Newcastle fans must not let Mike Ashley off the hook with the sound of silence

By Simon Bird

Published 12:16 02/11/09

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Should Mike Ashley be selling the name of St James’ Park to the highest bidder? No, say 89 per cent of Geordie fans.

Are you happy that Ashley has taken the club off the market? No, say 84 per cent.

Should Chris Hughton be Newcastle United manager? No, say 65 per cent of Geordie fans.

Could any other business survive given such negative feedback from its (and I hate to use this word about football fans) customers?

The survey of 1,000 supporters was conducted at the end of last week by the The Journal newspaper and has revealed the simmering anger and discontent felt across Tyneside after another week of controversial decision-making by the people in charge at St James’ Park.

It’s quite right that fans should be angry, especially at having the St James’ Park name sold off. A club’s history should be beyond price and commercialism.

But surely we have seen all this rage before?

Remember the weekend after Kevin Keegan was sacked?

There was an invigorating protest outside St James’ Park before the Hull game. The place throbbed. Newcastle fans found their voice, after years of keeping quiet for fear of being labelled disloyal, and started to have their say.

And then what happened?

Apart from the hard working, tenacious band who formed the new Newcastle United Supporters Trust to keep up the pressure, it all went quiet.

Fans paid their gate money and once again started to buy replica shirts, and snaffle the pies and pints inside St James’.

Ashley got away with appointing Joe Kinnear. Got away with ditching Alan Shearer despite saying appointing him was "110 per cent" the best decision he’d made. Got away with a damning verdict from a Premier League Tribunal over his treatment of Kevin Keegan.

Even got away with relegation, as 44,000 kept turning up to watch in the Championship.

Mike Ashley has got away with every bad decision he’s made at Newcastle. So no wonder he thinks he can change St James’ Park’s name to raise a couple of million a season.

The question is: will Newcastle fans stir themselves enough to stop their stadium name being changed?

A brilliant, spine-tingling polemic has been published by the True Faith fanzine editor Michael Martin today, that serves as a call to arms. A plea for the apathy to stop, and the action to start. At the very least, for the supporters voice to be heard again. Loudly.

He asks: “How long will this anger last? Will it be the usual 9-day wonder? Will you preen over a pint with your mates and show your disgust at how your club is being run into the dust and then file obediently into SJP and sit on your hands for a couple of hours?

“Will you remain silent in your pew when the only people giving it the "Get Out Of Our Club" are the admirable lads and lasses in the Leazes End Level 7 who you shamefully ignore match after match?

“Will you write to a fanzine and demand they fight the fight you don’t have the bottle for?

“If you love Newcastle United as much as you say you do, as much as you tell yourself you do, then I’m sorry but you just can’t put this on others to fight the good fight on your behalf. You’ll have to do it yourself. Christ, you might have to leave the house a bit earlier, you might have to miss that trip to the boozer and join in the protests at SJP? Its not exactly the D-Day Landings is it?

“Or is all that for someone else to do. Not you. You are above all of that. Or you just can’t be arsed. Only you can do something about your club being taken apart by this spiv. Fight your own fight.”

Perhaps Ashley’s regime has battered most fans into submission. When the chants of “get out of our club" strike up, he simply chuckles in the directors' box.

After all, the evidence that anyone actually listens to what fans want in the corridors of power at St James’ Park is non-existent, so why bother?

Perhaps Newcastle fans feel so disenfranchised and ignored by the hierarchy that the majority will not demonstrate this Saturday before the home game against Peterborough.

Perhaps they just want to turn up for 90 minutes, watch a game and file off home not bothering that every misguided decision made at boardroom level is chipping away at the club’s dignity.

I sincerely hope not.

I hope Newcastle fans start to make their collective voice heard.

And I hope that one day Mike Ashley and Derek Llambias might do the right thing and listen.

Follow Simon Bird on Twitter.

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