Obafemi, others, up for sale at Newcastle

Thursday, May 21, 2009
NEWCASTLE United will put every single player, including Nigerian international, Obafemi Martins, up for sale if its English Premiership survival bid at Aston Villa on Sunday ends in failure, as owner Mike Ashley frantically tries to contain the financial disaster of crashing into the Championship.






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United’s shocking home defeat by Fulham last Saturday means the Magpies have slipped back into the bottom three and will need at least a point at Villa Park to have any chance of avoiding the drop.

However, with Hull City entertaining a Manchester United side which has already won the title and which faces Barcelona in the Champions League final just three days later, United is clinging on to its place in the top flight by the tips of its fingernails.

As a result, the Newcastle hierarchy have already planned for the worst and The Journal reported that none of the first- team squad will be safe from the chop as the club looks to reduce a wage bill which gobbles up around 70% of the business’s turnover.

It is thought Ashley, who has planned to cut costs and slash staff levels in every department, will look to reduce wages in the first-team squad by at least £600,000 a week – or £31.2m a year – if results do not go Newcastle’s way on the final day of the season.

That will prompt a fire sale at St James’s Park as rival clubs look to pick up a bargain from the wreckage of United’s catastrophic campaign.

While the non-renewal of the contracts of Michael Owen and Mark Viduka would save around £180,000 a week, there are plenty of other high earners on the books, including Obafemi Martins, Joey Barton, Geremi, José Enrique, Alan Smith, and Damien Duff.

Fabricio Coloccini and Jonás Gutiérrez would almost certainly return to Spain after just one season in English football, despite costing around £18m when they were signed last summer, with interest thought to be high in the Argentinian pair despite a troubled year on Tyneside.

Whether buyers can be found for some of the other big earners remains to be seen and some players may be willing to sit on their lucrative contracts in the Championship rather than move on, despite the damage this could do to the club in the long term.

In turn, while the board will want to slash costs, Alan Shearer will fight to keep some of the best players even if he fails to keep them in the top flight after just eight games in charge.

The former Newcastle skipper will have some leverage and he will demand certain assurances before committing to becoming permanent manager at the end of the season.