George Caulkin visar vägen
I sviterna av gårdagens meddelande från klubben - som många fortfarande kämpar febrilt med att tyda - har The Times nordostkorrespondent George Caulkin tagit sig tid att formulera meddelandet som borde ha släppts. Make of it what you want, men det låter lite vettigare på det här sättet.
The statement Newcastle should have released
George Caulkin
In a parallel universe, a parallel Newcastle United released a parallel statement on their parallel official website yesterday evening. This is how it read...
Dear Newcastle United supporters,
First things first: thank you. Thank you on behalf of everyone connected with the club, from the players, from the managerial staff and from the boardroom, for your continued backing. Thank you for bearing with us over the past few, difficult seasons and thank you for persevering as we attempt to put things right.
Thank you for continuing to buy your season tickets, your replica shirts, your pies and programmes and thank you for trooping through the turnstiles to shout yourselves hoarse week upon week. We know that you have a choice, that you didn’t have to do what you did and we appreciate the sacrifices some of you made at a time when the economy is in turmoil and finances are tight. In a very real and meaningful way, we simply couldn’t have done it without you.
For a club that haven't won a domestic trophy since 1955 to record an average attendance of 43,387 in the Coca-Cola Championship was stunning and humbling. Once again: thank you.
Without wishing to open old sores, we recognise that we’ve made some pretty big mistakes. Hopefully, by acknowledging that and accepting it, the process of healing those wounds can gather pace. What’s been so productive about the campaign just ended is that it felt like we were all in it together; team, coaches, fans. In testing circumstances, the club began to renew itself and long may that continue.
In the spirt of that bond, we feel that we have a duty to be open and frank. Just as this is a different Newcastle from the club that were relegated a year ago, it also a very different environment. Money has coalesced at the top of the Barclays Premier League and it is all too easy for clubs to overreach themselves chasing an illusory pot of gold. There were some great times at St James’ Park under Kevin Keegan and Sir Bobby Robson and we’d love to repeat them, but we all have to accept that, for the foreseeable future anyway, things have changed.
We’re not trying to apportion blame here - and, in any case, we would deserve a slice of it - but, for whatever reason, the club got into a situation where they were paying exorbitant transfer fees, wages and agent fees, often at the expense of team-building. That can’t and won’t happen again. Successful clubs build and grow and we want to protect the team spirit that has been so evident in the Championship. We want to protect the football club as a whole.
It is our judgement - and that of Chris Hughton, our manager - that we have the basis of a squad that can compete in the Premier League next season. If you look at clubs like Wigan Athletic, Bolton Wanderers and, more recently, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Birmingham City, you can see that it’s possible to stabilise following promotion and that’s the route that Newcastle are going down. We’ll be relying on loans, free transfers and a bit of imagination. We’re not saying it’ll be easy and we’re taking nothing for granted, least of all you.
Put simply, the pot is empty. In our last season in the Premier League, we made a loss of £37.7m and we’re due to record another loss of £32.5m this season. That’s just not sustainable. Our overdraft - all clubs have them - stands at £20m and it’s already been allocated. Yes, our income from television money will shoot back up again, but the owner has already invested around £300m of his own money into Newcastle and, as far as he’s concerned, that’s enough. As our last accounts stated, there is an outstanding loan of £111m from Mike Ashley that is “repayable on demand,” and, ideally, he’d like some of it back.
That’s reasonable, isn’t it? He’s kept things ticking over this season and we’ve slashed costs, but it’s a matter of record that Mike has twice attempted to sell the club and he just isn’t willing to leave himself further out of pocket. You may not want to hear that, but we hope you appreciate the honesty. To borrow an old phrase, we are where we are.
In the meantime, we want to build a new Newcastle, if you will. We want this to be a Newcastle you can be proud of. A big part of that, as always, will be determined by what happens on the pitch and all players will be reminded of their responsibilities to you, but it also means focusing resources on our Academy structure.
For far too long, this region has allowed its better players to leave and we have to put a stop to that drain of talent. We tip our hats to the work done by our neighbours Middlesbrough and Sunderland in this regard and we want to do the same. And we mean it this time. We’re going to let the experts get on with the job of building scouting networks and providing opportunities and, with a bit of luck, in a few years’ time, you’ll be cheering on a team peppered with skilful Geordies. How good would that be?
We should also say a few words about the media and our relationship with them. It hasn’t always been easy. We happen to think that this club and their supporters has not always been well served by newspapers, television and radio and that we’re sometimes subjected to crude stereotyping, but we also accept that because of decisions taken by this regime and its predecessors, we’ve made ourselves easy targets. In retrospect, there was probably an opportunity to reshape the debate when Mr Ashley bought the club, but he was never very comfortable about assuming a public role and that moment has sadly dissipated.
We have to hold our hands up, too. When we have spoken out, we haven’t consistently managed to get our message across in the way we wanted to, so we’ve taken the decision to let our football and our football people do the talking for us. If you see anything in the papers from now on where Newcastle “sources” or “insiders” are quoted, rest assured that it hasn’t come from us. We don’t want to get in the way of Chris’s work because he’s got a tough enough job without any unnecessary interference from us.
Hope this clears things up.
Thanks again and Howay the Lads,
Newcastle United
