With only three weeks to go until the football league season begins afresh, time is of the essence for clubs to make their final tweaks and preparations. Relatively speaking the beginning of a new season acts as a clean slate for each and every club, regardless of if they have suffered relegation, promotion or mid-table mediocrity in their previous season.
In that way football, and all sports are an endless cycle of trying to achieve. Of course those teams that win trophies, or individuals that set personal records will be noted down in the sands of time of sporting history. With sport, though there are the peaks and pinnacles the difficulty lies more in trying to match and repeat such feats, rather than getting there in the first place. For those for who have this positive 'problem' the only inevitable worry is that there will be a time when being the best is no longer a certainty. Instead there is the unavoidable decline that comes with competing in professional sports.
Unfortunately for Newcastle United they are yet to reach a winning pinnacle in the last thirty+ years. After their relegation from the Premiership last May and despite the shambles that the club were in, it was expected that Newcastle would promptly confirm Alan Shearer in the manager's post and would then set about in earnest for planning a promotion run in this coming Championship season.
Instead the Geordie faithful have had their patience and loyalty further tested during the summer break. It has been well documented how Newcastle Utd's wage bill had expanded to an alarming size, only matched by some of the shirt-less fans of the club who were often depicted on screen during their last Premiership matches. In fact Michael Owen's departure on a free transfer to Manchester United represents Newcastle's one major cut in their draining wages.
The lack of transfer movement either in or out of the club can be partly excused by the fact that there is still no permanent manager in charge to make the crucial decisions over personnel. This calamity is ultimately down to the owner Mike Ashley, who has failed to make a positive decision when appointing the long-term successor to Kevin Keegan. After all that has happened at the club it's easy to forget that Newcastle haven't actually had a manager installed with a permanent mandate since the 'messiah' walked out last September, this is simply ridiculous.
The stop-gap appointments of Joe Kinnear, Chris Hughton and finally Shearer have only helped to contribute to the aura of a club that seems to be making it all up as it goes along. Clearly bold manager replacements can sometimes pay off, but with Newcastle it appeared only to add to the lack of stability and sense of confusion that has often surrounded St James' Park since Sir Bobby Robson was sacked.
The logic surrounding Mike Ashley's dithering and the fact that Shearer has not been cemented as manager yet, is based on both parties wanting there to be clarification on the club's ownership before moving forward. This is down to Ashley having been looking to sell the club that has drained his finances, practically since Keegan was forced out and he had to face the supporter’s wrath.
The whole situation adds up to being a near farcical equation. Mike Ashley has failed to sell the club in nine months worth of trying and Newcastle's relegation has clearly dented his efforts to do so further still. What Ashley should be aiming to do is to reinvigorate the club and get it back into the Premiership, surely then he would have a much more likely chance of ridding himself of an acquisition that could be argued to be back on the up and worth investing in.
Shearer obviously has no guarantee of achieving this and it would most probably cost Ashley even more money to attain promotion, but with Shearer on board Newcastle inevitably become a more marketable proposition. On the other hand as it stands Ashley is trying to flog a football club with no manager, a huge wage bill and mounting debts to boot.
His lack of firm offers so far is proof that he needs to be decisive now, by getting behind Newcastle so that they may get back to being a worthy prospect for a budding entrepreneur. If Ashley otherwise continues on his current path of naivety, someone should point out to him that even Southampton have managed a buyer this summer. If a club with a ten-point deficit in League One is more attractive than St James' Park, then something is seriously awry!
As for the on-field troubles, whilst the club has kept together most of it's Premiership squad this still represents a kind of failure. For a start some of the players should have been sold to help alleviate the overall debts, this would help more in the long-term rather than risking keeping hold of them and seeing their stock value dramatically drop. Newcastle technically made this decision easier on themselves although they have failed to act on it. The gamble of keeping their 'star' players is undermined by the poor foresight of not having any contract clauses, which would have lowered their wages in the event of relegation.
The failure to move players out of the club has clearly knocked on to affect their ability to bring in any new players, and crucially ones that may be better suited to getting them out of the Championship melee. It appears that Newcastle are still operating in a day dream and have not grasped the fact that a bounce-back promotion is far from certain. The Championship has become more and more difficult over the years, and this was further demonstrated by three recent Premiership clubs being relegated to League One last season.
In fact the Championship as it will line up for 2009/10 has twenty-four teams, of these, fifteen have been in the Premiership since it's inception. This is quite a staggering statistic and clearly it lends weight to how difficult a challenge it is to make it back up. It is perfectly fair to argue that the likes of West Brom, Middlesbrough and even Reading are far more comfortably placed for a crack at the Championship than Newcastle currently are. With only three weeks until they kick-off their season at the Hawthorns, the Tyneside club may soon be regretting their lack of impetus...