UK Edition
What now for Newcastle after Amanda Staveley's failed attempt to hustle Mike Ashley?
If there was a dummies' guide to selling a football club, Mike Ashley’s decision to publicly mock and deride Amanda Staveley’s bid to buy Newcastle would be somewhere near the back, in the chapter titled 'Extreme measures'.
It would probably go ahead of the section on pulling out a loaded gun in a meeting and pointing it at the face of the person you are negotiating with, as well as the chunk that deals with planning to kidnap their family, but it falls roughly into the same sort of category.
It was an inflammatory attack by Ashley, but also deliberately provocative. It was calculated, designed to insult. Having allowed Staveley to dictate the public relations battle in this war, he had grown tired of hearing false reports claiming she had made a series of bids that edged ever closer to his asking price.
The meeting in a London curry house before Christmas, that was conveniently spotted by a professional photographer waiting outside, the carefully constructed narrative that made out she was genuinely trying to buy the club from him and that he was the one being unreasonable. These tactics put all the pressure on Staveley.
If she seriously wanted to buy the club, she was called out. If she was genuine, the impetus was on her to prove what Ashley said was wrong and make a larger bid, a bid close enough to his asking price to at least tempt him to sell.
For all the noise Staveley has generated since October, this has simply not happened. As I said on the Telegraph Total Football podcast back in December, don’t just talk about wanting to do the deal, do the deal.
- Listen to Luke Edwards on Total Football:
No more leaks claiming improved offers have been made when they have not, no more trying to manipulate supporters into turning against Ashley, no more quiet reassurances through spin doctors that the takeover is going to happen, just a challenge to come up with a credible offer to buy the club that matches his asking price.
Staveley has made a crucial error in this saga, she thought she could hustle and bully someone like Ashley. She has finally realised she can not.
She has two choices now, save her own reputation by proving she can make an offer of £300m plus, or walk away and leave Ashley to get on with finding someone who can.
Staveley has got previous here. She tried to buy Liverpool twice and failed, managing to provoke the Merseyside club into releasing a statement that denied reports she had a £1.5bn offer turned down last year.
“We have better things to do than batting down rumours about negotiations with Ms Staveley,” said Liverpool chairman Tom Werner last October. “However, there's no truth to them.”
It was around that time that Staveley first expressed her interest in Newcastle and there is still no reason to believe that interest was not genuine. Staveley’s, mistake, though, is that she thought she could get a bargain.
She assumed Ashley was desperate to sell and she would be able to manipulate the negotiating process to suit her. She was wrong. She has failed to do the things she said she would do and her takeover has effectively collapsed. It is up to her whether she can salvage it, but what is clear is there will be no more games, no more pretence.
Make a serious offer or walk away and leave supporters to wait for another buyer to appear. There are people around, there has been tentative interest shown by other potential investors, but like a hawk, Staveley scared off the other birds circling because her PCP Capital firm supposedly had more money to invest than any of them.
What Ashley has done is fired a shot in the air and clipped her wings with the following words. “Attempts to reach a deal with A. Staveley & PCP have proved exhausting, frustrating and a complete waste of time.”
The easy thing to do at a time like this is blame Ashley. It feels good, it feels right, because most of the things wrong with Newcastle are down to their parsimonious, arrogant and volatile owner.
This is a man who can appoint four hugely popular managers at St James’ Park, Kevin Keegan, Alan Shearer, Chris Hughton and Rafa Benitez and then make a series of decisions that provoke and alienate them; a man who gives Joe Kinnear a job, twice, who gives Benitez full control of player recruitment and then appoints people above him who question his transfer policy; a man who can promise every extra penny generated by promotion, but who is then outspent by Huddersfield Town; a man who says the club will not be sold until he wins a trophy or qualifies for the Champions League who, two years later, publicly puts it up for sale because he says it is impossible for a club like Newcastle to compete.
But for now, the takeover does not matter. What matters is giving Benitez the tools to keep Newcastle in the Premier League and that means backing him in this transfer window. The takeover needs to be parked. It needs to be postponed.
If Ashley wants to sell, to Staveley, or more likely, anyone else, he has to make sure he has a top flight club to sell with Benitez as its manager.
That means he is going to have to allow the Spaniard to recruit more players this month. It is so simple to say, but nothing is ever that straightforward when it comes to Ashley at Newcastle United.