GIVEN my experiences over the last few days, it’s safe to assume that I’m in the minority. Rightly or wrongly – and I’m being regularly told it’s the latter – I feel there seems to be a load of unnecessary fuss on Tyneside.

St James’ Park has now been given a new name. Well, actually, no it hasn’t, it has just been given a new sponsor. It remains St James’ Park, it just has the long-winded sportsdirect.com @ before it. Very few will use its brand name anyway, so who cares.

There would have been something majorly wrong had owner Mike Ashley decided to completely ditch the name St James’ Park: 117 years and all that. He hasn’t.

Whether he was going to originally, before the plans for protests ahead of this Saturday's game with Peterborough emerged, only he knows. What matters now, though, is that St James' Park remains St James' Park.

More than 16,000 supporters have apparently signed a petition to object to Ashley’s decision. The truth is, the vast majority of those were already signed up before managing director Derek Llambias attempted to clarify the situation by outlining that the sacred name of St James’ Park would remain, just with a sponsor.

Yes, a sponsor. Remember 1982/83 when the sacred black and white shirt suddenly had the Newcastle Breweries’ famous blue star emblazoned across it?

That was the year when Newcastle decided that it would go down the sponsorship route, following a trend set by Liverpool four years earlier when they struck a deal with Hitachi.

There will be an argument that the star was a symbol of Tyneside. True, but that only paved the way for other brands such as ntl and Northern Rock to follow.

I see very little difference between a shirt which has been the colours of Newcastle United since 1894 being branded with a sponsor and the stadium where they have played for more than a century following suit. If, like the black and white shirt has done all of these years, St James’ Park remains the constant then surely that counts for a lot.

One thing for sure is that St James’ Park will not be the last club to go down this route. There will be many, many more to follow. Chelsea have already outlined plans to consider such a marketing ploy, while you could see Manchester United’s money-men doing the same.

If Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford don’t become Sony Bridge and the T-Mobile Stadium what difference does it make.

Maybe there is an argument that silverware and recent success means Chelsea’s powerbrokers are in credit with their supporters so they will find it easier to come to terms with. For those who agree with that notion, then that just proves the problem is not the sponsorship of the stadium, it is Mike Ashley.

I will probably be accused of backing the Ashley regime, when in all honesty I would be the first to admit that he has misled supporters along with his directors and badly treated local heroes such as Alan Shearer and Kevin Keegan.

But it is in Ashley’s best interests to see Newcastle claim promotion back to the Premier League. Then he might be able to conclude a sale, having failed twice before, and then everyone on Tyneside could finally see the back of him.