As a guest on BeIN Sports' coverage of the Swansea vs Newcastle game yesterday, friend of Mike Ashley and public enemy number 4 (behind Ashley, Pardew and Kinnear) Dennis Wise was invited, for some reason, to give his own assessment of the situation at the club. Inevitably, he ignored the team's under-performance, the current regime's ignorance of key transfers, and the manager's inability to choose the right system and came to the conclusion that the biggest problem is that Newcastle fans simple hate Southerners. Way to miss the point. It must be wonderful being inside a head like Wise's where your own attitude and your own reputation for kicking players had no impact on how anyone saw you, because where you were born was all that mattered. No, Dennis, Newcastle fans might not all be as educated and eloquent as you, but we can recognise when someone really deserves to be hated. The point is that the thing that links the Newcastle blacklist is not where they live, it's what they have done to the club. Yes, the sounds of "you fat cockney b*stard" do still ring around the stands, but that's more about a catchy line rather than parochial abuse, and the suggestion that the only reason we hate Mike Ashley is his accent and what he calls bread buns is insulting. Like the rest of the footballing world (or at least the good parts of it), Newcastle fans respect any player or manager or media personality who respects the club and does right by them, no matter whether they're from Wallsend or Southend. And the club's love affairs with Les Ferdinand, Rob Lee, Supermac, Warren Barton and every single popular southern player suggests that idiotic cliche for what it actually is: a load of recycled tripe. So perhaps Mr Wise should spend more time actually assessing the impact of his friend Mike Ashley and his current manager, and what he himself did to the club rather than wrapping himself up in the comforting knowledge that he was only ever hated because he was a Londoner. It's not that at all, it's more that as well as being a toxic influence on the club, you're really just not that likeable.
