Michael Owen Has Failed Newcastle United: What Now for the Toon?

There is a crucial period in the close season when you can pull off transfers early and inject new life into the dressing room. They have to get rid of 12 or 13 people on £50,000 plus a week and get in some hungry, up-and-coming players in their place. It needs to happen—or rather, it needed to happen. To basically ignore the summer because nobody is in charge is sheer madness.

But let's face it, it's not that much of a surprise for a club that's been punching above their head for years and a huge fan base doesn't equal a great football team.

If ever there was a story about how not to run a football club, then the main protagonists in the novel would be Newcastle. It's a bad setup that starts from the bottom and extends all the way up to the boardroom with complete and hopeless mismanagement.

First and foremost, the team is a group of aging has-beens, let's be honest, and it's not helped by those bogus underachieving signings of the last few years. There's nobody in the ranks they could rely on in getting 15 goals a season. I know Martins was out for most of the campaign, but he's ready for someone else to pick him up for buttons now.

For the majority of the season, most players on the pitch looked like they didn't even want to be there. When Shay Given left, many people criticised his loyalty, but I ask those people, who has been the club's most loyal player of the last 12 years? The team is, essentially, a group of average players making money off of past glories, thrown together by six or seven managers.

Mike Ashley has admitted that his love for the game, more than having footballing management knowledge has not paid dividends the way that he intended; the set up of the youth system and trying to blood youngsters into a team that requires a constant flow of talent was all of a good nature, but it seemed having a director of football that controlled this had been the initial hurdle for a club.

Director of Football, Dennis Wise was pulling the strings from...wait for it...London no less, and should he had only played a part in scouring the world for youthful talent in order to enhance the future prospects of Newcastle United, leaving first team affairs to the manager, then this could have been a different story altogether.

The season could have ended with Newcastle either finishing in typical style of mid table or pushing the likes of Tottenham and Manchester City for a place in the Europa League instead a teetering on the brink of relegation all season long.

In fact, it is quite remarkable how the crowds held up.

It's not the end of the world, and even though the Premiership revenue will be missed, players who got Newcastle into this will most likely leave—and good riddance—no other football club is going to pay their huge wages for their level of talent like Newcastle was robbed each week doing. I think Newcastle have motivated youth. Ranger and the like, while in the Premier League, would never get a look in as well as other up and comers with huge ability.

There has been the talk that Freddie Shepherd's consortium wants to take charge of the club and I feel it is vital that he, or whoever takes over, is given the time required to re-shape a club that has lost all of its stability. I personally believe Newcastle United will bounce back, but the real question is when. In the Championship, Newcastle will have more time for intrapreneurship and organisation of the football club as a whole.

Sometimes you just have to take one step back, before taking two steps forward.

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