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Opinion

Crazy times but I think that something good may come from it. I feel that Mike Ashley will move on…

4 years ago
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“The old believe everything: The middle-aged suspect everything: The young know everything.” – Oscar Wilde

It seems like yesterday that I was 13 years old, standing at the front of the Gallowgate, resplendent in my best Chester le street market gear.

This consisted of a blue jumper with three stars on the chest, a penny collared shirt, brown sta prest and a pair of tasseled loafers.

Just how cool could a five feet nowt, spotty faced adolescent be?

Sadly not cool enough to get Elaine to meet me behind the Garden Farm chip shop…but that’s another matter.

And for my 40 pence entry free, I got to watch my football team winning everything in sight. Well that’s if you regard the Anglo Italian and the Texaco Cup as ‘everything’…

Its hard to believe that forty five years on, that’s as good as its got.

The question that I ask myself over and over again, is just what on earth has stopped Newcastle achieving success in those decades?

Is it all simply down to rank bad ownership?

Well it’s as good place to start as any.

The club’s finances have been in a worse state than my daughter’s phone bill for the majority of the past 40 years, which has meant we have lurched from one crisis to another.

Only Newcastle could get themselves a billionaire owner that doesn’t want to spend any cash.

So is it because of the succession of bad managers?

The list is huge. From McGarry to McClaren, we sure knew how to pick them.

Looking back, I can make excuses for the utter tripe that McGarry served up, because he had a transfer budget of 10 bob and some Panini stickers to work with, but just what excuses did King Kenny have for Barnes, Rush and Andersson.

For me though, Jack Charlton’s masterstroke of playing Reilly and Cunningham up front instead of Waddle and Beardsley (who were pushed back to the wings), is a low that I hoped never to see surpassed. Mind you, that has been debatable.

So was it down to the many big name players we have signed who turned out to be so unbelievably rubbish?

Were they really that bad or did this club make them bad?

Hasn’t every club had its share of Marcelinos and Rivieres? Only we though seem to have cornered the market in mercenary wasters in recent years.

And so I get to the bloody great elephant in the room.

Is it the fans?

In the not so distant past, we have heard Managers use the fans as a reason for their failure and we have certainly heard many a pundit spout off about our ‘unrealistic expectations’.

It depends on which side of the argument you are on I guess. Support the club through the bad times or stay away to try and force change.

Have the huge crowds watching a succession of underachieving sides over the past couple of decades been part of the reason for the club’s malaise?

Maybe I am looking too deep. Maybe we are simply a cursed football club. Damned by all those bad lads who were swung by their neck until they were dead on the Gallowgate hill all those years ago.

It just might be our fate to be the nearly men of English football.

I have come to the conclusion that if you allow yourself to think about just why the likes of Wigan, Swansea, Birmingham and Middlesbrough can win a cup and we can’t, it will drive you to drink and an early grave.

These may be crazy times but I think that something good may come from it.

I feel that Mike Ashley will move on, the self-proclaimed greatest league in the world’s gravy train will crash and burn, and just like Doctor Who, Newcastle United will regenerate and take its place in the new world order.

Sorry guys, I’m allowed to be ridiculously optimistic. Despite the madness around us, I’m in a very good place.

That’s because I did the cancer advert meeting last week.

“Well we have your scan results and I’m glad to say you don’t need any further treatment.”

It’s a cliche I know but the only thing that really matters is to be healthy and be able to watch your family grow up

Newcastle United being successful?

Sure it would be nice, but in the great scheme of things, it’s not that important.

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