Credibility of Mike Ashley’s regime hits new low

Oct 3 2009 by Mark Douglas, The Journal

THE credibility of Mike Ashley’s regime at Newcastle United plunged to a new low with the revelation that senior figures at the club deliberately lied about Kevin Keegan’s remit as manager.

While there was plenty in the jaw-dropping 23-page verdict to cause Newcastle embarrassment, the tribunal’s verdict made special mention of the way the club handled the difficult questions about whether Keegan’s role would be affected by Dennis Wise’s appointment.

The tribunal was incredulous about the club making a succession of misleading statements through official club media outlets claiming that Keegan had the final say on the transfers, noting an instance when Wise himself was quoted as saying he would not be bringing in players behind the manager’s back.

The club’s mealy-mouthed argument for the lies made by those in charge was that they didn’t want to undermine their manager – and that the statements were part of a “press relations exercise” that were necessary to counter claims made by Keegan.

The tribunal found that statement “profoundly unsatisfactory”, stated that the club had never talked to Keegan about the interviews and with admirable understatement asserted that this approach was merely storing up problems for the future.

That is only the half of it. Covering Newcastle United since Keegan left has been a depressing exercise in bluff and bluster – from the curious outbursts of Joe Kinnear that he routinely contradicted a few hours later to this summer’s flurry of claims from Derek Llambias over a takeover yet to materialise.

Statements on the club website are rarely attributed to anyone, and decent and honest men like Chris Hughton are left to answer the searching questions that have stacked up about the club’s future.

Distrust and suspicion has been a depressingly common theme at St James’s Park ever since Ashley took over.

The sports mogul’s mistrust of the media has always been put down to a fear of being misquoted, or seeing his words manipulated to make him look bad.

It would be easier to have some sympathy with the reclusive United chairman if his henchmen hadn’t done precisely that over the contentious issue of whether Keegan had the final say of transfers.

Using a club website that trumpets its role as an official and trustworthy source of information to mislead supporters says just about everything about the contempt in which the paying public and the media are held by this regime.

It also raises profound questions for the future too. Can we ever really trust anything coming from the club while Ashley and his associates remain in charge? Indeed is the club really for sale at all?

The depressing truth is that as long as Newcastle United remains under the control of Ashley, no-one will come out and answer those questions. And even if they did, we would have to take whatever they said with a huge dose of salt.