Moat still wants Newcastle United but club’s fans are wary

Barry Moat, the businessman whose drawn-out attempts to take over Newcastle United this summer ended in failure, has insisted he is still keen on buying the English soccer club.

"For one reason or another it didn't come to pass," he told Sky Sports News. "It's extremely disappointing. It's something we'd given up a lot of time and effort and abortive costs with so I've been feeling pretty bruised by the whole process.

He added: "I think from my perspective I don't think Mike Ashley wants to stay at St James' Park for the long term, so I'll never give up. I'll keep beavering away in the background and hopefully one day we'll get there."

However, Moat's comments this week that, like Ashley, he would sell the naming rights to the ground have alienated many fans. "We welcome any serious offers for Newcastle but this is deja-vu," said Mark Jensen, Spokesperson for the Newcastle United Supporters' Trust, on the NUST website following Moat's comments.

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"We will continue our fan based campaign to make the club accountable to the city again. We've made approaches to Mr Moat previously and had no reply but we're happy to speak to anyone who has the long term interests of Newcastle at heart. If he has any ideas about how he would take the club forward apart from carrying on the idea of selling the name of Saint James' Park 'for commercial reasons' then once again we would happily talk."

"One point of immediate disagreement is the issue of re-naming the ground. We'll be clear, under a Trust-led bid there would be no change of name. We have a series of commercial ideas that don't strip out the history of the club and would retain the integrity of Saint James' Park."

NUST claims to already have pledges of £20 million – including £5 from an orphanage in Ghana that was given Newcastle replica kits by NUST - towards a fan buy-out of the club.

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