For some time, there had existed a popular myth that the manager's job at St James' Park was a poisoned chalice.

The succession of high-qualified candidates who have offered their services whenever time the post has become available in recent years has given the lie to that view.

At least, that is, until now.

Ashley this afternoon managed to persuade 61-year-old Joe Kinnear to step back into the limelight for six weeks to attempt to drag the club out of a rapidly deepening mire.

But the appointment came after a desperate trawl through the ranks of the terminally unemployed and executive director Dennis Wise's little black book in an effort to find a man ready to take on a job which few genuinely want.

Kinnear has nothing to lose. The former Wimbledon and Luton boss has been out of the management game since his spell at Nottingham Forest drew to a close in December 2004, and he will not be expected to perform miracles.

He will be asked to steady a ship which has slipped its moorings and is inexorably heading for stormy seas, and if he can steer back into calmer waters as Ashley attempts to offload the club he bought for £134.4million 16 months ago, he will have done his job.

If he does not and the malaise on Tyneside develops into a full-blown disaster, little of the mud will stick to him.

Kinnear's appointment was greeted with bemusement in Newcastle this afternoon, but perhaps came as no surprise after the list of likely candidates dwindled further last night when Terry Venables decided against taking on the role of trouble-shooter once again.

Just how the Toon Army will greet him remains to be seen, but there is little doubt their ire will be directed once again at Ashley and the regime he put into place following his surprise swoop for the club last year.

The billionaire is understood to have taken over the task of finding an interim manager personally after losing patience with the lack of progress made by Wise and vice-president Tony Jimenez.

However, when he sits back and reflects upon an eventful period in his colourful business career, he will have plenty of food for thought.

His arrival in the north-east was greeted with glee by fans who expected a multi-million shopping spree, and that excitement simply grew once he had dispensed with the services of Sam Allardyce and installed Geordie Messiah Kevin Keegan in his place.

But with Ashley keeping his own counsel, it gradually emerged that far from throwing money at the club, he wanted to run it as a viable business and would not fund either the kind of big-money transfers or the inflated wages his predecessors had sanctioned in an effort to attract top players to the club.

That, coupled with his decision to take the responsibility for recruitment out of the manager's hands, ultimately led to an irretrievable breakdown in his relationship with Keegan and quickly to the chaos which has reigned within St James' Park since.

Keegan the football manager is not a particularly complex character: give him the money to buy exciting players, and he will put together a team that produces entertaining football and wins more games than it loses.

For that reason alone, he and Newcastle were a marriage made in heaven.

Ashley was either naive or spectacularly badly advised - and perhaps both - if he expected the whole thing not to end in tears, or the club's fans not to side with the adopted Geordie.

Had Ashley donned a Sunderland shirt and danced on the legendary Jackie Milburn's grave, he could not have caused more anger or offence.

Despite his faults, Keegan - like Alan Shearer, as Ruud Gullit discovered to his cost - is virtually untouchable on Tyneside and there was only ever going to be one winner in that particular popularity contest.

Having tried and failed to patch up his differences with the former England boss, Ashley decided there was only one way out.

If he does not have the stomach to see his mission through, he is probably right, and the divorce cannot come quickly enough for either party.