Here's a weird one. Rumours were floating around as late as the beginning of this year that Mike Ashley's end-game for Rangers was to combine Rangers with Newcastle United's Premier League registration. Those rumours, which now look like little more than conspiracy theories, suggested that a club of Rangers' size playing in the Barclays Premier League would be more commercially marketable for Ashley and would have the added benefit of infuriating Newcastle United fans who would have their club pulled out from underneath them. With the ongoing wrangling between Ashley and the Rangers board, a symbiotic relationship between the Magpies and the Teddy Bears is looking ever more unlikely and both Rangers and Newcastle fans will be thanking their lucky stars that they were able to avoid an MK Dons situation.
