Mike Ashley Ate My Hamster*

As we all know football began in the 1992-1993 season with the advent of the Premier League. Before then football was a barren wasteland, full of hooliganism and bad behaviour, of talentless cloggers who prevented the emergence of “tiki taka” football the likes of Arsenal and Barca now bless us with. Players drank their way through the season rather than training and observing foreign professional standards in terms of diet and application. Crowds were low and inhabited dark, foreboding terraces that were unsafe in every way. Football was no place for families, women or children and racism was rife. The viewing experience is now vastly superior. Stadiums, no longer described as grounds, are now the best we’ve ever had, we’re told. We get to watch the “best league in the world” and have some of the best footballers on the globe representing the highly successful England national team. Except England, in major tournaments, are generally awful; a lot of clubs play in soulless, flat-pack stadiums that see supporters ejected for daring to stand in front of their seat and create an atmosphere; football is a sanitised marketers paradise where a glossy image is created for global consumption; where away support is marginalised and isolated in the pokiest corners of grounds away from the cameras; where games are rescheduled to suit the needs of international tv audiences the excuse being that we get to see the overpaid and over hyped best players in the world for this gross inconvenience; where prices rocket year on year despite the product or service not improving; where clubs accrue millions of millions in debt as footballers, directors and managers are paid whilst local businesses go to the wall as clubs are saved, immune to the rules of their own market ethos; violence and racism are still visible but its Johnny foreigner in Spain and Bulgaria who has the real problem. My point? No picture, no view of the present or history is ever that clear cut, different perspectives create and fit different narratives, different stories that the teller wants to get across are emphasised with a selective view of the facts. Things aren’t really better are they? They’re just different.

In Newcastle Mike Ashley and his acolytes are currently causing no amount of disquiet over the running of the football club. In truth, he’s been a divisive figure since the acrimonious split with former manager and club legend Kevin Keegan, his own appointment. The owner and the Chairman, installed in 2008, Derek Llambias have been derided for their personal behaviour and the policies the club has pursued, particularly in terms of recruitment and retention of players. Now every move, every (rare) public utterance or action of either man is immediately met with outrage, often venomous, appearances engender similar reactions such as the reported reception Llambias received at the friendly match with Darlington, a farce for many reasons. The list of perceived grievances are many; sacking Keegan; appointing Wise, Jimenez & Vetere and showing loyalty to the former; buying and loaning certain players for questionable reasons; selling Milner; appointing Joe Kinnear; selling Nzogbia & Given; sacking Hughton; selling Carroll without a replacement; leaving the squad paper thin in certain areas; failing to communicate with the supporters since the departure of Chris Mort as Chairman, I could go on but you get the picture if you didn’t know it already. However the ongoing reaction to Ashley and the policies the football club he owns confuses and confounds me in many ways because it seems to ignore certain key facts as well as appear deeply contradictory. I look at the mistakes he has made but struggle to reconcile them with the outpouring of venom and even reasoned disagreement. I look at the paucity of alternatives to the Ashley plan and don’t wonder if a re-conceptualisation of the club strategy is required even if the man himself remains anathema to many.

You will get no argument from me that, in my opinion, the supporters of Newcastle United deserve a greater level of communication from the club in terms of its strategies and plans into the future. Some clear outlining of what the owner foresees the future to be, what aims and goals we want the team to achieve, would go a long way to resolving the concerns of many; it may even reduce the level of bile towards the man himself. I similarly agree with many who complain the decisions made in the first three years of Ashley’s ownership proved disastrous for the football club and that many of the problems we have encountered were brought on the owner by him and him alone. However constantly revisiting what has happened in the past is not healthy or productive and this is where I disagree with many of my fellow supporters. Nobody gets everything right; learning from your mistakes is the key.

The accounts of Newcastle United are something of a mystery, the club has a tendency to compile the figures and release them to the public some time after the end of the financial year although I claim no expertise in this field. As such the 2010-2011 accounts are still outstanding and are likely to be for some time. To the end of the financial year 30 June 2010 NUFC made an operating loss of £33.5 million, as opposed to £37.7 million in the year that preceded it (figures from NUFC website). Overall losses after player trading is taken into consideration are cut across both periods to £17.1 and £15.2 million respectively but it’s clear that in terms of income and expenditure the club continues to function due to the largesse of the owner. In simple terms, whoever owned the club would have to be prepared to stump up large amounts of cash to keep it running at its present level or take out loans with significant interest rates as was previously the case.

That is not to excuse relegation or to agree with every decision made by the owner or his executives. Income from match day revenue rose, gate receipts improved, and NUFC maintained the fourth highest football attendance in England whilst in the Championship. It’s true that income fell due to relegation but looking at the Swiss Ramble’s excellent assesment of the finances of NUFC the club has not been profitable for some time “The last time Newcastle made a profit was back in 2005 – and that was a very small one of £620,000. Since then, the club has registered pre-tax losses of £12 million in 2006, £34 million in 2007, £20 million in 2008 and £15 million in 2009”. Whilst the Swiss Ramble point out that the mix of revenue is good at NUFC the club is still reliant on TV money and cannot compete with clubs who qualify for the Champions League, our position as competitors for top four places being lost under the ownership of Hall/Shepherd. In fact balancing the books, reducing wages and relying on loans from Ashley can be said to have saved NUFC from a perilous financial position, loans at interest rates of 11.72% were secured by Shepherd and this was not something that could continue, banks are not keen to refinance debt at football clubs anymore as the situation at other teams in the Premier League shows. In short, neglecting due diligence may have been a mistake but in my opinion Ashley has turned around that situation by putting his own money into the club to keep it running. It may be hard to palate for some, but he deserves credit for that.

The mistake of Ashley and his charges appears to me to have been walking blindly into football and trying to implement ill conceived changes whilst seemingly trying to figure out what they were going to do. A number of appointments in key roles, and I include Kevin Keegan and Alan Shearer, were in my opinion massive errors that were badly handled and resolved. But I think the man has learned from these errors. I was as shocked and appalled at the treatment of Chris Hughton as anybody else at the time of his dismissal but Hughton was not a great manager; he was a good man who did a good job. This is a ruthless results driven business with no permanence in terms of employment contracts, you can be dispensed with at a moment’s notice, at least you get paid off. Whilst Hughton could feel aggrieved at the manner of his being dispatched he knew who he was working for when he took on the role and he knew the terms of his contract. He knew that Shearer and Keegan had been dispensed with clinically. We’ve adopted a much more palatable style since Hughton left with a progressive approach built around passing players, with pace in the side, that is surely much more preferable than Hughton’s hit Carroll and Nolan might get the knock downs style. All of the outpouring of anger at the departure of Nolan ignores the fact that many, me included, doubted he could hack it in the Premier League last season with his lack of pace and that we feared relegation.

Similarly all of the supporters who condemn Ashley for failing to make significant investment in the transfer market are no doubt the same people who looked upon the performance and wages of Owen, Duff, Geremi et al with disdain as I did. However, spending millions on players has proved a busted flush in the past. The new strategy of recruiting hungry, young, promising talent from across Europe, of building a youth system from which Vuckic, Ferguson, Krul and others are emerging is far more promising than the boom and bust policy of Ashley’s predecessors or the early part of his ownership. Is it not time that we gave this methodology a chance? Had we signed Brian Ruiz, if indeed there ever was any bid, for £10 million would it have solved any problems or potentially created another Luque or Xisco situation? I like caution. I like that we won’t be taken for mugs in the transfer market anymore paying the loyalty bonuses of players like Joey Barton as component parts of transfer fees, as well as tremendous wages that judging by past performances don’t represent value for money. What benefit have we had from offering or extending significant contracts of ageing players in the past? Butt, Carr, Viduka, Geremi, Cacapa, Owen were all at NUFC far too long for me, or should never have been recruited in the first place. We should be making money out of Kevin Nolans at appropriate points, it’s what successful clubs like Arsenal (Henry) and Man United (Van Nistelrooy, Beckham) do. Who really believes that Nolan will be scoring 12 Premier League goals in three years time earning £50k plus a week or that Barton will have five good seasons looking at his recent history?

Buying Tiotes, Ben Arfas and Cabayes is an eminently more sensible approach. To those who argue we will certainly sell them on if they perform, well that is how football works, especially when you look at our finances. Andy Cole left, Les Ferdinand too when good offers came in. What is different now from the past? Not all players will stick around as Shearer has, it’s not realistic. Andy Carroll left NUFC because Liverpool agreed to pay an amount of money that even in the context of modern football was obscene, he’s no more a £35 million footballer than I am a £5 million player, and then I can point back to those club finances again. Did we have any choice? Why should our football club not be ran as any other business is, with balanced books? Would we rather caution was thrown to the wind and more debt accrued? Look at what happened to other clubs who maxed out their credit cards, Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday, Bradford City and now maybe Everton. It’s no guarantee of success. Players and agents are well aware of the tricky relationship between club and supporters and I don’t doubt that in specific instances the loyalty of fans is used to protect the image of players as they move for bigger pay deals and longer contracts at the end off their relatively mediocre careers. Players don’t simply move because they don’t like Ashley, they move for money and other reasons as well, its too simplistic to argue otherwise surely?

The argument is made that Ashley should splash the cash, but why? After he has made mistakes the supporters were rightly angry and upset and heaped abuse on him, some of it excusable. However, Ashley could quite easily have pulled the plug and called in his loans. Instead we have 10 year season ticket deals freezing prices something Arsenal and QPR fans are envious of I’m sure. We might not have a top four team but then we don’t have top four finances. I’m happy that we aren’t in the position of other clubs in the Premier League, how dispiriting must it be to support Everton right now? Would we rather the “ambition” (Joey Barton) of QPR? A 40 per cent season ticket increase and a £4.5 million Anton Ferdinand? No thanks. We could show the ambition of Sunderland and sign two 30 something ex Manchester United players on big salaries that will be paid whether they’re injured or past it in two years? Again, no thanks. Players can pontificate about ambition and praise the abilities of their close colleagues but are they qualified to comment on the operation of a football club, not in my mind. They play football. How many ex footballers occupy senior executive positions in football or any other industry, very few.

The anti Ashley brigade have little argument in the main. There is no coherent voice. I hear rhetoric, “get out of our club”, “never come back to the city” but there is little in the way of suggestion of plausible alternatives. NUST wanted to buy the club with private pensions, how would it then be run? We wouldn’t be spending millions on top players looking at the finances, we wouldn’t be able to resist big offers for players. Would Enrique and others hang around if Liverpool or another team came knocking with massive wages or European football? The fact is we have no guarantee that if somebody does buy NUFC they will be an improvement on Ashley. If ticket prices were hiked up by 40 per cent, if we were saddled with debt a la Glazer would we be really happy, is that preferable to rid us of Ashley? It might be nice seeing us win trophies with an Abramovich figure in charge but I’d still rather develop local and international talent and build a team following the methodology of Lyon, Lille, Udinese than sell out to international markets and become the play thing of an oligarch or sheikh. Give me a man who makes a twat out of himself drunk ahead of that fate, it reflects me more. The team can at least retain its pride of place at the centre of the community, as a local institution and source of pride that reflects the identity and culture of its support and the city.

In summary we’ve won nothing and achieved little since 1969. Countless talented players have left our side to win things, mainly mediocre managers have raised expectations beyond their limited abilties. A lot of money, mainly ours outside of the Sky tv revenue years, has been expended on mediocrity or worse. Ashley has made errors, he continues to make one with his uncommunicative approach in my opinion, but he does seem capable of learning from his mistakes and making hard decisions that bring furious reaction. I’m cynical and don’t wonder if some of the negative response is fuelled by a media peeved that they have limited access? Wouldn’t it be conciliatory to acknowledge the errors and move on? Wouldn’t we have a better argument for dialogue and transparency if we removed the bile and the furious reaction to every utterance or Chinese meal? Yes, he’s dropped some bollocks but we’re a damn sight better off now than we were in the latter days of Hall and Shepherd in my opinion. We’re a lot better off than Everton and others and we have a promising young side that encourages me more than teams who have invested significantly greater resources in players. I for one am pleased that the situation is as it is, for football surely cannot sustain the massive expenditure of the past, what industry can function like that in the long term? Teams that adjust will do better than teams that continue to operate at a loss and we should hope that we can be profitable and competitive in the future without needing to rely on Ashley or anybody else. That is the direction his current plan is taking us in looking at the figures, sustainability that other clubs don’t appear to have without their sugar daddies or their champions league revenue. It would be nice to hear it from Mike or Derek, whatever my opinion of them as people, to affirm where we are going because in many ways it appears positive to me. Simply picking over the bones of every past error isn’t helping anybody looking to the future and is no starting place for an argument for dialogue.

FOOTNOTE: I’ve been called a t**t and a c**t more times than I can remember. If you disagree and are militantly against Mike Ashley and his apparent vision then it’s your right, I’d (seriously) love to hear your alternative to the status quo. Please at least construct an argument or just ignore me. You’ll be a better person for it.

*He didn’t really, it’s a joke