As a group, we are deeply concerned with current events at NUFC. There are reports that the Manager is having his summer budget withheld as he has not committed to sign a contract extension.

The Fans Forum fully supports Rafael Benitez in his right not to sign a new deal until he’s seen sufficient evidence to support his and the Fans’ ambition.

We also feel that the club’s board need to support him now more than ever to show him that they are ambitious and are willing to be a stable top ten club pushing for European qualification and for domestic Cup success.

We’ve seen Season Ticket prices rise significantly, England’s most expensive replica shirts and little evident appetite to attempt to compete in the transfer market whilst clubs around and below us significantly invest.

​We sincerely hope the Manager gets the assurances he seeks and signs a long-term deal.

Most parents with children at university have experienced it. They drop off their child for Freshers Week happy in the knowledge that the accommodation that the University provide within their halls is of the highest quality. The properties are modern, clean, fresh; the bathrooms and kitchen facilities well proportioned and finished to a high quality. The mixed areas are kitted out with plasma screens, expresso machines, computer gaming bays, free internet, wifi and concierge and security service that gives parents a feeling of caring reassurance and just as importantly, safety.

The first year passes like a dream and as the summer break closes in, you leave it to your child to arrange their accommodation for the next year. Most want the freedom of living together with their friends; Matt from Poole, Julia from Derby, Isaac from Chelmsford and Karen from Kingston on Thames whose father is a merchant banker and mother is big in publishing. You met them all when you first dropped your own 18 year old off. They all looked clean cut, polite, well mannered and the parents were similar although a little nervous and uncertain; very much like yourself. You’re confident that wherever they choose to live together will be of a high standard!

Summer comes and goes; you’ve barely seen your now more confident and assured son or daughter. They haven’t really needed you as they’ve slept through most of the summer mornings and been out most summer nights. They’ve surfaced occasionally for food and to ask to borrow a tenner that turns into a twenty when you have nothing smaller. You never see it again btw.

Next thing you know they’re packing up heading down the A1 in a car stacked with sports bags, pillows and Asda bags full of provisions that mother feels are essential if their little darling is to see through the first few weeks before student finance sort out their act!

“It’s just down there dad, past the second hand furniture shop, the taxi office and the all night off licence; it’s next to the one with the security gate attached to the external frame of the front door”

Unlike the neighbours’, the property looks ok from the outside but doesn’t stand up to inspection once you get inside. It’s shabby. Its lick of paint has been put on slapdash; by a jobbing builder, whose main talent is roofing or laying pavements not painting and decorating.

It is advertised as fully furnished yet the fixtures and fittings are definitely 1980’s, the wiring suspect, the carpets threadbare, the bathroom and kitchen require modernizing and while modern features from the 1990’s such as a microwave and washer drier are installed, they are definitely not of the most modern range that tenants have become accustomed to as standard.

There are no telephony or internet connection facilities. There is however a sticker on the grubby fridge door advertising a local store ran by a friend of the landlord, whose nephew can arrange internet connectivity by hanging off the back of the neighbours hi-speed connection via a series of cables, copper wire and a couple of cocktail sticks stuck in the back of special black box that he gets from a contact in Ghuangdhu.

What is obvious is that the absentee landlord is doing the bare minimum to justify the rent he is charging. He doesn’t live in the house therefore he has no real interest in anyone’s opinion of its condition. He knows that with demand outstripping supply he will eventually find someone who will sign up to his terms and conditions of tenure.

But you learn that all is not lost. The Absentee Landlord has been in discussion with a Housing Association with a track record in regional development and presented him with a plan that will not only completely refurbish his property buy also help regenerate the whole area as most of the other property owners have agreed that if the absentee landlord commits to the remedial work necessary to bring his property up to a modern functioning standard, they too will reciprocate; clearing their gardens of waste, updating the general wellbeing of the are and working with the local authority to bring life to this once vibrant part of the city. All it will take will be for the Absentee Landlord to invest in his own property and trust the Housing Association that they can bring the property up to the standard expected; supported by the Regional Development Agency.

As you leave your son or daughter with four weeks of tinned food, a limitless supply of pot noodles and £20 credit on their phone your abiding thought is will the absentee landlord take up the Housing Associations offer and by the time you return to collect their belongings at the end year two you can see the changes that have been made have really made a difference. And most importantly, your son or daughter wants to stay and sign up in the property for the duration of year three.

Of course, there is nothing to stop an Absentee Landlord selling his property to someone who wants to work with the Housing Association; not only putting the physical house back in order but also adding new modern fixtures and fittings, perhaps building an extension, tidying up the gardens and garage and creating a property that puts the pride back into the area

Any Absentee Landlord wishing to know more about the works of the Housing Association referred to, what is has to offer and how it can bring regeneration to run down properties and areas, please check out the record of its Chief Executive Rafa Benitez @rafabenitezweb

For more on Development Agencies in your area check out @IfRafaGoesWeGo  #IfRafaGoesWeGo

All seater stadiums were introduced following the Taylor report, conducted immediately after the tragedy of Hillsborough some 29 years ago and had more to do with the government’s distain of football fans than the dilapidated stadiums that supporters frequented throughout Britain or any desire to make the experience of watching sporting events safer. If the latter really were the case, then all seater stadiums would be a universal requirement for all major sports in the UK; be it Football, Rugby (league and union), NFL, hockey, or a myriad of other outdoor venue sports. But No; football and only football was targeted.

The introduction of safe standing areas at football grounds in England and Wales is something that football supporters across the country have been advocating for a number of years and this desire has gained universal support.  The development of rail seating as a safe and measured response to supporters desire to choose to stand and watch a game of football is seen as a measured, safe and sensible method of meeting this response while keeping safety as the paramount most important facet of the match day experience. The comments by the sports Minister Tracey Crouch when she stated that the calls for its introduction were coming from a “vocal minority” therefore come somewhat as a surprise. Not only is Crouch wrong, but her assessment that persistent standing at football grounds should be punished, shows how detached this politician is from the real world; the world of football in general and the concept of safe standing in particular.

The majority of football supporters understand the concept of rail seating as a viable and safe method that introduces safe standing to our grounds and the pilot programme at Celtic FC has witnessed nothing to the detriment of its introduction.
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That is why football supporters need to stand together and let Tracey Crouch know how vocal the “vocal minority” really is. Please take the time to sign the petition here.

Click here or more information on Rail Seating and safe standing. 

It’s the middle of January 2018. The transfer window shuts in fifteen days time, Newcastle United have signed precisely zero players and Mike Ashley still owns the Club - despite there being at least one genuine bidder with the means to buy it, and Mr Ashley’s apparent willingness to sell.

So what’s going on?

Here’s what we do know, in mid August Mike Ashley gave an exclusive to his besties at Sky Sports where he admitted he couldn’t (or was unwilling to) back Rafa Benitez in the transfer window and as a result the club was up for sale.

His exact words were,

“I must make it crystal clear that I am not wealthy enough in football now to compete with the likes of Man City etcetera, not just Man City. It's basically a wealthy individual taking on the equivalent of a country. I cannot, and will not. That's why, if someone would like to come along, take this seat and fund Newcastle with a nought on the end with more wealth than me, I will not stand in Newcastle's way.”

In the subsequent months a bidder that fits his own criteria has come to the fore, but he is doing exactly what he said he wouldn’t do - he is standing in Newcastle’s way.

On 1st October 2017, Amanda Staveley appeared at St James’ Park and after a couple of weeks it became apparent that she was interested in leading a bid to buy Newcastle United Football Club. Then (probably in response to rumours) Mike Ashley got his thoughts out in front of us all - again using his favourite media outlet Sky Sports - this is what Keith Downie reported on 16th October:

And yet here we are on 16th January 2018 - a full three months later - and Mike Ashley still hasn’t sold the Club and still hasn’t backed Rafa in the transfer window. If I was a reporter for Sky Sports, I’d be on the phone to Mike Ashley’s people asking for further comment.

His words are there for all to see, and his words do not match his actions. So is he a liar? He’s certainly not acting in good faith or in the best interests of Newcastle United; yet those words - his “PROMISE” - are yet to be acted on. However the people who brought you these “exclusives” seem to be completely disinterested in following up on the story.

Why is that?

​I appreciate that Mike Ashley’s Newcastle United can be a little like Donald Trump’s White House and gobby journalists can be banned for doing their jobs properly - but there is no way on God’s Green Earth that a football club would ban a Sky Sports reporter from their premises. Sky Sports pay all of their wages, it’s the bank that runs football. They are perhaps the only outlet to have the power to push this story - and yet they choose not to. Well shame on them. I know we aren’t talking about the Washington Post here - this isn’t All the President’s Men, but surely your own sense of professionalism would be pleading with you to dig deeper? Instead it seems like it’s all just a laugh, and as long as the joke is on us deluded Geordies then it doesn’t really matter.

​I spent many years working in sales - and as my old boss used to say “something is only worth what someone is willing to pay” - considering there are no other bids and there haven’t been any other bids since 2009 then perhaps Newcastle United is only worth what PCP Capital Partners are willing to pay. That the value has not doubled or tripled during Mr Ashley’s decade of ownership is nobody’s fault but his own. 

At the end of the day all we know is that if Mr Ashley does not sell and/ or back Rafa in the next fortnight the chances that Newcastle United will get relegated for a third time under his ownership will be frighteningly high. And if the worst does come to pass in May, then the price someone is willing to pay for the club will be significantly lower than it is now. All he needs to do is look at Them Down The Road to see how disastrous that could be.

PCP Capital Partners are still here; they haven't gone away. Their interest is real and their offer of £250m remains on the table. Rafa Benitez is working miracles trying to keep the show on the road despite Mr Ashley's unwillingness to back him financially, while he risks his asset in a gamble that all of Tyneside considers to be an act of unforgivable vindictiveness. It makes no sense to risk diminishing your asset when a well reasoned offer sits waiting to be accepted.

Yet Ashley seems hell bent on doing just that.

Perhaps Sky Sports could ask Mike, Why?