Mort - 'I'm No Puppet For Ashley'!

Mort: "If people want to say I'm a puppet, fine. But it doesn't reflect the reality.

"I've been consistent throughout, Mike's been consistent throughout. He didn't want to get involved in the business side.

"He's got his own massive, multi- national business. That's his day job and he doesn't want Newcastle United to become a day job as well.

"So he wants me to run the club and he wants to come and support it, which he thoroughly enjoys doing.

"He just wants me to get on with it. I understand what the financial spend of the club can be, but within those constraints it's for me to go and run the business, and that includes deciding to sign players.

"In the summer, he didn't get involved in any of the signings. That's not the role he wants.

"We travel to games together, we talk as mates do about the team and how it's going. But he's not out to influence who's in the team.

"He seems less involved day to day than, say, Roman Abramovich is at Chelsea. Mike's a passionate supporter. In fact, my conversations with Mike in the context of Newcastle tend to be on matchdays and not often in between.

"Mike and I discussed at the start whether he (Allardyce) was the right person, because he wasn't our appointment.

"We had to decide whether we were going to stay with Sam or not. We concluded then that we should.

"He's an experienced manager - and this club needs one because it's a big club to run and there are some significant demands here.

"Since then, we've never sought to think about 'right, who's next?'

"Nothing's changed between Sam and me. We sit down, go through business and talk about what's happening with the team.

"We are both very frustrated by the level of inaccurate Press comment that's been around over recent weeks, particularly in the nationals.

"But I assume Sam would say he feels that, in terms of a management and ownership team, we are stable and not going to do anything crazy.

"He and I are making plans about what's happening next summer in terms of signings and the like.

"We've talked about how we're planning to build this club up over a long period of time, and those are still our topics of conversation."