We may as well begin as we mean to continue: Ashley out. We may as well shed any notion of journalistic impartiality, because certain circumstances demand it: Ashley out. Just as no man is bigger than a football club - in spite of what those same men might think - some issues rise above work and professionalism and straddling a fence in the name of politics and this is one of them: Ashley out.

Now that he is staying, it warrants repetition: Ashley out. There is nothing to be gained by not speaking minds, even if Mike Ashley’s tattered regime at Newcastle United is limping on regardless and even if supporters know damn well their battered old club has not been listening. Over the past two years, they have been stripped of their pride, dignity, status and reputation; take away the howl of rage and what are you left with?

This is not simply about sport any more. This is about the most iconic structure in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a building which looms above the city and, even after the Chinese water torture of the last few years, a club which burrows its way beneath a people’s skin. It is about a region and history and tradition and heritage, things that cannot be wiped out with the flourish of a cheque-book.

There are debates to be had about a takeover saga which was drifting on without resolution. There are debates to be had about Chris Hughton’s managerial situation at Newcastle. You can pose reasonable arguments that lingering uncertainty in both areas did not provide the stability necessary for a promotion campaign and yet, for all of that, Ashley has undermined himself. Again.

(One point: nobody should start playing fantasy football with the £20m which Ashley has stated he will be ploughing back into the club. Now that Newcastle are officially off the market, Barclays will insist that their overdraft, which recently stood at £22m, is kept to the £10m level they insist upon for Coca Cola Championship clubs. Heady activity in the transfer market remains desperately unlikely).

Like black follows white, Ashley’s Newcastle is institutionally incapable of stringing two good decisions together. Preach the long-term, sack Sam Allardyce. Hire Kevin Keegan, appoint Dennis Wise. Back your manager in public and then tell him to look up new signings on YouTube. Joe Kinnear! Herald Alan Shearer as your “best decision” and then jettison him. Put the club up for sale and then refuse the only realistic offer.

And then we come to the Keegan tribunal, at which Newcastle officials admitted to consistently misleading fans as “an exercise in public relations,” where their testimony was described by the three-man panel as “profoundly unsatisfactory,” and their case as “wholly without merit,” when “entirely unfounded allegations against Mr Keegan,” were made. Keegan won and Newcastle’s rotten core was exposed.

Renaming St James’ Park is a muddle-headed, flawed and divisive notion which must not and cannot stand. In an era of recession, there may be a need for Newcastle, in their own words, to “maximise their commercial revenues,” but if it comes at the expense of goodwill (what little there is left of it), hope and a sense of community, it would also come at a bitter, prohibitive, self-defeating cost.

More than 44,000 supporters watched Newcastle struggle their way to victory against Doncaster Rovers last Saturday. It is a remarkable figure given the travails of the last few months and years, the crushing disappointments, the moribund football that led to demotion, the faulty decision-making they could not influence, the lack of communication from their club.

There are all sorts of reasons why people persist in turning up, from passion, habit, a feeling of belonging, of place, to those who want to walk away but cannot quite bring themselves to do so. For all his attempts to portray himself as an ordinary bloke, Ashley has never quite grasped that the plaything he bought for £134m is not bricks and mortar, but a collection of heartbeats. Without them, he owns a shell.

Sir Bobby Robson: “What is a club in any case? Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it. It’s not the television contracts, get-out clauses, marketing departments or executive boxes. It’s the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city. It’s a small boy clambering up stadium steps for the very first time, gripping his father’s hand, gawping at that hallowed stretch of turf beneath him and, without being able to do a thing about it, falling in love.”

It has been said before, but ties are being stretched and bonds frayed, because the love that Sir Bobby talked about is utterly unrequited. Fans - and that means everybody who cares about life and football in the North East - have been dragged through the mud and then, just for good measure, had their faces rubbed in it. It is thoroughly and miserably unsustainable.

It has been heartening this season to attend matches at St James’ (say it while you still can) and see a Newcastle team winning, to witness a pared-back squad stumble on team spirit in desperate circumstances.

Heartening, but in the context of the state of the club, also misleading, because since Shearer’s departure, strategy has been absent. Newcastle’s guts have rusted.

As the Newcastle United Supporters Trust put it, Ashley “seems intent on dragging this farcical situation through even more embarrassment, without any regard for the damage that he is placing upon the city, the supporters, the team and the long-established good name of Newcastle United in world football.” To come back to the start, now more than ever, futile though it seems, that howl of rage: Ashley out.

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