Newcastle United Are In Purgatory

derek llambias is a pathalogical liar.

Luke, what has been the general response when the Chronicle has asked the club to state what has been going on? The reason I ask is that the more you look at what is happening the more it just does not make sense.

Why would he not just drop his price to get a sale, better to have £50 million in your hand and be done with it all than nothing in a years time (which will almost certainly happen if he keeps it and doesnt invest, which it is clear he wont). Just can't believe that a man in charge of a billion dollar business can be so thick! Which makes me think that there is some other game plan afoot, administration perhaps is his preferred option? Never ever felt so sick as a Newcastle fan. It's that bad I'm losing my passion for the club and may well jack it all in...then again we may not have a club to support in a few months time.

Calm down, calm down Luke!!!!
I am not turning this into anything my friend.

What you don't seem to realise is that thousands and thousands of real supporters who PAY to go to football matches rely on people like yourself for real NEWS about the club.

Now its a lot easier for you to make a quick phone call to Seymour Price and ask 'Is there any news on the take over?' 'No?' 'Thank you very much, sorry for troubling you' than to maybe try to doorstep one of the guys and ask him direct. If he punches you in the mouth or gives you an earful what a story for you.

Unfortunately that's the sort of thing that only real journos do.

Luke wrote...if Mike Ashley is left in charge of a business he has no intention of bankrolling, Newcastle will head into administration.

I always doubted this but it is looking increasingly likely that it is going to happen and the worst part is that it is being done deliberately and maliciously to hurt the Newcastle United fans.

Ryan, I reserve the right to respond as I see fit on this blog and what on earth gives you the belief I don't respect the readers? I have been reporting the information as it has been told to me. That is my job. If I have been lied to and misled then, unfortunately, that is passed on to you. As for the harking back to the Llambias interview earlier this year, we asked the questions you wanted asked and they gave answers you didn't want to hear and we got the blame for it. However, I agree, I was willing to give them a chance to put things right. They have failed to take that chance, the biggest error of all being the decision to leave poor Chris Hughton in charge when JFK became ill. If Alan Shearer had been given more then eight games I'm sure Newcastle would still be in the PL and Mike Ashley would have no intention of trying to sell the club.

Give the man a break lads, instead of moaning about an article written months ago why dont we look at the real issue at hand. We all suspected from day one Ashley was an idiot, no due dilligence on a club run by Freddie Shepherd? However we wanted to believe that because he has a so called billionaire he'd bankroll us back to the Champions league. How wrong we were! Accepting the fact that fat man wont walk away until his pockets have been lined, lets look at the real issue at hand.
Am I the only one sick at the procession of players lining up to say they are going to leave? These mercenaries are being paid premiership wages for league one performances! As far as I'm concerned they should all be keeping their mouths shut right now. I'm as sick as anyone by whats happening, but I do not need to read fat Kevin Nolan having a moan, if he'd kept his mouth shut at Burger King maybe he'd have actually been able to run a bit last season! Bar a few these players are a disgrace, should shut their mouths and get on with the job at hand. If they think they'll get away with the same inept performances that they did when KK left they are sorely mistaken. Yes Ashley is an idiot but he will soon be off, lets start putting a bit of pressure on the under-performing idiots at SJP to show some heart and return the club to where it belongs!

Hello everyone, I'm back!

At this juncture I'd like to remind every one that I was the first to call Mike Ashley a fat fraud and a liar about a couple of months after he bought the club, promised to stun the football world with signings, and then did nothing.

I was also the first on this blog to bag Luke as a journalistic scrote pimple, although my chief beef was not a literary one, rather that he was sitting idly while the journalistic gold-mine that was the Ashley Administration sailed by and did nothing, and not reflect my outrage. He's getting better though.

I also said we should have bought Harry Kewell.

I told you so.

Thanks for your response Luke, your comment about passing on the information as you have heard it is fair and I respect that. However my point regarding respecting your readers is based on your earlier rebuke of Geordie_Baz. I too reserve the right, as a buyer of your paper - and via the allocation of this platform for me to pass comment - to respond to you directly and in this instance I feel your tone is ill advised, especially in this current climate. I also stand by my opinion on how you handled the mid season Llambias piece and you certainly didn't ask any questions I wanted asking - in fact I would rather you had woken up and grabbed a whiff of the coffee beans with us lot and not visited them at all, rather than perpetuate the propaganda these morons peddled you. We are all beyond frustrated Luke, you AND me. But defensive and blunt feedback to clearly irate and desperate fans surely does nothing but fan the flames.

Aaaargggh! Luke that's the whole point of what we are saying. If you're sick of being lied to and told halve truths - expose it! Tell it like it is! Give us a cracking piece of considered, journalism and we'll all love you for it. More importantly your papers circulation will go up as we'll no longer see you as apologists. Writing trite pieces about player X being upset with things or former player Y criticising the regime is just too easy. Tell us what you were promised earlier in the year. Delve into the much vaunted 5 year business plan and expose its deficiencies etc. etc. That's real work and we'd all appreciate it. Thanks.

The interview you did had very little in the way of serious questions that needed to be asked. For years the local rags have been guilty of sucking up to those in charge of the club for fear of being cut out of the loop. For me nufc.com and true-faith offer the only true reflection of how things are heading/have been heading for years.

Its now to late - we are down and out of the prem - we have a majority squad of overpaid underperformong players and no manager with the season approaching fast.

9/2 to win the league. howay, wake up - how we ever let the scum down the road become better than us is beyond belief. It'll be years before we are ahead of them again. Its not just ashley. Shepherd and the halls are just as guilty. It makes you weep.

Luke, with the fans basically kept in the dark or fed scraps to fend them off for a day or two by giving faulse hope please dont take any of the harsh comments to heart. yes some of the remarks are a little misdirected, you have to understand the many true fans are silenced by the doors of power slamed shut in our faces. We look to people like yourself, who can get inside not to just do the interview put stand up and be counted and say no if this the individual is taking rubbish. At the same time don't leave it at that but look to do another interview and get in their faces and say 'you promised this and we have seen nothing TELL ME WHY NOT!'. We need someone to not just ask our quesitons but ask them as we want them to be asked with passion and purpose, demanding real answers not just lip srevice. Please realise that the comments are out of frustration because you, Lee alike in the current climate have an even bigger role to play in the life of the B&W army.

RAF Mark, what are you drinking mate!!!

Luke mate, it doesn't matter what you write, you'll never please all the people who read you rag, so I personally wouldn't worry about any of the comments on here!!

As for Ashley & the TOON, if JFK isn't being made manager, then obviously someone, one of the potentail new owners have said a bog 'NO' to his appointment, so end of!!

Ashley won't take the club into administration because he'll get nowt from it, he won't get a penny & it won't look good on is current business 'Sports Direct' which is where he makes his money, so he'll not want to lose out twice!!

Now to all the winging TOON fans on here, get a grip, we're not down & out just yet but the more we carry on crying like babies, the more the other fans are going to rib us about it, so catch a grip will yer!!

Guys give Luke a break, he can only report the things he's told by the club etc, its hardly a journo's fault if their spun the same lies as everyone else! Think Ashley is biting off his nose to spite his face a little bit, what with our relegation and a massive 91% drop for Sports Direct (where i'll add I picked up our last years away kit for a fiver online and they gave me a free mug) he's probably desperate, he's lost his billionaire status and if things continue he'll lose his millionaire status, surely he can't afford to keep it going much longer... saying that theres always a chance he blames NUFC for all of this and wants to make the club pay for his public lynching last year....

It is Tuesday 21st July 2009 and from what I am reading in this mornings Journal I am more convinced that MA is not trying to sell the club but is just making sure he does not have to spend any money on players/manager/staff etc during the summer months. He will probably take the club off the market one week before the close of the transfer window and appoint Joe Kinnear as manager for the season. If you read today that the bank Seymours does not think a sale will go through this week it just proves that there were NEVER any offers that matched the so called magic £100m that MA wants. So we have had are loads of make believe stories to passify the press. I cannot beleive that 20,000 fans have bought season tickets, unless they had to under the 3 year scheme. I wonder if the Journal or Chronicle should contact the FA and see what they think of this farce.

I sympathise with Luke. I've been in his company when the phone rings at an unsociable time and he's had to race off to re-write his back page.
I don't envy your job mate, I wouldn't be able to do it without confronting the board as liars, wide boys or paedos and where would that get you, or the Journal? Banned from the ground?

Interesting that people say it's going to be a critical time. I feel any proposed sale is already too late for a new regime to have any decent chance of getting back up this season. A lot of our divisional rivals have signed players we're being linked with and Ipswich, Forest, Bristol City, etc, are building squads that may well end up being bigger and better than ours come May. We can ill afford to be in this position.
They're dire times indeed, and I for one, haven't renewed my ticket, nor will I until Ashley departs.
My fear, however, is that Ashley will take the club off the market, as Restless Native stated earlier and appoint JFK permanently....

Luke I agree with you now; MA could leave this club to die and still won't have to sell his house and down size. From the outside it really looks like that guy has personal issues, hes over weight, gambles, recently split with his wife, lost millions on the stock market and his 2 main buisnesses are in free fall. he is sole owner of newcastle united and has a director that has not got a clue!! from what i hear DK said as much himself when he was offered the job. I MA bought this club as a toy and like every spoilt little fat boy when the batteries have run out they simply throw it in the corner and go and find a knew one. When the geordie supporters challenged him to fight last season instead of standing up and saying "right then, i'll have some of that!" he went and hid in his room. now his way of beating us and having the last laugh is to let this club fall to pieces aka spitting the dummy out or taking his ball away.. I do seem to remember that he made an agreement with the bank/ accountents or whoever looks after his money/ SJP that he would continue to put money in to the club at at leat 10m a season i believe? but i guess that would prob just cover the water and electricitly!? this man has major problems. He has hires Seymour Price to flog his club but what is the point if he will not negotiate? If he wont bugde on 100m + whatever is outstanding on the books he is basically tying their hands behind their back and he might as well get a local estate agent to tak it on for him.. it just goes to prove you dont have to be clever to have money...