A sliver of sanity smuggled into St James

But only a sliver.  Joe Kinnear may finally have brought his farcical reign as director of football at Newcastle United to an end, yet the squad remains kyboshed for the rest of the season, Mike Ashley is still the owner and Alan Pardew can't handle more than one game per week.  It used to be a source of pride for me that, while others lost their head (coach), Newcastle United for the first time since Bobby Robson (later Sir Bobby) have actually had some managerial stability.  Swansea City today granting Michael Laudrup his wish and making him redundant allowing him a severance package that he would not have received when he walked away in the summer would have been another manager that Pardew outlasted, but after last Saturday's humiliation and the previous two derbies making a run that's the worst for 90 years, plus winning only one of seven derbies, Pardew's stock is at a low ebb.  So scintillating if scoreless at Norwich, so pitifully pathetic four days later.
True, the top four goalscorers at the club were missing through being sold, suspended or simply not interested in playing through knocks.  The long absence of Fabricio Coloccini, the club captain and defensive lynchpin, has undertones of broad dissatisfaction at being held to his contract instead of being allowed to return to his native Argentina, much like Robin van Persie's interminable injury problems for Manchester United seem to reflect his anger at being at a club that has fallen so far.  Even taking into account the loans (and Loic Remy will leave in the summer, if not convicted of rape beforehand in his much deferred trial), the squad is weaker than when Kinnear arrived and it was already a small squad then.  Newcastle United are the only Premier League club not to make a permanent signing over the last two transfer windows and somehow have struggled up to eighth (though will probably finish ninth come May).  Last August, despite promising to work 24/7 to bring players in, Kinnear took a two-week holiday - try and find another director of football taking such an ill-timed rest.  Kinnear said judge me on transfers but when that window slams shut it was all about results - a coded threat to Pardew.  Well, Kinnear was judged and Pardew kept his job through getting just enough wins to avoid being replaced by Kinnear in the dug-out.
I half suspect Kinnear was brought in to get the best value for Yohan Cabaye - Ashley believing Kinnear's craic about his experience and worldwide contacts.  £19m is a significant increase on the £4.5m paid to bring Cabaye to St James Park (or the Sports Direct Arena as it was then known) but with his performances over the season, a veteran rather than just grizzled negotiator would have wangled £25m out of Paris-St Germain.  I'm sure that didn't go down well with Ashley, the ultimate businessman, who probably finally realised his folly and asked his friend to step aside.
In football, everything Ashley touches turns to fool's gold, but when he lets the professionals get on with it, the club is - surprisingly - run well.  Who would have guessed?  Derek Llambias was informed that he had resigned as director of football over the radio by Kinnear and then resigned properly as managing director when Kinnear vetoed the free - that's right, free - transfer of a defender with Champions League experience on the grounds that he had never heard of him.  Llambias had spent a year cultivating the defender Douglas only to see it go up in smoke on the say-so of a has-been only days after the latter was in post.  Ashley's petulance extended to not replacing Llambias as managing director as a way of saying 'nah, nah, nah, we can do this without you'.  Talk now is of Llambias returning but Ashley would have to eat a gargantuan slice of humble pie and he doesn't do humility.
The thing is, despite being a billionaire and being able to guarantee incoming players even if sales don't occur (like Joe Lewis at Tottenham Hotspur, where Ashley has many friends), Ashley isn't just not investing in the club for whom he has fallen out of love, he's milking it for all its worth.  £11m taken out of the club last year.  With the increased TV deal and shirt sponsorship, £18m is projected to be exacted this year, as Ashley pays down his 'interest-free' loan, a loan whose interest is paid for by the millions of pounds of free advertising for his company Sports Direct (of which he is founder and majority shareholder) on the hoardings around the stadium as well as the ill-judged change of the historic ground's name.  He had put £100m of his fortune to stop the club going bankrupt because he didn't do due diligence when he bought it in 2007.  Sir John Hall proved he was Thatcher's favourite businessman by taking the money and running, otherwise he would have had to stump up the money to rescue his footballing golden goose.  Best let someone else shoulder the responsibility of saving the ailing bird.  Ashley's gaucheness though still contributed to the club's relegation a year later.  Ashley stumped up another £20m to ensure the club returned to the promised land of the Premier League at the first attempt.  Now he wants it back, all of it.  Which is not unreasonable in most businesses but to have withdrawn it at a slower rate would have allowed Newcastle Utd the funding to provide a squad capable of repeated top ten finishes and cup runs, be they domestic or European.
The only consolation is that the more money Ashley takes out, the further his asking price for a buyer falls.  Valuing the club at £100m, come May, the bid price will be £191m.  Five years after that and his debt will be virtually cleared and Ashley's tenuous hold on the moral high ground will have have completely crumbled away, like a rock fall at Beachy Head.  The trouble is Ashley won't care who he sells to, indeed might get a perverse pleasure of screwing the club over one final time, by selling - for the right price - to someone that is worse than he is, say, an asset-stripping private equity firm (it almost happened under the Hall/Shepherd 'stewardship').  How the club has survived the vicissitudes of so many self-serving owners is testament to the bedrock of the fans and the occasional geniuses to have graced the badge, both on and off the pitch, as well the hard work of a phalanx of honest triers.  But the ease that comes is only fleeting.