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Opinion

Lack of communication from Newcastle United, can anybody explain why…?

3 years ago
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I have been taking a look into football club ownership across the English Premier League (and lower English divisions) and ISL (Indian super league).

I came across an article that listed the supposed top 10 best owners in the top four leagues in England.

Most of the owners were from the bottom two leagues, then there were a few from the Championship and Premier League, the likes of Leicester, Brentford, Norwich…and to my surprise, even the likes of Aton Villa and Southampton were there.

In my opinion it’s all relative, but there were a few owners who were respected very highly for a good number of years, the likes of Accrington, Peterborough, Norwich and Brentford.

Now lets come to the main issue here.

I also came across Sunderland and found Stewart Donald, the former majority shareholder, presently a minority share holder, who sold control of the club to Kyril Louis-Dreyfus. I was curious as to how much the club sold for and found the asking price was £37.5m for Sunderland. This was publicly confirmed by the former owner Stewart Donald. He held a meeting with fan groups and relayed the message.

To summarise, he wanted to get back what he invested in the club and wasn’t trying to make a profit on the sale. He had also detailed that he was leaving since the fans wanted him out, the abuse, and the interested parties etc.

There were other parts of his interview that got me to think about Newcastle United as a club and their communication with the fans.

Recently, I have been noticing there have been regular comments on The Mag regarding lack of communication from Newcastle United as a club, which I hadn’t thought about much about previously.

However, after this Sunderland article above, it then made me wonder why Newcastle United aren’t communicating to the support, other than through Twitter feeds and Bruce?

I also vaguely remembered reading a few times in The Mag about the early days of the Mike Ashley era and how there was more communication from the club.

Is it because of the consistent criticism aimed at the club that made them go silent, to keep everything to the minimum and a need to know basis?

Is it because the people who run the club had started believing that it is impossible to placate the fans, even if the reasons and communication given for many issues were genuine and reasonable.

Maybe the silent approach is better than any other interview’s words and lines being twisted and misinterpreted by the modern media? When I thought about how they could try and justify the failure to communicate, it seemed like the best attempt at a reason I could think of them potentially trying to use.

I just wanted to know the views of others on here, as it might help make some sense for me to understand, especially since many here are following the club for decades. This would seem like a better conversation to help understand about the club’s failings in terms of communication, than just the constant ‘compliments’ that Mike Ashley gets here.

I am not going to lie, Sunderland under Donald seemed like they communicated more than Newcastle United.

I hope I don’t get criticised for making a Sunderland reference…

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