Sat in the Directors’ Box at St. James Park, I felt strange.
Only vaguely engaged by the game being played out in front of me, my thoughts
turned from events on the pitch to the knots of fans directly opposite in the
East Stand, passionately engaged in the struggle for their team’s future, many
of whom nonetheless drifted away long before the contest was finally over, the
enormous swathes of empty seats in the stadium and the collection of mainly
middle aged men, largely attired as if for a wedding reception, who sat around
me, idly chatting, networking and luxuriating in the reflected glamour that a
seat in corporate hospitality afforded them, rather than paying attention to
the contest that had ostensibly drawn us there. They’d enjoyed a sumptuous pre
match repast of Homemade Northumberland
Broth, served with a Fresh Homemade Bread Roll, followed by Supreme of Chicken served with a Panache of
Fresh Vegetables, Grated Dauphinoise Potatoes in a Sun Blushed Tomato, Shallot
and Pancetta Sauce, topped off with Chocolate
Mousse Tart swimming in Bailey’s Cream Raspberry Coulis and Crème Anglaise,
while I’d been grafting on the far side of the stadium, selling programmes in
return for zero financial reward, save the chance to hob nob with the beautiful
people after the game.
Sadly, the Northern League Cup Final between Whitley Bay and
Marske United went to extra time and by the time the unfancied side from the
North Riding had claimed the trophy with a controversial 120th minute
penalty, it was pushing 10 o’clock and so most people cleared off straight
after the final whistle. I’d guess I was halfway back to the coast on the Metro
by the time the Presentation was over. Still, despite the result, being among a
crowd of 1,503 devotees of the local non-league game, was a wonderful occasion
and affirmed to me that the Northern League, whose 125th season this
game was the climax to, is the best place to watch football I can think of. How
much more satisfying it was to be in SJP on Tuesday 6th May than it
had been on Saturday 3rd when, swimming against the tide as ever,
I’d skirted cabals of the disaffected early departed to patent the 84th
minute walk-in.
It is now a month since I last blogged about Newcastle
United. During this period of time, there has been nothing remotely worthy of
celebration related to the club. While 6 successive defeats took place on the
park, the litany of ludicrous weekly press conference witterings by Pardew veered
from farcical to beyond parody. It is bad enough that his Friday banalities
ruin the weekend for Newcastle supporters across the region and beyond, even
before a goal has been needlessly conceded, without giving these outpourings of
verbal effluent any degree of credibility by repeating them here. The man is a
joke and he talks errant nonsense, but replacing him with another useful idiot
seems to me a pointless act while Ashley remains in place. We would only be
exchanging one simpering clown for another. Indeed it should also be
unfortunately recognised that, despite the fact huge sections of the support
have been roaring on Stoke City and Crystal Palace in the fervent hope NUFC
could end up in the bottom half of the table, as a top 10 finish has, somehow,
been secured, the manager has sickeningly earned himself a bonus for completing
the task set for him before the season’s start. Consequently, despite the fact
that pessimism related to next season’s presumed relegation is already
approaching fever pitch among the support, though it is a fact that every
summer since the advent of the 10/11 campaign, NUFC fans have assumed that we
are going down (with the notable exception of 12/13 when we very nearly did), Pards
is going absolutely nowhere; literally and metaphorically. This is despite the
fact that the only reason the Mackems are staying up, regardless of their
insane end of season away form, is that NUFC managed to present Poyet’s team with
6 points, undoubtedly demonstrating those on Wearside had a better season of
it, regardless of league positions, than those on Tyneside. Unfortunately, in
business, as in sport, people tend not to get sacked for doing the job their
boss asked of them. In sport, as well as society, the actual point is we need
to get rid of the bosses and replace them with the workers; this has never been
more apparent than after the mealy-mouthed, contemptuous press release that was
released to coincide with Lee Charnley’s appointment as Managing Director. I
defy you not to read this incredible tissue of horseshit with imagining
yourself as a pitchfork wielding medieval peasant hell-bent on slaying the evil
lord of the manor…
“The Club has never
been in such a stable and healthy financial position, which gives us the best
possible platform from which to grow. I am confident that with our dedicated,
hardworking and loyal employees, together with Alan Pardew and his backroom
staff, we will progress the Club, both on and off the field over the coming
years. Our immediate priority of course is to finish this season as strongly as
possible. Our minimum target for this campaign was a top ten finish, but I can
assure our supporters that everyone at Newcastle United will do their utmost to
ensure the Club finishes in the highest league position it can. At the
beginning of the season all our staff and players were incentivised should we
finish in tenth position and above, and our commitment to achieving this will
continue right up until the final whistle on 11th May. To their credit, the
players, led by the captain, agreed to this incentive scheme despite our 16th
place finish last season. Looking ahead to future seasons, our primary focus
will remain the Premier League. Our preparations for the summer transfer window
have already begun of course, and our challenge is to make sure we spend the
funds we have available in a careful and considered way in order to ensure that
we get the maximum benefit from every pound we invest in the squad. We will
continue to operate in a financially responsible manner and live within our
means. This Club is financially strong and there is money to spend if the deal
is right and we are confident a player can add quality to the squad. That said,
we will not pay over the odds or make knee-jerk decisions. Every player we sign
represents a major investment and mistakes are costly which is why we will
continue to be prudent in our transfer dealings. This is the reality of a
well-run football club like ours. We can be proud that we already meet, and in
fact exceed, the requirements of UEFA's Financial Fair Play regulations and in
our latest set of published accounts we recorded a profit for our third
consecutive year. We will continue to manage our finances in this sustainable
manner and will not accrue debt in order to achieve short-term gains. It is
also important that we don't over-promise and under-deliver for our supporters,
players and staff. False expectations lead to disappointment and frustration,
hence why we will keep our transfer business confidential and will not be drawn
into commenting on the media speculation and rumour that exists in this digital
world. As a board we will continue to make the final decisions on all player
transfers. Clearly, however, the manager and his team have a very significant
involvement in such decisions and will be instrumental in making
recommendations in relation to the squad. Our transfer policy and strategy is
very clear and will remain unchanged. We will focus on identifying and
recruiting young players whose best years are ahead of them, which in nearly
all cases means players in their early to mid-20s and not beyond. We don't look
at transfer windows in isolation, but rather as a full trading year, and our
intention for the first team is to sign one or two players per year to
strengthen the squad. The Club has long been focused on keeping football
affordable for our supporters and that will remain a priority for us. Our
average attendance for league games so far this season has been more than
50,000, making us the third best supported club in England. We want to see St
James' Park full throughout the season and we will continue to operate a
ticketing policy and pricing structure that keeps Newcastle United one of the
most affordable clubs in the Premier League, encouraging family attendance and
rewarding our most loyal supporters with long-term price guarantees. We are
also committed to our current strategy in relation to communication between the
Club and its supporters. At the beginning of the season we launched a new Fans
Forum, with members representing our diverse fanbase. It has been an open,
honest and productive forum and it will continue to be our primary means of
direct supporter communication and engagement. Of our three core income streams
- broadcast, matchday and commercial - it is only our commercial income that we
are able to affect to any great degree, especially given our commitment to
keeping ticket prices affordable for our fans. We have made great strides in
this respect recently, having secured the most lucrative sponsorship deal in
the Club's history, with Wonga. We are delighted to have them as a partner from
a commercial perspective but also because of their desire to work closely with
our supporters and in our local community. This is our vision and strategy for
the years ahead. The purpose of this statement is to communicate with our
supporters in an open and transparent manner and we hope that it provides a
clear outline of our intentions. We all want to see Newcastle United improve,
but we are convinced that the best route to achieving this is to do so
sustainably, building each season without risking the financial health and
stability of the Club. I can assure supporters that the board and everyone
associated with the Club aim to make Newcastle United the best it can be, pound
for pound.”
I don’t know about you, but every syllable of that
communication makes me feel ill; from the patronising tone, to the clear
indication that the only signings we’ll make are loan ones, to the further
confirmation that both Pards is a powerless puppet and that Ashley will
continue to do what the hell he wants with the club, without deigning to
explain or justify any of his actions at all. It’s precisely this kind of
contemptuous, high-handed, dismissive communication, on top of the litany of
other sleights against the club and the support, which is starting to turn
everything related to Newcastle United completely poisonous. Ashley has been a
toxic, malign influence for years now. Pards has gone from despised crony to
sympathetic victim, via a brief period as assumed tactical genius (that should
read opportunistic chancer), to playing the role of vacuous clown with the
natural verve he now brings to the role. The players, many of whom are highly
talented professionals, are neither coached nor motivated, intrinsically or
extrinsically, to produce the kind of performances of which they are capable.
In truth, NUFC’s squad, with Cabaye, could have been 6th,
without Cabaye but with Remy, could have been 8th, but without
either of them, it has only maintained 9th spot because of a great
pre-Christmas run and the shortcomings of others. Prior to Cardiff, the team
had collected 4 wins and 1 draw from the previous 18 Premier League games; 13
points in almost half a season. The fact that nobody seems to care or accept
responsibility, much less display an element of contrition relating to such
appalling statistics, is why the support is starting to turn. Or so it seems
anyway…
One of the ways this lack of engagement has been
demonstrated is by the sheer amount of free tickets knocking around for home
games. As I pointed out in my last NUFC blog, it took a superhuman effort to
palm off a freebie for the Man United game, when I was at Heaton Stannington 2
Northallerton Town 1. I didn’t even try to get rid of the half a dozen unused
ones I was offered for the Swansea game; what would be the point of offering
them to friends or acquaintances? Who in their right mind would even thank you
for giving them the chance to see that? Certainly I was far happier watching
Longbenton see off West Allotment Reserves 2-0 in a Northern Alliance Division
2 fixture. Amazingly though, more than 50,000 people are still attending first
team fixtures at St. James’ Park. I can’t even begin to explain why, much less
understand that statistic.
The Monday night we lost 3-0 to Arsenal, I was watching Team
Northumbria 0 West Auckland 3 in Northern League Division 1; decent game
actually. In the hours and days following the predictable spineless capitulation
at the Emirates, a campaign grew on social media for fans to stage a walk out
at the Cardiff game to show their disapproval of Ashley, Pards or both. The
suggestion was that after an hour, people should turn their backs on the game
and leave the stadium. As ever with these sorts of suggestions, such as the
infamous, stillborn Toon Poznan protest of 2011, there is always an element of
concern with the legitimacy of those suggesting action. However, the proposal
seemed to strike a chord and support for it among the on-line community grew as
the week progressed. Here was something that was organic, spontaneous and from
the grassroots; someone had suggested it and, by a process of Social Media
Darwinism, it seemed to be gaining momentum. Quite how the success of such a
protest could be measured was another matter entirely of course.
On Thursday 1st May, NUST held their first
long-promised public meeting since their January 22nd AGM; it wasn’t
the previously publicised “comedy” night with Gavin Webster, whose articles in The
Mag I found far less amusing than Tony Pearson’s, but instead a forum
to discuss Ashley’s proposed sale of a patch of land across from the Gallowgate
that the Shepherd regime had earmarked as the potential site for a hotel and
casino development, with the potential to further build upwards in that stand.
The fact that NUFC are seeking to sell the land by itself, without planning
permission, suggests two things; firstly the club has absolutely no interest in
extending the ground and secondly the club’s motivation for the sale seems to
be a desire to rid itself of an asset for a quick buck, as any land sale with
planning permission would be more lucrative, but perhaps harder to achieve
because of the particular niche market for the development mooted.
In addition,
it means the club will have zero further involvement in the land if and when it
is sold, which is why NUST are seeking to make the land an Asset of Community
Value which, while not stopping any sale, is a way of putting some pressure on
potential developers to think of the consequences of building on that spot.
The meeting took place in The Mining Institute in Neville
Hall and attracted an attendance of around 35, with an awful lot of scalp on
show. While Supporters Direct spokesman Kevin Rye, a contributor to the
Baltic Publications title FC Business gave a little homily
about how hard he works and how much he has achieved, I looked around the room
and estimated I knew about a third of those gathered, several of whom may not
have had any involvement with current or former Baltic Publications titles.
When the meeting broke up, the suggestion was to attend The Telegraph for a
post-meeting pint, but as I’d been feeling vibes that suggested some of those
gathered actually hated me more than Mike Ashley, we headed for The
Bridge to watch Gateshead bravely hold on for a draw at Grimsby in
their play-off game and for a debrief on what my companions and I had felt to
be a productive, positive and worthwhile meeting.
I still had the caveat that I did not understand why the
NUST Board had acted unilaterally in their response to this matter and not
consulted with the ordinary membership before deciding on their course of
action, but that could be seen as a procedural rather than a philosophical
point. However, the abiding feeling I
had was positivity; if NUST could keep their promise of regular meetings with
members and adopt a policy of openness, engagement and campaigning for change,
then it is possible that they could have a central role to play in the fight
for this club’s future, despite the atrocious faux pas related to the Fans
Forum that leaves NUFC Fans United as the only credible conduit between the
owners and support. Consequently, I went to bed on Thursday night in a
contented frame of mind. On Friday morning however, came email news of the
hijacking of the 60 minute walk-out campaign by NUST and the two former Baltic
Publications titles, in favour of a 69 minute walk-out, as apparently this was
seen, by whom I’m not sure, as a more significant time as it coincided with our
last trophy. Why not 27 for our last title, 55 for our last FA Cup or even 07
to recognise when Scott Parker proudly waved the Inter Toto goblet above his
head?
It must be stated immediately that at no point during Thursday’s
NUST meeting was a 69 minute walk-out ever mentioned. However, less than 12 hours
later, a social media firestorm had erupted that set fans at each other’s
throats and subsequently, I believe, reduced the impact of the walk-out. As has
been stated previously, the positive aspects of the proposed 60 minute walk-out
were that it was spontaneous, organic and from the grassroots, giving a clear
and unambiguous message that an element of the support was unhappy with the
current state of affairs at the club. The crass tactical error of NUST’s
dirigistic, Leninist insistence on a 69 minute walk-out was not only in
muddying the waters, but the arbitrary imposition of their will and their
agenda, in the face of something that had gained only positive comments in the
days before NUST’s breakfast email on Friday. In effect, it seems to me that
NUST, for the sake of media publicity, were perhaps unwittingly responsible for
upsetting a section of our support and allowing many others to state, with some
justification, that this is the problem with our fanbase; we can never agree on
anything. Certainly if NUST insist on keeping the spirit of Gordon McKeag alive
and aloof, then that will certainly be the case for a considerable while longer.
Personally, while I supported the aims of those who had
announced they’d be observing the 60 minute walk-out, I had not intended to be
anywhere near the Cardiff game. Killingworth Station 1 Blyth Town 4 in the
Northern Alliance Premier Division was my game of the day, having carried my
union banner at the Tyneside May Day March and Rally. However, full time at
West Moor saw an express bus to the town pull up and, fifteen minutes later, I
was walking into the Gallowgate with Newcastle 1-0 up. It was the first time I
had entered the ground after the opening of the gates since May 13th
1989, when the dying embers of a 1-1 draw with Millwall that marked the end of
an appalling campaign that had ended in relegation in last place, were enjoyed
by around 400 hundred of us who’d decided not to join with the 14k others who’d
paid for the pleasure of spending a sunny afternoon singing Sack
The Board!
Saturday May 3rd 2014 has an altogether different
atmosphere than the game a quarter of a century previously. While intending to
take a seat in the row behind where I used to sit, on the way there the first
action I saw was Remy putting Newcastle 2-0 up. The photograph I took from the
lower Gallowgate shows just how full the Milburn and Leazes stands were so late
in the game, as was the East Stand. It seemed to me the only significant
departures had been from the Strawberry Corner of the Gallowgate, which
contained significant numbers of empty seats. However it must be conceded that
certainly no more than 10% of the crowd had left the ground before the final
whistle. Obviously I too left at that point; watching a lap of honour was not
something I was prepared to do, even if I had just seen 2 goals in 5 minutes
for absolutely nothing. If the fact that 50,000 turn up regularly surprises me,
then I am absolutely stunned by estimates of 8,000 people staying behind to
allow the players to complete a lap of honour. And I’m one of those in May 1987
who demanded the players come out to see us after we’d lost 3-0 at home to
Charlton Athletic, but had secured top flight survival…
Being objective, I felt the atmosphere in the ground during
the Cardiff game was surprisingly equable; though the unstinting positivity of
Gateshead’s fans on the Sunday in their memorable 3-1 win over Grimsby put the
NUFC support in context. Indeed, so did the wish of Gateshead’s players to pass
the ball around and not aimlessly hoof it up field like Pards has his lot
doing. Amazing to think that Gary Mills is exactly the same age as the hapless
incumbent at SJP; I wonder what the relative approval ratings of supporters
would be. Actually, I don’t need to wonder at all.
What are we to conclude from Saturday’s events? Well, it is
an undeniable fact that whether you left after 60 minutes, 69 minutes, full
time or the lap of honour or even if you didn’t attend the game at all, we are
all Newcastle United fans of equal worth, equal validity and entitled to an
equal say in our club. Perhaps the walk-out would have been more popular if the
message had not been confused by NUST’s announcement or if the team had been
losing. However, we will never know if this is the case. It is instructive to
any and all of us who think the time is ripe for revolution among the support
that perhaps we have a long, long way to go. In 1989, the first home game after
relegation saw nearly 26,000 attend a 5-2 victory over Leeds United, whilst a
boycott of games under the then McKeag Regime was in place; how naïve some of
us were in trusting the Hall family to philanthropically save the club. In
2009, the first home game post relegation saw us defeat Reading 3-0 with a
Shola hat trick in front of 37,000. If there is to be a mass desertion through
anger, apathy or any other emotion, I would suggest this is the figure that
would indicate action or indeed inaction has replaced grumbling. Gateshead
overcoming Cambridge at Wembley could be crucial in this instance.
However, the main lesson to be drawn from this is the one
I’ve been trumpeting all along; whoever manages or plays for Newcastle United,
or wherever the club finishes in the table is immaterial under the present
ownership. We need Ashley OUT and 100% Fan Ownership IN, though I would be
prepared to accept 51% as a transitional demand. I don’t expect this to happen overnight, but
remember Ashley has been here since 2007; Newcastle United have been around
since 1892. Our day will come.
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