A year ago this weekend Mike Ashley launched a surprise attack on former Newcastle United chairman Freddie Shepherd, buying out the Sir John Hall family shares to effectively begin a hostile takeover of the club.
Considering Shepherd had only a matter of days earlier insisted nobody could buy the club as he would not sell his shares, the unfolding events, I have to admit, did cause me some amusement.
For many Newcastle fans, the fact Ashley was responsible for ending the Shepherd years - no trophies, mounting debts, interventions in the transfer market, appointment of Graeme Souness, Glenn Roeder and Sam Allardyce as manager - will always endear him to them.
But, one year on, what sort of state is the club in now and is Ashley’s largely London-based regime still looking like a good thing for Newcastle United?
On the whole, I would still say a firm yes. Under outgoing chairman Chris Mort, the club has a clear business plan to help it realise its full potential - a top six club competing in Europe every year - debts of more than £100m have been cleared and, in Kevin Keegan, Ashley has appointed a manager with a unique understanding of what makes the club and its supporters tick.
The two most successful managers in Newcastle’s recent history are Keegan and Sir Bobby Robson and both had an emotional connection with the club before they sat in the dugout.
But, while the club is undoubtedly better run, there is a danger it is being run too frequently from London by those with connections in the capital, but who have little or no affinity with the North East or the club they have been brought in to improve.
As a journalist based in Newcastle, too much information concerning the club and its plans is leaking out elsewhere from mysterious sources who don’t wish to be named, but who seem alarmingly well-informed.
It is these leaks which have fuelled worrying rumours that Keegan is not in charge of the club’s transfer policy - despite his repeated insistence that he would not tolerate such a situation - and that there is considerable tension behind the scenes as a result.
I have not seen or heard anything which confirms that tension, but Keegan is a more prickly character than he was during his first stint as manager, perhaps a scar from his days as England manager when, like anyone who sits in that hottest of hot seats, the media chewed him up and spat him out.
I hope Keegan is, as he says when asked, happy because he is perhaps vital to the success of the new regime. If he goes, what link is there between those in charge of the club and those who invest so much time, energy, money and emotion in following it?
Much of the speculation surrounding Newcastle is little more than mischief making from those who never want to see the club succeed and from those who will never comprehend what the club means to the city and its residents, but there is, as a fireman once told me when I was at school, no smoke without fire!
There have been problems, like the meeting with Ashley earlier this month, when Keegan was suddenly called down to London to discuss transfers, budgets and his comments about Newcastle being unable to qualify for the Champions League.
We are told, by both Mort and Keegan that the meeting went well and that, if there were problems, they have been solved, but only time will tell whether that is actually the case or, like a wife who has just found out her husband has been sleeping with her sister, just a brave face in public!
What is clear is that, a year after launching his bid to become Newcastle’s owner and with a manager he appointed in charge of the side, Ashley is expected to invest in the transfer market this summer so that Keegan can get on with constructing a team which is capable of qualifying for Europe on the pitch.
As ever, that is the true barometer of any regime’s success. If Newcastle buy well, Keegan gets the team playing attractive attacking football which does well in the Premier League and has regular cup runs to crank up the excitement, nobody will care if the men who run the club are based in London or Cornwall or how much money they are making in the process. They won’t even care about Dennis Wise!
Just ask Manchester United fans what they think about their American owner the Glazer family as they celebrate the Premier League and European Cup double!
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