BOTH were surprisingly emphatic, but on the face of it the two “statements” which came out of Newcastle United’s Darsley Park training complex first thing yesterday morning sounded contradictory.
Cheick Tioté announced he wanted “to play in the top five”, yet agreed to stay with the Magpies until the cusp of his 31st birthday. Time will tell if he is an optimist or a realist.
It might not be the best analogy to draw on such a good news day for Newcastle, but in one respect footballers’ contracts are like prison sentences – they seldom match the time served. For a club who recently lost their prize asset three months into a five-and-a-half-year contract to then hand its next-best player six-and-a-half years seems naïvely romantic. It is not something a hard-nosed businessman like Mike Ashley is often accused of, and nor should he be today.
Tioté’s new contract is less a financial arrangement between club and midfielder, more a series of statements of intent.
The first is surely a personal one: after some time wavering, owner Ashley is here for keeps.
With no official word for such a long time, the sneaking suspicion was that last season Ashley merely put selling United on the back burner, to be resurrected once he felt he could get a decent return on his investment. But his recent actions have not been those of a here-today-gone-tomorrow fly-by-night.
Tioté is one in a lengthy line to be tied down for the long term. The ink had barely dried before assistant manager John Carver committed until 2016. If Ashley does have an exit strategy, perhaps that is when he plans to get out.
This season the services of Steven Taylor, Nile Ranger, Mike Williamson and manager Alan Pardew have been secured until then, as were Andy Carroll’s until he left for £35m in January.
“I think with Mike there was a period when perhaps he wanted to sell the club, but he’s out of the other side of that,” Pardew theorised. “He wants to build something here but in such a way.
“He wants to build it in a financial structure where it’s not costing him £10m, £15m a year.
“He wants it to try to run itself and with the fan-base we’ve got there’s no reason that can’t happen if the finances are correctly managed. Between myself, Mike and Derek (Llambias, Newcastle’s managing director) we’re trying to do that and build the team.”
