According to sources in the City, the price quoted for the purchase of Newcastle United is in the region of £400 million. Sadly, that is not the only ludicrous figure attached to the club these days .

When Mike Ashley, the owner, arrives for the first match of the new season dressed in his black and white replica shirt and ready to join the Toon Army in another chorus of “Walking In A Keegan Wonderland”, how will he be received? There is a credibility issue as dense as the fog on the Tyne for him now. Does Ashley want to sell? His people say no, but a pesky little group called InterMedia Partners claims to have been approached by an intermediary with a view to buying Ashley’s share for about three times his purchase price. Unsurprisingly, considering the doubt surrounding the structure of the club and its long-term prospects, it declined.

If Ashley wishes to cash in early, Kevin Keegan, the club’s manager, may have queered his pitch. The little speech about how far Newcastle are behind the clubs at the top of the Barclays Premier League, how futile is the chase and how much money it would cost to put them on an even footing will have done for potential buyers what an immovable listed tree making cracks in the main supporting wall will do for your house price.

Everyone now knows that, according to the expert employed by Ashley to restore the good old days when the club were a force in the English game, to reestablish Newcastle in that elite group would require a long-term plan of incalculable cost. Maybe it is that knowledge that is worrying Keegan’s boss. If so, saving money from the petty cash, with talk of players buying their own club suits, is hardly going to balance the books.

These rumours of cut and run are surfacing too frequently to be casually dismissed and, even so, this regime has form for saying one thing and doing another, from the time of Sam Allardyce’s departure. Having played the honorary Geordie card so brazenly in his first year, it is going to take more than another raid on the club shop to convince the locals of Ashley’s sincerity second time around.

If he is foursquare behind his investment, as he wishes us to believe, he has an increasingly strange way of showing it. If he is trying to get out, then all that fancy dress and mugging for the camera on match days will not obscure the truth. They are a devoted bunch at St James’ Park, but they are not fools.

History books point to backward step by Uefa

Before condemning Euro 2008 to its dreary, expanded, 24-team future, Uefa would do well to study the success of the format at other tournaments, most notably the three World Cup competitions that took place between 1986 and 1994. All were played using an identical model to that proposed for forthcoming European Championship finals, with six groups of four coming down to a knockout round of 16, and all stand as a testament to the drabness that ensues when mediocrity is rewarded.

As competition organisers know, 16 is the magic number because it reduces down perfectly to eight quarter-finalists, four semi-finalists, two finalists and one winner. To make the numbers work in a 24-team tournament, as well as the top two in each group, the four best third-placed teams advance, often despite weak performances.

The evidence is in the record books. During the time the World Cup had a 24-team structure, 12 countries made it by the back door, playing a total of 36 matches and winning less than one third, with nine getting knocked out instantly at the next stage. Usually a win and a draw was enough to go through, but Uruguay and Bulgaria in 1986 and Holland in 1990 advanced without winning (Uruguay were beaten 6-1 by Denmark in one match) and when the 1990 finals recorded the lowest goals average in the history of the competition, the points system at the group stage had to be changed to three for a win to encourage attacking play.

The full breakdown of third-placed qualifiers is: 1986 Bulgaria 2 points (drew with Italy and South Korea, lost to Argentina); Belgium 3 (lost to Mexico, beat Iraq, drew with Paraguay); Uruguay 2 (drew with West Germany and Scotland, lost to Denmark); Poland 3 (drew with Morocco, beat Portugal, lost to England). 1990Argentina 3 points (lost to Cameroon, beat USSR, drew with Romania); Colombia 3 (beat United Arab Emirates, lost to Yugoslavia, drew with West Germany); Uruguay 3 (drew with Spain, lost to Belgium, beat South Korea); Holland 3 (drew with Egypt, England, Ireland). 1994 United States 4 points (drew with Switzerland, beat Colombia, lost to Romania); Italy 4 (lost to Ireland, beat Norway, drew with Mexico); Belgium 6 (beat Morocco, Holland, lost to Saudi Arabia); Argentina 6 (beat Greece, Nigeria, lost to Bulgaria).

The list of the boldly vanquished includes Iraq, the UAE, South Korea, Morocco and Norway, yet this is the way forward for the European Championship, apparently; one win over the group’s weak link (there will be plenty of those once almost half the nations under Uefa’s umbrella make it to the finals) and a dull stalemate in another game to secure a berth in the second round, when the real action begins.

Argentina in 1990 and Italy in 1994 made it to the World Cup final, but can anybody say that they deserved it? Their progress was an unwelcome anomaly in a flawed system. If a team who had trodden such an unexceptional path had defeated Spain, who won every match en route, in the final this year, would that have been just?

Uefa is money-motivated, as always, but wasn’t putting a football man in charge meant to ward off these tawdry sell-outs? Michel Platini, the Uefa president, has much to answer for: meet the new boss, worse than the old boss, and by some distance, too.

Scolari splits United

Luiz Felipe Scolari, having first steered Cristiano Ronaldo in the direction of Real Madrid, appears certain to be replaced as coach of Portugal by Carlos Queiroz, assistant manager to Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United. If Queiroz turns out to be Scolari’s recommendation, too, he will need only to talk the Glazer family into ploughing all their spare cash into an Indian Premier League Twenty20 franchise and the new Chelsea manager will have a hat-trick.

Bargain Barry not fair

Gareth Barry believes that he is entitled to his move to Liverpool, after so many years of service at Aston Villa, but equally, then, Martin O’Neill, the Villa manager, is entitled to drive the hardest bargain possible. Wanting parity with the fees paid by Manchester United for Michael Carrick and Owen Hargreaves, the two players Barry is keeping out of the England team, is reasonable.

Milan moan is a bit rich

AC Milan are out of the hunt for Emmanuel Adebayor, the Arsenal striker, because the price is too high, according to Adriano Galliani, the Milan vice-president. “The figure of £35 million is impossible for an Italian club,” he said. “When big teams like Barcelona and Chelsea arrive it is impossible to compete.”

No mention of the real reason Milan are excluded from this auction: the failure to qualify for the Champions League after finishing fifth in Serie A. Arsenal were in a different class from Milan when they played last season, yet the Italians expect to be able to take Arsène Wenger’s best players and moan about financial imbalances if they cannot.

Mischievous Mourinho

José Mourinho’s year out of football has not stripped him of his mischief. Asked about Frank Lampard’s proposed move to his club, Inter Milan, Mourinho said: “I am 100 per cent sure he will be playing here in 2009-10. This season? I don’t think so.” Translation: sell me the player this summer, or he will leave for nothing in 12 months’ time.

Mourinho is not known for his patience, so his words are designed to get Lampard now, not later.

Casillas rewards faith

On the night at Old Trafford in April 2003 when Real Madrid dumped Manchester United out of the Champions League, Iker Casillas was unjustly compared to Manuel, the comic waiter. “He does have his Meester Fawlty moments,” Clive Tyldesley, the ITV commentator, said with a giggle. Ron Atkinson, the ITV pundit, rarely had a good word to say for Casillas, either.

Now that he has a European Championship winner’s medal to add to his two from the Champions League, perhaps the jokes will stop. And, yes, Casillas was in the Madrid team at a very young age and at times looked vulnerable. But the club stuck by him and they were rewarded.

Had he been English, it may have been different. As Paul Robinson and Scott Carson have discovered, goalkeepers are not allowed to lose form in this country. Then we wonder why they look like nervous wrecks for England.

Let Poland go it alone

Poland do not need Ukraine to co-host the 2012 European Championship tournament. The Poles have six venues, including two reserves, that would be perfectly adequate for a 16-team tournament (the 24-team concept will not be implemented until 2016).

Modern tournaments are too unwieldy anyway. Using ten locations in Portugal in 2004 was unnecessary – and made for the most poorly organised competition of recent years – while even the eight utilised in England in 1996 could have been scaled down.

A 16-team tournament involves a block of 24 games in 12 days, which six venues can handle in rotation. Even if Poland wished to play every game in Warsaw it would still be workable, and allow for a minimum of 48 hours’ recovery time for each pitch, with travel time greatly reduced. Co-hosted competitions are a lousy idea in the first place. If the Poles are willing, Uefa should let them go it alone.