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Mike Ashley

Christmas Tree

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Scoreboard82

Scoreboard82

Posted
Posted

Michael Martin is a right c*** but that article is true in every word.

As was said in that piece, things have been bad in the past but the difference now is that the person running the club isn't even trying to make the club successful.

I wasn't around for the McKeag years and I've been unable to read too much about it apart from a snippet from the book Touching Distance. Only thing I know are best players sold for the building of a new stand, stadium in awful condition, s*** team, crowds of mostly <17,000, how different were those years to now? My dad went to games in that period and he still goes now, but he never really talks of it.

Although young myself back then, they sure were awful times. The ground was old and crumbling. As a kid i remember the old leazes end being demolished and they intended to build a new stand and join it with the East stand. We got relegated. They got as far as building a small terrace with a wall behind it then the work had to stop as we were skint. IIRC what is now the Milburn stand had to be replaced after the Bradford fire. It had wooden floors and seats and really was a danger.

Now we have the stadium, crowds, everything in place, just no ambition.

So McKeag actually was just skint? Was he as much of a vile b****** as Ashley?

My era mate and i was a kid back then and football so so much more simple back then (old git mode ) .we were s*** but tbh the fans were behind the team then now i think with the passion and to answer your question about Mckeag well i think he cared but greed took over but looking back i really enjoyed home and away with my mates .

:thup: Goes to show the way football's changed in the modern day. Absolute minging circumstances the club was in, crumbling stadium, s**** team, relegations, yet fans like yourselves were still enjoying following the team. I've still got that enjoyment of following Newcastle to be sapped from me being a younger supporter (although they are doing their best to rid me of it right now, cheers Mike) but can completely understand other people's complete loss of enthusiam for the club and/or football in general.

 

in those days we never thought we could be any better/bigger. took the likes of SJH and KK to show us a glimpse of the promised land.

the truth came out. we COULD succeed.

McKeag was vociferously hated but if i remember he only owned a solicitors and couldn't have been anywhere near as loaded as Ashley is owning SD. I suppose because we'd been so bad for so long, those heady days under SJH and KK  were all the more thrilling. How i'd love a repeat, with a new ambitious owner. Dare to dream eh?
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Away Day Gadgie

Away Day Gadgie

Posted
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Mad that Wise has never been involved in football since like. Seemed a solid Football League manager?

I'd imagine not many clubs would want anything to do with him after his dodgy dealings behind Keegan's back, it's easy to forget how much respect Keegan still commands in the game, he was a megastar back in the day.  Pretty sure Wise walked out on Leeds to take up the role here aswell.  Basically everyone thinks he's a c*** ?

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Guest chopey

Guest chopey

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I remember been in St James in the 80's and there was at least 25000 in but when you picked up the paper the next day the attendance said 16000 absolute crooks the lot of them.

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Guest JS

Guest JS

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Interesting looking back at his other guff from 2015. Contradictory, contrived s***:

 

[2015]

 

Sky Sports: How disappointed are you to find Newcastle in this situation?

 

Mike Ashley: I can't have really imagined it from Christmas. It probably didn't anticipate we would probably be even near this situation so obviously after the last sort of couple of weeks I'm still a little bit shocked by where we find ourselves today.

 

Who's responsible, the manager, the fans, the players or does it stop at your door?

 

My door.

 

What's next?

 

If you're talking about investing in the club, I will continue the policy of investing in the football club.

 

Even if it gets relegated?

 

If there is such a thing if you are able to guarantee promotion that I would like to say I will guarantee that.

 

The only positive is that we've got the club on a very sound financial footing. We are able to spend relatively and punch above our weight now with the current financial situation the club finds itself in.

 

If you hadn’t come into the club, where would they be?

 

Financially not as strong. Unfortunately I'm going to add to that that that isn't really good enough. It's no good having a horse-and-cart scenario. We may have the cart financially, but we're now going to bolt the horse on. And we're going to.

 

What's your ambition now?

 

Definitely to win something. By the way, I shall not be selling it until I do.

 

So the club is not for sale?

 

Not at any price. When I say win something if we ever get in the position that we get a Champions League place that also qualifies as winning something.

 

What’s your message for the fans?

 

Today we don't need to be unlucky. Not today. From this day forward we will definitely be making our own luck.

 

Appointments of managers, etc?

 

It's Lee Charnley and the football board that make those decisions, as it was Derek Llambias who brought in Alan Pardew. I will not be picking the next manager. It's not what I do.

 

My job is to make sure they have the maximum amount of financial resources and it’s their job to get the best pound-for-pound value out of those resources.

 

To be categorically clear, I’m not going anywhere until we win something.

 

[2017]

 

SS: On reflection, what advice would you give to yourself 10 years on?

 

MA: I probably rushed in too early. The first thing, when we let Sam Allardyce go, I was probably too keen to get going and make a difference, and I was a bit naïve about how football worked, I thought football was better regulated than it was. I was a little bit shocked at quite how football was more like the wild west. I could never imagine the money that people like Sky would pay for football. I still can't believe the sums that are paid. I thought the difference would be to get the academy right, the training ground, the fans' prices, the new generation of fans coming through, and building the football club from the ground up. That was where I thought I could make a difference, because I thought I could put in the time and the money. But now, let me think of an analogy; let's say football was a bicycle back then, it's now a Formula One car going along in the outside lane. It is so different from when I bought the club.

 

SS: How do you feel about the way you've been portrayed, do you think that's fair, or unfair?

 

MA: Criticism is a funny thing, because I think if you want to be something, create something or make a difference in any walk of life you have to be hugely self-critical. There's a reality. I think the majority of criticism I deserved, because I did really get some serious decisions wrong, albeit not deliberately, but that's a fact of life, because I get the time-frame wrong. People ask me what I'd do differently in football, I'd actually think more short term. I wouldn't try building something for five, 10 years' time, when in actual fact the landscape has completely changed. Therefore your medium or long term views never come into play because it has changed too much by the time you get there.

 

SS: Outside the money aspect, the short-termism of football, what have been the biggest challenges inside football, not only with Newcastle?

 

MA: I suppose trying to get your head round the fact on a Monday morning you are in a totally different business world, where normally you have cheques and balances, football literally doesn't have any. It is almost like, right, say a player comes up for £15m and we want him, it will be OK, because they say this player will supposedly 'come and embrace the club, and leave everything out there on the pitch'. But actually that isn't the case, you can get a lot more out of a trainee, or, for example, a young Andy Carroll, because they've got so much passion and want to get that place in the team, and in fact they do leave everything out on the pitch. So football is a very, very strange industry to get your head around.

 

SS: What type of owner would you describe yourself as, at the beginning, the middle and now in this 10th year?

 

MA: Very naïve in the beginning. In the middle I thought I was just about beginning to get my arms around it a little bit, we had a manager on an eight-year contract [Alan Pardew], had the finance right, we were talking about investing in the training ground and the academy, we had a strategy, buying the better young talent that's available and developing. That was around 2013, 2014, I thought we were going along quite well, and then within 18 months the wheels have come off, like a game of snakes and ladders, and we went from square 98 all the way down to about square 92!

 

SS: From what we do know about you, you're a man that is driven by success. When you don't get it right in football, how much does it eat away and make you want to succeed more?

 

MA: The first thing you feel is stupidity, because as soon as you know the hindsight of something, you know that was actually the wrong thing you were doing. For example, I thought it was the right thing to do to generate as much money as possible for Newcastle, so when people say to me: 'Whatever you do, in interviews do not talk about changing the name of St James' Park!' Well I'm me, and I'm going to talk about making an error, and I should not have changed the name of St James' Park. I should not have done that. Football is not all about making money and reinvesting it into football clubs, it has a very strange balance to it. I wanted to get naming rights, get money in and invest it into the club. The reality is, the vast majority of the Geordie fans would rather have the name of St James' Park and finish maybe one or two places lower in the table, because they want to keep it special. You begin to learn that the special side of Newcastle maybe means a little bit more than the ultimate end performance on the pitch.

 

SS: You inherited Sam Allardyce, there have been several managers since. How much input have you had on that process?

 

MA: It depends which manager. With Sam, I apologise to him, I was too hasty. Probably a little bit too eager to get started myself. With some of the others I did have a big input as to who we brought in. With Alan Pardew, I didn't actually know him before football at all, and I thought he ended up being very good. I thought I was very unfair to Chris Hughton, who got us promoted, I don't think I gave him enough time. And then of course you've got the Joe Kinnear era, Kevin Keegan, Alan Shearer.

 

SS: Two of the names that stand out there are two club legends in terms of playing career, Shearer and Keegan. Was it the right thing to do to appoint them, in terms of the dream, but in reality the expectation was too great?

 

MA: Personally I don't think for either of those individuals it was too much for them. Alan Shearer came in at the time when he was probably the only person on this planet who could keep Newcastle up. He did an absolutely fantastic job in everything else but the odd result not going his way. It was a hair's breadth, or a bad refereeing decision away. I genuinely thought that was the right thing to do for the football club. In a way, I would have done my job at Newcastle if we'd got one of the club legends in place, staying up, going forward and rolling on that strategy. Everybody else blames everybody else, but I totally agree with the appointment, and I was probably the man who said let's go for the safer pair of hands in the Championship with Chris Hughton. I think Kevin Keegan is an outstanding individual, and also did his best at the club. It wasn't always easy for Kevin at the football club, we didn't have that structure around that we should have had to support him, with the signings and everything else, and I will take responsibility for that. So Kevin, I apologise for that.

 

SS: To the outside, people who read about you, those who have met you, you are a successful wealthy man. Do people overestimate your wealth, when they read how much you are worth?

 

MA: It's very, very difficult to get the scale in football. You can say to me I'm wealthy, in theory I'm a billionaire or a multi-billionaire, but in reality my wealth is in Sports Direct shares, which are the same as wallpaper, I don't have that cash in the bank, so I don't have that ability to write a cheque for £200m, I don't have that, it's very simple, it's not there. I would have to sell the Sports Direct shares to fund that. So people outside of football looking in sometimes think that's how much you have in the bank, I must make it crystal clear that I am not wealthy enough in football now to compete with the likes of Man City etcetera, not just Man City. It's basically a wealthy individual taking on the equivalent of a country. I cannot, and will not. That's why, if someone would like to come along, take this seat and fund Newcastle with a nought on the end with more wealth than me, I will not stand in Newcastle's way. One of the reasons I am doing this interview is because I don't think you'll find many people out there who will actually stand up and do it. So I think myself and the Newcastle fans are going to be together for a good while longer! We've got the man himself at the moment in Rafa, and let's hope we can generate some funds, and give Rafa some chance to get some chance to get some building blocks going over the coming years.

 

SS: You've mentioned you can't take on a country like that, I don't want to ask you how much money you're giving Rafa Benitez…

 

MA: Not enough. Sorry to interrupt, but it's not enough. Very simple. It's not enough. And Rafa knows that, it's not enough, it's not a secret. Every penny the club generates he can have, but it doesn't generate enough. It's Newcastle United, it doesn't have a £40m a year stadium naming rights deal, it doesn't. I don't want the fans to watch this interview and think: 'Great, Rafa's getting £150m in the morning.' He's not. With Lee Charnley's help, and Lee answers to Rafa by the way, not the other way around, let's be crystal clear, Rafa makes all the final decisions on players out, players in, but he has to do it with the money the club have. I have put my £250m in the football club, guys, that's it, there is no more from me, now the club has to generate its own money.

 

 

SS: Twice you've been relegated, twice you've come back as champions. How important for you was coming back at the first attempt?

 

MA: You've got to do everything you can to come back at the first attempt. Football is a momentum game, and if that momentum starts to go against you, it actually feeds on itself. You must, must, must not get into that in the Championship. Otherwise you can actually go from the Premier League, to the Championship, and end up in an almighty mess. Chris Hughton, it was absolutely amazing what he did with the players, we kept the team and nobody left who didn't want to leave. Last season, we actually improved the team to make sure that we came straight back up. So on both occasions, slightly different ways of doing it. And please, God, do I not have to do it again. I know the Newcastle fans won't want to hear it, but just for this season I'd like to be mid-table, safe, back on that path of growing this football club.

 

SS: What would it mean to win a trophy? Can you put it into words?

 

MA: Maybe this year we could look for mid-table this season, and maybe make the cups a priority this season. Get ourselves safe and then go for a cup. Either cup. And the dream would always be qualifying for the Champions League, that's what it is for me, simple

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