Along with Darren Eales, Dan Ashworth sat down with the media to talk about Newcastle United, the past, present and future.
While Darren Eales focused on the revenue side of things, Dan Ashworth spoke about the scary nightmare the new owners inherited.
It’s no secret to Newcastle fans just how poorly the club was run under the previous regime, but it sounds like it was even worse than we knew based on the comments made by Dan Ashworth who said the club was running in “survival mode” doing just enough to keep ticking over and staying in the Premier League.
We always knew that survival in the league was the objective handed to the Baron of Bacon at the start of each season, but it turns out that Ashley had made it practically impossible to achieve any more than that, stripping the staff numbers down to a “skeleton crew”. That’s not to say that the Sultan of Sizzle, Steve Bruce didn’t contribute to the bad times with his ancient brand of football, bone-idle approach to training and inability to move with the times.
As reported in The Chronicle, Dan Ashworth said: “I think that everybody would admit that there are certain areas of the club that have been run on more of a skeleton framework and a survival basis, like ‘If we can stay in the Premier League that’s fine or enough’.
“That’s not enough anymore. So, consequently, you have to upscale the majority of departments and facilities in order to try to achieve our goals, which are to finish higher up the league, to compete for trophies and aspirational targets.
“[That is] The trajectory the club is going towards over the next few years. So, consequently, there is a building out of structures and capacity in order to be able to achieve that.”
In the first part of a series of interviews, Ashworth reiterated the club’s immediate goals, to:
- End the long trophy drought that dates back domestically to 1955 and 1969 in Europe
- Ensure the training ground is fit for purpose both now and in the future as they look to incorporate seniors, juniors and women’s teams
Hopefully, this was the first of many of these round table meetings between board members and the media. The lack of communication from the previous regime was a huge bone of contention for fans, and now it seems like all lines of communication seem to be open again and that can only ever be a good thing.