Old people who kept giving Mike Ashley money – No wonder SJP atmosphere is woeful | OneFootball

Surely one of the biggest myths is the St James’ Park atmosphere.

Sometimes it is very good.

Most of the time it is woeful.

Take for example… Saturday.

It was embarrassing for the vast majority of the match.

I rely on match by match tickets now and so I get to sit in a different part of St James’ Park, either through the match by match ticket sales/ballots, or through my network of friends and associates.

It is pretty much the same story though wherever I sit, yesterday was no exception.

This time in the Gallowgate End.

I was surrounded by old people and the only noise any of them ever made, was to moan.

Even when we played really well those opening 35 minutes, wave after wave of attacks, they barely stirred to get behind the team.

Then once the team went a goal down and needed the fans to help them get back into it, just nothing from the overwhelming majority of the Newcastle United fans. Certainly the vast majority within my earshot, only interested in finding scapegoats, from Eddie Howe to pretty much any of the players.

I do of course generalise when saying all of the Newcastle United fans where I sit, in all of the matches and areas of St James’ Park, however, it is not far off it.

There are exceptions, young AND old, who do get behind the team no matter what. However, it is a dying trend, no pun intended…

I myself am no spring chicken, in my early fifties, however, St James’ Park is one of the few places I can go to these days, where I am usually one of the younger ones there, when I look around.

This is not an anti-old people rant, after all, we all end up as one if we’re lucky.

It is more just a bit of honesty and pointing out what is the reality, rather than determined to back up and perpetuate this myth that the atmosphere at St James’ Park is always great. It isn’t. Far from it. It normally takes the players to create the atmosphere these days at St James’ Park, or a really bad referee determined to annoy ourselves and the team. Peter Bankes was woeful yesterday but there wasn’t that really big moment that would/could spark the whole crowd into life.

Which pretty much sums the atmosphere up now. It is either pretty much everybody getting involved, or nobody. Again, a bit of an exaggeration, more like very few Newcastle United fans getting behind their team no matter what, especially when the team and Eddie Howe need it the most.

St James’ Park isn’t alone in this of course. I would say all of the big (and most of the not so big) Premier League clubs have the same problem. An era where every major club now has the vast majority of seats filled by season ticket holders, an inside the stadium fanbase that then ages every season because the same people fill those seats until they die, or can’t manage to get to the matches.

At St James’ Park we have an additional problem, in that the 30,000+ season ticket holders are the ones who kept giving Mike Ashley their money for 15 years. They refused to boycott to try and get rid of him. We all understand the reasons why many season ticket holders couldn’t/wouldn’t give it up, especially those of us who did boycott and now can’t get in! Well can’t get in easily and certainly can’t get hold of a season ticket.

Going to the match is a habit, a misguided wanting to stay loyal to the team/club but which in reality was loyalty to Mike Ashley as he saw it, meeting up with friends and family, if you break a habit will you ever go back, will you be able to go back if things change/improve, protecting loyalty points built up over so many years, those loyalty points needed to go on away trips.

At the same time though, that decade and a half of Mike Ashley saw so many season tickets simply bought off as well. Ashley desperate to keep backsides on seats at any price next to his adverts and pulling stunts like an 8,000 seater family enclosure to fill the most difficult to sell seats at prices cheap as chips, that family enclosure full of a very strange combination of people, mostly parents seeing it as a mega-cheap option to keep kids occupied on a Saturday for around £4 a match. Where, if you have ever spent much time up there, especially in the Ashley era, was just kids on their smartphones or other devices, pretty much all match.

Then we also have tens of thousands of season ticket holders that Mike Ashley bought off with the long-term ticket deals, basically Ashley saying that look this is rubbish but it is cheap rubbish, stick with me and fill a seat next to my adverts and I will never put the price of your ticket up.

That is why we have all these season ticket holders now who have lived the dream the past three years, watching quality football at a now ambitious club, BUT still paying the same Mike Ashley prices that they were paying more than a decade ago. So unfair on other season ticket holders who aren’t on those deals, paying hundreds of pounds more than people they sit next to.

All that will end in the summer though, as at last the current owners can get rid of the Mike Ashley prices that they were held to after taking over, next summer they will also for sure bin the family enclosure and bring some kind of fairness where all fans pay similar prices. I worked out that when I have got a match by match ticket in level 7 towards the away fans, the £55+ (including the part of my £37 membership I allocate to any successful ticket ballot) I have paid, is more than a family of four will have paid collectively in the family enclosure WITH better seats than me as well, at the side of the pitch.

Anyway, back to the St James’ Park atmosphere.

Those who were season ticket holders when Mike Ashley took over in 2007 and kept giving him their cash and are still there now, are basically getting on for now being 20 years older than when he came in. The 40-50 year olds back then, are now 60-70 year olds now. Indeed, I think it is far worse than that, as I would say every chance that amongst the 30,000+ season ticket holders, the majority are now 60+.

Should old(er!) Newcastle United fans not be allowed into matches? Of course that would be daft.

However, the fact remains, if nothing changes the atmosphere will only get ever worse.

Back in the good old days of the terraces, we had natural selection at work. Survival of the fittest/youngest.

In the 70s and 80s I think there were only about 8,000 seats maximum in the wooden West Stand an the ‘new’ East Stand.

Unless you could afford seat prices and were able to get one of the few available, then it was the terraces for you old timer. What it meant in reality was that apart from the hardy few, as people (almost all blokes) got older, they didn’t think such a great idea standing on the open terracing with rain, wind and cold to endure.

It was a young man’s (and to a small extent woman’s) game and you had a constant supply of new generations of young fans taking the place of older ones who’d done their bit and wanted to stay in front of the fire now.

Today is very different. Old timers hanging on grimly to their season tickets no matter what. Good luck to them in this new era of everybody having a seat and relative comfort, especially if you don’t need much leg room!

However, this doesn’t help the atmosphere, it is killing it.

Young people can’t get into St James’ Park, very few of them anyway.

Whilst as for the old timers, I think fair to assume that as a generalisation, it was the more loud and shouty ones who were the ones to make a stand against Mike Ashley and force themselves to stay away, compared to the ones who were willing to stay and grin and bear it with the help of Ashley’s ‘generous’ ticket deals.

What is the solution when it comes to atmosphere?

Well, it has to be the brand new 80,000+ stadium, to be built on Leazes Park/ Castle Leazes.

All of us old(er) people can still get in as season ticket holders AND match by match far more easily. Whilst far more younger people will also be able to get in, with tens of thousands more seats. With a clean slate new stadium, the club can have huge areas of safe standing for those fans wanting to go in the ‘singing’ sections. Just like in the 70s where fans would choose to go in the old Leazes end, then the Gallowgate corner or scoreboard sections in the 80s.

I would also absolutely love it if a new stadium would have a section of say 3,000, which would only be for 14-21 year olds, where it was just turn up on the day and queue to pay in, maybe say no more than a tenner or so at today’s prices. Make it as easy as possible for young fans to get into matches as teenagers. Instead of just the lucky few who have parents/family who can help them get into St James’ Park, as is the case now.

With a new stadium, everybody would benefit, old and young. Plus the bigger the stadium, far more chance of ticket prices staying lower than otherwise will be the case with a far smaller St James’ Park, as is the case now.

The club was dying under Mike Ashley and the last thing we need now is a match going St James’ Park Newcastle United fanbase that sees the atmosphere swiftly dying.