I think it is only right and proper that everyone at true faith tips a Pork Pie hat in the 
direction of locally based journalists, Simon Bird of The Mirror and George Caulkin of The Times who had the enterprising idea of buying shares in Sports Direct, which of course entitled both to go along to the company’s AGM and pose some well-crafted questions to none other than Mike Ashley himself.
Football journalists get a lot of criticism but Simon and George have done us a service with this.
Please see link here for full details of how it all went down.
What we have here however, is two very important admissions.
Firstly, the free advertising to Sports Direct, provided by Newcastle United are to quote 
Mike Ashley himself: “are very beneficial to Sports Direct and its shareholders”
Do I need to remind you that Sports Direct pays Newcastle United the grand sum total of nothing for that advertising, despite its value?
That is revenue lost to Newcastle United at a time when the manager uses his programme notes to lecture supporters about the club needing to live within its means.
Secondly, we have discovered that the on-line merchandising at Newcastle United has a turnover value to Sports Direct of £3.8m.
I would suspect that this arrangement works for the advantage of Sports Direct rather than Newcastle United and will hold that view until evidence is supplied to the contrary.
In the circumstances, I would suggest anyone buying Newcastle United merchandise should know that no longer represents an act of supporting our club. It has been reduced to a mere revenue stream for Mike Ashley’s’s business, in my opinion.
Just be aware of the doubt there is about how this works for Newcastle United. Be aware at how revenue that should be going into Newcastle United is possibly being redirected for the benefit of Mike Ashley’s business interests.
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Fair play to Simon Bird (The Mirror) who presented a rather excellent TV programme on BBC detailing the infamous story of Frank Brennan (aka the Rock of Gibraltar), bulwark centre-half and beloved by Mags in the 50s, who was forced out of United by Stan Seymour Snr (aka Mr Newcastle United) over a dispute concerning sports shops (any one detecting a theme with us and sports shops by the way?).
If you want to watch the show, just click here.
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The good people at Wallsend Boys Club sent us there e-newsletter this week – its here if you want to have a look at it.
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Note from Liz Luff at the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation:
The Sir Bobby Robson Foundation has not been contacted by the creator of this website (sackpardew.com) and is not affiliated with it. While we always appreciate any offer to raise funds to support our work, we feel it would be inappropriate to endorse a campaign to remove a Newcastle United manager.
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And finally, Alan Pardew has stated quite clearly, he is happy with his squad and the spirit is great and all the rest of it. We can all look forward to a good win at Southampton then. No moaning afterwards and blaming anything else. If we lose, it isn’t the players’ fault. We’ll see how that rolls.
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As a mate put it yesterday, some good news ! if we all hang in there we may afterall get that trip to Wembley we all crave. To see us play Tottenham !!
We’ve all heard them, people coming onto the websites to defend Ashley and say ‘the books prove he’s not taking any money out’. Well, its the money that’s being diverted before it even reaches the books that’s the issue! £3.5m per annum here, £500k paid to SD last year for services, the value of the free advertising – think TF estimated that at £8-10m?
£12 – 14m a year right there, what a difference that would potentially make…
Yeah he
‘s our saviour alright.
£8m – £10m, you’re kidding aren’t you that advertising is “very beneficial” to Sports Direct.
Sports Direct is making sales of £2.8 billion and profit of 10% i.e. £240 odd million.
You’d expect a company with sales like that have a marketing budget of £500 million.
It’s growing very very rapidly globally, thanks in no small part the “very beneficial” free advertising it gets that has a global reach, it must be 10 times your estimate!
Don’t misunderstand me, I despise Ashley, I’m in no way trying to downplay the extent of his milking of NUFC. I was reiterating a figure I’d seen in TF, I’m sure it was a marketing guy who had done an article, can’t remember the details tbh. Albeit it was a while ago, and may be worth more now. I’m not an expert myself.
I do think your estimate of £80-£100m per annum at least as the value of that advertising sounds excessive. Again, not trying to downplay it at all, but we need to be realistic., Overestimating or exaggeration won’t help the credibility of those of us who are desperate to see the back of Ashley and his muppets.
think £8 – 10m was more the figure for advertising.
Our Messiah (Mike Ashley) is in fact a very naughty boy and the ill will being generated isn’t going to improve over the next 5 games if results go as expected by anyone with football knowledge.
Staying up this year will be a pleasant surprise.