NUFC - The Team We All Support
By Becksa09
December 27 2008
Sometimes in life we all wonder why we support such a club. The kind of club that waves in the wind - chances in the blink of any eye. Don't forget 18 months ago, Freddy Shepard sat proud at his news conference introducing Sam Allardyce as the Newcastle manager for the first time.
His goals? Rebuild the training ground, introduce sports science techniques to end the injury problems that plagued the squad and rebuild a team that had fallen from the graces of the top 5 to barely standing at top the lower half of the Premier League.
Yet here we are, no Sam Allardyce and no Freddy Shepard. In fact we don't even have the man the replaced Allardyce - Kevin Keegan was brought here to save our club and begin another Geordie revival. Instead we have an owner who for all his business genius doesn't know what to do. He can't sell his commodity because the global economic crisis has made it an overpriced statue to what used to be. Yet he can't even come to home games to the watch the team he owns due to the fact that the fans, covered head to toe in his gear, hate him beyond belief. Or at least enough of them do that he wouldn't risk showing his face.
So the latest attempt at the Geordie rescue plan has fallen into the hands of rusty old Joe Kinnear. Who, for over 5 years has been sat on his couch watching Soccer Saturday and playing golf in Ireland. He knew he wasn't the first choice replacement, and so did the fans. Within a week of Joe taking the job he went on a 5-minute rant about the media with more swear words in it than pub on a Saturday night. Yet the fans gave him a chance and the team went on. And so another revival began. It was of course slow to get going and seems now to have stalled. However, despite the natural skepticism still exists, the fans that the owners have taken to Kinnear in a way that I never imagined. He is honest and open about the good and bad with this club - he knows that he stays as long as our exiled owner does. We currently stand 2 points above the relegation zone with games against fellow strugglers to come. What happens in the next month will ultimately decide the fate our once-glorious club.
There is no doubt that Mike Ashley had the best intentions when he bought one of the most unique clubs in world football. He knew that the passion of the fans had the ability to make or break anyone foolish enough to add them to the fire. He wanted to build a business that could provide for itself. He had done it before, so assumed that this challenge could be done - impossible is nothing. Yet without perfect information the free market won't fix itself. Without regulation and investment a business won't thrive. Very few premier league clubs sustain themselves. When Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea he immediately loaned the club a billion pounds with the aim that within 8 years he would be paid back and the club would then support itself. He personally invested a billion dollars in his asset in order to create a mini-market for one team. He invested heavily in marketing the club worldwide - especially in the US and Asia, he invested heavily in the first team squad, to the tone of 200 million pounds within the first 2 years. Where did it get them, 2 league titles within 3 years. Of course there were casualties along with glory. Despite all this Chelsea remains dependant on his money, they are no closer to being self reliant than any other club - premier league owners make on loss on there investments. That's the nature of the beast. This league is so demanding that you have to continue to invest at a loss. It's a boom and bust economic climate. Demand will continue to rise and fortunes will continue to fall.
So now our owner faces a difficult decision. He knows that he needs to make this club attractive again to prospective buyers yet is not ready to invest in it without increasing the price. Its simple economics, sometimes when you want to sell a house you have to invest in a make over before its attractive to buyers, the same goes for his team in Newcastle. He simply has to invest, take a loss on his fortune, in order to keep this club in the most expensive poker game in the world - the Premier League.
Perhaps more like 15million. Fat chance.
And don't mind the delayed response; I've been out of action a while...