Cover courtesy of the brilliant Footysphere.

Newcastle United vs. Chelsea, St. James' Park, March 1973.

Photo credit: travelswiss on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

This seems like a week that Portsmouth fans need cheering up, so here’s a reminder of olden days: a beautiful programme from 1956, featuring what Portsmouth is best known for, its naval heritage: H.M.S. Victory was Lord Nelson’s ship in the Battle of Trafalgar, and is now docked in Portsmouth as a wonderful museum ship.

This fixture also had considerable historical significance, as the first English league game played under floodlights; the only thing missing was the actual victory part for Pompey fans, as Newcastle beat Portsmouth 2-0.

Image courtesy of the excellent Footysphere once again.

Big Story
So, despite protests from fans and politicians, Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley has further cemented his unpopularity on Tyneside by announcing the renaming of St. James’ Park — apparently believing that adding an “@” symbol to it means the club is respecting history. The name will be “sportsdirect.com @ StJames’Park”.

“With the renaming it was always going to be whatever brand it was, at St James’ Park,” Managing director Derek Llambias said. “For the remainder of this season, we already have sportsdirect.com on the Gallowgate so we’d like to take that branding through the rest of the stadium.”

The Newcastle United Supporters Trust already has a petition up against the renaming of the stadium, stating “Derek Llambias has announced on 03/11/09 that the ground will be renamed to “Sxxxxs DxxxxT.cxx @ St James’s Park”. We strongly believe the name and soul of our ground is not theirs to sale. Our petition stands. NO to the renaming of SJP!”

Right on. And hell, just in terms of a name, something new entirely would be better than this travesty of an attempted compromise.

Worldwide News

• There is a lot more in the papers today following-up yesterday’s story about Stan Kroenke’s possible takeover of Arsenal. Gabrielle Marcotti echoes the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust’s concerns about the prospect of a debt-laden purchase, though Jeremy Wilson suggests his past share purchases do not suggest a trend of massive borrowing (though we’re talking about a lot more money for a take-over). The Independent, like the AST, does not think a takeover bid is imminent anyway.
• Looks like Portsmouth’s embattled chief executive Peter Storrie has a lot to worry about, as the BBC is reporting he has been charged with tax evasion.
• We mentioned some unpleasant scenes in Bulgaria this weekend yesterday, as the mass brawl in the Plovdiv derby will have serious consequences for Lokomotiv.
• Stadium proposals for both DC United and Crystal Palace USA are to be studied in Baltimore.
• Southend United have until Friday to clear their £2.135 million tax debt. The Shrimpers Trust have been working overtime attempting to save their club, so let’s hope they can buy some more time.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Why is it that whenever a grotesquely rich businessman buys a football club, we’re surprised to find that he doesn’t run his team like a corporate Mahatma Gandhi but instead shows all the philanthropic patience of Donald Trump?

This past week, we’ve gorged on Mike Ashley’s madness — please, football gods, let him add Alan Shearer to the Wor Kev Movement at St. James Park — as pundits have wondered how a man brilliant enough to make a fortune selling polyester shirts could have lost his head so suddenly as soon as he bought a football club.

The man made a success of Milletts, for god’s sake, but give him Nicky Butt and Sam Allardyce’s twenty-five man entourage and suddenly he’s sunk in a diving bell 60m below the northern Caspian Sea giving an interview only Cristiano Ronaldo digs.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of northern England, those damn Yanks have completely lost it, running Liverpool as if they had no history, no glory, as if they were merely the Montreal Canadiens of English sawker!

No, This is Anfield, and I’ve heard Jamie Carragher’s chirpy voice enough on Five Live to know those Yanks wouldn’t recognise the genius of Rafael Benitez even if they were an entire 24 points behind Man Utd right now, instead of a mere 12. This is a man who sees coruscating winger where we see Jamie Pennant, and goalscoring talent where we see Dirk Kuyt turning away from goal for the eight hundredth time.

What is going on, friends? How can men who have long robbed the poor to feed themselves fail to bring instant success to England’s two People’s Clubs? (Sorry, Everton.)

Photo credits: AndyNugent; Pose

You will hear the sounds of barrelous laughter from football fans across England, as Mike Ashley does what we all hoped he’d do, apart from the bit about involving Alan Shearer as well.

You will see approximately 824,000 Geordies dressed in Black & White to welcome Kev at St. James Park, and hear 18,999 commentators state they’re the best in the land and deserve better than they’ve had since. . .well, since Kev left.

So how will it go? Brian at the Run of Play isn’t quite sure.

There’s something about Kevin Keegan that makes it impossible to say. On the one hand, he did sort of save the club the last time he managed it. On the other hand, he’s Kevin Keegan. He seems to exist in a small dead spot on the resonating surface of tone.

What do you think? Will Keegan don the boots himself and lead the line in a revolutionary 1-1-8 formation? Will he resign in the toilets next week when he finds out Joey Barton’s on his team? Or will he lead them back to where they belong by rights historically, about three places higher than they presently are?

Photo credits: dug_da_bu and davidwatts1978

But in an astonishing turn of events, he agreed last night to sit down with Pitch Invasion writer Brian Phillips for an in-depth discussion about the decision to sack recently departed Newcastle manager Sam Allardyce. What follows is a transcript of their erudite and wide-ranging conversation, conducted over a dish of pickled herrings at Ashley’s favorite dining spot, a diving bell sunk 60m into the northern Caspian Sea.

BRIAN: What the fuck, dude?

NEWCASTLE OWNER MIKE ASHLEY: Sorry?

BRIAN: That is my question for you. My question is: What. The. Fuck.

NOMA: Well, I don’t—

BRIAN: Because you finished thirteenth last year. You realize that, right? That you finished thirteenth last year? I know you don’t get out much. They have football tables in your hidden underground zebra-striped space cockpit, right?

NOMA: I know where we—

BRIAN: And the year before that you were seventh, and the year the before that you were fourteenth. These are not good numbers, dude. This is not a winning lottery ticket. The popcorn popper that churns ping-pong balls does not think you have won today’s powerball jackpot. We’re sorry, you bought Newcastle United. Please try again next week.

NOMA: What are you—

BRIAN: So why fire your manager now, champ? Midway through the season, he’s been on the job eight months, the team’s in eleventh place. That’s better than you did last year! And that’s not me talking; that’s math. Was it something that just came to you while you were blasting at TIE Fighters one day?

NOMA (bristling): Now, look here. I do not spend all my time playing Star Wars in a secluded bunker in my basement.

BRIAN: That’s my bad, man. Tone of your presence, man. That was just a thing I thought. I apologize to you.

NOMA: That’s all right.

BRIAN: I just pictured the blueprint of your house and there was like this hatch that led down to a secret Millennium Falcon clubhouse except you had to like hold your eye over a tiny camera to make it open. There was a firehouse pole. Seemed so believable. What made you fire Sam Allardyce?

NOMA: Well, the team were heading in the wrong—

BRIAN: You realize the dude took Bolton into the UEFA Cup? Bolton! That’s like taking Cameron Diaz to the Golden Globes, man. Just should not happen. I’m not saying he wasn’t basically showering with bars of solid gold soap he got from Tal Ben Haim’s agent’s nephew’s backpack, but you’ve got to give him more than eight months, right? Otherwise you’re just wasting the club’s money and everybody’s time, right?

NOMA: Well, I don’t see it that—

BRIAN: I mean, I keep hearing that when you bought the club, you didn’t want him in the first place, it was like a new house with a bat in the attic, he got hired a month before you took over, and ever since then you’ve just been looking for an excuse. So why not fire him at the start? You own some sporting-goods stores, right, Mike? Is that how you started to be worth 1.9 billion pounds?

NOMA: That’s right, yes.

BRIAN: Cool, cool. A child needs boxing gloves. You are standing at the ready. It’s just, I don’t know how it is when your job is selling trainers to the people who make a special trip to the supermarket to buy Beckham: The Story of David Beckham in hardback, but a football team needs stability, doesn’t it? I mean, you can’t just rip the stitches out and sew it up a different way every few months just because you got a bad result at Wigan. You see where I’m going with this sewing metaphor?

NOMA: I—

BRIAN: Woah, Captain Solo. I’m not Greedo, here. Don’t interrupt me, man. I’m working on something. What I’m saying is, there’s patience involved in running a football club. This is about letting a seed take root. It’s nature; it’s beautiful. This is why owners have to be different from fans, capice, because fans are going to be like the old blues singer who had hot-foot powder sprinkled outside his door, and had a ramblin’ mind every old place he went. They’re not going to sit still past the first bad goal from Man City. And do you know what the owner has to be like? He has to be like the sweater-wearing bald guy in the horn-rimmed glasses who produced, pressed, and marketed the record. Whole different thing, dude. Just sayin’.

NOMA: Well, it’s not quite that sim—

BRIAN: So I worry, man. I worry when I see these apple-cheeked billionaires buying up clubs to impress their twelve-year-old sons who already resent them because they only got the silver Learjet for Christmas when they wanted the Island of Capri. I worry that we’re getting too many owners who want to think like fans, who want to play “beautiful football” and fire anyone who makes a bad joke on a Tuesday, when they ought to be putting their club on some kind of footing and getting things in place. I worry that they’re liable to hear the fans chant for Alan Shearer and think, “Yeah, that’s the guy for me,” when ever since he retired Alan Shearer has basically been a comma stuck in the wrong place in a sentence. But you new owners all want to wear the shirt and sit in the away end when the team travels, and I mean, dude, when you’re in the away end with two scowling men with earpieces sitting on either side of you, you are not of the people, man. No one ever pleased their fans by thinking like a fan, man. It’s a paradoxical existence.

NOMA: But it’s not at all that simple. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Fans only want to listen to their own opinions. Fans want to be the owners! They think they know how to run the team! But by God, there’s a different side to this. Listen—

BRIAN: What, man? What’s the other side? What are we missing here? What?

Brian Phillips is currently pricing a Death-Star-trash-compactor closet for The Run of Play.

Photo credits: Richard_Hu; Akuppa