Have been silent after his parted company with Sam Allardyce, Mike Ashley finally allowed an interview with News of The World on Sunday and said his decision in the week because he could not envisage much success under his former manager.
“When my chairman told me it was time for a change, I knew it had to happen,” Ashley said, “I bought this club to make it a success and the harsh truth is there wasn’t much prospect of that. I bought this club to have some fun and I wasn’t having much fun at all.”
Ashley said his first thought upon taking over Newcastle in June was based on his gut instinct to bring in my own team to run it straight away, including a new manager.
“But for once in my life I ignored my intuition and, looking back, that was a mistake.” He added more on his interview, “I want a team that is going to be admired up and down the country because of our brilliant, attacking football. Like they did when Kevin Keegan was in charge here.”
Ashley is keen for Newcastle to turn back to their mid-1990s when United played in a go-for-goals exciting football that fears most of the other Premiership defenders. To date he has invested around 250 million pounds including the clearance of club’s debts.
Mike also said he wants to have some fun and wasn’t having much of it recently. So he did what he think should have done in the first place and decided it was time to run the club the way he wanted.
“Now is the time to put away my Newcastle shirt. I’m not saying I will never go back on the terraces but now I have to be in the boardroom. I have to be hands on.”
Ashley was considering as desperately disappointed with the return of his massive investment. Newcastle United’s poor performances, disappointed results and off-field problems including the Joey Barton’s last incident are shocking rewards and was not Ashley’s vision when he decided to buy the sleeping giants of English football.
On his last words of the interview with NoTW, Mike said he wants to be here and to win trophies.
“That’s it – period – to get trophies in the cabinet and have a ball doing it. I can’t see anything wrong with that at all. Buying a football club is something I’ve always wanted to do so it’s living a dream.” He said, “I always said I bought this club to become part of its passion.”
“I’d like to think I’ve done that. Now I want to channel that passion into bringing success and I just can’t wait until it happens.”
Mike Ashley now has finished with his business work in Hong Kong and will jetted back home immediately and rush in to his office at St. James’ and start working on with Chris Mort to make his final decision of who will be the next United manager.
I believe not very long now, we will have another official announcement and it’s interesting to see who that “lucky” manager is.
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