@Stray Wasp You'll have to pardon my ignorance, but has there been a real push of late calling for Ashley to sell the club? I know there's been in the past, but I've not hear anything of late. Perhaps a Benitez flight to greener pastures would create greater demand. That said Ashley doesn't seem the sort to care a jot what the supporters think when it really comes down to it.
There hasn't been a push to dislodge Ashley recently- the fans have preferred to back Rafa. There's a logical reason for this, namely that Newcastle United is a tent held up by one peg, and the peg is Benitez. The club has no infrastructure, which is by Ashley's design, not be accident. When Benitez goes, Newcastle risks going the way of the lot down the road.
I think the supporters' rejection of Ashley does rile him, but that only exacerbates his desire to exploit the club to the last penny. He's like a nightmarish amalgam of Charles Foster Kane and Daniel Plainview.
He's increased his price from the already extortionate £350 million he demanded last summer to £400 million. That isn't the action of a 'desperate' vendor, for all that's how Ashley styles himself. I'm convinced he wouldn't only want to sell Newcastle at a vast profit, he'd want to leave behind such an enfeebled husk of a club it'd never be able to compete again. Because this is a man who loves to feel he's ripped people off by making them pay over the odds for a heap of shit- particularly when he can gloat to the world about it afterwards. I also believe if he possessed every last penny on earth but one, he'd feel tortured until that final penny was in his flabby paws too.
A part of him will itch to be rid of Benitez and that massive salary, bring in Alan Curbishley, or David O'Leary or some other deadbeat on a Championship-level salary and try to recreate 2011/12.
A part of him will itch to flog Lascelles for a fee that exceeds the John Stone deal, and to sit back and laugh as Lascelles goes the way of Andy Carroll.
A part of him will itch to dispense with every over-25 year old in the squad, never pay an eight figure transfer fee again, qualify for the Champions League, sell every single member of his first team for £100 million, have the entire world of football prostrate itself at his feet, and repeat the process the next decade in a row.
And given the bloke is a gambler, I reckon he won't settle as long as any of those itches remain unscratched.
The cliche is that Newcastle's fans are deluded, but they have nothing on the wishful thinking that impels the neurotic running the place.