thank fuck. Once I seen RVP scored and Rooney got an assist I was nearly crying my eyes out.

Can you stream MOTD on the BBC website when it's on TV?

Fuck that then.

If you make a load of changes today, does it take points off your total from this week or next week? I'm on course to lose in my head to head league again ffs and my team isn't even that bad. But I'd need to make about 3 or 4 changes, I'd rather that came out of my points this week if I'm beaten anyway.

Time to get rid of Lukaku. I also have too many shite players consistently getting me fuck all in Lampard, Barkley and Terry.

ITV have no more football now? The pundits and commentators will just end up else ware.

I never put a single player of ours in there after last season. I think you were asking for trouble there mate with Colo and Cisse in particular.

It's no different to any other live coverage out there tbh.

Brilliant news. It's about time Sky had some real competition for these things.

"Pardew currently has a long-term deal on Tyneside and has done a good job since taking over in 2010."

Had a terrible week last week. I lost my head to head game by 4 points, and I didn't captain Aguero. Desperately need a win this weekend.

I think our squad is capable of beating them, but then you've Pardew who will more than likely go for the draw.

Better than last season (I think?), and probably the best we can hope for under Pardew. The mackem result was disgraceful, but I can't help but feel the mackems have that mental edge over Pardew now after two wins in a row, because we've been shambolic in both despite having a much better team. We've look absolutely terrible for the majority of the season, but football is a results game and we're doing pretty well considering we've a League One manager and a weak squad in terms of depth. It's hard to predict how the rest of the season will go having looked at the first ten games, because we've shown before under Pardew that we can suddenly hit terrible runs of form. Infact at this stage last year we started a run of two wins in 3 months. Off the pitch is once again a shambles that we've come to expect under Ashley.

Who wouldn't love to see that?

Derby also beat us when they went down ffs. We've rotten luck against bad sides, having said that Pardew has lost the mental edge in the derbies.

Anita saved his skin, because we were woeful up until that point, but he makes the decisions and he gets credit for that. Taking Cisse and Obertan on was just plain stupid. If he has to change it up like that then he can at least stick on someone who'll actually do something - Ben Arfa.