WHEN news broke on Monday night effectively confirming the collapse of Amanda Staveley’s proposed takeover of Newcastle United, the initial temptation was to pin all the blame on Mike Ashley.

Newcastle’s provocative owner is hardly the most popular figure at the best of times, and with hopes of his departure having been dramatically dashed, plenty of the club’s fans took to social media to vent their frustration. Even his supposed exit had turned into a means of inflicting yet more misery.

The desire to berate Ashley is understandable. His 11-year spell in charge of Newcastle has lurched from one self-inflicted crisis to the next. Wonga, The Sports Direct Arena, the belittling of legendary figures such as Kevin Keegan and Alan Shearer. This is a man who saw fit to employ Joe Kinnear in a position of authority, not once, but twice.

Yet as the dust begins to settle on the latest drama to have besmirched his reign, perhaps at least some of the anger and fury has been misplaced. Ashley has not been free of fault during the failed negotiations that resulted in Monday’s collapse, but nor has he been the only, or indeed the main, person to blame.

Ultimately, the situation at Newcastle is a relatively simple one. Ashley wants a certain price before he will agree to sell up. He has never publicly put a figure on his demands, but those close to the discussions that have taken place over the last three months continue to claim he will walk away if he is able to bank £350m. Anything less than that, and he won’t be interested. Offer him what he wants, and he will disappear into the sunset.

Staveley must know that. Having met Lee Charnley and Ashley’s right-hand man, Justin Barnes, on that fateful October afternoon that saw her watch Newcastle’s 1-1 draw with Liverpool from the St James’ Park stands, the North Yorkshire businesswoman must have known what it would take to buy the club.

Her London curry-house meeting with Ashley, which the Newcastle hierarchy believe was used for maximum PR advantage by Staveley and her associates thanks to the presence of a carefully-positioned photographer, must have featured a discussion over price.

Yet at no stage in the last three months has Staveley’s PCP Capital Partners group even come close to making Ashley an offer that might have resulted in a deal. The two sides continue to dispute the exact timeline of what has occurred since Staveley’s interest first became apparent, but it is understood an initial offer of close to £350m was made, but featured a host of clauses and potential refunds that were never going to be acceptable to Ashley.

When that was rejected, a second offer followed, worth around £250m. It is that bid that Staveley’s camp insist remained on the table right up to the point when a source close to Ashley explosively branded discussions “exhausting, frustrating and a complete waste of time”.

Did Staveley really think Ashley was going to cave in and agree to a £250m deal when he has spent more than £260m on buying Newcastle and signing off a series of loans that addressed the club’s pre-existing debt? There is a debate to be had on whether Ashley’s chaotic stewardship of the Magpies entitles him to leave with a profit, but it is nevertheless wholly unrealistic to expect him to walk away having sustained a financial loss.

The guaranteed income of a Premier League club has risen dramatically since Ashley bought out Sir John Hall and Freddie Shepherd in 2007, and is set to soar again next month when the next round of broadcasting deals is announced. True, Newcastle might find themselves in the bottom three in May and miss out on the next round of riches. But is it realistic to expect Ashley to agree to a loss now, when the value of his club is set to increase again in a few weeks’ time?

Having completed an extensive process of due diligence, Staveley might have concluded that £250m is all Newcastle United is worth. Nevertheless, a bid of that size was never going to result in an agreement, so given the opaqueness of the funding behind her bid, it is easy to see why Ashley and his associates began to question her ability to carry through on her initially bullish claims.

Staveley had plenty of opportunity to increase her offer to meet Ashley’s asking price. Does the fact that she didn’t mean she had been unable to raise the kind of funds that might have allowed her to table an offer that could not have been refused? Amid all the talk of Saudi Arabian and Chinese investors, Staveley’s only confirmed backer was revealed in the Guardian as the London-based Reuben family, and the source quoted in that story suggests they are no longer interested in being part of any deal.

An alternative suggestion is that Staveley was playing hardball in an attempt to force Ashley to cave in. If that is true, then she has seriously misjudged the intransigence of the person on the opposite side of the negotiating table.

Ashley has carved a career out of driving a hard bargain, and given that he does not need to sell Newcastle in order to raise capital, he holds all the aces when it comes to negotiating a price.

The feeling from within Ashley’s camp is that Staveley’s carefully-orchestrated PR campaign was an attempt to place pressure on the Sports Direct owner via the constant drip-feeding of information. There were leaks hinting at improved offers, briefings to PR spin-doctors maintaining the takeover was on track and a cultivation of links to fans ensuring popular support for attempts to buy the club.

Was any of that ever going to affect Ashley’s judgement? In a word, no. The 53-year-old has brushed off Government inquiries into his businesses, so he was hardly going to be hustled by someone purporting to be interested in buying his football club.

That is not to say that he is without fault. Monday’s statement was unnecessarily antagonistic, and might make other interested parties reluctant to enter into talks. With a takeover seemingly dead in the water, Ashley could cause untold damage to Newcastle if he does not support Rafael Benitez in the transfer market this month.

Ultimately, though, it is his club, and whether Newcastle fans like it or not, he has the right to do what he wants with it. As this week’s events prove, that includes setting the price at which he will sell.