Hands up, I fancy a bit of schadenfreude today. Always first to criticise Bristol City fans who obsess over Rovers and Rovers fans who obsess over City and seem to take far more enjoyment from seeing their rivals losing rather than their own team winning, I will take great pleasure if one team loses today. That team is Newcastle United.
Yes, that “massive club” in the north east who last won the league in 1927 but won the FA Cup as recently as 1955. Okay – they did win the prestigious Inter Toto Cup in 2006, but usually the Geordie cupboard is bare and deservedly so.
I tire of reading that Magpie fans are some of the greatest in the land. Really? Just because 50,000 turn up every fortnight to watch a team of overseas journeymen at a club whose stated ambition is to finish in the top ten at best, are they really the most knowledgeable supporters? Easily satisfied, I’d say.
There are any number of reasons I can’t stand Newcastle United and high on my list is Mike Ashley. I don’t doubt for a moment that the only reason Ashley owns Newcastle is to raise the profile of his sports tat clothing business Sports Direct, a terrible company whose low paid minimum wage staff are almost all on zero hours contracts. But added to that, the main shirt sponsor is none other than high interest pay day loan behemoth Wonga.
Wanting Newcastle United to do badly does not necessarily mean that I want their opponents to do any better. West Ham, owned partly by Tory porn merchant David Sullivan and soon to leave their historical home to move into the Olympic Stadium, are not my vision of how a club should be owned either. And should I really care too much that Hull City, whose owner wants to change the very name of the club, should stay up if they beat Manchester United with the odious Glazers who effectively bought the club with its own money? Football is becoming a sport where I now work out who I dislike when thinking about who I want to win.
Newcastle, for all the above reasons (and for many more, often obscure and bizarre ones), are the ones I’d least like to see succeed. The supporters embraced Ashley when he arrived, bearing false gifts and promises, so it’s partly their fault what’s happened.
My ideal world where fans actually have a meaningful stake holding in their club is nowhere to been seen at almost any level of the game, apart from rare examples such as AFC Wimbledon and Exeter City and if anything it’s getting worse.
Football sold its soul for a few pieces of silver many years ago and now we can take it or leave it. The latter is becoming a more sensible option.
