I don't usually go in for these, but this occurred to me during a recent flick through the papers.
Cast them as cousins.
Anyway, now to the serious business. Yesterday Newcastle United Football Club placed a notice on it's website declaring that, once again, the club is up for sale, this time around for the princely sum of £100million. A steep sum for an outfit playing in the second tier of English football, you must agree.
The latest move to find a buyer can only have confirmed among the most ardent supporters what outsiders knew long ago: the club is under the stewardship of a complete amateur. At the time, Mike Ashley's acquisition was seen by some as a welcome move given the burgeoning trend of low-profile foreign money men taking controlling stakes in top-level teams.
While cries of "Cockney Mafia!" have since echoed around St James' Park and beyond many fans were pleased to see the old administration make way for the new. How things change. While the faithful are die-hard to the point of self-denial, it has become increasingly clear to fans and commentators alike that the club was being run by someone without even the first idea how to do so.
The unprofessional - if direct - nature of Ashley's way of advertising his desire to rid himself of this multimillion-pound burden is all too apparent. What compounds it is that this is only the latest incident in a long-line of forehead-slappingly stupid moves.
"What's that?" said Ashley to no-one in particular when he heard of Manchester City being offloaded by its unscupulous former owner to a band of oil-rich squillionaires from the Middle East, thus simultaneously purging the club of any lingering scandal and pumping its coffers full of dosh that they would be hard pressed to actually spend despite laughable delusions about being a 'big club'?
"I'll have some of that," he must have muttered to himself as he got on the blower to his travel agent.
The thought of someone of Ashley's not inconsiderable mass touching down in Dubai and stepping out of an air-conditioned first-class cabin into 40-degree heat is comical enough. But the notion that the kind of individuals to whom he was looking to sell would just allow him to turn up at their corporate headquarters with the keys to SJ'sP and a stack of replica shirts with "Sheikh" printed on the back is staggering in its ineptitude. Something tells me necking cocktails in public during the holy month of Ramadan didn't do him any favours, either.
What's more, it seems that no-one has yet learnt from Ashley's mistakes. Fans have espoused the need for a manager who loves the club to sweep in and take over, perhaps in tandem with a new owner who understands what NUFC is all about. This would surely only compound their woes and see them sink ever deeper into the mire. Tough love, or perhaps no love at all and instead sheer pragmatism, is what is needed now more than ever.
And the sooner Mike Ashley sells, to almost anyone, the sooner the club can begin to redeem itself in the eyes of football fans in general and, most importantly, its own supporters. The faithful might still believe in their side's stature for the time being. But something tells me that, by the time the whistle blows on the first day of the season and they line up to face not Manchester United or Chelsea but instead the likes of Plymouth Argyle and Doncaster Rovers, the shit will have well and truly hit the fan.
For a comprehensive and compelling look at the club's current need for a detached and utterly unromantic manager, read Times columnist Matthew Syed's thoughts on the matter - rightly described by my friend and fellow blogger Matt as "the most 'nail on head' article I've ever read".
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