Bill Bradshaw:
It was a big story that should have generated a major media pack – but it didn’t. Instead there were two men and a dog (but the dog did not bother turning up). Here’s why…
THERE was, for a fleeting sliver of time, the thought on the final day of the Premier League season that Mike Ashley had seen the light.
For the first time in the eight years since he bought the club from the Hall and Shepherd families, Ashley deigned to give a football interview. As he spoke, Newcastle stood on the brink of relegation. Defeat for his club that day coupled with a good result for Hull and Ashley’s stock would have shrivelled.
He spoke well; said the right things. He was not selling up, he said. He would invest in the team… and he would not leave until something had been won or the club qualified for the Champions League.
This was a different Ashley; not the aloof billionaire who clearly did not give a flying fig about what anyone – especially the fans – thought about him.
Or so it seemed.
The new era of communication and apparent transparency lasted, well, until yesterday. The unveiling of new head coach Steve McClaren was handled like the appointment of a two-bit general by a tin-pot dictator.
Communication? Transparency? The unveiling was restricted to one approved newspaper and a solitary approved broadcaster: the Daily Mirror and Sky Sports News, for the uninitiated.
Not a single other newspaper or TV or radio outfit were allowed across the threshold. It seemed that the Mirror and Sky had got together to offer the club something sweet – and Ashley was being sweet in return. Preferential access, it’s called.
The rest of the media? The local Newcastle newspapers? They could all sod off, frankly, was the club’s message.
The rest of Her Majesty’s Press were left to scramble after McClaren who weakly said he could not talk to them. When pressed, he offered, “Let the dust settle first.”
Pardon me, Steve? Let the dust settle first? You have just been appointed as manager of the football club – indeed appointed to the board of directors – and already you are doing a first-class impression of Ashley’s poodle.
If you enjoy such power and responsibility, a club director for goodness sake, you should be able to tell the WORLD about your appointment at what was once a proud club. A big club. A club held in very high esteem by its public, the fans.
Not any more.
So enjoy your three-year contract, but don’t gamble too much on it being top-trumped into a promised eight-year deal (Alan Pardew, anyone?).
Yes, that three-year contract will be extended by half a decade if Steve finishes in the top eight or wins a trophy.
Extended by Mike Ashley, of course, who has removed himself from the board. So he won’t interfere, right? Wrong – he will still be all over his club like a rash. He owns it and will continue to run it like his own personal fiefdom.
Rich Victorians often displayed their wealth by building nonsensical vanity projects. Often on top of a hill so their silly creations could be better seen. Follies, they were called.
Ashley doesn’t have one of those. He’s got St. James’ Park on top of the hill above Newcastle. It’s more dramatic than any folly. And his vanity is there for all to see.
So McClaren’s terms of employment are strictly in the gift of the big man with the Sports Direct fortune who has reverted to type.
He bullies; he intimidates. He talks openly (once every eight years). And he wants McClaren to push his side from relegation fodder to top-eight finishers or trophy winners.
Good luck with that, Steve. If you pull it off, fair play, you will have something to shout about.
At least the Mirror and Sky Sports News will be around to listen to what you have to say.