Newcastle fans have accused owner Mike Ashley of being cheap before, but this year his idiocy is going to get them relegated
Newcastle has been a train wreck this year and their fans certainly deserve better. The most recent news that Mike Ashley is refusing to sanction purchases before sales in the January transfer window is more than any of their fans should be forced to stand.
Poor Steve McClaren. One can only imagine the lies that Mike Ashley fed him when he convinced the former England manager to take over at Newcastle. He was probably promised full support of club ownership and reasonable expectations for Newcastle’s season. He’s clearly not going to receive either.
The club currently sit 19th in the Premier League table and have only earned 10 points from their first 14 matches. As bad as they’ve looked on paper, it’s been worse on the pitch. Their performances have been inconsistent at best and they’ve frequently been dominated both in terms of possession and the score. Outside of Aston Villa they’ve easily been the worst watch in the entire Premier League.
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Logic would tell you that most owners would want to shake things up at their club if they’d been this poor. Not Mike Ashley, he’s dictating that Steve McClaren work miracles with the current squad. It’s sheer madness.
McClaren, in the interest of complete fairness, had no real input on this summer’s incoming transfers. Thus, the significant sums that Ashley shelled out in the summer shouldn’t be applied to his record. 56 million pounds is a lot of money, but at this point it seems that it was mostly wasted at Newcastle.
The point is that money is a complete sunk cost for the club now. Ashley can regret the investments that he made over the summer, but he needs to put that aside immediately. If he continues to blame McClaren for those erroneous purchases it will lead to complete disaster for his club.
Newcastle as they are currently constructed don’t have a ton of hope. There is some hope in the club’s young attack led by Ayoze Perez and Georginio Wijnaldum, but the team’s defense is a dumpster fire to put it kindly. McClaren realizes this and wants to invest funds to purchase a new spine for the team in January. This is the right tactical and figurative fix for Newcastle. They need help at those spots on the pitch and need the mental fortitude associated with a strong spine to survive the relegation battle.
Sadly for Newcastle fans, it doesn’t look like help is on the way. Mike Ashley will continue to put his manager’s under absurd expectations to finish in the top eight with a squad that may not have the talent to avoid the bottom three. Newcastle could likely survive another year in the Premier League with a few key purchases in January, but Ashley is just too cheap to bail them out.