Sports Direct have confirmed that their website will be renamed “Cluelesswankers @ Sportsdirect.com” until the end of the football season.

The temporary rebranding follows an announcement from the chavwear company’s owner Mike Ashley that the website’s naming rights would be offered in an attempt to raise funds. Ashley has already rebranded the 130-year-old stadium of his once-famous soccer team Newcastle United.

“We will showcase the fact that we are Cluelesswankers until the end of the season,” said company yes man Delboy Lluverley. “We already have tens of thousands of right-minded football fans up and down the country referring to us as Cluelesswankers, so it made sense to apply that branding to our website.”

“We wanted to include the ‘@’ symbol to show how relevant and up-to-date Sports Direct is, and to bring the company in line with scores of now-failed internet cafes that opened circa 1992.”

Sports Direct is currently on course to reduce its net debt to below £400m, and the Serious Fraud Office is yet to bring any charges against Ashley for criminal price-fixing, fraud, and financially crippling Iceland. The country, not the supermarket.

***

Five ways to hit Mike Ashley where it hurts

All proper football fans should be appalled by Mike Ashley’s treatment of Newcastle United, its stadium, and its fans. If this can happen to Newcastle United, it can happen to any club in the country. It’s time to hit Ashley in the only place it will hurt – his pocket.

Here are five ways football fans can metaphorically bloody the bastard’s nose:

1. Don’t shop at Sports Direct. If you desperately need a pair of cheap trackie bottoms, get them from Ashley’s rivals JJB Sports, or M and M Direct.

2. And don’t shop at JD Sports (which Ashley owns 19% of), or Lilywhites, Gilesports, Blacks, Millets or Mambo. And don’t buy anything branded by Umbro, Donnay, Slazenger, Dunlop, Karrimor or Lonsdale. He owns, or part-owns, all of them.

3. Don’t buy anything from the NUFC club shop. That banana away kit is bloody awful, anyway. If you need a football souvenir, visit the nearby Back Page.

4. Don’t buy an NUFC match programme unless you really, really need a Marlon Harewood poster and an exclusive insight into Ryan Taylor’s favourite sandwich filling. Buy a fanzine instead, like The Mag or True Faith.

5. Get your pre-match pint from one of the city’s 100-plus boozers, and get your match pie from Greggs. And Shearer’s Bar is owned by Mike Ashley, not Alan Shearer. Avoid.

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Can Mike Ashley still be regarded as a successful businessman? His sportswear empire has been haemorrhaging cash, and his clueless involvement in football has hammered his wallet. His decision yesterday to stick rather than twist at Newcastle United will further deplete his fortune.

More importantly, it will further damage this once great football club, and sadden the hearts of its hundreds of thousands of fans. Mike Ashley is no longer a successful businessman, but he is certainly still a f*ddl*st*ck*ng t*gb**t.

I’ve not written about Newcastle United so far this season. That’s because, after 16 years as a season ticket holder, this summer Mike Ashley drove me out of the club I love. I decided not to renew in the hope that Ashley would depart, and with the determination that he wouldn’t take my season ticket money with him. As it transpired, Ashley didn’t go anywhere. So I did.

This was not an easy decision – and it hurt. I felt guilty at abandoning my team, and angry that I was being pushed away. And, of course, I had nothing to do on Saturday afternoons. I spent my season ticket money on Sky Sports HD, but that overhyped emperor’s new outfit hardly filled the void.

Inevitably, I couldn’t stay away for long, and I’ve been back to enough individual matches this season to determine that Chris Hughton’s team, thin in number and talent, is top of the Championship by virtue of the standard of the league being absolutely woeful. Saturday’s Newcastle United versus Doncaster Rovers match was, for long periods, excruciatingly bad, like watching two hungover pub teams. And the worry is that things are going to get even worse.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Saturday’s match was the attendance – a remarkable 43,949. That’s just 239 less than watched Liverpool versus Manchester United in the Premier League 24 hours later. Newcastle’s home attendances in the Championship this season have averaged 41,251 – well over 10,000 more than any other team in the division, and more than almost every Premier League team with the exception of Man United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Man City.

That’s an incredible show of support for a club that has treated its fans with such disdain over the past year or so. But, ironically, the faithfulness of the fans, and the huge injection of cash they continue to provide, has offered the stability that allows Ashley to stick around.

Yesterday, Ashley announced that the club has been taken off the market. He clearly believes that the team will win promotion, and the value of his hobbyhorse will subsequently rise. Last season he clearly believed that the team would avoid relegation, and that his investment wouldn’t implode. The guy knows less about football than a chimp knows about quantum physics.

Meanwhile, Chris Hughton has been appointed as permanent manager on an 18-month contract. There is no question that Hughton is a decent bloke who has done a more than decent job with the paltry tools afforded to him. But, by his own admission, he is not a manager. He is, however, both cheap and a “yes” man. He will not be kicking Ashley’s door down during the January transfer window, and he’ll continue to toe the party line in press conferences. And he isn’t that pesky Alan Shearer. All good news for puppet-master Ashley.

For the players, the permanent appointment of Hughton is unlikely to inspire greater effort. It seems more likely that they will get out the deckchairs, pipes and slippers. There has been much talk of the team spirit that Hughton has fostered, but he has also abandoned many of the disciplinary measures introduced by Shearer. The players no longer eat together, and are no longer fined for persistent lateness. Injured players are no longer required to attend the training centre for ice baths and extra treatment. No wonder some of the players are happier. No wonder some of them are persistently late and repeatedly injured.

The final insult in Ashley’s announcement was the claim that he will look to sell naming rights for St James’ Park. This is not an out-of-town, flat-packed, identikit arena of the type inhabited by the likes of Middlesbrough, Bolton or Wigan. This is a city centre stadium that has evolved as a hub of its community over more than 100 years of history. Any new name would be ignored by all right-thinking football supporters, and any interested sponsor should think very carefully about the implications of becoming involved in such a deranged scheme.

Ashley doesn’t even properly own the stadium. And he certainly doesn’t own the fans who fill it. What does he own? The contracts of a bunch of overpaid, overrated and unloved players, and a big thick wad of debts. Does that really constitute owning a football club? The fact is that without the fans Ashley has nothing.

The day St James’ Park is renamed the Cillit Bang Arena is the day we should all finally withdraw our support and our money, and leave Mike Ashley to count the cost of destroying one of the world’s greatest football clubs.

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My book about Newcastle United is Black & White Army.

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There have been some big games in the Unofficial Football World Championships over the last few months, and on Wednesday there is another one as current UFWC title holders the Netherlands (some say Holland) travel to Glasgow to take on all-time UFWC champions Scotland.

The game is also a crucial qualifying match for some tin pot competition to be held in South Africa next year, but obviously the player’s minds will be on the UFWC…

Scotland are the all-time UFWC champions, having won 86 UFWC title matches – more than any other nation, ahead of the likes of England, Argentina, Russia – and the Netherlands, who have won 38 title matches and are ranked fifth overall.

Scotland have not had an easy time of things in UFWC competition in recent years. The Scots last held the title in March 2007, having ended a 40-year drought by beating Georgia, only then to lose out just four days later to official world champions Italy.

The UFWC website has all the build-up to the game, and will cover the action on Wednesday night. The game will be shown live in the UK on Sky Sports 2.

If you have no idea what the previous 200 words mean, you can read an explanation of sorts at www.ufwc.co.uk.

Football, Websites UFWC