The whole thing's astonishing. You have leading media figures lambasting the club, local journo's like John Gibson absolutely tearing into them, yet there's just silence and inactivity. Ashley's nowhere to be seen, Charnley less so, and the whole thing's laughable. Football board now, which has replicated the sequence of pi$$-takes and worst appointments since God chose Lucifer as one of his top angels. History repeats so even if Schteve goes (which he won't), he'll just be replaced by someone just as bad, just as ill-conceived. We know this - why oh why do we try and kid ourselves that something else will happen! I mean, intelligent people have mentioned Rafa Benitez. Seriously. He of Liverpool, Inter, Chelsea and Madrid. Our last sequence of managers has been Keegan, Kinnear, Shearer, Hughton, Pardew, Carver, McClaren. Just digest that for a minute.
Ashley has never understood football - the affect on community, on people's lives almost. He just sees a company with less than £100m turnover. The man gave his daughters boyfriend the reigns on property development, he relies on Keith Bishop (football experience zero) to tell him what's happening. You could write a book on the epic failure of Mike Ashley at NUFC. I've no doubt it's not complicated and I also don't think Ashley wants either relegation or a catastrophic failure of a club. If he could get Champions League football, he'd take it, but in his teeny tiny world and circle of trust he has nobody willing to tell him the truth and nobody worth trusting to do a job. Shearer, Ginola, Lee, they've all said, we've all said it - this club is rotten to its very foundation and needs to be completely ripped up. "Football Board" - demolished instantly, let's pretend it never happened. Charnley - sacked. Carr - sacked. Moncur - pensioned off. McClaren - sacked, re-hired then sacked again just to make it clear. Beardsley - sacked. Backroom - sacked. Restructure of club and policy from top to bottom starting with the appointment of a leading and experienced CEO - Nicola Cortese - coupled with someone to oversee the clubs image, community, development and so on - Kevin Keegan, Sporting Director. Their role is to identify a MANAGER to take over the first team primarily, and to work together on building out the coaching/scouting set up. Cortese's role is to also appoint a board to include the never-replaced Finance Director (John Irving) and a Commercial Director, who in turn have the relevant people and staffing around them to ensure the profitability of the football club in line with the CEO's top-level strategy. I'll end with a quote from Cortese when at Southampton in the early years (they were League One remember):
"Clubs spend money they do not have; they spend next year’s income. They spend money that will not arrive for two years and say, "But we'll have some success and bring in more cash to cover the shortfall". It cannot be sustained. In good times you need to be saving money for the bad times. If we reach the Premier League, I would like to be in a position where we did not need parachute payments. In good years you should put money away for the bad years"