Moat bids £80m, which is really £60m cash. Fans try to bash Ash.
Posted on October 25th, 2009 | 124 Comments |
Apparently Barry Moat tabled an £80m bid for Newcastle United on Friday and Mike Ashley had to be saved from angry fans by stewards during the away match to Scunny.
Divven get too excited though – it’s News of the World time again.
First, Barry Moat’s bid. Sport of the World has apparently ‘learned’ that Barry Moat put in an £80m bid for Newcastle on Friday after being given the go-ahead by his financial backers.
It seems this bid consists of £60m down plus a finance package to appease Barclays Bank which will see Moat inject another £20m into the club immediately.
I’m a bit confused by the newspaper’s claims here because surely that’s a £60m bid as far as Mike Ashley is concerned isn’t it? Which of course he’ll most probably refuse. Anyway, Moat was supposed to have been promised a decision on Friday but it seems Ashley has since asked for a few more days to consider Moat’s offer.
The NotW also claims that Ashley was subjected to threats by furious fans during Tuesday’s trip to Scunthorpe and had to be ‘rescued’ from said fans by stewards. It seems some Toon fans – being somewhat uppity about Ashley’s claims that he puts more money into the club than all the fans together and can therefore do what he likes – took Ashley to task during the game at Glanford Park. Then Ashley wound those fans up a bit more by claiming that Keegan and Shearer were demanding a small fortune to manage the side before stewards stepped in to ‘rescue’ Ashley.
The NotW doesn’t go into much detail about what the stewards actually ‘rescued’ Ashley from or whether the fans really did try to bash Ashley, but I can’t imagine stewards would step in to ‘rescue’ him from mere insults, of which Ashley has accumulated a decent collection over the last few years.
The newspaper found a ‘senior source’ from somewhere who said: “It is time for Mike to realise this is his way out. Stewards saved him at Scunthorpe in midweek. They had to fight off supporters from getting at him.”
I’m no pacifist and I’m certainly not one to say ‘violence doesn’t solve anything’ when clearly it’s solved loads of things in the past, but if the NotW’s story is true (big ‘if’ as usual) then that sort of behaviour really doesn’t help the fans’ image at all. It just plays into the hands of rags like the News of the World who can use it to paint an unsavoury picture of Toon fans.
Anyway, the NotW’s article then goes on to try and gee up Toon fans a bit more by reminding them that the club is still paying Dennis Wise £80,000/month and will have to do so until March.
Never a dull moment with the Toon.
it,s supposed to be crap,a lad on the footymad said he was at the scunny game,and ashley wasn,t even there.