Same Peas Different Pod
It is far too late for Mike Ashley to buy friendship on Tyneside, but the release of Newcastle United's accounts for 2008 do at least paint the rotund billionaire in a slightly more favourable light.
Before you splutter hot drinks onto your monitor, mobile phone or other portable internet device, I'm not defending Ashley from the many mistakes he has made since he came to St James's Park.
He cannot be excused some of them; the monumental blunders he made over the appointment and subsequent treatment of Kevin Keegan, the complete lack of understanding about how running a football club is different to running a cut-price sport shop empire, a confused and potentially disastrous transfer policy and the alarming absence of any sort of communication with the club's customers - erm sorry supporters.
These are the things which have ruined his dream of owning a football club and these are the key reasons behind his unpopularity among United's rank and file followers. However, it is a sobering thought to see that, had Ashley not been in control at St James's Park, things are likely to have been even worse!
The accounts confirm that Ashley did have to pump in £100m of his own money to clear the club's debt - albeit in a the form of a loan in the same way Roman Abramovich has done at Chelsea, that he has had to provide another £10m to provide cash flow this season, that the club made a loss of more than £20m last year and is now £22.6m in debt.
On one hand, he has himself to blame for finding the club's finances were in such a mess because he didn't conduct due diligence. On the other, if he had not provided this cash injection, Newcastle may well have ended up in administration under the former regime, with points deductions and relegation a definite danger.
Freddie Shepherd may have backed his managers in the transfer market - as his apologists like to argue - he just did it with the bank's rather than his own money!
The bottom line is, the Shepherds and Halls were Newcastle fans when they took over, but they were considerably richer Newcastle fans by the time they left a club which was in major trouble financially.
With the current wage bill swallowing up around 70% of the club's income, no wonder Ashley has made it a priority to reduce that particular area of expenditure.
With the credit crunch also squeezing hard, it is also easier to understand why he has not released a load more of his personal fortune to fund an extravagant spending spree during this month's transfer window.
That doesn't help Joe Kinnear of course. There is about £10m to spend, but that will be it, there will be no more for United's manager to play with as he tries to strengthen a threadbare squad. Newcastle will not be spending their way out of the trouble they were in before Ashley's name became a household one in these parts.
The lesson from all this? Businessmen get involved in football to boost their egos or their bank balances, even if Ashley has so far failed to do either.
Businessmen, generally, don't buy into football because of a love of the game or a desire to blow their personal fortunes on a hobby, they do it out of personal interest.
In that respect, the only difference between Ashley and his predecessors, other than the fact he did not grow up supporting the black and whites, is his accent.
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Luke Edwards - is Chief Sports Writer of The Journal and uses his blog to give a unique and entertaining insight into events at Newcastle United and Sunderland.
we will see how desperate ashley is in the next 10 days about keeping the club in the premiership.
Spot on Luke. The Shepherds/Halls grew rich building a club on quicksand foundations, spending other people's money on useless players and star names with no regard to the needs of a team. Newcastle's decline was well-entrenched before Ashley's arrival and I dread to think where the club would have been had it not been sold. Mortgaged up to the eyeballs and in huge peril is my informed guess. The sad thing about Ashley is that some of his ideas about running the club have been sound - build the youth team, reduce the wages, attempt to establish a recruitment department - but the implementation of them has been hopeless, arrogant and misguided and he has treated supporters terribly. If, for example, he had bothered to explain these recently-published figures - what it means for the club and how it should be run - and posted them on Newcastle's website, perhaps there would be greater understanding of what's been happening. Instead we get the usual silence, as if we're not worth the trouble. For very different reasons, the current regime and the last one have been equally inept. At the end of it all, the same group of people suffer. Ashley out, Halls out, Shepherds out.
I can't say I agree that Ashley and Shepherd were similar, one is putting his own money in fund the club while the other was happy to take out dividends even when the club made a loss
Ashley has made mistakes but knowing his guarantee to Ernst & Young to keep financing us is the only thing keeping us out of administration means he will get my support in turning it all around.
Good piece, Luke.
Communication is everything - and that means accurate & honest communication, not contradictory rubbish fed through two mouthpiece managers.
Unfortunately, it seems that no amount of requests from press & fans alike are getting this message through to him - and so his position continues getting worse.
I have a message for Mike Ashley, that poisonous dwarf Wise and Llambias SOD OFF BACK TO LONDON AND SELL THE CLUB TO SOMEBODY WHO WILL SPEND MONEY ON PLAYERS! they have done what I thought was impossible thay have made it just about certan that I will not renew my season ticket next season after destroying the club.
BRING BACK FREDDIE SHEPHERD AT LEAST HE GAVE FINANCIAL BACKING TO HIS MANAGERS. Shepherd's mistake was to sack Sir Bobby and replace him with that Scottish idiot Graham Souness
The patient is dead and cant be revived.
Bring back Shepherd? The man who insulted the entire north east in a drunken stupor? The man who raked in thousands of supporters cash and won us nothing? The man who sacked the only manager since Keegan to raise the standard of our football (Sir Bob), but before and after gave us numpties like Gullit, Souness and Allardyce? I don't think so. The situation we are in now was caused by Shepherd - let no-one forget that. We need a clean break: new owners, board, manager, and most of the first team squad!
I seem to recall the club was in pretty good shape when SJH handed over to FFS. Shepherd mortgaged the club to the hilt with a succession of hopeless blunders which have created the situation we're in now. Make no mistake, Shepherd's reign was a disastrous one. As for Ashley, not communicating with fans through the local press is bewildering and as you point out, he actually has a reasonable case to argue. We aren't stupid and we accept that the club can't continue handing over 70% of its revenue to players many of whom are simply here for a last big payday and aren't up for the fight. This has to stop, but it needs everyone pulling the same way, will take a little time to change and requires patience all round. That means good communication is VITAL. Letting Chris Mort go was Ashley's biggest mistake in this respect.
Doesn't replacing Cris Mort with his gambling mate, the smirking taylor's dummy Llambias, show that Ashley just doesn't care and will only do the minimum required to protect his "investment"?
MA doesn't need to sit at a table every week enad tell us what going on. Yes the accounts are grim and the mess is mostly down to FS and which ever Hall.. However MA wants to start cleaning up the mess letting Liambias and Wise go would be a huge head start as far as regaining support from the fans go. Keeping them almost cancels out anything he tries to do i.e. allowing the accounts to be made public. Two suggestions Llambias to be replaced by Mort and Wise to be replaced by a team of SBR and whoever he'd like to work with and can trust.. the main problem we have at the moment is nobody trusts DL & DW let alone MA..