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Garth Crooks ‘The pummelling must end at Newcastle United and a deal needs to be struck’

5 years ago
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Garth Crooks has been talking about the situation at Newcastle United.

He ‘applauds’ Mike Ashley for recruiting Rafa Benitez and also for ‘providing Premier League football’ to Newcastle fans.

Well, it was Rafa Benitez who approached Mike Ashley/Newcastle United, not the other way round.

Whilst as for giving us Premier League football…Newcastle were a Premier League club who had never been relegated in the PL era when the new owner came along, and if he manages another relegation this time, it will be three of them in the past nine Premier League seasons under Mike Ashley.

In reality, if he has provided anything, it is a very badly run club, which suffers from essential lack of investment throughout, and as basically become a yo-yo club between the top two divisions.

Although Newcastle fans feel that if the worst happens this season, there may well not be such an easy ‘Yo’ next campaign if we end up in the Championship and Rafa walks away.

To be fair to Garth Crooks, he has regularly savaged Mike Ashley in the past and stuck up for Rafa Benitez and the fans.

This time he appears to be desperately trying to be even-handed but the end result is the same.

Crooks says that Newcastle can’t possibly go on with Ashley still in charge, comparing it to a very one-sided boxing match, the BBC Sport pundit declares Newcastle fans must feel they have been on the end of a right ‘pummelling’ under Ashley’s ownership ‘and it can’t go on’ any longer.

You can’t disagree with his comment either that Newcastle United are now ‘painful to watch’, a home game against an average Leicester side where Newcastle’s only shot n target was a 60 yard effort from Shelvey, is proof of that.

Referring to press reports of Peter Kenyon supposedly looking to buy NUFC with the help of investors, Garth Crooks states: ‘In the interests of everyone concerned, a deal needs to be struck. It’s time the club (Newcastle United) moved on.’

However, after a decade where Mike Ashley has only pretended he had any intention of selling the club and plenty of planted PR distraction stories in the media, it is very difficult to believe/hope that this latest Kenyon rumour will prove any different.

Garth Crooks talking to BBC Sport:

“Third from bottom with two points from seven matches and rudely dismissed by Leicester – performances on the pitch have only served to contribute to the anger and frustration fermenting among Newcastle United supporters.

“The target: owner Mike Ashley; public enemy number one.

“Last week, BBC Sport posed this question: ‘Have Newcastle’s Ashley generation had enough?’

“Had enough?

“That’s what boxing referees ask the opponent having just been on the end of a pummelling.

“The analogy is fitting, because that is precisely how Newcastle fans must feel and it can’t go on.

“Newcastle are painful to watch, and on the front and back pages for all the wrong reasons.

“Ashley has provided Premier League football to an area that is otherwise starved of a top-class football team.

“He has also brought in a top-class manager. For that he must be applauded, but neither works without serious investment.

“The news that former Manchester United and Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon is leading a consortium to take over the Magpies is an exciting prospect.

“In the interests of everyone concerned, a deal needs to be struck. It’s time the club (Newcastle United) moved on.”

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