Mike Ashley's 3am crisis talks

May 3 2009 by Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun

NERVY Newcastle owner Mike Ashley has spelled out the devastating potential cost of relegation to club employees at a bizarre 3am crisis meeting.

Ashley reacted to United’s 0-0 draw against Portsmouth last Monday night by holding impromptu talks with staff at St James’s Park until well into the early hours.

The goalless draw in a supposedly must-win game left the Magpies rooted in the Premier League bottom three and odds-on favourites for the drop ahead of today’s daunting trip to title-chasing Liverpool.

And it resulted in Ashley delivering a brutal reality check for Newcastle insiders on the possible consequences of life in the Championship.

As the clock ticked long past midnight, the Sunday Sun understands an increasingly animated Ashley told his select but grim-faced audience of the likelihood of widespread redundancies in the event of relegation.

The former billionaire – whose fortune has reportedly more than halved during the last year – has always appeared upbeat during previous matchday visits to Newcastle, despite his plummeting popularity among fans.

But his mood in the small hours of Tuesday morning is said to have left witnesses in no doubt that he is dreading the implications of United dropping out of the top flight for the first time in 16 years.

“Ashley was pulling no punches,” confirmed a source inside St James’s.

“The meeting went long into the early hours and as decidedly gloomy.

“He laid it on the line that there would be huge cuts in the event of relegation and that jobs would have to go.”