Hit rock bottom, breaking new ground through it

The latest developments at Newcastle United are another hammer blow to the support. Chris Hughton is a decent man and a good coach, but, should he guide the club back to the Premiership, he has a very poor record against top-flight teams (his only victory being over the team that finished last season bottom of the Premier League heap). However, he is the best manager that will work under the regime of Mike Ashley, who is by turns vindictive, mendacious and incompetent. When a team suffers a defeat there is always potential redemption with a good result in the next game; when a manager is useless, there is always hope that one day they will be replaced; but there is no hope when the owner is like Ashley and no-one can afford and/or wants to buy the club. The latest development (which is anything but ‘developing’ unless in the sense of a poor and struggling country) is to rename the stadium St James Park ‘to maximise revenue’ (if that was true, there are dozens of actions that Ashley could have not done to do so). This may be understandable in the case of a newly built ground where history has yet to take hold such as the Emirates for Arsenal, the JJB (now DW) for Wigan Athletic or, cringingly, the Walkers Stadium for Leicester City (among others), but not at a place with more than a hundred years of past memories. It’s like renaming St Stephen’s Tower (housing Big Ben) the Swatch Tower to ease the taxpayer burden of maintaining the Houses of Parliament. But then Ashley’s tenure has not just been car-crash ownership, it’s a multi-car pile-up on a motorway, the victims being the fans (injured) and the club’s Premier League status (clinically dead). It shows that it takes a heck of a lot to relegate an established top-flight club. And things are not going to change for the better anytime soon.