Newcastle United FC, A History of Mismanagement
After years of mismanagement, who do we, or should we blame for relegation?
It depends how far you want to go back, the seeds of our relegation were sown years ago, they were sown the day Freddy Shepherd undermined Sir Bobby Robson during the 2004-05 summer break.
At that point Newcastle had just finished 5th in the league and had reached the UEFA Cup semi-final.
Just before the start of season 2004/05 our then Chairman came out and announced that the 12 month Roll-on contract of Bobby Robson would not be renewed. What followed that announcement was so predictable to everybody except Shepherd. The players knew that they would probably be at the club long after the manager. With that knowledge the players knew that if something kicked off then the manager would probably be the one to lose out. Sir Alex Ferguson had announced that he was going to retire and had to publicly change his mind because players were no longer performing for him. Ferguson himself admitted that the decision to pre-announce his retirement had resulted in a negative effect on the players and on his ability to impose discipline. The same thing happened at Newcastle and that is down to nobody other than Shepherd and possibly Douglas Hall.
Robson had a terrible time after that announcement and before the start of the new season, the club was in turmoil as the manager denied any knowledge that this was to be his last season, while Shepherd told the press that Robson knew that it was to be his last season. Kieron Dyer was dropped to the bench for refusing to play on the right wing although this was first denied and described as "utter rubbish" by Sir Bobby Robson. The players were also hit by a bout of conjunctivitis that had taken out every fit central defender at the club, Woodgate had recently been sold and his replacement was still to arrive. Robson had actually been called into see Shepherd thinking that a central defender had been signed, little was he to know that this would be the last time he would go to St James’ Park as manager of Newcastle United. Robson has said that he would have liked to have been involved in identifying his successor but that wasn’t to be. Identifying his successor was down to Shepherd and again, possibly Douglas Hall as Sir John was no longer involved with the running of the club and what a spectacular failure the appointment turned out to be.
Newcastle United was near the bottom of the league when Robson was relieved of his duties. The team had drawn against Middlesborough, lost at home to Tottenham, drawn at home to Norwich and lost away to Aston Villa and were 16th in the league. Newcastle having a poor start to a league campaign wasn’t anything new; in fact it had already become normal. 12 months earlier after 4 games Newcastle were sitting one place lower than when Robson were sacked, we were 17th and still went on to finish 5th by the end of the season. The season before that was even worse, after 4 games we were 19th yet went on to finish 3rd. Sacking Robson was knee-jerk and would prove to have been a costly mistake which the club would fail to get over for years; we’re still waiting to get over it today.
Robson was replaced by one of only 4 managers who were below him in the league when he was sacked. Souness was appointed and we actually paid compensation to Blackburn who were rumored to be close to sacking him, that would be seriously funny if it had of happened to another club but it didn’t happen to another club, it happened to ours.
Souness came with a reputation of falling out with players on a fairly regular basis. He also came with the reputation of having taken over a Liverpool team who produced trophies as quickly as they could be manufactured, they produced trophies as if they were coming off a conveyor belt, at least they did until they appointed Souness who to be fair had done well in Scotland.
Souness delivered what most fans had expected, for some strange reason Bellamy was substituted against Charlton when he looked to be the best player for Newcastle on the pitch, Bellamy was seen to utter something while leaving the pitch. Souness was then said to have grabbed Bellamy by the throat during training. If this is true then Souness wasn’t only a verbal bully, he was also a physical bully as anybody doing that anywhere else would probably result in an assault charge. A manager who assaults an employee in industry would be a manager out of a job within days and rightly so. This happened on 17th October 2004 and was soon to be followed by Souness and Bellamy publicly slagging each other off on Sky Sports after playing away to Arsenal on 23rd January 2005. Souness claimed that Bellamy had feigned injury while Bellamy claimed that Souness was a liar. Bellamy was eventually loaned out to Celtic before being sold for a fee that was around £3 million, the fee was used by Bellamy to have a go at Souness later via a newspaper article.
Newcastle didn’t only have a discipline problem with Bellamy; on April 2nd 2005 we finished a home game against Aston Villa on the wrong end of a 0-3 score line. That doesn’t tell the whole story, we lost the game and finished it with 8 players on the field after Stave Taylor was sent off for handling the ball, and both Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer were also sent off, this time for fighting with each other after Dyer had failed to pass the ball to Lee Bowyer.
Shepherd was later to defend Souness when he claimed “But the seeds of the Craig Bellamy situation were sown before he arrived at the club. “Many of the problems Graeme is having to deal with are down to the way the previous manager handled discipline.”
Souness was allegedly been brought to the club to install some discipline, on that score he failed miserably. He was also brought to the club to turn around a team which had previously finished 5th in the league. Again, he failed because he was sacked after taking the club to 14th at the end of his first season and at the time of his sacking, 15th in the league. He has spent close to £50 million to take the 5th placed team to 14th and was sacked after a defeat away to Manchester City. Amazingly Shepherd used the excuse of two players colliding during the game as reason for the dismissal, so we are to believe that it had nothing to do with the fact that we were 15th in the league at this time?
Shepherd installed Glenn Roeder as caretaker manager and boasted that the Newcastle manager’s job was one of the top jobs in world football. If that was the case then why did we end up appointing Roeder who had a poor record as a manager at his previous clubs? Roeder did lift the players in his first season with the team eventually finishing in 7th place and qualifying for the Intertoto Cup. Roeder didn’t last long, he was appointed as caretaker in February 2006 and resigned in May 2007 although future accounts highlighted that Roeder walked away from the club with a lot of money so for resigned, use sacked. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Roeder was the fans choice so Shepherd probably thought that the fans were to blame for this failure. Within days of Roeder becoming manager Shepherd claimed “The amount of text messages and emails we have had in support of Glenn run into their thousands. “The supporters have identified Glenn as the man they want. We have listened to them.” Where would anybody get a hold of Shepherd’s mobile number to allow them to send him texts? How would thousands of fans been able to get a hold of his e-mail address?
Shepherd then appointed Sam Allardyce as soon as the season had finished. On the face of it this looked like a good move by the club. The first team was struggling on the pitch and the club was in debt so had very little, if anything to spend. Allardyce was known as a manager who played direct football but he’d worked on a low budget and had been relatively successful dealing in this way, he was out of work and looking for a fresh challenge.
Allardyce never had the chance to field a team under the man who had appointed him as during the summer Sir John Hall went down to London to watch the FA Cup final. By chance Hall had bumped into a billionaire who was unknown to the majority of Newcastle fans, Mike Ashley. Sir John and Ashley got talking and Hall offered to sell his shares to Ashley. Sir John told Ashley that he would be leaving London that night by train and that if Ashley was interested then he had to agree to buy them before Sir John had boarded his train at Kings Cross. Sir John claimed that he was looking for a quick sale so that the club wasn’t destabilised by rumours and Ashley took the bait.
Ashley had his advisors look through the clubs accounts but they didn’t complete Due Diligence as they were never given enough time and Ashley was known to have bought a business in this manner before.
Ashley appointed Chris Mort as Deputy Chairman to work under Shepherd who was in hospital suffering from pneumonia. Shepherd was later relieved of his duties and Mort took over as Chairman on a years secondment from law firm Freshfields. Mort had been brought in to look at all levels of the club and soon had a surprise when he found out that the club had a loan agreement which carried a clause which forced the repayment after the club was sold. Ashley had no other option but to dig deep and pay off £44 million within weeks of buying the club. Other loans of around £30 million were paid off by Ashley who loaned the money to the club. To this day he doesn’t appear to have taken a penny out of the club in interest for these loans.
Allardyce was given money to spend, he would later thank Ashley for allowing him to spend the most money he’d ever spent at a club but he was also complaining that the new people at the club were not acting quickly enough and that we were losing players because of this. Allardyce was still allowed to bring in players like Joey Barton and Alan Smith while letting go players like Dyer and Solano. Very few people complained about the loss of Solano or Dyer but the replacements brought to the club turned out to be terrible buys.
Smith has still to score for the club and Barton has hardly played for the club and has spent more minutes in prison than on the pitch and that is almost 2 years after he joined the club.
Allardyce was sacked for poor performance; he was the only manager to lose in the league to Derby County who were eventually relegated with the fewest number of points in a Premiership campaign. They still managed to take 4 of the 11 points they managed to muster during the full league season off Allardyce and Newcastle.
Ashley was about to either make or allow the first of his mistakes to be made. He appointed or allowed the appointment of Keegan who had a record of walking out of clubs when he wasn’t getting his own way. He also appointed or allowed what would eventually turn out to be the reason for Keegan walking out of the club for the second time as manager, Dennis Wise.
Keegan was constantly alleged to have been complaining to the press off the record about what he didn’t like to see happening at the club. A meeting was hastily arranged after Keegan had spoken in front of TV cameras after a defeat to Chelsea. Within days stories were put out that the meeting was positive and that everybody had left the meeting satisfied with what had been said and agreed upon.
Keegan must also take his share of the blame, he alleges that he was forced out of the club but it can't be forgotten that Keegan wasn't escorted to the door. He made the decision to walk for whatever reason and he walked because he wanted to. Keegan came to the club knowing that Dennis Wise could be following him through the door. Keegan was also asked about the first time he walked out citing that the job was no longer what is said on the tin. He was asked if he would walk out this time and his reply was along the lines of not having been given any assurances this time.
The season came to an end and everybody went off on holiday but we knew that Chris Mort would probably be leaving the club when we received an e-mail from somebody at the club at the end of April although we didn’t make that public because we had been trusted with that information.
Mort was with the club for 12 months and in that time had stabilised things, he’d overseen the buyout, he’d had to contend with the City of London Police knocking on the doors at St James’ Park, he’d replaced a manager and managed to steer the club to one position higher up the league than the season before. He’d gone through the club from top to bottom to identify where things were in need of improvement and he’d got the fans onboard. Mort had set the foundation in place to allow the football club to move forwards both on and off the field and then he’d been sent packing so that Ashley could employ another of his mates. Ashley appointed a one of his mates to become Deputy Chairman at first. Llambias had been running casinos in London and was said to be a West Ham fan who was supposed to be good at the corporate side of things.
The summer didn’t go well with whispers in the media that all was not too well and that Keegan wasn’t too happy with the pace of team building. The club sold James Milner to Villa just before the transfer window came to an end and had only brought in Xisco and Gonzalez at the last minute. These transfers appear to be what was to send Keegan running for home while Ashley was getting pissed in a New York night club if the press are to be believed.
Once again the club was in turmoil and Ashley’s new MD as he had become was involved in a baptism of fire. The press also made it known that during a meeting between Keegan and Llambias that Llambias had wanted to slap Keegan. All hell broke loose amongst the fans that were mostly in a state of uproar.
Stories were coming out that Keegan has resigned then it was alleged that he’d not resigned but was sacked. It’s hard trying to think back at what was happening and when it was happening. Ashley flew back to England and held a meeting with Keegan in London but Keegan didn’t get what he wanted to make his return possible so he walked away from the club, this time probably forever.
Newcastle played Hull at home and the atmosphere was terrible. Fans protested before during and after the game which ended in a home defeat. The club was then put up for sale and a protest group/supporters club was then formed by a group of fans who were not happy with what was going on. It appeared that Ashley and Llambias had preferred to take the side of Dennis Wise in his power struggle with Keegan. Keegan had done so much for the club and fans in the past and Wise had not been seen to have done anything of note. Ashley and Llambias had misjudged what was going on and made some fatal errors, none more so than an ill-advised “Fact” statement which was put out on the official clubs website. Everything which the club seemed to do was just adding to the furore which the fans were feeling.
Newcastle played 3 games without a manager, 4 if you include the Blackburn game the day after Joe Kinnear was appointed as interim manager and all 4 games ended in defeat when Chris Hughton was picking the team. His record as caretaker was played 4, lost 4, 100% failure.
Kinnear was brought in on a month to month contract while Ashley tried to sell the club as nobody else seemed prepared to work under these conditions. Joe had been out of management for almost 4 years after resigning at Nottingham Forrest who were in danger of being relegated, which they were at the end of that season. At the end of November 2008 Joe Kinnear was appointed to take the club to the end of the season and the club was taken off the market because nobody could find a buyer. Joe does come here having experience of working at clubs who had a manager working for a Director of Football while at Oxford and at Luton. Joe was that DoF at Luton and he demoted the manager and took over the job of managing the team himself, he guided them to relegation but to be fair, they were in danger long before he became manager.
Kinnear has a record at Newcastle of having managed the club for 18 games in the league; he was in hospital when we played West Brom in the Midlands. His record in that time is one of played 19, won 4, drawn 8 and lost 7 which is a pathetic reason to wait for his return from illness. Kinnear was taken into hospital for what was said to have been heart problems, we later found out that he would require a triple heart bypass and would be out of the game for months.
Most people would think that a manager with such a poor record of results and who was predicted to be out of the game until almost the end of his contract would have been replaced. Well that didn’t happen, we were put back under the control of Chris Hughton, remember played 4 lost 4? At this time the record of Hughton now stands at played 10 (we’re giving him West Brom as Kinnear was in hospital) won 1, drawn 2 and lost 7. He’s got that record, we’re near the bottom of the league and the club is being allowed to flounder without direction in the hope that Joe Kinnear can come back and be a better manager than he was before his operation. It’s undoubted that he’ll eventually be in better health but that will not make any difference, why should it? Kinnear doesn’t run around the pitch so physical fitness shouldn’t be an issue. We’ve got an owner who should be making decisions if his MD isn’t willing to do so.
Ashley is not totally to blame for our current position but he’s had more than enough opportunities to change our direction and he’s mostly got those wrong or allowed his employee’s to do that without recourse. If we go down this season then Ashley has to carry the can for that although he has been ably assisted by the people who sold shares to him almost 2 years ago because they left a mountain of debt which had to be sorted as it was crippling the club during a financial melt-down. It shouldn’t be forgotten either that we had finished 13th 2 years ago and 14th a couple of years earlier so our current position haven’t come out of the blue. It was probably coming anyway and hasn’t been helped by the money which has had to be used by Ashley to allow the club to pay the bills. Some people blame Ashley for not checking the books properly but that doesn’t really make the slightest bit of difference to our current situation because we would arguably be in a worse position without him as none of our previous major shareholders had the kind of money needed to turn us around. Without Ashley being daft enough to buy a club without Due Diligence and none of us could possibly know where we would be now. After having said that, his mistakes will be the ones that might take us down, because if he’d gotten it right then we wouldn’t be in this position.
It’s over to you Ashley, why have you left the destiny of this club to luck?
Why is this club run like a rudderless ship?
What are YOU going to do about it?
So back to the original question, now that relegation has become reality, who do we, or should we blame?
The honest answer is all of the above (excluding Sir Bobby) and probably a few others. The players don't get out of this without any of the blame but they didn't force anybody to buy or play them. Sir John Hall, Freddy Shepherd, Graeme Souness, Glenn Roeder and Sam Allardyce to a lesser extent. Mike Ashley, Derek Llambias, Dennis Wise, Kevin Keegan, Joe Kinnear and Chris Hughton can all take a bow. You should all hold your heads in shame while taking the club to where we now find ourselves, the second teir of English football, and the next couple of months could be a lot worse than they are now.
The next time you all look in the mirror you can safely say to yourself, "I've helped make Newcastle United Football Club into what it is today."
Mike Ashley and Derek Llambias have a responsibility to this club and it'e employee's, a lot of whom will be out of work through the actions, or inactions of others. A lot of good people will be looking for work while so many people have made a lot of good money for failure. If Ashley is to sell up then he has to look to get out as soon as possible. If he is to stay and fight on then he's got to learn from the mistakes made by him and others. Mr Ashley, you made your own bed, now you have to lie in it.
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