I was interested to read the article on The Mag on Thursday morning by Joe Dixon, talking about the financing of a new Newcastle United training ground (‘Route now clear on financing new state of the art £200m Newcastle United training ground’).

One sentence in the article stood out in particular and that was: ‘The more I read about it all, about the part a state of the art new Newcastle United training ground can play in help building NUFC into a major power, the more I am convinced that this is indeed the case.’

Back in the day, Mike Ashley and his lackeys claimed that no potential new signing had been put off by the Newcastle United training facilities.

How exactly they knew this was never explained…

When transfer targets decided not to move to Ashley’s Newcastle United, were they sent a questionnaire asking them to say exactly why? Did they have to tick one or more boxes for things that had put them off – wages, working conditions, Lee Charnley, the FCB himself, Steve Bruce, the training ground?

When Mike Ashley’s NUFC training ground was ever mentioned, it often prompted great hilarity as people posted images of...