The most insulting part of Mike Ashley’s latest kick to Newcastle fans’ teeth was the words used to justify it.
“We have worked hard to extend Rafa Benitez’s contract over a significant period of time,” was his explanation for the Spaniard no longer being their manager.
And if you believe that, you’ll believe Ashley was genuinely shocked to hear a Commons Select Committee tell him one of his Sports Direct warehouses was more like a “Victorian workhouse” or “a gulag” than a modern place of work.
He was clearly happy to let the club’s most talented and best-loved manager since Bobby Robson walk away, because any boss wanting to keep a world-class employee doesn’t offer them the same wage on a one-year deal and refuse to back him with enough money to compete. And you don’t cut off all communication with him. It makes no business sense.
But then, neither does treating your loyal customer base with a sadistic contempt.
Yet in the 12 years since Ashley picked up Newcastle for £135million, on a whim, he has messed with their heads on such an illogical, unparalleled scale that a psychiatrist would surely conclude he gets off on it.
He sacked well-loved managers Kevin Keegan, Alan Shearer and Chris Hughton, and imposed Joe Kinnear, Dennis Wise and John Carver on them.
He renamed their hallowed ground after his sports-gear firm and sold their iconic shirts to Wonga.
He wrote off all cup competitions, gave Alan Pardew an eight-year contract and has just priced the new replica home shirt at £65, making it the most expensive in English football.
And through all those bizarre decisions, he imposed a Stalinist black-out on all information about the goings-on at St James’ Park.
It’s seemed deliberately vindictive.
As Keegan revealed last year, he was hurt at being “treated like dirt” by Ashley and his henchmen, and was appalled at their “disregard for people”.
Fans get that hurt in spades. But nothing appears to have hurt them as much as Benitez being effectively forced out, because he offered them genuine hope of a revival. He was the real deal. A talisman who could lure a rich owner with the prospect of building something special in a proper football city.
Benitez can be a political animal, but the motives behind his grandstanding are nearly always to take his team to the next level. All he wanted under Ashley was the chance to buy quality players, enabling him to compete with those clubs trying to break into the top six.
But buying quality and ceding control runs contrary to Ashley’s autocratic pile ‘em high, flog ‘em cheap business model — one he still believes can work in top-flight football despite 12 years of evidence to the contrary.
Take the £50million budget he offered Benitez to re-build a squad, which has had a minus £11.2m net spend for the three years he’s been there. Newly-promoted Aston Villa have already agreed a £22m deal with Bruges for striker Wesley Moraes, who Newcastle had been scouting for months.
The real puzzle about Ashley is how a businessmen worth £2.5 billion failed to grasp the possibilities offered by owning a huge club with a world-class manager in an era when football success guarantees colossal financial reward.
Potentially he has a Jaguar dealership on his hands but runs it like a spivvish second-hand car-salesman.
If he’d possessed more courage and vision, with a bit of luck he could have had it all — a club worth four times what he paid for it, the love and gratitude of a city, and respect as a shrewd business operator rather that a rag trade hustler.
Instead he’ll go down as a mean loser who refused to seek the silver lining lurking behind the Tyneside clouds.
