MIKE ASHLEY offering Newcastle players a free holiday if they avoid relegation is an insult.

If I was a player at that team dinner on Wednesday and he offered me that, I would have told him to shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.

I would have said, ‘Instead of spending money on a holiday spend it on the football club and back the manager!’

As a player, that might give me hope and extra motivation that we’re all in the fight together.

These players are on from between £30,000 and £100,000-a-week, they are multi-millionaires.

Does he not think they can afford any holiday they want?

They have spent ten months with each other and my guess is that the last thing they would want is to go away as a team.

As for the dinner, how is that going to make you better as a player?

If you are motivated by that, or by the owner being at matches, there is something wrong with you. Was it a coincidence that the meal happened on the same night fans were meeting to discuss future protests against Ashley?

And was it a coincidence that it happened at the same time that Kevin Keegan’s book has come out criticising the owner?

Maybe I am just being cynical but Kevin’s book tells it exactly how it is. He has been inside the club and knows what it is like.

It is an honest account of what happened at Newcastle during his second time there as boss.

Good for Kevin for telling everyone. I like it.

I am also suspicious as to why the owner has been at the last three games when he hadn’t been at one for 16 months beforehand.

Let’s hope it means he is closer to selling the club.

Ashley supposedly said he does not want Rafa Benitez to leave and he will back him in January.

But I don’t believe a word that comes out of Newcastle these days.