So it’s out with the old (in Sir John’s case the very old) and in with the new at Gallowgate. In a few short heady weeks, we’ve seen the demise of the Halls, the Shepherds and their lickspittles and the stirrings of the new regime. Fat Freddy clings on for now but is plainly a marked man, and his ill health may even mean he leaves sooner rather than later. The club is now firmly in the hands of that nice Mr Ashley, and changes are afoot.

In the meantime, Big Sam ploughs on regardless, accumulating the sort of solid signings the club has needed for a decade. No wonder Roeland Rat’s been blowing chunks out his arse in envy in the papers recently. At this rate we might even go into the new season with a properly prepared, well balanced squad for the first time in years. Someone stick a fork in my arse, I must be dreaming!

What a difference a bit of disinfectant makes. Out with the dead wood and ne’er- do-wells: Bruce, Dougie, Tim, Allison, all gone and not missed. Meet the new breed: Chris Mort and Steve Hayward. No doubt there will be more in due course. Mort is a top lawyer brought in to run the show, Hayward is by all accounts an international marketing guru. As far as Mort’s concerned, you don’t get to the top of a massive law firm like Freshfields by being a dummy. He may lack experience in football, but he has proven business acumen and, perhaps just as importantly these days, deep legal expertise.

It is obvious that Ashley does not believe that the previous management were fit for purpose and many of us have asked for some time now exactly what they did for their salaries. Many on this site’s forum have called for years for the Halls, Shepherds and their cronies to be replaced by professional managers like Mort. However for me, the most telling aspect of the takeover has not only been the hasty clear out of the previous incumbents but also the immediate review of the club’s affairs from top to bottom. The new owner wants to know what they’ve been up to as well.

A top to bottom review is not surprising to me on two counts. Firstly the club was bought in haste seemingly without the due diligence reviews that are usual in large transactions. This is where the club allows limited access to a would be purchaser to its books and contracts to assess whether the price is fair or not. Ashley either decided to strike whilst the iron was hot (or whilst the fat one was laid low) or perhaps reckoned the price was decent even if the club was in a mess in the worst case. Certainly in the case of the Polygon bid, extensive due diligence seems to have got them nowhere.

I also think that one of the reasons Ashley bought our club is that he simply didn’t rate the previous management at all. In the same way that people like Theo Paphitis have made a fortune out of turning around badly run businesses like Rymans, Ashley has looked at our club and reckoned that all the fundamentals are there to make a bucket load of money, if he can just get it right. Unlike the previous chairman, there seems to be no craving for the spotlight or the admiration of the Geordie public; he’s content to remain in the background and let others run the show - people who know how to take a business and make it successful. It’s therefore telling that one of the first announcements is regarding a top to bottom review of the club, because it suggests to me that not only do they want to understand what’s been going on, but also that it’s not been good enough. You often review things in detail because you want to change them.

Which, in a long roundabout way, brings me to the point of this article: what will Mort look at, and what questions will he raise? Here are some brief thoughts:

The proposed Gallowgate development – one of the first decisions the new board must make is whether to press ahead with the plans for the new hotel, conference centre and ground expansion. This is difficult to call as it’s hard to say whether how well advanced the club’s plans were, and whether they made real business sense. Expect a hard headed business decision on this one, rather than one based on the romantic ideal of a 60,000 seater.

The club’s finances – the club has steadily bled money since the floatation, whether through ill advised player purchases, cash extraction by the club’s * ahem * investors, high wages or borrowings to fund ground expansion etc. At the time of the Ashley takeover, the club was reckoned to be some £80m in debt. Whilst this debt will no doubt be reduced or even eliminated, it will be interesting to see whether the finances will be made available to fund Chelsea style player purchases and wages, or whether a more balanced and cautious approach will be taken. We still await a trophy signing or two to signal our intent. In the meantime it would be interesting to see what financial skeletons if any lurk in the Toon closet!

The club’s internal dealings – certain elements of the club have never satisfactorily been explained to my mind. What exactly was Douglas Hall’s role and what did he do? What business did Tim Revill, an international tax adviser, have with the club? What purpose did our subsidiary based in Gibraltar have? It is interesting (to me anyway) to note the club is presently embroiled in a court action brought by Customs & Excise for sailing too close to the wind on its VAT affairs. Were there other tax shenanigans involving players contracts, using tax efficient structures to subsidise the cost of contracts - it’s been known at other top clubs (Arsenal for instance)? Could there be other time bombs ticking away in there?

Player contracts - is the club happy with the shape of player contracts, in particular items like sell on clauses which, in the case of Owen and Martins, have caused controversy and may allow players to leave contrary to the wishes of the manager. I’d expect Mort to give this close attention and to lay down the law going forward. It would be interesting to see if there were any contracts he will attempt to re-negotiate too.

Player and agent dealings – no doubt an area of particular interest for a lawyer like Mr Mort. It won’t have escaped his attention that the club were mentioned in Lord Stevens’ report in connection with 3 separate signings – Boumsong, Luque and Emre. With the deadly duo of Batman and Robin previously on the case, aka Cushing and Shepherd, I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t want to look at all the signings in the last 5 years in quite some detail. To this day I can’t understand how we managed to pay quite so much money for Boumsong. Or why we continued to allow a certain Willie McKay into St James’s Park when, in my opinion, in a sane and decent universe he would have been dragged from his car and hanged from the nearest lamp-post. No doubt Mort will soon have all the answers (unless the fat one gets to them first!). Let’s hope we have higher standards going forward.

International marketing and development – whilst the club has talked the talk in bygone times, with mentions of linking up with exotic clubs like the Chinese side Dalian Shiide, nothing seems to have come of it. I’ve long had the impression that the club didn’t seem to have a clue how to go about growing its overseas market, despite Dougie Hall’s special interest in overseas development (well that’s what he got paid for wasn’t it?). Expect the club to motor on brand marketing and development with Hayward on the board. On a more general level, I expect the club will leverage more money out of its image and brand and this is an area where Ashley expects to make a lot more money.

The club’s player resources and infrastructure – no doubt this will fall within the remit but I expect Allardyce will be given time and resources to develop not only the first eleven and his back up team, but also the training facilities and youth development. To be fair, the deficiencies in youth and reserve team development have been recognised for some time so not much may need to be done here, and the club has invested a lot in its training facilities. However the club has in the past been hopeless at helping overseas players settle and I hope that in the future a truly professional set-up will be implemented that long survives Allardyce’s exit, whenever that is.

All in all we live in interesting times and, in keeping with the prevailing mood of optimism, I’m looking forward not back. However it would be interesting to read Mr Mort’s review of the previous regime and what his plans are. Let’s hope it’s more than “Bugger me, they spent all the money Mike. Better get your chequebook out!”