Read this yesterday and I think it sums up pretty well the current situation.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...-Martin-Demichelis-at-the-Etihad-Stadium.html
If Mike Ashley, the billionaire owner of Newcastle United, wants the best for the football club he bought in 2007, he will sell it. If he wants to control Rangers as much as he seems to judging by his refusal to relinquish his grip on the Ibrox boardroom, he will reduce the asking price too.
According to the club, which released a statement on its website in September in order to deny a
Telegraph Sport claim he was looking for a buyer, Ashley will not consider selling “for any price” until 2016.
You will be hard pushed to find a single person on Tyneside outside of the Newcastle boardroom or media department who hopes he sticks to that timetable.
Ashley wanted just £100m to sell following the club’s relegation to the Championship in 2009. Surely a man worth as much as he is, could be willing to accept a similar sort of offer in the summer if it means he can get on with whatever he has planned at Ibrox.
Sell Newcastle and buy Rangers. It really should be that simple, but there is nobody willing to take Newcastle off his hands for £250m plus, even if he was, contrary to those he employs to run things at St James’ Park in his absence, willing to sell.
There are people willing to pay less. Ashley, though, seems determined to get all of the money back from the £129m worth of interest-free loans still owed to him, on top of an asking price for the business.
For once, Ashley could do the decent thing. Not that such pleas are likely to sway a man who has steadfastly refused to take advice or listen to criticism throughout his business career.
Newcastle need new leadership; a new start. They need to get rid of the man whose presence has sucked the life out of a club that once oozed pride and passion.
The atmosphere inside St James Park during the team’s 2-1 home defeat to Southampton at the weekend was as flat as unpacked Ikea furniture. This should never be the case. Ashley has crushed the spirit of the clubs supporters. He has drained the club of hope and extinguished dreams.
At least when former manager Alan Pardew was in place, there was something to stir up emotions, albeit mainly in a negative way.
Newcastle are a joyless, uninspiring, unambitious football club with some of the worst public relations in the country. There is a deep divide between those who run the club and those who support it from cradle to grave. They are not the only club in the country with that schism tearing at its soul, but they are probably the biggest.
There might be a new head coach arriving before Newcastle play again at the end of the month, but it is Ashley who must go for proper progress to be made. It is a football club that needs to be freed from his stranglehold.
A new head coach will provide some much-needed leadership and direction for a rudderless team. The enthusiasm of caretaker manager John Carver for the job, sadly, has been undermined by a run of four games, no wins and three defeats since Pardew abandoned ship to take charge of Crystal Palace
Carver no longer looks like a safe pair of hands. He may still be given the job until the end of the season, but it would represent a gamble.
If the owner is not going to leave, there has to be at least a suggestion of a fresh start. Carver was Pardew’s assistant and he is working with exactly the same coaching team that has been in place for the last four years.
The supporters know that. They see Carver as part of an old problem, rather than a new hope. It’s a shame. The 52-year-old is a decent, loyal man who loves the club as much as any supporter, but to renovate and modernise you need to get rid of the old furniture.
Ultimately, though, with Ashley ordering that cup competitions should not be taken seriously, that the Europa League is nothing but a booby prize for domestic success and that every player will be sold if enough of a profit can be made, it does not really matter who the new head coach is.
They will always be rolling with loaded dice and they will always be playing with a weakened hand. The manager/head coach loses. The house wins and the house in controlled by Ashley.