A long period of total silence from the club. This in itself is a disgraceful way to treat its paying customers. Then the loss of the only decent footballing brain who can keep us in the Premiership. Infact all of Rafa's backroom coaching staff have all left with him. If there's no change of ownership I can't see anything but chaos in the year ahead.
Doesn't take a genius to work out what this means for deal moving forward. Groundhog Day springs to mind ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Following a meeting with Bin Zayed Group officials they would like to put on record the following information for NUFC fans: "Both parties have worked diligently in finalising a deal, none more so than ourselves. We have completed every aspect required in a takeover process. "Press claims of no bids or Premier League approval processes are simply untrue. "The current owners have cooperated amicably throughout this process and if a deal is not forthcoming it will not be due to lack of effort from both parties".
It's a journalist statement. About as reliable as the Chronicle. The club is in chaos. No new owner means free fall.
So Amanda Staveley has stuck at it and she looks to have pulled it off. The major difference at this time imo has been the massive business blow that the lockdown from covid-19 has caused to Ashley. His whole business empire, many of them failed high st businesses, are at risk. Even the cash cow and advertising board that is Newcastle United is probably less appealing now, with no date for a return to live games for perhaps 2 years, possibly sooner if a vaccine is developed before then. Even buying cheap youngsters and selling them on for big profits now looks shakey. It's all over bar a last minute pull out, which would be costly for him. 100% of Toon fans are happy to see the back of the Ashley regime. We just want to compete again.
I live in the toon and I love the whole North East but I have to ask where do you think you'd be if Ashley hadn't bought the club? Yeah I get the frustrations but you have to be slightly grateful to him surely? Prestons owner is a billionaire who just puts enough in to keep us alive without ever splashing out to get us promoted. Frustrating yes but we'd be L2 now without him.
Newcastle wouldn't be in L2 without Ashley. I accept that he did reign in the stupid spending that the previous incumbents went a little wild with. The £100k plus that was spent on a four year contact on king of injuries Michael Owen was the straw that got us into trouble, though there were a few other expensive but poor signings bought around that time by the late Freddie Shepherd. We've had two relegations in the 13 years of Ashley, and avoided the drop in a fair number of the other seasons. YouTube signings, way past it signings and just bottom of the barrel rubbish have been our lot for too much of the time. We sold Andy Carroll at the peak of his career - no idea what happened to the £35m we got for him. Chris Hughton was fired after doing so well for us, to be replaced by Pardew. Joe Kinnear was wheeled out of his retirement home at one point! Our cup form has been a complete disaster and Mike Ashley cannot lower himself to have any kind of conversation with the fans or fans bodies. He's treated our past heroes with complete ambivalence and has simply killed the passion that our people have for the game. I wore a Toon top today for the first time in about 4 years - I feel that at long last my club might be coming back. Anyway, we'll see.
