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Opinion

So what now for Newcastle United?

8 years ago
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It’s over, the Titanic won’t change course even though the iceberg is clearly in sight, mad Captain McClaren is calling for full power on the engines as we hurtle towards certain doom.

Those pundits who heralded the Newcastle United owner for ‘putting his wallet where his mouth is’  (credit Paul Merson), will maybe one day realise that all the owner did was hand over the free money from the TV contracts to a bunch of incompetent baboons working under a structure so tight, it makes Kim Jong Il’s ‘Juche’ political system look like the loose guidelines to bare knuckle boxing.

We spend much time here on The Mag, and other forums, apportioning blame, and there is more than enough to go around…

From the manically smiling loon who gives after match interviews so infuriating that they make you miss good old John Carver…

To the Chairman whose greatest qualification is knowing how many sugars Big Mike likes in his tea…

To the Newcastle United chief scout who’s really, really proud of his O level in French and likes to use it as often as possibleand finally…

To the owner who for years has sat smugly clutching his balance sheets which (to him) prove that the rest of the Premier League is doing it wrong. Not a brain cell between them.

The sad reality of this perfect storm of idiocy was always going to be the relegation and possible destruction of the 17th richest football club in the world.

At a time when there has never been so much money in football, they have literally been given a licence to print money and f***ed it up somehow.

They have the most loyal fans in the country, who else would put up with what those still attending SJP have?

They have an enormous and virtually guaranteed income so long as they stay in the Premier League, can’t be that hard right?

They have a globally recognised brand to build on and who wouldn’t capitalise on that?

Finally, they have a billionaire owner who can, with a little smart investment, make the club a real footballing power and generate even more cash, it cannot lose….but it has.

The almost nine year long saga which has led us to where we are now, has been documented and debated time after time, we all know what happened and why, we all know that much can be attributed to the hubris of one man and we should all feel guilt that none of us did enough to stop him.

Instead the ‘Geordie nation’ has been bought out by (allegedly) cheaper season tickets, long-term deals, empty promises and mostly by that most dastardly of tools, having their own unflinching loyalty used as a weapon against them.

So what now?

We know that the cash cow of Premier League TV contract money is heading out of the pasture, but from next season the parachute payment increases in both amount and duration, will Mike stick around to milk the cash goat?

Will he cut his losses and sell up to the first fake Sheik?

Will he make good on his promise to win something by having a good go at reclaiming our Championship title?

I honestly have no idea how his mind works at the moment – he has seen his beloved Sports Direct share value halved in the last few months, as well as being kicked from the FTSE 100 list, so it’s probably fair to say that he has bigger fish to fry than the northern outpost of his advertising vehicle.

It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if he left it all totally in the hands of Penfold to mastermind the cow’s return, and then we really are screwed.

(To feature like Notts Toon, send in your articles for our website to contribute@themag.co.uk)

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