AshleyOut.com

[Mattoon]

There's just too much to tackle that post, maybe a simple "you sir, are cunt" would suffice.

[Stifler]

The fact that a few thousand people won't turn up to the game including the people who sit next to him should show him that it is the fans who do go to matches who are doing this and not just kids behind a keyboard. Then again if he's that stupid he'll probably delude himself that they were all ill or couldn't get in because of people protesting.

 

I'm sure it has to be a wind up though.

[Deuce]

Managed to make it to the line about Riviere being a proven goal-scoring talent in France. Mmm, not so much sunnah.

[Skeletor]

Probably a Sports Direct employee on a zero hour contract who's been offered a little social media work.

[Yorkie]

Similarly to anyone who liked Pardew, I simply have absolutely no time whatsoever for people who aren't behind this movement. As for those who speak badly of it, I actually resent them, too. Maybe I'm bigoted but I just cannot entertain anyone who thinks differently on the matter.

 

Anyone trying to convince me that any form of protest against the man is misguided or incorrect... well, you'd have better luck convincing me the sky was yellow.

 

The 'this summer' thing is utter bullshit as well. Of course we're going to spend. The squad is pitiful, aging and will get smaller. Of course we're going to spend some fucking money. We need to, simply in order to stand still. Staggers me how people don't get that.

 

Cronky, man - are you going to answer me this time? I've asked you before and I'll ask you again: what actually is your opinion of the club? Do you think it's underachieving? What would you change? I know you're not a wind-up merchant but you only ever speak on the contrary.

[Mattoon]

I know I shouldn't entertain the cunt but I couldn't help myself, that got me riled up.

 

Mattoon  Martin Rooneyin a minute

 

Support the team, fund the regime. As you so rightly put, this is Ashley's club, ergo everything associated with said club is ALL his fault, he gave us a threadbare squad full of amateurs, he CHOSE to use a questionable sponsor, he hired inept coaches and medical staff who cannot maintain a healthy squad, he sanctioned the purchase or Siem De Jong, who no one else touched because of his medical history.

 

Other teams may not prioritise cups, but at least they take them seriously and don't actively try and throw them.

 

No keyboard warriors here just realists that see the issues at hand.

 

Yes, let's all go and "support the lads" because that's been working so well, heaven forbid there's no support on Sunday and we, shock horror, lose. They clearly don't care about us, the gutless, spineless performance at Sunderland spoke volumes in that regard. Rotten club top to bottom.

 

[/Quote]

[Peppe]

What a fucking idiot.

 

Ignoring the fact that all players we buy is just so we can sell them on later for a bigger fee.

 

Also, the part about Arsenal Yeah, we're probably just saving up to splash £100M later

[Mattoon]

What a f***ing idiot.

 

Ignoring the fact that all players we buy is just so we can sell them on later for a bigger fee.

 

Also, the part about Arsenal Yeah, we're probably just saving up to splash £100M later

 

I cannot fathom how someone can be so misguided and gullible?!

[Nattfare]

This from AO.com comments section, this is what we're up against, I've been trying to educate them but some are just a lost cause!

 

 

Martin Rooney2 hours ago

 

I'm utterly disappointed with my fellow Newcastle fans. Whilst I feel alone in my thoughts that there's something missing in the Psyche of toon fans i have to tell myself its just some and not all. I'm worried that the some god complex amongst many of the keyboard warriors starting the protest movement, long lost migrants away from the northeast who haven't been to a Newcastle game in an age. Those who haven't been able to cut the ties with the Northeast and hang all their misplace parochial emotion on NUFC. Screaming away at the club in an angry silence on the laptop smartphone or PC. Football is important but shankley was wrong there are many much much more important things in life family and work are just two, with most football clubs under going a period of rejuvenation each summer the out cry of pain from these so called fans is nothing but a false emotion.

 

There will be no acceptance that their have been many influences on the performance of on the pitch by the playing squad, and that the least of them is Mike Ashley. Having been identified as the ideal replacement for a player like Yohan Cabaye, Siem Du Jong was bought and Heralded as a great addition with many national journalists surprised nufc could attract such a player. Adding significant players like Janmatt an improvement on the french international full back that was angling on a move ever since his Striking best mate moved on. That they bought a player who was proving a goal scoring talent in the french league is ignored because the guy hasn't performed instantly. The stupidity of Cisse twice, Colback, Colo, Sissoko again twice has led to already weakend teams being played even further hampered with injuries to Tiote Krul, Cisse, Elliot, R Taylor, S Taylor, Dummett, Haidara along with fringe players like Obertan Aarons Abeid Jonas who are meant to be the back up. It's all Mike Ashley's fault.

Dismissing the fact that the club which was honest enough to speak the priorities of all bar 5 premier league clubs and ye still reach the qtr final of a cup this season, only going out after the rookie keeper under pressure makes a ruck of things. It's all Mike Ashley's fault.

 

Looking to create future success by investing in top quality talent, Darlow, Perez Lascelles and doing their damnedest to sign Deli Alli shows a complete lack of Mike Ashley's interest in thinking about NUFC's future it's obvious.

 

Only 4 clubs have used more players than nufc this season and yet the squad is said to be too small, players have been sold they cry Santon, the one the fans wanted hung after his performance against Sunderland last season, Mbiwa a liability of a player who has had few games for nufc yet stand out performances include sending offs and fouls more akin to assault than whats needed in the premiership, his international team mate Nasri will stand, or maybe won't, testimony to that.

 

It's all Mike Ashley's fault.

 

Mike Ashley spent Qtr of a billion pound on the club I think that gives him the right to put a billboard up, it is after all money that came from yes the customers of Sports Direct. That's the company which put an end to the lack of competition in sports replica kit for fans.

 

We're sponsored by wonga a despicable company, one which lends people money after they approach them for the money, but online gambling and alcohol companies are just fine and dandy. It's all Mike Ashley's fault.

 

Fans want the club to be buying the likes of that Premiership success Ozil or his team mate Sanchez, yet go screaming for the every penny in the pot to be spent instantly Arsenal took six years to build up their transfer pot in order to buy big players and once able to do that have paid dividends that after two years they may just may be in with a chance of the title but more importantly assure CL football without qualifying rounds.

 

There's clearly selection in the minds of many Newcastle fans there really is nothing that that the club can do differently to what it is now to move much higher up the table. Any club that has had our injuries would struggle even a team like Man City with all their riches have found that key injuries completely scupper a season.

 

If anyone can put reasoning behind a different plan of how the future management of the would be better please put one forward, FFP stops any owner spending hundreds of millions.

 

Strangely though it seems that the one thing the protesters don't want to do is support the team, they haven't all season at SJP, and they won't until nufc start qualifying for the champions league, to my shame, maybe all those away fans singing where were you when you were s*** maybe right, maybe our big crowds are just glory hunters, and not solely down to there being bot all else to do on in the Northeast on a Saturday afternoon.

 

I'll be there Sunday so will my lad.

 

[/Quote]

 

 

 

http://i344.photobucket.com/albums/p354/JoleneSjodin/Absurd/Blowhard.jpg

 

[Guest Roger Kint]

If thats the same person i have met him before, doesnt really surprise me sadly

[NG32]

Obvsiously an Ashley spook.

[Mattoon]

If thats the same person i have met him before, doesnt really surprise me sadly

 

I'm pretty sure I've come up against him on another website comment section too, proppa supafan.

[Andymc1]

If thats the same person i have met him before, doesnt really surprise me sadly

 

I'm pretty sure I've come up against him on another website comment section too, proppa supafan bellend.

[Guest chopey]

Why do these people live life with blinkers on its so frustrating

[Memphis]

On the front page of CNN's Sport section:

 

http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/17/football/football-newcastle-united-zombie/index.html

 

(CNN)Every other week 50,000 fans of an English Premier League team flock to the city's soccer cathedral to cheer on a club that hasn't won a trophy for over half a century.

 

But it's not Newcastle United's inability to end an exhaustive wait for silverware that is troubling a sizeable chunk of its supporters.

 

Its billionaire British owner has seemingly perfected a method for squeezing every last cent out of a club that made a $28 million profit for 2013/14, while appearing content to let it tread water in sporting terms.

 

The English Premier League team is deep in a trough of form, defeat at Liverpool on Monday its fifth in a row, and could yet be sucked into another bitter battle to avoid relegation.

 

But an under performing team is only part of the problem.

 

Many supporters feel betrayed by a perceived poverty of ambition from Mike Ashley, who they accuse of allying the club to "tacky" brands and prioritising profit over performance since his takeover in 2007.

 

"A zombie club," is how one Newcastle fanzine describes United's current state. "An empty shell," cries another. Newcastle is renowned in soccer circles for the passion of its fans. The joke goes the club could schedule a friendly for two days' time in Timbuktu and a clutch of hardy souls would still make the trip. But patience is running thin. The four-time English champions' last domestic trophy was secured 60 years ago and it hasn't won anything of note since 1969.

 

 

Ashley stands accused of not investing enough in the squad, selling the club's best players and being content merely to survive in order to milk the huge riches on offer from multi-billion dollar television deals. Yet despite the discontent, 50,000 disciples ritually flock up Gallowgate Hill on a match day to pack the Premier League's third biggest stadium for every home game. There might be a few less sporting the famous black and white stripes on Sunday though, as disillusioned fans call for a boycott of the clash with Spurs in protest at the club's apparent stagnation.

 

"When Ashley rolled into town you thought 'We've got this mega-rich, English businessman in the sports industry, what could possibly go wrong?'" Mark Jensen, editor of The Mag fanzine, told CNN. "Our place in his business empire appears to underpin the rest of it. The eternal optimists keep thinking he's going to reach a point where he says 'I'm going to invest in players, and we're going to plan to be successful.'

 

"He's been in charge nearly eight years now and any sane person can tell that's not going to happen. The club have said that cup competitions aren't a priority and they mean it. To remain in the Premier League is the overall aim. But survival -- what does that offer fans?"

 

Ashley is a fabulously wealthy man, and a controversial one. He has grown his Sports Direct empire significantly since acquiring Newcastle, piggybacking on the Premier League's profound global reach to spread its name far and wide. From a turnover of $1.8 billion in 2006, it recently announced a "record" 15% rise in annual pre-tax profits to $359.8m and a turnover of $4.05bn. There are stores in 19 European countries and an expansion into Australia and New Zealand is planned.

 

But the company, whose logo is plastered all over Newcastle's St James' Park stadium, has been criticised for employing an estimated 75% of its staff on zero-hour contracts — that guarantee no set hours each week. The retailer's chairman, Keith Hellawell, told a British parliamentary committee that 15,000 of its 19,000 staff were on such terms, arguing it offered flexibility for what is, predominantly, a young workforce.

 

The club argues it is unable to compete with the untold riches at the disposal of fellow top flight clubs like Chelsea and Manchester City, and Ashley has tried desperately to drive up revenue. The 123-year-old St James' was temporarily renamed The Sports Direct Arena in 2011 to try and attract a naming sponsor. It was a move that infuriated fans. And the decision to sign a shirt sponsorship deal with payday loans company Wonga is one that stoked anger in what is, traditionally, one of the most economically deprived regions of the country.

 

"Like a lot of fans, I think (the association) is cheap and tacky and undermines the values of what the club stands for," the leader of Newcastle City Council, Nick Forbes, told CNN. "As leader of the council it really concerns me we've got a toxic brand like Sports Direct, with the zero hours culture it promotes, and Wonga and the payday loans it promotes. To have both of those concepts sponsoring our football club is deeply unfortunate.

 

"As a council we are having increasingly to pick up the pieces of people whose lives have been shattered both by zero hours contracts and by loan sharks.

 

"Newcastle United has such brand recognition it penetrates into some of our poorer communities in a way that others can't and I find it absolutely appalling that's the message they get. It doesn't feel that there's any social responsibility. Because there's only one Newcastle United I think there's a reliance on fans as cash cows to keep supporting the club come what may. I think there's been a calculated business decision to keep milking that cash cow without generating the football returns that people expect."

 

Sports Direct declined to respond when contacted by CNN and questions to both Wonga and Newcastle United were unanswered. While Ashley's appetite to grow his retail business appears limitless, he has insisted on a far more frugal modus operandi at Newcastle. The club seeks to unearth bargains in foreign markets then sell them on for huge profits when they reach peak value. United's stated aim is a 10th place finish or higher in the Premier League while the two domestic cup competitions are "not a priority." But Newcastle are on an unquestionably sound financial footing.

 

Ashley has turned a traditionally debt-laden outfit into one that turned an $28.05 million profit in the 2013/14 season, recent accounts showing it had a $51m surplus in its bank accounts. The club's managing director Lee Charnley trumpeted the figures as a "reflection of the prudent and measured manner in which we operate." But fans are at a loss to explain why a man whose fortune amounts to $4.5 billion, according to Forbes, seems so reluctant to chase success for a club that is the 19th wealthiest in Europe.

 

"People are miserable, fed up," Forbes added. "Newcastle's current performance is like a permanent cloud over the city. The club feels soulless — an island. In the same way the senior management doesn't have any engagement with fans, they don't have any engagement with the city either. People have worked out the current owner has a business model, which is participating in the Premier League but not winning it. What people see is a disinterested owner, interested only in the cash the business generates, not the trophies it could produce."

 

Just like last year, Newcastle are stumbling towards the end-of-season finishing line.

 

In January 2014 it sold its star player Yohan Cabaye to Paris-Saint Germain for $28.5m, making a cool $22.5m profit in the process. No replacement was hired, the money was banked and its season quickly nosedived. A year on, history is repeating itself. Manager Alan Pardew left for Crystal Palace — a much smaller English top flight club — and was replaced by his assistant, John Carver and Newcastle signed no new players.

 

They have won two out of 14 games since and its threadbare squad contains only two fit defenders. They are leaking goals, losing games and haemorrhaging confidence. Fans, having suffered one relegation under Ashley's ownership in 2009, are fearful of another. Protests have been audible at matches, now the Toon Army are planning to vote with their feet.

 

"There has been a numbness and with Ashley twice failing to sell Newcastle, there has also been a powerlessness," George Caulkin, north east correspondent for The Times newspaper, told CNN.

 

"A huge part of the North East tradition is simply turning up at the football — turning up no matter how bad it gets, turning up and bearing witness, turning up and singing, turning up, regardless. It is like being locked in a loveless marriage. The fact some people are now considering not turning up at all shows how much alienation is around."

 

Mark Douglas, who covers United for two local papers The Chronicle and The Journal, says fans find it hard to believe the club when it says it will invest healthily in the summer.

 

"Most Newcastle fans say they've heard all that before," Douglas explained. "It's the second season that it has drifted after Christmas and it's created this toxic atmosphere. They have lost all the faith and belief of the supporters who don't believe in what Ashley is trying to do any more. The identity of the club has been lost in the last seven or eight years. It has culminated in a feeling that this club is happy just to exist. They're not interested in glory or in winning things any more. You can see it in the way the players are the results have gone. It's a slow evaporation of what NUFC is all about."

 

In the early 90s, Newcastle were dubbed 'The Entertainers' for a swashbuckling style under manager Kevin Keegan, and came close to winning the Premier League in 1995/96. After losing successive finals of the FA Cup — England's premier cup competition — in 1998 and 99, the late Sir Bobby Robson led Newcastle to a third placed finish in the Premier League in 2001/02 and into the European Champions League. Keegan returned at the start of the Ashley's reign but later resigned in protest at how the club operated. Fans demonstrated and Ashley vowed to sell, but he could not find a buyer.

 

Keegan was subsequently awarded $3m by an independent arbitration panel, that rejected some of the club's evidence as "profoundly unsatisfactory."

 

Newcastle finished fifth in 2012, narrowly missing out on a return to Europe's top club competition, as a slew of signings gelled together. Finishes in the Premier League of 16th and 10th have followed. But while those flirtations with glory under Keegan and Robson have shown fans could be possible, Douglas says the ambitions of supporters are much more grounded these days.

 

"Newcastle's fans are often painted as delusional, believing that they should be regularly in with a shout of winning the league," Douglas explained. "Having lived and worked here for eight years that idea is complete rubbish.

 

"What Newcastle fans want to see is a club that, even if it fails, it is at least trying to be the best it can be. That means attempting to win things, taking a few risks. It could be a northern powerhouse. At the moment, it's almost a shell of a club, it exists just to exist and that's not what fans want from a club that is supposed to represent the city much better."

 

There have been protests before but Ashley has ridden the storm.

 

Whether a groundswell of support for the boycott on social media translates into an embarrassing number of empty seats in what is a televised match on Sunday, remains to be seen. But even if it does, fans are unlikely to hear what their publicity-shy owner thinks about it.

 

"Does Ashley care? As it is impossible to get close to him, so it is impossible to answer," Caulkin explained.

 

"The evidence of recent years will probably make him feel he can just about get away with anything and people will still troop through the turnstiles. Is that different now?

 

"In the final analysis, he'll only go when someone meets his asking price, but there can be a value in protest for protest's sake, in saying that this is not good enough, that more should be expected, that a club is not just about profit margins but a collection of human beings brought together for a common cause.

 

"Sometimes a howl of anguish is all that there is left."

[Sima]

Laments fans for judging Rivière too early and writing him off, then does the same to Yanga-M'Biwa a few sentences later.

 

Drivel.

[Guest Roger Kint]

Good article. Its deeply sickening that media people who have never been to the city know and understand more about what it means than the majority of our match going idiots do.

[Deuce]

USA USA!

 

you know shit's getting serious if CNN is picking up an English football story.

[NG32]

So how come a US journo can put something like that together but the chronicle fails on a daily basis? 

[KaKa]

There is no real sports journalism in this country. Just a bunch of suck ups trying to get in good with these clubs and owners. Castrated beings.

[Mole_Toonfan]

So how come a US journo can put something like that together but the chronicle fails on a daily basis? 

 

Probably because he actually puts pride in his job and doesn't lick windows the rest of the time.

[Troll]

So how come a US journo can put something like that together but the chronicle fails on a daily basis? 

 

Their chief sports writer just tweeted this:

 

lee_ryder: I'm sure I seen a local TV news piece saying bread was bad for ducks. Oats, corn and peas are better for them #leazespark #nufc

 

"I seen this".  It's like if Froggy was a journalist.

[Thomson Mouse]

Grammar aside is he trying to take the piss out of the protest?

[Mole_Toonfan]

I doubt he actually knows what he's trying to do.

[Mattoon]

From a Spurs fansite, glad it's getting the respect it deserves and we are no longer being sneered upon for being fickle:

 

Travelling Spurs fans are likely to be greeted by plenty of empty seats at St. James’ on Sunday.

 

“Fifteen or sixteen thousand” Newcastle fans could boycott this Sunday’s match at St. James’ Park, according to the chairman of the Newcastle United Supporters’ Trust Norman Watson.

 

SEE ALSO: Levy planning massive Spurs overhaul: Baldini to be sacked; 10 players to be sold

 

That could see 52k-seater St James’ reduced to around 35k – still around the same capacity as White Hart Lane!

 

The last Toon boycott against owner Mike Ashley attracted just 1,000 fans but Sunday’s movement is set to be considerably bigger, even if Spurs fans are unlikely to outnumber home supporters.

 

Newcastle fans on social media started calls to boycott the game, which is live on Sky Sports, following the defeat to Sunderland and they’ll also be protests staged near the ground both before and after the match.

 

Travelling Spurs fans could therefore find themselves in the unusual position of seeing a huge number of empty seats at the normally raucous St. James’.

 

Anything that gives Tottenham an advantage, regardless of how slim, is fine with me and it’d be great to hear our travelling support, which rarely needs any encouragement to sing, easily make themselves heard above the usually vocal Geordies.

 

That said, I have a huge amount of sympathy for Newcastle fans, whose once great club has been left to simply exist under Ashley’s management. Good on them and I hope the boycott is a success.