Show support for your supporters!

Mar 14 2010 by Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun

WHAT good is a charm offensive if it offends your most loyal customers?

Anybody? No, OK then, what about this one: Who do you reckon cares more about Newcastle United . . .

Mike Ashley, as he rebuilds the club from the ruins of relegation, or the supporters who won’t let him forget his part in razing it to the ground?

Your opinion may depend on whether you regard them as supporters or “supporters”.

Managing director Derek Llambias, having come out in support of Ashley all last week, used inverted commas when writing about the fans – a “small and very negative group” who are vocal “especially away from home” – who continue to chant “ugly” and “abusive” anti-Ashley songs.

Inverted commas, for a somewhat topsy-turvy argument.

The argument – or at least the suggestion – seemingly being that those “supporters” are not really supporters at all. Its topsy- turviness being, as alluded to in my opening question, that they are actually not so much fans as fanatics.

Fanatics who, only 24 hours before Llambias took them to task in his programme notes, had arranged a day or two off work to follow Newcastle to Plymouth in April.

That’s having already been forced to book an overnight stay at Bristol this coming Saturday and at Swansea not so long ago.

Those three away trips alone involve well over 2,000 miles of travel, a stupid o’clock departure time for the hard-up or at least a couple of hundred quid’s worth of accommodation for those that can afford it.

A “very negative group”? Surely fans who follow United home and away – despite relegation; despite everything – are among the club’s most positive assets.

And “small”? It sounded like the well-populated visiting enclosure at Watford just over a fortnight ago was of one voice on the subject of Ashley.

For the record, I agree with Llambias that there is no longer much mileage in dismissing Ashley as a “fat, Cockney b*****d”.

Not while the man clearly isn’t going anywhere and continues to put his hand in his pocket, albeit to right his own wrongs.

And not while he is committed to smashing a club culture of cliques, trophy signings and absurd wages. But that the new song of choice at St James’ Park – “I don’t care about Ashley . . . all I care about is NUFC” – is neither ugly nor abusive suggests “supporters” are increasingly content to let things lie.

For now.

And while appealing to fans to unite is one thing, to do so by querying whether the most passionate among them are fans at all is quite another.

I’d also argue that, never mind a sense of benevolence or philanthropy, necessity has been the mother of Newcastle’s reinvention under Ashley this season.

Let’s face it, by allowing United to be bumped into administration, he would be writing off a fortune.

And the more he invests, the tighter his ties to the club.

The only way he stands to get a return is by sticking around.

Whatever happens, and whatever is said about them, you can be sure Newcastle’s “supporters” will do the same.