No real surprise, to be honest

note the subtle, cynical mockery of fans who dare to question absolute market fundamentalism

though to be honest I, too, think they're deeply naive to be surprised: perhaps they should abandon football at that level

The best piece I've seen so far on Newcastle United

by David Conn in the Guardian

As I sort of predicted in January 2008, Newcastle's demise is running ever further in parallel with that of New Labour, aptly enough because both were, essentially, the same thing.  Both were projects built on reinventing something which had seemed dead in the 1980s, killed off by Thatcherism and the collapse of British industry.  Both attempted to use American and/or neoliberal techniques - the strategies of marketing generally, the presentation of American football specifically - to regenerate something local, culturally specific and rooted in history which was dying on its feet.  Both were an ingenious hybrid of social and market values, either post-Thatcherite, post-Cold War reformed social democracy for a new era or reheated Thatcherism with a human face depending on how kind you were to the mechanisms which had brought them into being. Both only made sense for as long as the long boom continued.  Both are now being very, very publicly exposed as having been built on a lie, or at least on exceedingly weak foundations.  And both, if they lose power this year or next, might never get it back.