You make some good points there, Wilf.Getting rid of Ashley, for who?
Have you ever wondered just what getting rid of Ashley means?
You support Newcastle United and are a fan of Newcastle United, generally for better or worse and for richer or poorer...in sickness and in health, till death do you part.
It's called unconditional support and I see a lot of fans attaching conditions to their support, who likely haven't ever really done that, even though way worse times.
I think a lot of it is due to being carried along by a tide of hatred for one man and a dislike for anyone that dares to say anything good about him, coupled with a reliance on messiah's.
This is how I see it.
If some other potential owner doesn't ride in then you have Ashley as your club's owner. You absolutely do not need to even mention his name or think of him as the owner if you don't want to. You can merely support the club and be the fan of the club that you've always been.
It's pointless refusing to support the club because if everyone did that, you lose the club, not just Ashley.
If you think any Tom, Dirk or Harry can simply jump in and give you your fix of what you seem to expect, then you're going to be cheesed off, In my opinion.
Wishing failure of a manager by wishing on the club to go down in a belief that it'll get rid of the owner, is naive in the extreme, as far as I can see.
Ashley would simply downgrade to even things up to keep the club viable, even in a lower league. He wouldn't lose out and could quite happily run this club in a lower league...even league two and still have a decent fan base and decent stadium of fans that would very quickly adapt.
Take a look at the other big clubs. Their fans stick by them and some of those big clubs have went down the entire leagues and then clawed their way back up, only to go down again, then fight to get back up.
So...if you think this is bad then take a bit of time on your own, without anyone to nudge you in any direction and try and imagine being a supporter and fan of all the other clubs that were around us or below us, all the way to the non league and in that pack, look at all the clubs that have so called potential.
Leeds is a classic. Look at the absolute mental turmoil that club's been in with owners galore and an owner under investigation, etc.
Anyone that wants this club to fail to prove some kind of point or to rid it of an owner that actually has it running without begging, all because the owner is a tough nut who won't just bow down to fans or messiah's backed by fans, should...in my honest opinion, do themselves a favour and see that the people whose lives are being blighted are those that are thinking this and boycotting or spewing hate.
Some people saying they've never been or supported the club for 12 years is all well and good to say but, if Ashley ran the club for 20/30/40 or 50 years and the same applied, then the reality is, you might as well save yourself the turmoil of associating yourself with the club so you can have a better life without cutting off your own nose to spite your own face just so you can have your day with an owner who you rarely see.
And yet each and every time there's a squad of players doing the business on the pitch, whether it's good bad or indifferent.
As it stands, this club sits like another 19 as premier league competitors.
Ultimately we will all still be supporting Newcastle, and no matter how much we hate Ashley will be happy when we win.
But you've seriously got to stop trying to tell people to ignore everything, stop having ambition and to accept what the fat man is doing.
Not having cashley foes not = "doing a Leeds!"