Any Ashley apologists on here?

[Guest Phil K]

Hope he develops advanced syphilis and gonoreah of the @rse

I hope he rots in hell for what he's inflicted on us

Yeah, the players fault.

But who is responsible for the players who represent us ?

[GM]

Hope he develops advanced syphilis and gonoreah of the @rse

I hope he rots in hell for what he's inflicted on us

Yeah, the players fault.

But who is responsible for the players who represent us ?

 

Their parents?

[Guest Mani]

I  blamed keegan alot for this s*** and i still do, i gave fat ash the benefit of the doubt but the more i think about i blame the fat basdard for bringing keegan back.

 

it was the perfect time to start a new era and new direction, he wanted good youth system and foreign scouts and such but why the fook did he bring back someone from yesteryear.

 

The only positive i have for this season is that we killed two birds with one stone.  The ghost of kevin keegan and alan shearer will never haunt us again.  Next time we struggle in the league again and we want a new manager, whether its in the prem or in the championship, i dont wanna hear fooking kevin keegan or alan shearer ever mentioned again. 

 

honestly we look like twats in the media everytime things goes tits up and they show us wankers outside st jame's shouting for shearer and kevin keegan. 

 

             

[madras]

Just wondering if there is and if so, how do you's feel now that the club is standing on the brink of oblivion. Or is he not to blame?

care to name names ? i'm pretty sure most have pointed out what he's done wrong.

[Guest TheKingOfNewcastle]

Ashley is ultimately responsible for all of this mess.

[Slugsy]

Only one man was responsible for bringing in Kinnear and then failing to replace him till 8 games to go.

[Liam Liam Liam O]

Only one man was responsible for bringing in Kinnear and then failing to replace him till 8 games to go.

 

Llambias?

[Wullie]

Ashley's antics in selling Faye, Given, Milner and N'Zogbia are what have taken us down (if we do drop). Even with the managerial messes we've had, those players would have been enough - his eyes lit up upon seeing the cheques.

 

I wouldn't brake if I saw the cunt crossing the road.

[jimmymag]

Ashley's antics in selling Faye, Given, Milner and N'Zogbia are what have taken us down (if we do drop).

 

I wouldn't brake if I saw the cunt crossing the road.

 

I've told you Wullie, he's a bit of a fat cunt and you'll damage your pushbike.

[Big Geordie]

Thing is if we do go down, then the power to change things lies in the hands that go to games. The only way Ashley can redeem himself (if he can) is to convince Shearer to rebuild the club and give him the support that he needs. Anything other than that, then the club is a lost cause and will be until it changes hands.

 

If the latter is the case, then think hard about what you are going to to with your season ticket money when the begging letters come out. If you's need convincing - picture the likes of Ashley, Lambias, Owen, Smith and Duff laughing at you as you sign the cheque - because they will be.

[Bad Mongo]

it was the perfect time to start a new era and new direction, he wanted good youth system and foreign scouts and such but why the fook did he bring back someone from yesteryear.

 

 

He did it to bring in some enthusiasm and hope so that he could sell more season tickets.

[Frazzle]

Ashley's antics in selling Faye, Given, Milner and N'Zogbia are what have taken us down (if we do drop). Even with the managerial messes we've had, those players would have been enough - his eyes lit up upon seeing the cheques.

 

I wouldn't brake if I saw the c*** crossing the road.

 

Why does everyone keep mentioning Faye? Keegan wanted rid (nothing to do with Ashley), Faye refused to play, why would you want to keep a player like that?

[Guest The Libertine]

Ashley's antics in selling Faye, Given, Milner and N'Zogbia are what have taken us down (if we do drop). Even with the managerial messes we've had, those players would have been enough - his eyes lit up upon seeing the cheques.

 

I wouldn't brake if I saw the c*** crossing the road.

 

Why does everyone keep mentioning Faye? Keegan wanted rid (nothing to do with Ashley), Faye refused to play, why would you want to keep a player like that?

 

and the other three mentioned all handed in transfer requests i believe.

[sicsfingeredmong]

The arsehole's running - and general lack of ambition..... the profit making & recent Jan transfer window encapsulates the direction the club has taken under Ashley's watch, and he sets the financial constraints & Llambarse/Wise Co simply work within these consigned boundaries - of the club will feature heavily in the editorial pieces which will inevitably pop up when we go down.

 

They'll amount to obituary pieces, such is the headline grabbing nature of today's press gallery - particularly amongst the tabloid element.

 

There will be a common theme though, and it will run along the line of 'how to destroy a big football club'.

 

Whilst there was obvious & personal slant to Whelan's comments re- Ashley, he was absolutely right in his assessment. 'Pile em high, Sell em cheap' Ashley has stripped a proud club of it's dignity.

 

When it comes to acquiring & cheapening/devaluing another well known brand, the Ashley Effect has run it's cycle yet again .

[Stu]

I blame Keegan 100%

[cosmic]

I blame Keegan 100%

 

You may as well blame the day you supported Newcastle.

[Guest LucaAltieri]

Ashley has made his mistakes, as have many.

 

It's one thing to say "he's the owner so he's ultimately responsible." Which is fair enough really. At the same time, he came into this knowing nowt about football. His forte (and the bit he's got spot on) are the finances.

 

In order to aid him in getting the finances in order he decided it made good financial and footballing sense to buy young talent and develop them - a philosophy that most on here would agree with.

 

To get the most out of our squad of has-beens and cast-offs (that we couldn't afford to replace) he hired a motivator as manager - the exact same thing I (and many others) would have done.

 

On paper he got a lot of it right. The approach is exactly what we needed. The problem came with the execution.

 

His first big mistake.

Given his lack of football knowledge he really should have appointed boards members who knew what the fuck they were doing. When there were rumours of us bringing in David Dein we REALLY should have been bending over backwards to bring him (or someone like him) into the club in order to put Mike's game plan into action.

 

Instead our chairmen have been a lawyer and a smug cunt both with no knowledge or experience of the game. To remedy that Ashley appointed Dennis the Menace as a football executive... a role in which he had no experience and has never shown any qualities that might suggest he'd be any good at it. A year and a bit on and Wise, surprise surprise, is no longer with us.

 

If we had hired someone like David Dein instead of the three stooges you'd imagine that some situations would never have arisen eg. Milner being allowed to leave before a replacement was signed and sealed - that was a schoolboy error of epic proportions. (Same goes for allowing other players to leave)

 

His second big mistake.

Hiring Kevin Keegan was both a master stroke and a disaster. There's no doubt that we needed a motivator to get the most out of our players and someone likeable to take the heat off us in the media. Keegan ticked both boxes. There's also no doubt that Kevin saved us in his first season.

 

That said, from the second Keegan was appointed the speculation was that he wouldn't see out the rest of his contract. Whether you would describe him as 'flaky' or 'principled' is all down to your own personal opinion of the man but he was always going to leave. The amount of times he's talked about the pressure of the game it was obvious - and they don't come with much more pressure than being a tyneside hero and the fans expecting you to work miracles.

 

Given that he was always going to be a short-term measure there were only two ways Ashley could play it: 1) Bend over backwards to keep him as happy as possible for as long as possible. 2) Have a replacement lined up for when the shit hits.

 

As it happened he did neither. Again this is a problem which could have been avoided had he hired a director who had a fucking clue.

 

His third big mistake.

There was always going to be trouble when Keegan left. We still don't know the true story behind Keegan leaving and we probably never will but there was only ever going to be one man winning the PR battle that followed and it wasn't Ashley. From then on it should have been a damage limitation exercise for Ashley. He should have kept coming to the matches. He should have been sympathetic and tried to work towards a strong replacement. But again, he did none of those things and bowed to the initial fan kneejerk responses and he put the club up for sale.

 

This has two negative impacts: 1) The fans felt empowered meaning the protests went on far longer than they should have, which in turn disrupted the harmony at the club. 2) Nobody wanted to come and manage a team that was up for sale, on a temporary contract, with the transfer window closed.

 

Yes, appointing Kinnear was a farce but by that time Ashley had backed himself into a corner. Nobody else of any stature wanted the job and once again, he had nobody around him with any footballing knowledge who might have spotted Kinnear's bullshit from a mile off.

 

His fourth big mistake.

This sort of stems from the other mistakes and that is to do with the time it has taken to replace both Keegan and Kinnear. It's simply ridiculous that even after the disaster earlier in the season when Hughton took over as manager he still took several weeks to find a replacement for Kinnear leaving Hughton in charge a second time. Again this is down to lack of interest in the job and the board's football naivety.

 

The positives

Amongst the catastrophe people have ignored the positives. It's easy to see why. It is hard to see Ashley as anything other than a 2d cartoon villain at times... but you have to give him this; he appears to be learning from his mistakes. Once again he has appointed a media-friendly and fan-friendly motivator in Alan Shearer. Only this time he is bending over backwards to keep him. He's given Wise and medical staff the boot and allowed Shearer to hire what you can only assume is a fairly expensive assistant in Iain Dowie. If we continue down this path we should see a long-term improvement at the club.

 

While we have been selling-off some of our players (rightly or wrongly) we have been getting fantastic money for them. This has no doubt increased our stability and based on Ashley's projections in terms of spending we should now be able to go out and spend some money this summer for the much needed rebuilding of the squad. This will be the key as to whether or not he has my support. He has seen enough of the first time now to know that we're struggling. Even as a novice he will be able to see it plain as day. He's done well backing Shearer so far but he needs to follow that through with financial backing in the summer.

 

I have given Ashley the benefit of the doubt so far with regards to spending. He has said he was only willing to put x amount into the club every year and according to what our smug cunt chairman said recently that means that this year we should see the majority of it going on transfers (as debt has now decreased and top earners will be leaving).

 

Hopefully Ashley has learned the error of his ways and will no longer neglect the first team. In the summer we need to buy and we need to buy quality. I don't care if they're 18 or 28, we need to bring in the right kind of players.

 

If he keeps his word and backs Shearer (or whoever is in charge) then he will have my support. If he has played us all for fools yet again then I'm done with him. That doesn't mean you'll see me walking around with anti-Ashley messages written on bed sheets but I certainly won't be shedding any tears if/when he decides to sell up.

[Guest Gemmill]

Some of those mistakes are fucking MONUMENTAL man.  And we're going down off the back of them.  Benefit of the doubt my arse.

[Guest LucaAltieri]

Some of those mistakes are fucking MONUMENTAL man.  And we're going down off the back of them.  Benefit of the doubt my arse.

 

They are big mistakes, but they are all born out of one mistake: surrounding himself with the wrong people.

 

Ashley has bigger fish to fry. I doubt there's a very high percentage of the working week that he dedicates to Newcastle United.

 

Had he appointed better directors and left the club in capable hands we may have avoided most of this. But what's done is done... let's see what he can do from here on.

[Cronky]

I can deal with relegation, but I don't know if I can deal with another civil war over the owner, as happened after the Keegan walk-out. That did so much damage.

 

Ashley has made mistakes, but he's not the only one responsible for the situation we're in. We've been in decline for the last four years.

[Guest Gemmill]

But what's done is done... let's see what he can do from here on.

 

Jesus, we're going down.  Never mind, what's done is done.  There there Mike, you've made a couple of booboos, but no point crying over spilt milk.  Undoubtedly the players take some of the blame for this - they've been a fucking disgrace for the most part, but Mike Ashley has got every big decision since he came to this club wrong, and we will be playing in the Championship next year as a direct result of his mistakes.  You'll have to forgive me and others if we're not quite as prepared as you are to just shrug them off.

[Guest Gemmill]

Ashley has made mistakes, but he's not the only one responsible for the situation we're in. We've been in decline for the last four years.

 

He's fairly hit the fucking accelerator on that decline tbf.

[Guest LucaAltieri]

But what's done is done... let's see what he can do from here on.

 

Jesus, we're going down.  Never mind, what's done is done.  There there Mike, you've made a couple of booboos, but no point crying over spilt milk.  Undoubtedly the players take some of the blame for this - they've been a fucking disgrace for the most part, but Mike Ashley has got every big decision since he came to this club wrong, and we will be playing in the Championship next year as a direct result of his mistakes.  You'll have to forgive me and others if we're not quite as prepared as you are to just shrug them off.

 

As I've said, he's made mistakes but they're at the very top level. He's also got a lot of things right with his overall approach. If he keeps the same approach but implements it better we will see significant long-term improvement.

 

What happens on the pitch is not solely down to Ashley. Our current plight is down to several factors:

 

1) Ashley

2) The board

3) Kevin Keegan

4) Joe Kinnear

5) The players

6) The fans (specifically the protesters)

 

All have played their parts in equal measure.

 

There's no telling what would happen if Ashley was to sell up. In my opinion it's better the devil you know... particularly if he is showing signs of improving.

[Guest Gemmill]

The fans.   All to blame in equal measure.   Thanks, you've reminded me why I don't come on here much.  Fucking clueless.

[Guest LucaAltieri]

Off you pop then.