The other day I heard that after 119 years my favourite football team, Newcastle United, are to sell the naming rights to St. James’ Park (below. To ‘help’ with this it’s temporarily going to be called the Sports Direct Arena…

I can’t say I was overly keen on the idea. It’s always been St. James’ Park and really it always will be whatever else it’s branded as. I can understand the need to bring in money to help develop the team so we can compete at the highest level with the likes of Manchester City, Manchester United and QPR (the latter was included just to keep my guide Luke Watson happy as clearly QPR are unlikely to ever reach such hights…). Mike Ashley is, begrudingly, entitled to do what he likes, after all he is the owner, but I can’t imagine it will endear him to the fans. He hasn’t exactly done much to help on this front since he bought the club if truth be told. He sacked Chris Hughton when he seemed to be doing well,  sold our No. 9 Andy Carroll to Liverpool for £35million promising to spend it all on players only to then let others go too and now this.  

OK, a few players have come in and done really well with the team currently in 3rd place in the Premier League (where are QPR Luke?!), which is great. Howver the owner seems be just trying to get some free advertising for his own business and maybe thinks he can get away with anything since the team is performing well at the moment. Alternatively he might just turn us (yes, Jill, like most NUFC fans we are part of the team!) into world beaters, but I doubt it. Who knows what he has planned??

If you want to read a bit more about this have a look at this article

Rant over!

Iain