How to lose friends and alienate people...

...the Mike Ashley way

“Perhaps (though) the biggest accomplishment this season (a broken jaw aside) is the fact that for once Newcastle United have not been in the press every day as a crisis club, a club making barmy decisions, a club employing Dennis Wise to be a director of football. Indeed if ever there has been an advert for attempting to run a football club in a sensible manner and trying to achieve success that way, then this has been it and surely that’s something worth shouting about.”

I apologise for the self indulgence and quoting myself, but that was what I wrote back in April just after Newcastle United had been promoted back to the Premier League at the first time of asking as champions. 2010 looked set to be a year when the Tyneside club, for once, could be praised for operating sensibly, going about their business quietly, and cutting costs dramatically and yet still moving forward. As the end of the year approaches, all that has been royally flushed down the toilet following the sacking of manager Chris Hughton.

This is a man who had united a disparate dressing room, forged a resolute team spirit, rebuilt relations between fan base and club, taken the team away from crazy headlines, all of a very small budget, and this, this, a gutless, spineless dismissal. Happy Christmas Chris Hughton, happy Christmas Newcastle fans, and, in general, happy Christmas all football fans from vain, greedy, short sighted football club owners everywhere.

It’s hard to know where to start, other that repeating over and over again “what more could the man have done?” Before the start of the 2009/10 season, there was much talk of Newcastle ‘doing a Leeds’ and going straight through the division and out the other side. Hughton’s first task was to get the players at the club to seemingly care about playing again. His second was to bring the club back at the first time of asking in dominant style, His third was a continuation of the success; achieving some memorable results and performances back in the top flight. What’s more all of this was done against a backdrop of virtually no investment in the squad whatsoever.

Newcastle’s transfer dealings in the summer were minimal. Players such as Sol Campbell and Dan Gosling were recruited on frees, with Hatem Ben Arfa (since crocked by another appalling piece of thuggery from Nigel De Jong) joining on loan. The only significant outlay was on the impressive Ivorian midfielder Cheick Tiote, who after a number of top draw performances will probably be sold on at a large profit.

So, and more and more people have been asking themselves this – why was he so unceremoniously dumped? Its clear Hughton was never the big name that the owner Mike Ashley wanted, but then he also seemed to fit the bill in his desire to do everything on the cheap. Ashley wants the club to be self sufficient and live within its means. That is an admirable target, yet its unclear how getting rid of a manager helping you along the way to achieving this helps in any way.

The decision is a bone headed one, but then that’s unsurprising given Ashley’s track record and that of football club owners in general. As Barney Ronay wrote in the Guardian in the immediate aftermath;

"It seems an ignominious thing, not just because Hughton's Newcastle were an engaging team playing to their potential; not just because he is a nice man curating a difficult group of players with an engagingly light touch; but because it provides a reminder of the enduring block-headedness of a certain species of Premier League chairman.”

I struggle to understand the motives behind the sacking. Sure, results in recent weeks had taken a turn for the worse and there return to the top flight has included a number of rather limp performances (particularly at home) but given the squad and playing staff at the managers disposal, the club’s position in the table was surely something of a strong achievement. Likewise, if the edict from on high was that the manager either wasn’t high profile enough or had taken the club as far as he could, well at least they’re reasons...but then, if those were the reasons, then please explain to me how ‘project Alan Pardew’ makes any sense.

Perhaps though, the most depressing aspect of the whole baffling and depressing affair is that this is bound to bring up all the lazy stereotyping from the media and from ignorant fans about how Newcastle supporters hounded out Hughton with their delusions of grandeur and over inflated sense of self entitlement. None of that’s true, but then it hasn’t stopped the media in the past. No, the reason a thoroughly decent man doing a thoroughly decent job has been sacked is because of the inexplicable actions of one thoroughly pig headed man.