Newcastle, the days of being owned by Mike Ashley and handing lucrative long-term contracts to French flops such as Sylvain Marveaux and Gabriel Obertan appear to be behind them for good.Toon fans will not need reminding of the dark period in the Premier League club’s history where Ligue 1 was their preferred choice of market for recruiting players on the cheap.On the one hand, it got them Yohan Cabaye, Hatem Ben Arfa and Moussa Sissoko, who all can point to successful periods spent with the Geordie outfit.But the list of expensive transfer failures — ranging from the capture of Florian Thauvin to the hugely disappointing Remy Cabella — are just as prominent as their successes under Alan Pardew and Rafa Benitez.Unfortunately for Marveaux and Obertan, the pair fit snugly in the latter category following their ineffectual respective stints on Tyneside. And 10 years on from their respective arrivals, they now ply their trade in the third tier of American soccer.Playing in the United States no longer carries the same embarrassment that it once did.
