NUFC media bans - Telegraph now banned from club

[Mick]

 

 

I care why they're doing it. Because this proves that they don't actually give a s*** about the club. They just want the attention and sales that go with this. And when the momentum dies a bit or it gets a bit tougher, they'll stop.

 

In it solely for the money.

 

It's not about money, if that was the case, why didn't it happen earlier?

[captainhaircut]

 

 

I care why they're doing it. Because this proves that they don't actually give a s*** about the club. They just want the attention and sales that go with this. And when the momentum dies a bit or it gets a bit tougher, they'll stop.

 

In it solely for the money.

 

It's not about money, if that was the case, why didn't it happen earlier?

 

Because the publicity wasn't there and because they would alienate themselves from

The club which could lead to longer term loss. As the club has banned them, the publicity and alienation has been sorted for them.

[Mick]

 

 

Because the publicity wasn't there and because they would alienate themselves from

The club which could lead to longer term loss. As the club has banned them, the publicity and alienation has been sorted for them.

 

So it has nothing to do with money and everything to do with being banned.

[jdckelly]

obviously they're doing it for the money they have a business to keep running and these are hard times for most papers let alone local ones. The one noticeable thing is as of yet theres not actually been much they haven't printed before (except for the outrage at ban articles which are to be expected) and certainly no kind of actual investigations into things that need answering (Sports direct adverts not being paid for, how much competition was there actually for the main sponsorship, what the hell does Kinnear do, does the money from the online club shop actually go to the clubs coffers or to sports direct? etc) maybe these will come in time but I have my doubts.

[Kasper]

 

 

Because the publicity wasn't there and because they would alienate themselves from

The club which could lead to longer term loss. As the club has banned them, the publicity and alienation has been sorted for them.

 

So it has nothing to do with money and everything to do with being banned.

 

Can't really seperate the two can you? They sell papers with player interviews etc so it's got to hurt them financially a bit too.

[TRon]

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/lee-ryder-football-again-newcastle-6261888

 

 

Lee Ryder: When will it be about football again at Newcastle United?

  1 Nov 2013 09:00   

 

When will it be about football again at Newcastle United, asks the Chronicle's chief sports writer Lee Ryder

 

I would like to be writing this column about football – I really would.

 

Remember that?

 

For example, writing about great goals, great saves, great football and with a bit of entertainment chucked in if possible.

 

Not for the first time in the Mike Ashley era, though, I find myself asking: “When will it be about football again?”

 

Watching the game from the terraces against Manchester City, it is worth noting within the concourses of St James’ Park there are still huge pictures of Entertainers like Alan Shearer, Tino Asprilla, David Ginola and Peter Beardsley hanging proudly around the stadium.

 

We are guilty of living in the past, but we are also in danger of never scaling the heights of those days again.

 

Why?

 

Because there seems to be a constant squabble over what the expectations should be at St James’ Park these days.

 

The current ban on the local press is not really about coverage, it is about the fact Newcastle do not like people calling for change because they feel running the club which makes a profit and simply dines at English football’s top table is good enough.

 

It works in business terms, it does not work in football terms.

 

It certainly does not work in a football-mad city which can rival Barcelona, Madrid, Munich, Dortmund, Liverpool, Manchester, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Milan or Rome when it comes to passion from the fans.

 

Yet we are writing about the politics once more and why so many of Newcastle United’s “customers” appear unhappy (if 20,000 empty seats against Man City during half-term with cheap tickets is anything to go by that is).

 

Indeed: “When will it be about football again?” is a question which just will not go away.

 

That was the case when, just a few months into Mike Ashley’s ownership, Newcastle parted company with Sam Allardyce.

 

Now whether football and Big Sam (given his ugly tactics) can be spoken about in the same sentence is up for debate.

 

However, if we were looking for a first set of trials and tribulations under Ashley, here is where you will find it.

 

Ashley actually had public support when he sacked Big Sam.

 

In 2007 he sat side by side with supporters, bought fans a pint and even listened to their points of view from the terraces in away sections up and down the land.

 

In my opinion, that eventually resulted in Allardyce losing his job.

 

Yet Ashley – flanked by his then chairman in the approachable and friendly Chris Mort – was still onside with the Toon Army.

 

I have often heard people at the club close to Ashley say: “Mike wishes he could go for a drink in Newcastle again.”

 

Well the truth is, if Ashley communicated with the supporters this would be less of an issue.

 

Newcastle is a friendly city compared to other places, Geordies are generally warm and chatty and love to talk about football.

 

Yes, we do get passionate and sometimes outspoken about football but overall the heart is in the right place.

 

Something Ashley, surely deep down, should know.

 

He may not have spoken to fans in the build-up to replacing Allardyce with Kevin Keegan but in listening to supporter opinion he delivered a manager fans could relate to – the Messiah.

 

It did not work out and plenty of Ashley’s good work in appointing Keegan was quickly undone.

 

One of the recurring themes at United during the Ashley years has been to take one step forward, then three back.

 

You could probably make that four in the appointment of director of football Dennis Wise.

 

It was a decision which would have been as popular as painting the Tyne Bridge red and white.

 

Really, apart from a couple of peaks here and there, it has been a rocky ride for Geordie fans ever since.

 

After Wise v Keegan kicked in, again I found myself asking: “When will it be about football again?”

 

When Keegan resigned after a bitter transfer row it was more of the same, politics first, football second.

 

Newcastle claiming we were right, you are wrong – it is our club, so there. The PR OGs continued when Joe Kinnear arrived at the club in 2008 and his explosive, swearing rant of a press conference found its way into the national pages of the media again.

 

Hardly reporting on football was it?

 

No, reporting on a middle-aged bloke who got a kick out of swearing his head off.

 

Could what happened in between Kinnear and relegation be classed as reporting on football?

 

Well, if four wins out of 18 games floats your boat and a 22% win record, maybe.

 

Kinnear, like Wise, was never the right fit for the Magpies – yet that has not stopped him being back at the club as the man in charge of ALL football operations.

 

Yet this timeline must move on as we move on to the painful relegation in 2009.

 

Alan Shearer was the man at the helm but by that time the damage had been done.

 

The black summer of 2009 – when the Magpies did not communicate until the club was put up for sale on the internet like a secondhand DVD player – also left many scratching their heads.

 

Here we were reporting on a fire sale of first-team players, the possibility of administration if Ashley pulled out his money and the sight of empty seats in the Championship.

 

Again I asked: “When will it be about football again?”

 

The Championship and winning every week offered those upstairs light relief but it did not take long for things to deflect back to off the field again.

 

Since then we have had good men like Shearer discarded, Chris Hughton sacked, Andy Carroll sold, Kevin Nolan sold, Joey Barton given away for free and plenty of failed transfer quests.

 

There was the renaming of St James’ Park, Wonga, the return to the helm of Kinnear and the most recent farce – banning the local written press because they simply reported on a protest march about Mike Ashley through our city.

 

For all the mess, for all the politics and for all the problems, only one thing is for certain.

 

That is Newcastle United Football Club, St James’ Park and the supporters will be here longer than any manager, player or director.

 

When will it be about football again though?

 

Now that is a good question!

 

 

One of my major peeves about local journalists is their unwillingness to ask these same questions about the manager in charge of the team week to week. If you really want to talk about football then why is that bit missed out? After all, he's an Ashley employee every bit as much as Kinnear is. His excruciating bum slurping interview with Sky's David Craig in his own office on Wednesday was surely proof enough of that?

 

 

[Mick]

 

 

Can't really seperate the two can you? They sell papers with player interviews etc so it's got to hurt them financially a bit too.

 

What I was getting at is that they aren't taking a stance over money, they wouldn't be doing what they are currently doing if they weren't banned.

[jdckelly]

 

 

Can't really seperate the two can you? They sell papers with player interviews etc so it's got to hurt them financially a bit too.

 

What I was getting at is that they aren't taking a stance over money, they wouldn't be doing what they are currently doing if they weren't banned.

its interlinked they're doing because they were banned to make up the revenue they'd lose from not having direct access to the club.

[Mick]

 

its interlinked they're doing because they were banned to make up the revenue they'd lose from not having direct access to the club.

 

The direct access will be virtually worthless anyway as they'll have enough access by attending games and they'll reproduce what other get from press conferences.

[jdckelly]

 

its interlinked they're doing because they were banned to make up the revenue they'd lose from not having direct access to the club.

 

The direct access will be virtually worthless anyway as they'll have enough access by attending games and they'll reproduce what other get from press conferences.

then why haven't they done something like this before? Why all the kid glove stuff towards the club? Its obviously worth something otherwise they wouldn't be so non critical of Ashley and co when theres been plenty to take a stand over previously.

[Mick]

 

then why haven't they done something like this before? Why all the kid glove stuff towards the club? Its obviously worth something otherwise they wouldn't be so non critical of Ashley and co when theres been plenty to take a stand over previously.

 

It'll be much easier for them if they have the access that they had before the ban but I've seen nothing worth reading until now. I don't want to read what Shola or Taylor has to say after a defeat.

[jdckelly]

 

then why haven't they done something like this before? Why all the kid glove stuff towards the club? Its obviously worth something otherwise they wouldn't be so non critical of Ashley and co when theres been plenty to take a stand over previously.

 

It'll be much easier for them if they have the access that they had before the ban but I've seen nothing worth reading until now. I don't want to read what Shola or Taylor has to say after a defeat.

obviously other people do otherwise they wouldn't have kept doing it. We'll see in the long term but I do expect they'll be allowed back in and after a brief period where they proclaim victory and a new dawn of harder hitting questions directly to the hierarchy probably some fluff pieces with Pardew and some board member, things return back to players talking nonsense and whatever quotes people are getting angry at Pardew over at the time. I'm perfectly willing to be proven completely wrong of coarse.

[Raconteur]

Of course they're doing it out of self-interest, and of course if/when things are patched off they'll stop. It's a business decision for them: either be on good terms with the only football club in town, or not - except that's no real choice at all, hence decades of syncophantic reporting. Except the choice has been made for them, and they've chosen the path of campaigning against the club instead of being even more submissive in the hope of patching things up. That's the real surprise here.

 

Except we don't (or shouldn't) care about that at all. The papers don't care about the club, but we sure do, and so we need to sieze this moment because it's a rare opportunity to have a loud voice on our side. The papers aren't going to campaign against Ashley for long, and so now is the moment to harness their energy while it lasts. Who knows how long that will be - another week, a month, until Pardew walks/is sacked, who knows? We can't count on it lasting any real length of time, because the media is a business and at some point a business decision will be made that results in Ryder, Douglas et al toning down their rhetoric and all the anger from Thompson House dissipating.

 

"Strike while the iron is hot" is an old cliche, but a very true one for the supporters right now...

[TheGuv]

Excellent post

 

[Dr Venkman]

 

Brilliant from the Chronicle that.

 

Ashley couldn't give a shit, but it's still brilliant.

 

Even now, people are still saying this?

[Dr Venkman]

Going to the match and holding up a paper might piss him off a bit. Cancel your season ticket and don't go back until he's gone, that's the only thing that will get through, if enough people do it.

[Foluwashola]

 

Brilliant from the Chronicle that.

 

Ashley couldn't give a shit, but it's still brilliant.

 

Even now, people are still saying this?

 

Have I missed something? Doesn't seem like the type of man who cares about local newspaper headlines. Hopefully the fat mess is genuinely effected by it.

[Dr Venkman]

 

 

Brilliant from the Chronicle that.

 

Ashley couldn't give a shit, but it's still brilliant.

 

Even now, people are still saying this?

 

Have I missed something? Doesn't seem like the type of man who cares about local newspaper headlines. Hopefully the fat mess is genuinely effected by it.

 

Well for starters it seems like you've missed the title of the thread

[Foluwashola]

 

 

Brilliant from the Chronicle that.

 

Ashley couldn't give a shit, but it's still brilliant.

 

Even now, people are still saying this?

 

Have I missed something? Doesn't seem like the type of man who cares about local newspaper headlines. Hopefully the fat mess is genuinely effected by it.

 

Well for starters it seems like you've missed the title of the thread

 

Valid point

 

Ultimately though, these headlines won't change anything.

 

As you say, the only way to hurt him is financially.

[Colos Short and Curlies]

Feel like something else needs to happen this weekend or there is a risk of each 'story' just becoming a bland rhetoric of what has gone wrong rather than looking deeper into issues.

 

Yes we know Wise/Kinnear/The Ebay type sale attempt were just plain awful, but its not saying anything new to heap pressure on MA and AP. Hopefully the crowd turn today.

[Dr Venkman]

 

 

 

Brilliant from the Chronicle that.

 

Ashley couldn't give a shit, but it's still brilliant.

 

Even now, people are still saying this?

 

Have I missed something? Doesn't seem like the type of man who cares about local newspaper headlines. Hopefully the fat mess is genuinely effected by it.

 

Well for starters it seems like you've missed the title of the thread

 

Valid point

 

Ultimately though, these headlines won't change anything.

 

As you say, the only way to hurt him is financially.

 

 

I honestly think we'd only need numbers to dip a few thousand to get the ball rolling, with the local news in this kind of mood we could do enough to make a difference.

 

 

[cp40]

Feel like something else needs to happen this weekend or there is a risk of each 'story' just becoming a bland rhetoric of what has gone wrong rather than looking deeper into issues.

 

Yes we know Wise/Kinnear/The Ebay type sale attempt were just plain awful, but its not saying anything new to heap pressure on MA and AP. Hopefully the crowd turn today.

 

 

I think the unfortunate consequence of the crowd turning is it simply affects Pardew rather that ashley. poisonous atmosphere affecting players, results suffer Ashley just doesnt turn up to see it.

Ashley acts too late and makes loads of mistakes as we are relegated.

I think the only thing that would affect him would be anti Sports direct banners, displays, songs, protests. but these would be stopped by the stewards and police.

[Mick]

 

I think the unfortunate consequence of the crowd turning is it simply affects Pardew rather that ashley. poisonous atmosphere affecting players, results suffer Ashley just doesnt turn up to see it.

Ashley acts too late and makes loads of mistakes as we are relegated.

I think the only thing that would affect him would be anti Sports direct banners, displays, songs, protests. but these would be stopped by the stewards and police.

 

They can stop the banners, they can't stop people singing or protesting as long as it's not seen as offensive although I don't see how that can be achieved.

[Mick]

[TheGuv]

 

Genuine lump in my throat there.

 

Great video