NUFC takeover: stopped, stalled, standstill?
By Simon O'Rourke, Sports Correspondent
You have a first-class ticket for the Orient Express. You are excited, of course you are, because you've never travelled like this before. But the train never leaves the station. What's worse, there are no announcements. No one official is telling you when, or if, the train is actually going to leave. The only snippets of information you hear tend to be bad news. More delays, more uncertainty, more problems on the line.
I'm sure you get the picture. The Station is Newcastle Central Station. The train is the NUFC Takeover Express. The train has been stuck in the station for 4 months.The latest we hear is more delays should be expected. It seems now no one's really sure who might end up driving the train. So the signal stays on red. You wait, and you wait, and you wait some more.
To make matters worse, you don't really know who to blame. Normally, Mike Ashley gets the blame for everything at Newcastle United. But you can't blame Mike for this. He's, finally, a willing seller, so this situation has passed out of his control.
You can, if you wish, pass the time by blaming Mike for all the other things. Mike is able to afford the first-class ticket on the Orient Express - but he chooses to get the Metro. At the end of the day, it's always been his money and his choice. But you're sick of the Metro and the mid-table rush hour you're always stuck in. Some of you have stopped making the journey at all.
So you wait, and you hope for something more. But the train remains stuck in the station.I'll spare you the details because you've read them all before and it's all so overwhelmingly complicated, nuanced and difficult to make your peace with. But there comes a point, surely, when all the detail, context, geopolitics, international intrigue, moral judgment and TV piracy allegations have to be boiled down to one simple question: Pass or fail?
The Saudi Arabian-backed NUFC takeover bid has been trying to pass the Premier League's Owners and Directors test for four months. That's long enough. The waiting is interminable. The waiting is stressful. The waiting is damaging your mood and potentially damaging your mental health.
Newcastle United Fans need to know whether this train is going to leave the station, or whether they need to get off the train and get back on the Metro again.