I was 19 when he bought the club. I’m 34 now, so obviously life has happened - births and deaths, love and loss etc. Two main ones that stick out though…
My grandad died. He had long since stopped going to matches before Ashley arrived, but he was the reason me and my brother were black and white daft. He took us to our first games, dragged us around the club shop so we could get fully kitted out, had us in awe with stories of Newcastle old. Trophies and world class players. He handed over the baton in a way, as when he stopped being able to attend me and my brother started going. Football was always our thing, and for the last decade of his life our conversations about it were uniformly miserable.
Also, my daughter was born. I took her to her first game at the start of this season against West Ham. She was pretty nonplussed to be honest, but she enjoyed the idea of liking the same thing as dad so she didn’t outright say she was bored to tears. Anyway, she was sat with me watching the Leeds game on TV a few weeks later and when we went 1-0 down she says “Do I have to support Newcastle?”. You kind of hope that this takeover will put an end to questions like that.