There was a time when Mike Ashley could have got out. When, with no loss of face personally or professionally, he could have turned away from the disaster-in-waiting that was Kevin Keegan’s appointment as Newcastle United manager and wiped his brow in the manner of one who has just picked the bullet with his name on it out of the wall, having bent down at precisely the right second to tie his shoelaces.

The moment would have come during that first meeting, when the conversation turned to Keegan’s recent football activities. Keegan would have admitted, as he had previously to several newspaper interviewers, that he had not watched a top-flight league match live in almost three years and that he only bothered to tune in for, at most, two games on his television during the 2006 World Cup finals (England alone played five).

On hearing those words, even a novice such as Ashley would have concluded that this was a man who had not kept abreast of the game sufficiently to warrant employment. He could have thanked Keegan for his time, said that he would be in touch and, quietly, let the matter drop.

There is something vaguely ludicrous in the same man looking Keegan in the eyes and pleading to be told that Newcastle will not be relegated. The bottom line is that survival is in the hands of a manager who has taken a freshly serious interest in football for little more than seven weeks. And, sadly, it looks like it.

Keegan has not brought new ideas or impetus to the Newcastle team because when he was away, such thoughts were not on his mind. He was not planning to return to management with a big football club, the way you are not planning an armed raid on the Halifax Building Society in your high street. For that reason, just as you are not wasting time on stake-outs, getaway drivers and failsafe plans, so Keegan did not arrive with a folder of material on how to negate Cesc Fàbregas, Fernando Torres, Cristiano Ronaldo or Chelsea’s 4-3-3 system.

Michael Owen and Alan Smith were tried as a partnership last year by Steve McClaren when he was England head coach. Was Keegan watching? Who knows? They have played 527 minutes together on international duty and produced one goal (scored by Smith in a friendly against Portugal on September 7, 2002). Was Keegan aware of this when he paired them again? Who can say?

The most worrying aspect of Newcastle’s nosedive is that the performances have been so random. If Keegan’s team play well, it is more than likely because there are good players in the squad, not because anything revolutionary or radical is taking place. If they leak one goal they collapse because there is little in the way of strategy. Ashley can hardly be surprised. If expertise was not high on the list of priorities when Sam Allardyce was replaced, why value it now?

Ashley looks at the league table and wonders where his next win is coming from; so does his manager. In any job, three years is a long time to be out of the swim. It was always going to take Keegan some time to adapt and Ashley misjudged Newcastle’s vulnerability.

One question: would he employ a chief executive at Sports World International who had not followed the sports and leisurewear market for that long? What made him think football was different?

Turned down flat

To the surprise of no one who has spent one minute in the county, Essex has not turned out to be the natural home of Olympic mountain biking after all. The International Cycling Union vetoed the plan to hold the 2012 event at Weald Country Park, near Brentwood, presumably on the ground that the nearest English mountain is in the northern Pennines, about 300 miles away, and the highest point in Essex is a multistorey car park in Harlow.

The mountain bike centre was going to cost £5 million, which is, coincidentally, the sum needed to stop my local Essex school selling off half its playing field for houses to fund essential building works. Having been denied its paltry claim to 2012, no doubt Essex County Council will wish to do the decent thing and provide a genuine legacy for children, by guaranteeing the room to play sports that this country actually cares about.

Flamini the key

Cesc Fàbregas was the undoubted star, but the unsung hero of Arsenal’s victory over AC Milan last week was Mathieu Flamini, his midfield partner, whose technically adept, highly combative approach to what might tentatively be called the holding role provides the platform for Fàbregas to perform.

Flamini’s contract runs out in the summer and no agreement has been reached on a new deal. Losing him would halt Arsenal’s revival in its tracks. Arsène Wenger is mad if he allows such an important player to go the way of Ashley Cole.

Blatter out of line

Another stunning brainwave from Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president. Instead of the technology that could have revealed instantly whether a ball had crossed the line, his organisation will experiment with a very human, very fallible extra assistant referee, hovering around behind the goal, trying to make a decision by peering through the confusion in the six-yard box.

By placing him at an angle to the action, his perspective will be altered and close decisions could be misjudged. If a player obscures his view, his judgment will be redundant anyway.

A solution solves a problem. This solves nothing. Classic Blatter, classic Fifa.

Film stars’ sorry tale

Lurid Sunday newspaper stories about the behaviour of footballers usually tell us little we did not already know. Young people have a tendency to drink to excess and cop off on Saturday nights. Fit lads with lots of ready money like girls. Girls like fit lads with lots of ready money.

There is, however, something about the CCTV footage of a party from Southampton Football Club, and friends, going through the personal belongings of waitresses at the Bar Bluu club in Portsmouth that goes beyond the pale.

Police are investigating after the girls claimed that money, mobile phones, cigarettes and other personal items were missing from coats, handbags and purses. Film shows Nathan Dyer, the 20-year-old winger, rifling the bags with an unidentified accomplice, while Bradley Wright-Phillips, the 22-year-old striker, appears to keep watch. There is apparently no motive, other than the belief that celebrity excuses all behaviour, no matter how immoral.

Chris Sheridan, the general manager of Bar Bluu, contacted Southampton, but after a conversation with Lee Hoos, the chief executive, heard nothing. Representatives of Wright-Phillips also failed to respond after an initial exchange on February 29. Confronted with the allegations at the weekend, Stuart Peters, the agent for Wright-Phillips, said: “We’re very relaxed about this. I have seen the footage and it is quite clear Bradley is not involved; he has not taken a single thing.” Maybe, but neither did he act to stop it. And that makes him the ethical equal of any thief.

Girls will like boys and boys will like girls and much of the venom directed at footballers about their private lives and public behaviour is misjudged. But this is a tawdry episode, made worse by the arrogant assumption of those around the players that because cocktail waitresses serve, they do not deserve the respect that is the basic right of any human being.

The one consolation is that every restaurant, every bar, every nightclub, needs waitresses. Enjoy your future wining and dining experiences, gentlemen, because no doubt the staff will be preparing something special, just for you.

Curbishley on all fours

Alan Curbishley, the West Ham United manager, says he cannot understand fans who mockingly compare recent performances to those of Charlton Athletic, his former club. Anyone wishing to explain the meaning of these chants can contact him directly at Upton Park, extension 404040.

martin.samuel@thetimes.co.uk